The Queen and the Duchess never met again. But, in the midst of enemies, there were not wanting friends, faithful to the Duchess, and true to the Queen and constitution, who ventured to remonstrate with her Majesty upon the hazardous change in her counsels which her whole demeanour augured.
Amongst those who privately and earnestly pointed out the impending dangers and difficulties, was the Bishop of Salisbury, Dr. Burnet, who has done ample justice to the “economy and fidelity of the Duchess to the Queen, and justice to those who dealt with the crown,” which the Duchess of Marlborough manifested in her brilliant, but arduous career.[[166]]
Dr. Burnet had been assimilated with the Duchess in political, and in what was then considered almost as the same thing, religious, opinions. A close intimacy existed between the Duchess and the exemplary and third wife of the excellent prelate, the last of his three consorts, all of whom had been distinguished either in rank, in piety, or attainments. Mrs. Burnet took an active part in the concerns of the Duchess, who frequently communicated with her, and received letters in return, discussing the topics which then agitated the world, within the precincts of the court. At this time a staid matron of nine-and-forty, Mrs. Burnet could well remember the agitated times of James the Second, during whose reign she had retired with her first husband, Mr. Berkley of Spetchley Castle, Worcestershire, to Holland, to avoid the calamitous scenes which she expected to witness, and had remained at the Hague until the Revolution. Distinguished for piety, benevolence, and virtue, it was the lot of Mrs. Berkley, after a happy union with her first husband, to be left an opulent widow, in the prime of life. It was her choice to devote herself, for the seven years of that isolated, but possibly not dreary state, to works of charity, and to studies which would have adorned the leisure of the learned lords of creation. By her exertions, schools for the poorer classes, then little regarded in general, were established in the neighbourhood of Worcester and Salisbury. By her superior, although not classical attainments, she obtained the friendship of Dr. Stillingfleet, who declared that he knew not in England a more considerable woman than Mrs. Berkley. In his union with this amiable woman Bishop Burnet was eminently happy. Her influence in society tended, as that of every woman should, to make virtue throw its beams “far in a naughty world;” to elevate domestic, sober qualities in the eyes of men, by proving them to be compatible with the highest attainments; to be the counsellors as well as the solace of those whose vocation leads them to dive into the troubled waters of life.
The Bishop, who proved to all his wives an excellent husband, left to this, his last and his best, the disposal of her own fortune, and the entire charge of his numerous family. Mrs. Burnet, it is evident from many passages in the Duke of Marlborough’s letters, was not only the intimate associate and correspondent of the Duchess, but the object of respect and esteem to all the great leaders of the Whig ministry. She gained that ascendency, doubtless, in a great measure by her moderation—a quality which proves to the actors in difficult times as beneficial as the mariner’s compass to a vessel at sea. It was a quality in which her eminent husband was peculiarly deficient, and the want of which obscured those great and good qualities, and that real regard for truth, for which his contemporaries did not give him justice, and which posterity has slowly and, as it were, reluctantly assigned to him.
Mrs. Burnet, unhappily for those whom she instructed by her example, or guided by her influence, was, at this time, no more. The winter of 1708 had witnessed her death, from a pleuritic fever attending the breaking up of the frost in January. With consistent attention to all her engagements, she was buried at Spetchley, by the side of her first husband, in compliance with a promise made to him. And on this delicate point she thought it proper to leave an explanation in her will, for the consolation of her second helpmate, Dr. Burnet.[[167]]
The afflicted and then aged prelate did not survive his wife more than six years; and the close of his eventful and laborious life was saddened by seeing those principles which he had consistently contemned, triumph, and produce renewed confusion and contention. Dr. Burnet was, however, unhappily for his party, but little qualified to advance its popularity by his courtesy, or to gain proselytes by any other measures than an earnest, sincere preference of certain principles. His conversation was singularly deficient in the arts of address; his sincerity was involuntary, and in certain situations provokingly obtrusive. His love of politics, in which he took perhaps too great a share for one engaged in concerns of far higher importance, was derived, according to his own account, from the conversation of his father, who had the same fondness for politics as the excellent prelate himself, and whose arguments and anecdotes engendered that taste in the mind of his son.[[168]] Hence sprang up that ardent, active, and unquiet character, adapted to do some good, but to incur much censure, in such times as those in which the Bishop lived. The character of Burnet, written by the Marquis of Halifax, and given by that nobleman himself to the Bishop, portrays with much delicacy of touch, and probably in not too severe a light, both the brilliant parts and the strong shadows of Burnet’s mind: it brings to view the singleness of heart, the impetuosity of temper, the quickness to be offended, the readiness to forgive, the disinterestedness, the christian heroism, which were offensive to lesser men, from the high example which they presented, and which could not, without inconvenience to more selfish minds, be imitated.
Qualified thus to obtain respect, and having long exercised a considerable control over the Queen’s spiritual concerns, Dr. Burnet now undertook, in the crisis of her affairs, to remonstrate with his obstinate, and as he considered, misled sovereign. Perhaps, if certain anecdotes be true, there could not be a person less qualified in manner, although admirably in intention, for so delicate a task. The Bishop had an awkward habit of remembering any circumstance disgraceful to an individual, and a still more awkward practice of letting those facts escape, in conversation, just at the moment when all the proprieties of life required that they should be concealed. When Prince Eugene, some time after this period, visited England, Dr. Burnet, anxious to see so remarkable a person, requested the Duke of Marlborough to accomplish a meeting between him and the Prince in society. The Duke consented, on condition that the Bishop would be careful to let nothing drop from him which might offend the feelings of his illustrious guest; and Dr. Burnet was invited to dine, in company with the Prince, at Marlborough-house. It was not beyond the remembrance of most of the party assembled, and certainly still in that of the Bishop, that Prince Eugene’s mother, the famous Countess of Soissons, had been imprisoned, about thirty years previously, with several other ladies of Paris, on suspicion of poisoning.[[169]] The Bishop had assuredly no intention of reminding Prince Eugene of this circumstance, and indeed, conscious of his infirmity, he resolved to sit incognito during dinner, and to listen, not to converse. Unluckily for the rest of the party, however, the brave Eugene, seeing a prelate at table, inquired of the Duke of Marlborough who it was, and being told it was Bishop Burnet, addressed himself to him, and inquired, by way of conversation, when he had last been in Paris. The Bishop answered with precipitation, “that he did not exactly remember the year, but it was at the time that the Countess of Soissons was imprisoned.” As he spoke, his eye met that of the Duke of Marlborough, himself the quintessence of caution and courtesy; the poor Bishop was overpowered, and, by way of making the offence ten times greater, hastily asked pardon of his highness for his error.
The worthy Bishop’s asking after “that wicked wretch, the Countess of Wigton,” of her son, the Earl of Balcarres, and his avoiding Lord Mar because he did not like him, and knew that he could not avoid “babbling out something which would give him offence,” proved his involuntary propensity of speaking his thoughts, and his consciousness of that inconvenient propensity.
Dr. Burnet now, during the winter of 1710, undertook to speak to the Queen on her affairs, more freely than he had ever in his life done before. He told her the reports that prevailed, of her intention to favour the design of bringing the Pretender to the succession of the crown, on condition of her holding it during her life. He represented to her Majesty that her accordance in such a scheme would darken all the glory of her reign, and would arouse her people to a sense of their danger, and to the necessity of securing the Protestant succession; in which, the good Bishop assured her, he would plainly concur. He sought to work upon Anne’s timid temper, by declaring to her, that if such were her plans, he believed that her brother would not wait until the term of her natural life for his possession, but take some means to shorten it; and that he doubted not, when the Pretender was on the sea, there were “assassinates” here, who, upon the news of his landing, would try to despatch her. To these emphatic arguments the Queen listened patiently, and for the most part in silence, and, with her usual timid and crooked policy, gave the Bishop to understand that she thought as he did. Yet his remarks produced no effect upon her mind; and no other consolation was left to the Bishop than that of having honestly and forcibly delivered his sentiments.[[170]]
The appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury to the office of Lord Chamberlain, in room of the Marquis of Kent, who was made a peer, was the next event talked of, after the last stormy interview between the Queen and the Duchess. Godolphin, who was at Newmarket when the staff was given to Shrewsbury, remonstrated in vain with the Queen; and although the most positive assurances of fidelity to the Whigs were given by Shrewsbury, it was impossible for the ministry not to entertain considerable suspicions of his sincerity.