Her performance of her trust as mistress of the robes was attacked in libels, and charges of exorbitance and of peculation assailed her on all sides.
Her explanation of the circumstances under which she exercised her office, completely exonerates her from these grave accusations. But, through her clear and business-like vindication, few readers of our day will care to follow her. Interspersed with inuendoes against Harley, who “hired his creatures to misrepresent her as no better than a pickpocket,” and interwoven with letters, and with compared accounts, between the expenses of Queen Mary and those of Queen Anne, the Duchess’s defence, on these heads, will readily be taken for granted. It appears that in 1712 she drew up a statement, which, for certain reasons, was not published. Horace Walpole, looking at the close only of her Vindication, as critics are wont to do, might well call it the “Chronicle of a Wardrobe, rather than of a reign.” Yet against such enemies as the Duchess encountered, it was essential to preserve, and to insist upon, those accounts of mourning and other expenses, of new clothes and old clothes, sums given for the decorous attire of the maids of honour after the Prince of Denmark’s death, coronation accounts, and other matters, which the calumniated Duchess was obliged to produce, to justify her integrity.
The following passage is curious, as showing the accurate and close manner in which the Duchess dealt, and the strict manner in which she insisted upon all points of expense being referred to herself.[[184]]
It was the custom, according to her account, for the tradesmen who were employed by the royal family, to pay immense sums to the masters of the robes for that privilege, and to reimburse themselves by putting extravagant prices upon their goods. This dishonest practice, disgraceful to the royal household, was first broken through by the Duchess, who exacted no such perquisites from the tradesmen; neither would she suffer them to charge exorbitantly, as had been their custom. In discharging their accounts she was equally exact. Every bill was paid when the goods were delivered. A certain Mrs. Thomas, a confidential agent of the Duchess, was the person to whom the office of payment was given; and she was remunerated “by old clothes and other little advantages,” to the amount of between two and three hundred a year; but never allowed to take money from tradespeople.
The Duchess next expatiates upon her management of the privy purse, the yearly allowance for which was twenty thousand pounds,[[185]] “not,” as she declares, “half the sum allowed in King William’s time, and indeed very little, considering how great a charge there was fixed upon it by custom—the Queen’s bounties, play money, healing money,[[186]] besides the many pensions paid out of it. The allowance was augmented to twenty-six thousand pounds before I left the office. But in those two years Mrs. Masham was become the great dispenser of the Queen’s money, I only bringing to her Majesty the sums that were called for.”
But the responsibility of these places, which was so ungraciously requited by the public, was soon finally closed. On the return of the Duke of Marlborough from the Hague, in December, he perceived that all confidence in the Whig ministry was at an end: the Queen herself telling him that he was not, as usual, to receive the thanks of the two Houses of Parliament, but that she expected he would live well with her ministers. At first the Duke, still anxious to carry on the war, resolved to be patient, and to retain his command; but finding that the Duchess had again, by express command of the Queen, been forbidden to come to court, he resolved, perhaps too late for his own dignity and that of his wife, to carry to her Majesty the surrender of all her employments. It was readily accepted. The Duchess of Somerset was made groom of the stole, and had charge of the robes; and Mrs. Masham was appointed keeper of the privy purse.
The Duchess may now be considered to have retired for a season wholly from political life; and, indeed, the bright but harassing course which she had passed was never resumed.
It would be curious to inquire into the actual nature of her feelings upon this occasion. Her employments were, as we have seen, reluctantly, and not without urgent reason, resigned. The love of money has been assigned as a cause of this tardy compliance with the evident, though not expressed, wishes of the Queen. But whilst it is impossible wholly to defend both the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough from this charge, much may also be accorded to the hope, which the Duchess retained to the last, of regaining the affections of her alienated sovereign. Reproached by the Whigs as the cause of their dismissal, prompted by Godolphin, and perceiving that the fame of her husband, or at least the final accomplishment of his too extensive projects, depended on the party being kept together, there is every reason to excuse, on other grounds, the late surrender of what she had so long maintained. The promise that her employments should be bestowed on her daughters, was now wholly neglected; for the Queen’s partiality had become little less than personal hatred, and it was not long before the affections of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were assailed in their tenderest point.
From Somers, who blamed her as the cause of the misfortunes of his party, the Duchess received but little condolence on the loss of all her honours.[[187]] In Sunderland, whom she lately censured, in language the most vituperative, as the imprudent source of much mischief to the Duke her husband, she now beheld a warm and fearless advocate of the Duke, and of her own cause. Godolphin, himself deserted by those of his party who had not courage to let their fortunes sink with his, was still faithful and kind, and if he reproved, condemned her not.
Godolphin was now, by the new parliament, accused of having occasioned the national debt, and of misapplying the public money. He defended himself with the eloquence of truth. At last, driven from every charge, the adverse party, headed by the Earl of Rochester, accused him of embezzling twelve thousand pounds paid by the Duke of Queensbury into the exchequer. Godolphin, wishing to expose the malignant temper of his adversaries, made excuses, as one who had forgotten, but who would call to mind what he had done with the sum. Many of the members inveighed against him with bitterness at this excuse. “The old man,” says Cunningham, “made a show of falling into a fit of the epilepsy, and of being quite dejected: at last, when he had sufficiently tried and discovered the temper of the House, and how they stood affected towards him, behold her Majesty’s warrant and sign manual, which he produced for the twelve thousand pounds in question.” On the sight of this his adversaries were silenced.