The projected alliance, in most important respects, appeared to be highly advantageous. The House of Montague, anciently Montacute, was already connected with some of the wealthiest and most powerful among the nobility. Resembling, in one respect, the Churchill family, the progenitors of the young man on whom Lady Mary’s hand was ultimately bestowed, had been devoted to the service of the Stuarts. There is a tradition that one of the race, Edward Montague, who held the office of Master of the Horse to Queen Katharine, wife of Charles the Second, was removed from his post, for venturing to press the hand of his royal mistress,—an offence not likely to be of frequent occurrence, if historians have not done great injustice to the amiable but ungainly Katharine of Braganza.
The father of John Duke of Montague, who married Lady Mary Churchill, was a singular instance of something more than prudence,—even cupidity,—combined with liberality and a great mind. This nobleman enjoyed a fortunate, if not a happy life. He was appointed ambassador at the Court of France, by the especial favour of Charles the Second; and conferred on his station, as such, as much honour as he received from so distinguished a mission. During his residence at Paris, he secured the hand of the Countess of Northumberland, a rich widow, who had quitted England to escape the disgraceful addresses of Charles the Second. By this union he secured an income of six thousand a year; which was farther increased, upon his return to England, by his purchase of the place of Master of the King’s Wardrobe, for which he paid six thousand pounds. The prosperity of the family was, however, checked during the reign of James the Second, who, in consequence of Lord Montague’s known enmity to the Roman Catholics, took from him the post which he had obtained. This disgust prepared the offended nobleman for the Revolution, towards which he contributed by his influence and exertions. Honours and fortune then became abundant. The titles of Earl of Montague and Viscount Monthermer succeeded to that of a simple baron. A second marriage added to his wealth; for his first wife having died in giving birth to his only surviving son, he resolved to acquire, by an union with the Duchess of Albemarle, a revenue of six thousand pounds additional to his wealth, and, moreover, to unite his family with the house of Newcastle. The Duchess of Albemarle, whom he for these interested motives addressed, was the heiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and relict of Christopher March, Duke of Albemarle. There was only one slight blot upon her perfections as a wife—she was insane. In her delusion she had resolved to marry no one but a monarch; but her suitor soon compassed this difficulty, for he is said, with what truth it is not easy to determine, to have wooed and married her, in 1690, as Emperor of China, and to have cherished the delusion, which appears to have lasted nearly forty years; for the Duchess, during her residence at Newcastle-house in Clerkenwell, where she lived until her death, in 1734, would never suffer any person to serve her, save on the bended knee.[[9]] A later acquisition of wealth to the family took place, also, on the death of the celebrated Sir Ralph Winwood, Secretary of State to James the Second.
The vast fortune which had been thus from various sources accumulated, was spent by the Earl of Montague in a manner peculiarly befitting his lofty station. He could sustain his rank with splendour and dignity, and yet think his table honoured, not encumbered, by the presence of learned men, of no rank, but whose talents shed upon their well-judging patron a reflected lustre which wealth could not give. At his magnificent residence in Bloomsbury-house, now the British Museum, the ingenious St. Evremond, and other eminent foreigners, were seen mingling with the wits and artists of the time, in saloons and halls, to garnish which the arts of painting and sculpture had been called into requisition, and liberally remunerated. The taste of this excellent and high-minded nobleman for architecture, for gardening, as well as for the other arts which embellish, was displayed both in his abode in London and his estate in Northamptonshire. His style of living corresponded with his lofty ideas, and equalled, if it did not excel, that of the most princely of his contemporaries.
From this noble stock sprang John Montague, Viscount Monthermer, who became the son-in-law of Marlborough. An intimacy had for some time subsisted between the Earl his father, and the Duchess, his future mother-in-law.[[10]] But the Lady Mary Churchill, his destined bride, when the match was proposed to her, proved averse from complying with the wishes of her parents, having already, as report alleged, “set her eyes and her heart upon another young gentleman, a very handsome youth.” “Yet she must,” adds Cunningham, “have obeyed her mother’s commands immediately, had not an accident happened, which proved very lamentable to the Marlborough family.” The event to which he alludes was the death of Lord Blandford; and the marriage of the reluctant young lady was suspended until the period of mourning had been duly observed. It then, however, took place; for it was not the custom of the day to take into account the affections, in the calculations which were made in matrimonial contracts. Nor were the family of the young bridegroom likely to relax in their efforts to promote a favourable issue. Such is the mutability of human affections, and the folly of our most ardent desires, that Marlborough appears afterwards to have disliked, and the Duchess to have despised, though without adequate reason, the man whom she at this time preferred for her son-in-law. “All his talents,” thus she wrote of his lordship thirty-seven years afterwards, “lie in things natural in boys of fifteen years old, and he is about two-and-fifty—to get people into his garden and wet them with squirts, and to invite people to his country-houses, and put things into their beds to make them itch, and twenty such pretty fancies like these.”[[11]] Such was her opinion of this son-in-law; how far it was guided by prejudice will be seen presently.
The union, when once completed, seems to have afforded many means of happiness to the beautiful Lady Mary. As far as worldly advantages were to be considered, she encountered no disappointment. Soon after her marriage, the father of her husband was created a duke through the interest of her parents, and the reversion of the post of master of the wardrobe settled on his son through the influence of the Duchess of Marlborough, and, as she herself alleges, as part of her daughter’s portion.[[12]]
An unbroken course of prosperity attended the long life of Lord Monthermer, who had not many years to wait before he attained a higher title, on the death of his father, the Duke of Montague.[[13]] The disposition and character of the Lord Monthermer, those most important points of all, were, notwithstanding the character given of him by the Duchess, said, by a keen-sighted judge, to have been truly amiable. “He was,” says Horace Walpole, writing to his friend Sir Horace Mann, “with some foibles, a most amiable man, and one of the most feeling I ever knew.” “He had,” says Lord Hailes, in reference to the Duchess’s description of the Duke’s childish propensities, “other pretty fancies, not mentioned in the memoranda of his mother-in-law; he did good without ostentation. His vast benevolence of soul is not recorded by Pope; but it will be remembered while there is any tradition of human kindness or charity in England.” The defects of this nobleman appear to have been a thirst for gain, producing an inveterate place-hunting, which detracted from his better qualities. “He was,” says Walpole, “incessantly obtaining new, and making the most of all: he had quartered on the great wardrobe no less than thirty nominal tailors and arras workers,”—employments which were dropped at his death. This corrupt proceeding he redeemed, in some measure, by great liberality, paying out of his own property no less than two thousand a year in private pensions. The Duke of Montague’s talents fitted him indeed for better things than the grovelling love of gain. Sir Robert Walpole entertained so high an opinion of his abilities, that he was very desirous that the Duke should command the forces,—a charge which his grace, fearful of his own experience, declined.[[14]] He received, with his bride, an addition to her portion of ten thousand pounds, presented on the occasion by the Queen, who had conferred a similar gift on Lady Bridgewater. What was of still more importance, the favour of Anne was continued to him when the Marlborough family was disgraced, and the high offices which he held under George the First and Second attested the continuance of royal regard.
1703. The Duke of Marlborough passed the summer of this year in fruitless attempts to stimulate the timid spirit of the Dutch generals with whom, as commander-in-chief, he was destined to co-operate, and to unite the discordant opinions by which his operations against the French were weakened, and his plans wholly frustrated. So harassed and dispirited was the great commander at this time, when all his persuasions could not avail to induce the allied armies to attack the French lines, that he looked forward with something like pleasure to the projected siege of Limburg, as to a sort of episode to his weary existence amongst his friendly, but obstinate coadjutors. One painful and inconvenient effect of mental anxiety continually attacked the Duke, in the cruel form of continual and severe headache. To this, and to the harassed frame and dejected spirits of which it was a concomitant, he refers, when writing to the Duchess, in terms which ought to have made an affectionate wife careful lest she should increase his uneasiness by any line of conduct which she could possibly avoid.
“When[[15]] I last writ to you, I was so much disordered, that I writ in very great pain. I cannot say I am yet well, for my head aches violently, and I am afraid you will think me lightheaded, when I tell you that I go to-morrow to the siege of Limburg, in hopes to recover my health. But it is certainly true that I shall have more quiet there than I have here; for I have been these last six days in a perpetual dispute, and there I shall have nobody but such as will willingly obey me.”
The Duchess was too much absorbed in her own schemes, to regard the unkindness and impropriety of adding to her husband’s perplexities, which were already sufficiently overpowering, and which demanded an undisturbed attention. She was carried along, as it were, by a torrent. Her hopes, her endeavours, centered all in one point; the abasement of the high church party, and the establishment of the Whigs at the head of affairs, were the objects of her political existence. To accomplish this purpose, she now employed all the force of her arguments, not only to convert the Duke, but by correspondence, and in conversation, to sway the mind of her sovereign, and bend it to her purpose.
The marriage between the two great families of Churchill and Montague was intended to propitiate the favour both of Whigs and Tories, by adding connexions among each of those parties to the interests of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Never was there a period in which party spirit manifested itself with greater virulence than at the present juncture, and the contentions in parliament were so vehement, that a dreadful storm seemed impending over the country. The popularity of the Whigs was increased, and strong suspicions were entertained that even the Queen’s inclinations began to be favourable to that party. “But what was matter of hope to the Whigs,” observes Cunningham, “seemed to the Tories to be only a dangerous tempest ready to break upon the church; and the furious clergy began to prophesy and report about the country great dangers of—the Lord knows what! So that it was now easy to perceive what influence there is in England in the mere cry of religion.”[[16]]