Yet the people of England, indignant at the suspected project of altering the succession, marked their sense of the attempt by heaping insults upon the Duc d’Aumont, the French ambassador. They assembled for days before the gates of Ormond-house, where he resided; they uttered acclamations whenever they saw him of “No Papist! no Pretender!” and put up a bunch of grapes at his door, in derision of his alleged sale of French wines and other goods, free of duty, for his own and his master’s profit.[[205]]
The return of several noted Jacobites who had been outlawed, their insolence in the elections, and the publication of popular tracts in favour of the Pretender’s title, all contributed to this party clamour.
In the midst of these discontents, the increasing maladies of the Queen were the subject of universal alarm, both to Whigs and Tories,—the former dreading lest her death should again engage the country in a civil war; the latter trembling for that power of which her life was the sole stay.
The latter days of the once apathetic Anne were overshadowed by the gloom of mental uneasiness, and of corporeal suffering. Her frame was racked by the gout, her mind by the contending counsels of interested advisers, and by the dread of being governed by those to whom she gave the fair-sounding name of friends. She was harassed with repeated applications to strengthen the Act of Settlement by naming her successor. Her former professions of zeal for the Protestant religion, and the heartfelt conviction that her brother ought, by right of inheritance, to succeed her, created a struggle in her weak but conscientious mind. “Every new application to the Queen concerning her successor was,” says an eminent historian, “a knell to her heart, confirming, by the voice of a nation, those fearful apprehensions which arose from a sense of her increasing infirmities;” whilst the motion of the Earl of Wharton, that a premium should be offered for apprehending the Pretender, whether dead or alive, excited an indignation in the unhappy Queen, which caused, in her reply, a departure from that official dignity to which she was so much attached.[[206]]
The Duchess of Somerset had first succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen’s regard and confidence. This lady appears to have been much more worthy of the trust, either than her predecessor, or the intriguing Lady Masham, who succeeded her. A Whig at heart, the Duchess of Somerset acted, secretly, as a counterpoise to the too violent tendencies of the ministry from which her husband was dismissed. She probably tended to preserve Anne from an avowed predilection, that secret desire, which lay at the Queen’s heart—the succession of her brother; and she had the great merit of preventing Swift from being made a bishop.[[207]] But even the Duchess exercised not that ascendency over the mind of Anne which had been attained by her earliest companion, the Duchess of Marlborough. The Queen, like many persons who have been disappointed in the objects of their regard, became suspicious, and extremely tenacious of her free-will. She even took pleasure in refusing those who were dearest to her, favours which they required, lest she should be suspected of again being governed. She became slow and cautious in conferring obligations; differing from her former practice, when she had been wont to thrust benefits upon the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, and to command them to receive, “and make no more words about it.”[[208]] The attention, and, as it was probably with justice called, obsequious service of the Duchess of Somerset, soothed the pride which had been irritated by previous neglect. Mrs. Masham often offended her Majesty by what the Queen called too much party spirit; but eventually her influence prevailed.
The consideration which the Duchess of Somerset acquired was of slower growth than that obtained by her artful rival. The Duchess of Marlborough, indeed, attributed to a desire of acquiring the Queen’s favour, a little incident, of which she gives the following lively account, in her letter to Mr. Hutchinson. The narrative shows upon what a slender fabric royal approbation is founded.
“There was one thing more that happened about this time, in which the Duchess of Somerset was particularly concerned, and which was turned to a very malicious story against me. The case was this. At the christening of the child of Mr. Merydith’s, in which the Duchess of Somerset was to stand godmother with me, I was pressed very much to give the name, which it was properly her place to do, and upon that account I refused it, till at last, to end the dispute, it was agreed by all that the child was to have the Queen’s name. After this had been settled, I turned to the Duchess of Somerset, and said to her in a smiling way, that “the Duke of Hamilton had made a boy a girl, and christened it Anne, and why should not we make this girl a boy, and call it George?” This was then understood to be meant no otherwise than a jest upon the Duke of Hamilton, as it plainly was, and the Duchess of Somerset laughed at it, as the Queen herself, I dare say, would have done, if she had happened to be present. But this, as I had it afterwards from very good hands, was represented to the Queen in as different and false a way as possible, who was told that I said, ‘Don’t let the name of the child be Anne, for there was never one good of that name.’ I leave you to judge who was the most likely to give this story this ridiculous turn; and who was to find their account in it.
“When some such stories as those had made a great noise in the world, and all my friends were much offended at the baseness of this way of proceeding against me, in order to make a greater breach betwixt the Queen and me, I remember particularly Mrs. Darcay, falling upon that subject, I suppose accidentally, would needs persuade me to try and set all things right again with the Queen, by clearing up some of the false stories which had been made of me to her, of disrespectful things I was said to have spoke of her, several of which she repeated to me, and said she was sure the Queen had been told of them. These were some of them nothing else but what are properly called Grub-street stories; and therefore, as it was with some reluctancy that she had brought me to talk so much upon this subject, so I had still less inclination to engage in the defence of myself about these matters.”[[209]]
The poor Queen was not long destined to enjoy her partialities in peace. When the preference which Harley had received from the Queen declined, or rather when he had offended Lady Masham, that mercenary favourite could then discover and disclose to others, that the “Dragon,” as Harley was called in derision by her and her familiar associates, had been the most “ungrateful man” to the Queen, and “to his best friends, that ever was born,” and had been “teasing and vexing the Queen without intermission for the last three weeks.”[[210]] The same lady draws a mournful picture of the annoyances, importunities, and almost unkind usage, with which the poor Queen was assailed, by those whose party spirit she had fostered by her own vacillations.
The Tories beheld with dismay the undoubted decline of the Queen, and hailed each transient improvement in her health with undue elation. In the latter years of her life, political tergiversation became so common as scarcely to excite surprise. “Lord Nottingham,” says Swift, “a famous Tory and speechmaker, is gone over to the Whig side; they toast him daily, and Lord Wharton says, it is Dismal (so they call him from his looks) will save England at last.”[[211]]