“The least disorder that the Queen has,” says Swift, writing, in 1714, to Lord Peterborough, “puts us all in alarm; and when it is over, we act as if she were immortal.”[[212]] Harassed by political rivalships, each combatant, “the Dragon,” and Mercurialis, (Bolingbroke,) being resolved, as it was said, to die hard, the Queen and the Duchess of Somerset were supposed to entertain the notion of there being no “Monsieur le Premier,” but that all power should reside in the one, and profit in the other.
“Never,” wrote Dr. Arbuthnot to Dean Swift, “was sleep more welcome to a weary traveller than death to the Queen. It was frequently her lot, whilst worn with bodily suffering, to be an agitated and helpless witness of the bitter altercations of the Lord Treasurer Harley and of her Secretary for Foreign Affairs. It was her office, good-naturedly to check the sneers of the former, and to soothe the indignant spirit of Bolingbroke. In their mutual altercations ‘they addressed to each other such language as only cabinet ministers could use with impunity.’[[213]] Yet the Dragon held fast with a dead grip the little machine, or in other words, ‘clung to the Treasurer’s staff.’”[[214]]
To the disgrace both of Harley and Bolingbroke, if anything could disgrace politicians so venal, they each had recourse, in their extremity, to men of totally opposite principles to those which they had long professed. Harley addressed himself to Lord Cowper, and to the Duke of Shrewsbury, whose popularity with those who favoured the house of Hanover was greatly increased by his late conduct in Ireland. But neither of these influential personages would link themselves to the equivocal measures and falling fortunes of Harley.
Bolingbroke formed a scheme which proved equally unavailing, to rescue him from impending ruin. His superior influence with Lady Masham, and his correspondence with the Pretender, had secured him, as he believed, the favour of the Queen: yet he courted the Whig party, and resolved to avail himself again of that support which had been his earliest stay—the friendship and co-operation of the Duke of Marlborough.
The Duke had been expected, several times during the last year of Queen Anne’s reign, to arrive in England. At one time it was said that St. James’s, at another that Marlborough-house, was in preparation for his reception.
As affairs drew on towards the crisis, both Whigs and Tories solicited Marlborough to add his influence to their wasting strength. The Duke had been accused of having entered into an amicable and political correspondence with both parties; but from this charge he has been ably and effectually vindicated.[[215]] Throughout the political conflicts which had agitated the court of England since he had left her shores, Marlborough had maintained a steady correspondence with his friends, but had expressed a firm refusal to deviate from those principles which had occasioned his exile, or to approve of the peace of Utretcht, or to abandon his desire for the Hanoverian succession. Acting as a mediator between the Electoral Prince and the party well affected to him in England, he distrusted the sincerity of Harley’s pretended exertions, and resolutely decided that he would hold no intercourse with a minister of whose hollowness he had already received many proofs. Nor was the Duchess less determined never to pardon the injuries which she conceived herself and her husband to have received from Harley. All offers of his aid, all attempts to lend to him the influence which Marlborough’s military and personal character still commanded, were absolutely rejected.
At the court of Hanover, the Duke and Duchess saw, as it were, reflected, the cabals of their native country.
The year 1714, marked by other signal events, witnessed the death of the Electress Sophia, at a moment when the Elector was hesitating whether to accept an invitation from the Hanoverian party in England, to repair to that country, and to take his seat in the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge, the writ to which title he had recently received. The Electress died in May; her sudden decease having been hastened, it was supposed, by her anxiety that Prince George should make the important journey to which he had been solicited. The earnest hope of this accomplished and ambitious Princess had been, to have “Sophia, Queen of England,” engraved on her tomb; and she missed this object of her desires only by a space of two months.
The last hours of Queen Anne’s weary existence were now drawing to an end. As she had begun her life in a political tempest, so was it to close. Sharp contentions between Lady Masham and Harley permitted little of peace, and no chance of recovery, to the easy and broken-spirited Queen. Lady Masham had now bid open defiance to Harley, nor could the mediation of the Duke of Shrewsbury, from whom much was expected, effect a truce of amity in the distracted cabinet.
What the intentions of the dying Queen actually were, with respect to a new ministry, cannot now be determined. It is not improbable but that, had she lived, Bolingbroke would have succeeded Harley. The dismissal of Harley took place on the twenty-seventh of July, three days only before the Queen’s death. Her Majesty explained to the lords of the privy council her reasons for requiring him to resign the staff; namely, his want of truth, his want of punctuality, “the bad manners, indecency, and disrespect,” with which he treated her.[[216]] A cabinet council was held on the evening of the twenty-seventh of July, to consult as to what persons were to be put into commission for the management of the Treasury. Five commissioners were named; but it is remarkable that several of those so specified declined taking office in times so perilous, and of a nature so precarious. The consultations upon this matter lasted until two o’clock in the morning, and were accompanied by contention so bitter and violent, that the Queen, retiring, declared to one of her attendants “she should not survive it.”[[217]]