After a few days of suspense as well as of delay at Ostend, the Duke and Duchess set sail, and, after a stormy passage, were met, and their vessel was boarded, by a message from Sir Thomas Frankland, the postmaster-general, who announced the Queen’s death.[[224]] The Duke landed on the first of August, memorable for the accession of George the First, and was received by the Mayor and Jurats of the town with all formalities, and saluted by a discharge of great guns from the platform, but not from the castle, which pays such tribute to no one but the sovereign. Amid the acclamations of the assembled crowds, the Duke and Duchess proceeded to the house of Sir Henry Furnese, whose hospitable roof had received the great general, previous to his departure for his exile on the continent.
These rejoicings were much censured, as being indecent on the very day after the Queen’s death; and it was affirmed in excuse, that even the worshipful authorities of Dover were not apprised of that event when they received the Duke with noisy honours.[[225]] But the Duchess, sincere in all things, left in her narrative an explicit statement that the Duke had been informed of Anne’s decease whilst he was at sea.
Meantime, by an act of parliament passed in the fourth and fifth years of the late reign, a regency, consisting of the seven highest officers of the realm, came into immediate operation: and to these lords justices were added seventeen other noblemen, all heads of the Whig party, whom George the First was empowered, by the same act, to appoint. The Duke of Marlborough might reasonably have expected to find himself included among the persons thus honoured; but, on his progress to Sittingbourne, he was met by a former aide-de-camp, with the intelligence that neither his name nor that of Lord Sunderland was included in this catalogue.
Marlborough received this communication with the calmness that became a superior mind. His exclusion is said to have been the result of pique in the Elector, father of the King of England, on account of some want of confidence reposed in him by Marlborough, with respect to the operations of the campaign of 1708. It was attributed by others to the reported correspondence between Marlborough and the Stuart family. Be the cause what it might, this ungracious conduct was received both by the Duke and Duchess with a becoming spirit. They continued their journey to the metropolis, intending to enter it privately; but their friends would not suffer that Marlborough should thus return to dwell among them again. A number of gentlemen had attended them to Sittingbourne, and by them, and by others who met him there, he was, in part, forced to permit the honourable reception which awaited him. Sir Charles Cox, the member for Southwark, met him as he approached the borough, and escorted him into the city. Here he was joined by two hundred gentlemen on horseback, and by many of his relations, some of them in coaches and six, who joined the procession, the city volunteers marching before. In this manner the Duke proceeded to St. James’s, the people exclaiming as he passed along, “Long live King George—long live the Duke of Marlborough!”
At Temple Bar the Duke’s coach broke down, but without any person sustaining injury, and he proceeded to his house in St. James’s, in another carriage, the city guard firing a volley before they departed. The evening was passed in receiving friends and relations; with what sweet and bitter recollections, it is easy to conceive.
On the following day the Duke was visited by the foreign ministers, by many of the nobility and gentry then in the metropolis, and by numerous military men. He was sworn of the privy council, and once more appeared in the House of Lords, where he took the oaths of allegiance. But, on the prorogation of parliament to the twelfth, he retired to Holywell-house, there to conquer the vexation and disappointment which his exclusion from the regency undoubtedly occasioned him. On this occasion, the spirit of Lady Marlborough displayed itself, with a magnanimity and sound discretion which redeemed her many faults. Bothmar, the Hanoverian minister, visited the Duke in his retreat, and sought to apologise for the omission of his illustrious name from among the distinguished statesmen who were appointed lords justices. The Duke listened to these excuses with his usual courtesy, but he wisely adopted the advice of the Duchess, and declined at present again holding any official appointment.
“I begged of the Duke of Marlborough, upon my knees,” relates the Duchess, “that he would never accept any employment. I said, everybody that liked the Revolution and the security of the law, had a great esteem for him, that he had a greater fortune than he wanted, and that a man who had had such success, with such an estate, would be of more use to any court than they could be to him; that I would live civilly with them, if they were so to me, but would never put it into the power of any king to use me ill. He was entirely of this opinion, and determined to quit all, and serve them only when he could act honestly, and do his country service at the same time.”[[226]]
Six weeks elapsed between the death of Queen Anne and the arrival of her successor. On the sixteenth of August, the King embarked at Orange-Holder, and landed two days afterwards at Greenwich. Every ship in the river saluted the royal vessel as it sailed, and multitudes thronged the banks of the Thames, uttering loud acclamations of joy at the arrival of the monarch. Yet George the First, a man of plain understanding, without ambition, the romance of monarchs, felt, it is said, that he had arrived to claim a crown not his own, and had an uncomfortable notion all his life, that he was somewhat of a character to which nature had little disposed him, an usurper. In the evening of his landing, the royal house at Greenwich was crowded with nobility and gentry, amongst whom the Duke of Marlborough (who was regarded as a kind of martyr to the “criminals” of the last reign, as it was now the fashion to term Queen Anne’s last ministry) was pre-eminently distinguished by the new sovereign.[[227]]
The character of King George the First was well adapted to put an end to the furious factions by which the court had now for many years been disgraced, public business had been impeded, and peace long delayed, and obtained by the sacrifice of consistency. Of a plain exterior, simple habits, devoid of imagination, ignorant of English, and endowed with a vast proportion of German good nature and German indolence, the King had little of that propensity to favouritism which had filled the courts of his Stuart predecessors, and even of the just and stern William, with cabals. It may be said, that the reputation of George the First was far greater before he came to the throne of England, than after he ascended to that, in his time, uncomfortable eminence. He had distinguished himself in military operations, yet, when King of England, had the wisdom to forego a desire of fame which might have proved ruinous to his adopted people. His career as a warrior began and ended early. He had governed his German subjects with regard to the principles of the English constitution. It was the work of a corrupt English ministry to lead him from these honest intentions and worthy practices. It has been wittily said by Lord Chesterfield, that “England was too large for him.[[228]]” He found the court thronged with Whigs, to whom he showed marks of decided preference; yet not, it was suspected, without a design of borrowing strength to his still disputed title, by conciliating some of the Tory party.
One of the King’s first measures was to restore Marlborough to his post as captain-general of the land forces, to make him colonel of the first regiment of foot-guards, and master-general of the ordnance. The Earl of Sunderland was appointed Lord-lieutenant of Ireland; and a Whig cabinet was soon completely formed.