The Duchess of Marlborough was not inactive in the midst of this tempest of parties. Her dislike to Lord Rochester, and her abhorrence of the pretensions to superiority in spiritual affairs assumed, according to her notions, by that nobleman and his partisans, were the main sources of her adoption of Whig principles. Lord Rochester had, in the former reign, offended her pride by urging upon the King her removal from the service of the Princess Anne. The wound was inflamed continually, and, at last, the enmity rose to open hostilities. Lord Rochester was as averse to a reconciliation with his haughty foe as the Duchess herself; their influence bore the semblance of rival-ship; their advice drew the compliant Queen different ways; Lord Rochester guided the prejudices, the Duchess governed the affections of her royal slave. Finally, female influence prevailed: for when have men adequately opposed its sway? Yet it is certain, first, that Anne long resisted the arguments of her friend, and, secondly, that the Duchess would never have been completely successful, had not the violence and arrogance of her foes blazed out, and proved the most opportune and effectual aid that ever plotting woman received. To “the mad conduct of the tacking Tories,” as the Duchess termed the ill-judged manœuvres of that party, she owed, as she acknowledged, the temporary abatement, for it could not be called a change, that was effected in the Queen’s high church fervour, and obstinate, yet honest Toryism.[[17]]
Lord Rochester, who, as long as he remained in existence, was the chief object of the Duchess’s political displeasure—the thorn which, in the midst of her greatness, rankled in her side—was a man highly esteemed, not only by the party whose tenets he zealously and powerfully supported, but by the country in general. Far from being entirely indebted for the consideration which he enjoyed, to “the accident,” as the Duchess termed it, which made him uncle to the Queen, his earnestness and steadiness, during a long political life, had insured him universal respect, heightened, in the minds of those of the old school of English politics, by his relationship to the great historian and advocate of their party. There is a sort of reputation, a description of influence, which consistency, whether it be to the most approved or the most unpopular opinions of the time, can alone purchase. From the time that Lord Rochester, when Mr. Hyde, had pleaded for his father before the House of Commons, reconciling his filial love with his public duty, he had held an even, and, as far as the great changes in affairs would permit, an unequivocal line of conduct. After the bill against occasional Conformity was rejected, Lord Rochester first began to evince that “deep discontent with the Queen and her administration,”[[18]] which secret jealousies, and a real difference of sentiment had long been fostering in his mind. In the previous year, he had, in anger, declined the lieutenancy of Ireland, upon the Queen’s urging him to go to that country, the affairs of which required his presence. His resignation was followed, in 1704, by that of Lord Nottingham, who resigned the secretaryship upon the Queen’s refusal to dismiss the Dukes of Devonshire and Somerset from the council. This step on the part of Lord Nottingham was far more important in its consequences to the future fortunes of the Marlborough family, than they could, at that moment, possibly have foretold. After a month’s delay his place was filled up, and Harley, the prudent, the conciliating, and moderate, but aspiring Harley, succeeded to it; holding, at the same time, the office of Speaker of the House of Commons and that of Secretary of State—two appointments that had hitherto never been assigned to the same person.[[19]]
This preferment Harley owed chiefly to the favour of Marlborough and Godolphin, who considered him as a very proper person to manage the House of Commons.[[20]] They knew his talents, but they were not acquainted with the extent of his ambition, nor with his actual sentiments. Towards Marlborough, this able and celebrated minister expressed, at this time, an ardent attachment, and a lively concern in the recent loss which the great general had sustained in the death of Lord Blandford. “I will not,” he says, in a letter to the Duke on that topic, “call it your grace’s loss, but our common misfortune. I do feel it, that a limb is torn off; therefore I think, for the preservation of the residue, grief should be moderated: time, I know, is the best physician in this case; but our necessities require a quicker remedy.”[[21]]The Duchess, who must be regarded as the mainspring of all political changes at this period, had now inadvertently planted an enemy in the heart of the citadel. Whilst her husband was in Holland, distracted by contending factions and corroding jealousies, which, to use his own phrase, “made his life a burthen,” she had been diligently exerting the faculties of her ingenious mind to displace Nottingham, Seymour, and Lord Jersey, and to effect an union between her husband and the Whigs. Her efforts, like female interference generally, embarrassed rather than aided the Whigs, to whom she extended her gracious aid. They rendered, also, the path of her husband through the political mazes which surrounded him, more perplexing. Although the Whig party had encouraged Marlborough’s favourite schemes for the subversion of the power of France, neither he nor Godolphin desired to throw themselves into the hands of a party to whose measures they were from education averse. It was the wish and intention of these able men to act independently of party, and to promote the introduction of statesmen of sound morals and of moderate views into the cabinet, without regarding the political distinctions which proved so inconvenient to those who solely desired the advancement of the public good, and the benefit, at home and abroad, of her Majesty’s interests.
The violence of the Tories, and their determination to obtain a complete ascendency, frustrated this well-considered line of conduct on the part of Marlborough and his friend. Lord Rochester had been supported by Nottingham, in his opposition to that line of foreign policy which Marlborough had most at heart. Lord Godolphin had even, at one time, purposed to send in his resignation; for he found that he and his friend were losing the support of the Tories, without gaining that of the Whigs. The Queen overwhelmed the Lord Treasurer with reproaches whenever he hinted at the necessity of conciliating the Whigs. Godolphin, in despair, despatched letters to the Hague, filled with complaints to his friend. Marlborough, though by no means in an enviable situation himself, regarded that of Godolphin as still more pitiable. “I have very little rest here,” he remarks, writing from the camp; “but I should have less quiet of mind, if I were obliged to be in your station.” “I do from my heart pity you,” he says, in another place, “and everybody that has to do with unreasonable people; for certainly (and who will not join in the reflection?) it is much better to row in the galleys than to have to do with such as are very selfish, and misled by everybody that speaks to them, which I believe is the case of the author of your two letters.”
The Duchess was not a person to conciliate differences, nor to soothe the irritated passions of the two great men over whom she had an ascendency. She delighted to show her controul over the Queen, and vexed the weak spirit of Anne by reading extracts from Marlborough’s letters, complaining of the Tories. In particular, she failed not to transmit to her Majesty certain hints which Marlborough and Godolphin had thrown out of their projected resignations. Good Queen Anne then hastened to dispel such notions, and to reassure her beloved Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, and their friend and confidante Godolphin, who figured in her familiar letters under the name of “Montgomery,” of her unabated regard. Thus the aim of the arrogant Duchess was answered.
The Earl of Jersey, who was suspected of a close correspondence with the court of St. Germains, of course seconded the opposition of Rochester and Nottingham. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Privy Seal, was equally devoted to what was termed the high church party, though not so reputed a partisan of the exiled family as the weak, but dangerous, Lord Jersey. These noblemen all united in controverting, by every possible endeavour, the designs and propositions of Marlborough.[[22]]
Whilst the fervour of politics was at its height, the Queen was advised by her physicians to go to Bath. It was singular that Lord Wharton and Lord Somers were at the same time ordered to go to that fashionable resort for the recovery of their health. Lord Wharton, exhausted by his parliamentary exertions, and Lord Somers, frequently an invalid, were probably not unwilling to avail themselves of this opportunity of combining business with pleasure. The public, indeed, regarded the whole as a scheme among the physicians, and considered the Queen’s illness as only a pretext for meeting these two great Whig partisans on the neutral ground which a place like Bath affords. Many of the Tories who were in that city, insulted the Whigs in public meetings and assemblies. The Whigs returned the insult, nor did the Queen wholly escape some annoyances, when it was understood that she was willing to see Lord Somers. But the placid Anne looked on these demonstrations of party spirit with a smiling countenance, and “hoped to extinguish all their party flames in the waters of the Bath.” Those praises of her frugality, her constancy, her “English heart,”[[23]] which she had been in the habit of hearing from her subjects, were now no longer expressed; and the Queen returned to London from Bath, in all the miseries of unpopularity.
Lord Wharton, the veteran promoter of Whig principles, and father of the eccentric and infamous Duke of Wharton, had no sooner reached Bath than he was challenged, upon the pretence of affront, by a Mr. Dashwood, a hot young Tory, who was desirous of stepping forward to signalise himself in behalf of his party. Lord Wharton in vain offered the young man such satisfaction as a man of honour might give, without fighting; but neither his age nor his infirmities appeased the ardour of Dashwood, who insisted on a duel. The parties met, fought, as was the custom, with swords, and Dashwood was disarmed by the old lord, who, in consideration of the youth and zeal of his opponent, spared his life, and even gave him the honour of his acquaintance. But Mr. Dashwood, unable to sustain the reproaches of the world for his cowardice and rude fury in challenging so old a man, died soon afterwards, it is said, through shame and vexation.[[24]]
Such were some of the effects of that political rancour for which this free country has been, and probably ever will be, remarkable. The ladies of the time, it appears, were as zealous in those days as they often prove in this more enlightened age.