The Duchess was deeply disappointed upon the receipt of this letter. It was, she doubted not, dictated by the ministry at that time in power, of whom Horace Lord Walpole, Lord Sunderland, and Mr. Secretary Craggs, formed the most influential members.
Lord Walpole, the younger brother of the great minister, to whom the dislike of the Duchess extended, had been the early friend and fellow collegian of her deceased son; and what, perhaps, occasioned a greater bond of union in a mind so constituted, during the whole course of his political career, a genuine Whig, and, in conjunction with Newcastle, Addison, Pulteney, Craggs, and others. He was, also, a member of the Hanover club, who had gone so far, in 1713, as to show their hatred of the Jacobite cause, by parading effigies of the Devil, the Pope, and the Pretender, in solemn procession from Charing Cross to the Exchange, and back to Charing Cross, where they were burnt.[[278]] But, notwithstanding the similarity of their political opinions, that administration from which the Duchess had once expected great results, had failed to secure her regard; probably from the little attention which they proffered to that vanity which, like some weeds, grew more vigorously in the shade.
The Duchess was not only already at variance with Lord Sunderland, another ministerial friend, but Mr. Craggs had fallen under her severe displeasure. Upon this statesman of equivocal character the suspicions of the Duchess now rested,[[279]] of having some years previously sent her an anonymous letter of an offensive kind. She, therefore, in her reply to the King’s laconic letter, gave vent to her suspicions, that since there was only one person in all the world whom she knew capable of calumniating her, that person “who might, perhaps, have malice enough to her, and dishonour enough in himself to be guilty of it, is Mr. Secretary Craggs.”[[280]]
Her charge, daring as it was, fell to the ground. No notice was taken of this epistle, except a brief answer referring to the King’s former reply; but the painful consequence of the Duchess’s surmises was a total alienation from her son-in-law, Lord Sunderland; an alienation which lasted nearly until his death, which took place in 1722. So singular was the fate of this extraordinary woman in private life, that scarcely did she possess a tie which was not severed, or embittered, by worldly or political considerations.
The affair of the South Sea bubble, as it was called, a scheme designated by Lord Walpole as “weak in its projection, villainous in its execution, and calamitous in its end,”[[281]] was, in part, the cause of the coolness which thus severed Lord Sunderland from the family with whose interests his own had been so long bound up, and with whom he held an hereditary alliance of affection, cemented by his happy marriage with one of its best and purest ornaments. Scheming and ill judging, but not venal, Lord Sunderland, during the height of the national infatuation, availed himself of that singular crisis, and made use of the South Sea bubble only as a political engine, and not to benefit his own embarrassed fortunes.
The frenzy of this memorable scheme is said to have aided the settlement of the house of Hanover on the throne, by drawing off the attention of the people from the delirium of faction, to the almost equally dangerous mania for speculation.[[282]] As an aid to his party designs, Lord Sunderland, weakly, and with shortsighted policy, encouraged its transient influence. He incurred the deepest displeasure from his mother-in-law the Duchess; who might, perhaps, have forgiven him his share in the great imposition, had her family and his lordship’s own children not have suffered in the general crash. His neglect of the interests of his children formed one of her greatest grounds of complaint; yet she received, supported, and educated several of those children, when, from his lordship’s improvidence and his death, he left his numerous family to suffer from his embarrassments. Amongst other debts, he owed ten thousand pounds to the Duke of Marlborough; but his library, which, says Dr. Coxe, “was only rivalled by that of Lord Oxford in rarity and extent, was one of the items of his personal property, and now forms the basis of the noble collection at Blenheim.”
It may appear reasonable to suppose that the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, having now tasted of the enjoyments, or endured the annoyances, of four successive courts, would gladly retire from all such scenes, thankful to escape to the quiet possession of leisure, and to the participation of such blessings as were spared to their old age. Vast riches were superabundantly their portion. Yet even wealth, which becomes a blessing or a curse according to the quality of that nature to which it is attached, has its inconveniences; and the immense accumulation of ready money appears to have caused the Duke considerable embarrassment.
“I beg pardon for troubling you with this,” he wrote about this time, to a friend, “but I am in a very odd distress—too much ready money. I have now one hundred thousand pounds dead, and shall have fifty more next week; if you can employ it in any way, it will be a very great favour to me.”[[283]]
Surely so strange a dilemma as that of having a hundred and fifty thousand pounds too much for one’s peace of mind, and of being able to dispense with the interest of such a sum, is of rare occurrence.
The Duchess, it appears, was not only averse to speculations in the South Sea scheme, but dreaded, at times, lest the national debt should be cancelled by a “sponge,” as she frequently expressed it;[[284]] though that phrase relates to a later period, when the hated Walpole was in power.