Congratulatory addresses were from time to time sent up to the Throne on the success of the English arms on the Continent. In some of them reference is specially made to Godolphin's share in the national triumph; and when the victory of Ramillies on the 23rd May, 1706, was celebrated, Godolphin was selected to accompany the Queen to the thanksgiving service at St. Paul's on the 27th of the following month. That great battle, which caused the French to evacuate Flanders, and secured the best part of the Spanish Netherlands to Austria, compelled France to offer terms of peace, which Godolphin wisely rejected; for three or four successful sieges were necessary in order to secure Flanders. But this, too, like almost every other action of his life, was afterwards brought forward by his enemies as a charge against him. And here is perhaps a convenient place to refer to another of his acts as a War Minister. It will be remembered that at the beginning of the eighteenth century all the seaboard of America north of the St. Lawrence was in French possession. But in 1710 Godolphin granted six ships and a few hundred soldiers, with a sort of general commission, to one Nicholson, who, in May of that year, compelled the garrison at Port Royal (afterwards known as Annapolis) to surrender; thus acquiring for England the whole peninsula of Nova Scotia, and giving to the then capital of the province a name which will always associate the place with the memories of Queen Anne and her illustrious chief Minister of State. It cannot be supposed from his silence under attack—and he almost invariably held his tongue—that he did not writhe under his oppressors. 'Oh!' he wrote to Marlborough, 'a slave in the galleys is in paradise compared with me!'
Another object, and one worthy of the great statesman's ambition, was at length happily accomplished about this time—the union of England and Scotland;[165] a matter in which he manifested unusual zeal and activity. The Commissioners, wisely selected by Godolphin—holding their meetings at his official residence, which stood on the site of Henry VIII.'s cock-pit at Whitehall—at length happily brought it about 'to her Majesty's great satisfaction.' It was on the occasion of giving her assent to this Bill that Anne uttered the noble words, which may have been penned for her by Godolphin himself, 'I desire and expect from my subjects of both nations that henceforth they act with all possible respect and kindness to one another, that so it may appear to all the world that they are heartily disposed to become one people.'
It is pleasant to be able now to quote a friendly critic, and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of inserting the following lines by Dr. Garth, apparently in reply to an attack made upon Godolphin, entitled 'Arlus and Odolphus,' in which the real names of those alluded to are easily seen through their thin disguise:
'Ingratitude's a Weed in every Clime,
It thrives too fast at First, but fades in Time.
The God of Day and your own Lot's the Same,
The Vapours you have rais'd obscure your fame,
But, tho' you suffer, and awhile retreat,
Your Globe of Light looks larger as you set.'
We must pass briefly over his share in the Occasional Conformity Bill, in which he was said by some to have felt in one way and voted in another; and also his unfortunate attempt to provide for some poor Palatines both in London and at Godolphin Town in Scilly: at the latter place he proposed to maintain them as soldiers for the garrison. But, notwithstanding that the project was abandoned, it raised a hornets' nest about his ears. Some of his accusers (see the Medley, 11th June, 1711) asserted that Ministers had appropriated to their own use some of the thirty-five millions voted by Parliament; and more than one hot-brained partizan even clamoured that Godolphin's head should pay the price of the maladministration of his office. The Weekly Examiner (No. 47) stated that the Ministry had borrowed money at 5 per cent., whilst they charged the unhappy creditors upon the bills assigned to them from 20 to 40 per cent. These and other similar lying accusations were some of them pronounced by both Houses of Parliament to be 'false and scandalous;' whilst others were promptly and thoroughly disposed of in a pamphlet written by Walpole; but the slanderous scribblers, and still more the irresponsible advisers and gossips round Anne's toilet-table and at her music-parties, on whom the Queen had latterly taken a fancy for relying, did to some extent attain their end by discrediting for a while her responsible Ministers.
And here it should be said that Godolphin, though a Tory at heart—for 'a Whig was his aversion'—at once discerned the rising genius of Walpole, favoured him with his protection, and recommended him to Marlborough; and, when our great statesman was dying, he said to the Duchess of Marlborough, who stood by his bedside, 'If you ever forsake that young man, and if souls are permitted to return from the grave to the earth, I will appear to you and reproach you for your conduct.'
Both Marlborough and Godolphin loudly and vehemently protested against the line of conduct which Anne had adopted in slighting their counsels, whilst she, with characteristic sturdiness, refused to listen to their reproofs and entreaties. Wyon gives a letter from Godolphin to the Queen on the subject of the appointment of the Duke of Shrewsbury (the 'King of Hearts') vice the Marquis of Kent, as Chamberlain—the like of which, he thinks, can scarcely ever before have been addressed to a sovereign by one of her subjects, observing that 'He reproached her in round terms for permitting herself to be directed by a private ministry. Her conduct, he said, would draw ruin upon herself and the kingdom, and would force every man in the Council, except the Duke of Somerset, to run from it as he would from the plague. He put it to her what effect an entire change of Ministers was likely to have upon her allies abroad, and whether the war was likely to be carried on well by people who had been averse to it from the beginning.' Nevertheless, Godolphin loyally assured the Queen that, whatever course she determined to adopt, never would he in any way offer the least obstruction to her or to her Ministers.
Need it be added that after passages such as these the star of Godolphin paled? To what avail was it that, in 1706, he had been made Earl of Godolphin and Viscount Rialton? His life was a burden to him, as we have already seen; he was sick of the popularity which Sacheverell's[166] violent diatribes against the Government had secured for him; and he was weary of the intrigues of the discontented Whigs, and the taunts and sneers of the ultra-Tories. His nerves were shattered from constantly walking among many pitfalls; his mind was distracted by the irksome dilemmas with which he had for so long a time been compelled to deal; and he could no longer brook the black, unforgiving looks of his royal mistress. Yet he might have truly exclaimed, as Sir Robert Walpole did of himself afterwards, 'My crime is my long continuance in office: in other words, the long exclusion of those who now combine against me.' Was it a greater relief to him or to her when, in August, 1710, the Queen dismissed Godolphin from his post, and desired him, according to one account, that 'instead of bringing the Staff of Office to her, he would break it, as easier to them both.' Swift says that in doing so, the Earl flung the pieces into the fire, an act which greatly annoyed the Queen. And with Godolphin fell his son—then Cofferer to the Household—and his son's wife, the Lady Henrietta, one of the Ladies of the Queen's Bedchamber.
The time had come at length for Harley and St. John to reap the fruits of their triumph; and, though Marlborough[167] had more than once warded off the blow—not only for the sake of the friendship and the family ties[168] which had so long subsisted between him and the Minister, but for the sake of Queen and country—that blow fell at last. But the result was terrible also to the financial credit of England. The Treasury was put into commission; and vast was the commotion in Change Alley. Bank shares at once fell from 140 to 110, and soon to 106; whilst the Bank refused a loan of £400,000 to the new Government. 'That Godolphin should retire,' wrote Marlborough to his Duchess on 1st October, 1706, 'is impossible, unless it be resolved that everything must go ill abroad, as well as at home; for, without flattery, his reputation is as great in all Courts as well as at home; that such a step would go a great way with Holland, in particular, to make their peace with France, which at this time must be fatal to the liberties of Europe.'
Then came the Report of the Commissioners of Public Accounts (17th March, 1711-12), in which they stated, but did not dare to print their statement, that there were certain irregularities in the dealings of the English with the Scotch Treasury; and Godolphin's oath was confronted by another to the contrary from the Earl of Glasgow. Burnet describes this affair as an effusion of 'Tory malice,' and adds that 'the Earl of Godolphin's unblemished integrity was such that no imputation of any sort could be fastened upon him.'