Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/253

A.D. 1707.] instead count Staremberg, the general who in Austria was regarded as next in military genius to the prince.

We now come to a great revolution—a revolution in the ruling powers at court, which soon extended itself to the ruling powers in the field, which altered the whole policy of England, and produced consequences which continued to influence the fortunes of this country and of all Europe for a long period. Such a revolution, it might be supposed, originated with nothing less than the most powerful and gifted men of the nation, with the greatest statesmen and diplomatists. Nothing of the kind: like many such mighty events affecting the prosperity of nations and the happiness of millions, it originated simply on the backstairs of the palace, and in the queen merely changing her favourite. The duchess of Marlborough had introduced into the palace when she was groom of the stole, mistress of the robes, and more queen than the queen herself, a poor relation of her own, one Abigail Hill, her niece. Abigail, from whose position as a bedchamber woman, and from whose singular rise and fortunes all women of low degree end intriguing character have derived the name of Abigails, being placed so near the queen, soon caught her eye, took her fancy, and speedily became prime favourite. Harley, the tory minister, being also her uncle as lady Marlborough was her aunt, with equal tact, discovered her to be a useful tool for him. By working with her he eventually upset the reign of the Marlboroughs, drove the duchess from her long domination over the palace, drove Marlborough from the head of the army, a feat that Louis XIV. himself could not achieve; drove the whigs from power, reversed the whole policy of the nation, and just as Marlborough had completely beaten the French in the Netherlands, and brought the proud Louis of France to his knees, and the allied army might have marched to Paris as we did in our days, and have dictated its own terms for the peace of Europe, and indemnification for the past, the tories, to destroy all the whig triumphs, and those of the whig general, Marlborough, released Louis from all his troubles by the peace of Utrecht, rendered abortive all the blood which had been spilled since the revolution of 1688, all the money spent in these wars, and all the results of the splendid but now useless victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet. And the whole of these wonderful reactionary measures thus sprang from what Shakespeare calls "a trick not worth an egg;" from a young woman with empty pockets but a scheming brain, a red nose and a smooth tongue, being accidentally introduced as an "Abigail" in the queen's bedchamber. From such causes spring many of the most astounding changes of empires; to such influence are subjected the lives and fortunes of the swarming majority of nations.

The duchess of Marlborough, trusting to her long absolute sway over the mind of queen Anne, begun when she was a princess; to the firm establishment of the whig faction in power, her own work, because the tories had opposed the five thousand pounds a year which the queen, at the instigation of the duchess, demanded for Marlborough before he had even won the battle of Blenheim; and finally, relying on the great services which Marlborough had now rendered, had become intolerable in her tyranny over the queen. The manner in which she wrote and spoke to the queen in their style of calling one another Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman, is unexampled in the history of courts and crowned heads. The Marlboroughs all this time were making use, not only of their position to enjoy power, but to scrape up money with an insatiable and unblushing avarice. They had got the noble crown property of Woodstock made over for ever to them; the government was expending enormous sums in building and adorning Blenheim for them; the duke had his ten thousand pounds a year as commander of the allied armies in Flanders, and minted money out of his post, his opportunities, and out of the poor soldiers by every possible means; he received large bribes for the sale of commissions over the heads of meritorious but unpatronised officers; he made large sums by returning regiments complete which were very incomplete, pocketing the pay of all the soldiers who stood in the catalogues of the regiments, but existed nowhere else; and deriving great emolument from contracts for the army, by which the poor soldiers were defrauded of their proper quantity of food, clothes, bedding, and everything. The duchess meantime held the privy purse in her unrelaxing grasp, keeping the queen so poor that she had the utmost difficulty in making the smallest present, or presenting the customary gratuities on various occasions. It was remarked that queen Anne never gave such munificent sums as presents as her predecessors; the fact being that she had not the means. Whenever she wanted a sum from her privy purse for any such purpose, the haughty duchess would tell her "it was not fit to squander away money whilst so heavy a war lasted;" at the same time that she and her husband were grasping the most enormous sums; had acquired an income of no less than ninety-four thousand pounds per annum—the duke's salaries and emoluments amounting to sixty-four thousand pounds. At the same time the duchess never rested till she had obtained a grant of a portion of the ground adjoining St. James's palace, on which the Marlboroughs built the present Marlborough House; but, luckily for the country, obtained the grant only for fifty years. The duchess is believed—and, we think, on sufficient grounds—to have appropriated all the contents of the privy purse that were not inexorably demanded for the royal establishment; the queen, except in mere food, clothing, and lodging, being as poor as her poorest subject. And even her clothes were all claimed by the duchess of Marlborough as keeper of the robes and groom of the stole, and appropriated to her own use, except a few articles of inferior value, which she doled out to the bedchamber women.

On one occasion queen Anne wished to give fifty guineas to a Mrs. Dalrymple, who had brought her from Scotland a fine japanned cabinet of more than that value; but it was more than six months before she could procure the money. On another occasion she learned that Sir Andrew Foster, a gentleman who had been totally ruined by his devoted adhesion to her father's fortunes, had perished of absolute starvation in his old age in some wretched place in London, and she ordered his remains to be decently interred; but she had to borrow twenty guineas for this purpose from lady Fretcheville, one of her ladies in waiting.

The queen, reduced to this miserable state of slavery by her imperious and insatiable bedchamber woman, groaned under the degrading thraldom without having strength to