Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/264

250 the fleet must have fallen into their hands. When he returned to Jamaica he had two of his captains tried by court-martial and dismissed the service.

The duke of Savoy, on his part, made a substantial advance in this campaign on the frontiers of Dauphiné. Notwithstanding that he had to contend with the masterly genius of Villars, he made himself master of the important fortresses of Exilles, La Perouse, the valley of St. Martin, and Fenestrelle, so that he had at once established a grand barrier against the French on that side of his territories, at the same time that he had opened the way into theirs. In doing this, too, he had essentially served the cause of king Charles in Spain, by obliging the French to send from Roussillon a strong force to assist Villars. In the north, too, the king of Sweden, by quitting Poland and marching into the Ukraine against the czar, had relieved that part of the continent from a menaced danger, which detained many of the troops of the allies there. On the whole, the campaign had still further reduced Louis and strengthened the allies.

On the 28th of October, the prince of Denmark, the husband of the queen, died at Kensington Palace, in his 55th year. George of Denmark was a man not destitute of sense, but of no distinguished ability. He was a good-natured bon-vivant, who was, however, fond of the queen, who was very much attached to him. They lived together in great harmony and affection, having no jars or jealousies. They had several children, who all died early, their son, the duke of Gloucester, arriving at the greatest age. Anne was supposed to have a strong conviction that the death of all her children was a judgment on her for her desertion of her father, and the repudiation of her brother the prince of Wales, whom, though she was the first to brand as a supposititious child, she undoubtedly came to recognise as her own brother. Those feelings, however, did not prevent her from growing very fat, and in this respect her husband even outvied her. He loved his bottle and his table, being always exceedingly impatient of any delay or interruption of his dinner. The queen always studied his interest, and took care that he had his fifty thousand pounds a year, his ample provision in case of his survival, and made him lord high admiral of England, the duties of which, it is only justice to say, he very much neglected. He was, like his queen, a great stickler for the high church, because he thought it approached nearer to Lutheranism than the low church; and he had the sense to stand by Marlborough and his victories, after the tories endeavoured to ruin him, believing that they hated him only out of envy, and therefore he still stood by him when the whigs were driven from office. The prince was long a miserable victim to asthma, which, with his excessive corpulence, prevented him for long periods from lying down altogether. During these severe paroxysms, the queen attended him most affectionately day and night, took him during the summer to Bath, or to a cottage in Windsor Park, where he could be quieter than at the castle. In short, queen Anne proved to the last that she had a real affection for her husband, and was greatly afflicted on his death. Through all her griefs and anxieties on his account, she was still pursued by the fiendish malice of the implacable lady Marlborough. When the prince lay ill at Kensington, the duchess went there in a fury and forced herself into the queen's presence to demand that Mrs. Masham should vacate certain rooms, which she claimed as belonging to her office, though she had never used them, and this, notwithstanding they were appropriated to Mrs. Masham in order to be near her mistress, and relieve her in her anxious attendance on the prince. A more insolent and unfeeling conduct it is impossible to conceive, and which no sovereign but Anne would for a moment have tolerated. The duchess, however, compelled Mrs. Masham to vacate them; but hearing some time afterwards that Mrs. Masham was again using them, she went in a still more fiendish temper to insist on her quitting them, but this time obtaining only a blunt rebuff from the queen. When the prince was in his last agonies, the duchess again forced herself into his dying chamber, on the plea of its being her duty, when the outraged queen authoritatively ordered her to "withdraw!" She withdrew only to a neighbouring chamber, and continued to force herself on the reluctant queen till the funeral was over.

On the death of the prince his offices were quickly divided amongst the expectant whigs, no doubt in consequence of preconcerted arrangement. The earl of Pembroke took his office of lord high admiral, resigning the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland and the presidency of the council. But he soon found the business of the admiralty too arduous for him, and it was put into commission, the chief commissioner being lord Orford, that mercenary Russell whom the whigs had so long been endeavouring to restore to that post. The post of warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover Castle was separated from that of admiral to accommodate lord Dorset. Lord Somers was again brought into the cabinet as president of the council. Even the witty and wicked lord Wharton was promoted to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland. As Marlborough and Godolphin had a great fear and distrust of Wharton, this astonished many, but was accounted for by those more in the secrets of court, by Wharton being in possession of an autograph letter of Godolphin's to the court of St. Germains, by which that minister, and probably Marlborough too, was greatly in his power.

But though the whigs were now apparently omnipotent in the government, that was far from being the case. Harley and Mrs. Masham had the ear of the queen as much or more than ever. They were continually closeted with her, and laboured hard to disconcert all the measures of the whigs; the fierce and implacable duchess of Marlborough, raging with jealousy of the influence of Mrs. Masham, who had supplanted her, did perhaps still more than Harley himself, by her impolitic anger and insolence, to render the queen only the more desirous to be rid of the Marlborough pest. Nothing but the duke's continued victories made the countenance of the duchess at court possible. There is no instance in history of a discarded favourite continuing to pursue the monarch, even when a woman, with such unremitting insult and annoyance. Certainly there is nothing like the open, daring hectoring of this woman over the queen in public, which occurred on the occasion of the queen's going to St. Paul's to return thanks for the victory of Oudenarde, which took place