Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/41

A.D. 1690.] now in their present majesties; that a bill should be brought in to declare and perpetuate this investment; that the moiety of the excise granted to Charles and James should be secured by bill to their present majesties for life; and finally, that the customs which had been granted to Charles and James for their lives should be granted for four years from the next Christmas.

William was much dissatisfied with the last proviso, and complained that the commons should show less confidence in him, who had restored their liberties, than in Charles and James, who destroyed them. Sir John Lowther pressed this point on the commons strongly, but in vain; and Burnet told king William that there was no disrespect meant towards him, but that the commons wished to establish this as a general principle, protective of future subjects from the evils which the ill-judged liberalty of past parliaments had produced.

There was, moreover, a demand for the reform of the pension list, and the salaries of office; and Sir Charles Sedley, the poet, who had now zealously embraced the patriotic side, distinguished himself in the debate on this subject. He said — "Truly, Mr. Speaker, it is a sad reflection that some men should wallow in wealth and places, while others put away in taxes the fourth part of their revenue for the support of the same government. We are not upon equal terms for his majesty's service. The courtiers and great officers charge, as it were, in armour. They feel not the taxes by reason of their places; while the country gentlemen are shot through and through by them. The king is pleased to lay his wants before us, and, I am confident, expects our advice upon it; we ought, therefore, to tell him what pensions are too great, what places may be extinguished during the time of war and public calamity. His majesty sees nothing but coaches and six and great tables, and therefore cannot imagine the want and misery of the rest of his subjects. He is a brave and generous prince, but he is a young king, encompassed and hemmed in by a company of crafty old courtiers. To say no more, some have places of three thousand pounds, some of six thousand pounds, others of eight thousand pounds per annum; and I am told the commissioners of the treasury had one thousand six hundred pounds per annum apiece. Certainly, public pensions, whatever they have been formerly, are much too great for the present want and calamity that reigns everywhere else." He contended that they must, therefore, first save the king what they could, and then give him what they were able.

Finally, the amount of supply was fixed that, from that time to the next Michaelmas, it should be one million two hundred thousand pounds, of which one million should be raised on the credit of the bills for settling the revenue, and the remainder on another tax. In setting the royal revenue there was one circumstance which occasioned a strong debate, and which excited strong feelings of enmity betwixt the king and queen and the princess Anne. This was a demand made by the tories in parliament on the part of Anne for an augmentation of her annuity chargeable on the civil list. Anne was receiving thirty thousand pounds a year—in those times an enormous income for a princess of the royal family; but now a proposition for seventy thousand pounds a year was put forward. The house of commons was astonished; William and Mary were still more so. To them it was a matter of wonder how Anne could ever spend her thirty thousand pounds; but Anne, though not expensive herself in her habits, was in the hands of people who could absorb any amount of money; these were the Malboroughs The countess of Marlborough—originally Sarah Jennings- a most ambitious and domineering woman, had managed to acquire a most absolute ascendancy over the not very bright Anne. Anne's husband, the prince of Denmark, a gourmand and a sot, was a still more passive tool than Anne. He had no influence over his wife, and she, perhaps, still less over him; but Sarah Churchill could sway Anne any way that she pleased. She ruled Anne absolutely, and she ruled her own husband, the earl of Marlborough, too. The great general was but the second person, his wife was the first; she ruled Anne as princess, and long afterwards as queen; and Marlborough, whose great passion was avarice, was all the more willing to give precedence to her, because she managed, through the princess, to open up the fountains of promotion and affluence.

At the suggestion of the Marlboroughs, therefore, the demand for seventy thousand pounds a year was preferred for Anne—or, as in their own familiar intercourse with her the Marlboroughs would have called her, Mrs. Morley. For a most romantic agreement had been come to amongst these most unromantic friends, Anne and the Marlboroughs, that they should abandon all the stiffness of court etiquette in their intercourse, and call each other by the most simple names. Anne was "Mrs. Morley," the prince of Denmark "Mr. Morley," and the Marlboroughs were "Mr. and Mrs. Freeman." The Marlboroughs, or Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, saw that the tory influence had now risen greatly, and through the tories they hoped to make this splendid conquest of an additional forty thousand pounds, which would have gone in Marlborough's all-capacious moneybag.

William and his wife, Anne's own sister, were deeply mortified that the request had not been made to them, but had come through a hostile influence in the commons. William sent the earl of Shrewsbury to Anne to represent the enormous pecuniary demands on the country, and to offer her fifty thousand pounds on condition that she should cease to press it through a parliament opposition—thus appearing to force it on reluctant relatives. But the countess of Marlborough had the insolence to ask what security she was to have for William keeping his word; and Anne rejected the offer, taking her cue from her dear Mrs. Freeman, and saying, "She could not think herself in the wrong to desire a security for what was to support her, and that the business was now gone so far that she thought it reasonable to see what her friends could do for her." This was as much as to say that she did not number her brother-in-law and sister amongst her friends. If William was stung by this unsisterly message, Mary was still more deeply wounded when she spoke personally to Anne on the subject. Anne repeated the remark about her friends acting in this matter for her, and Mary replied, "What friends have you except the king and me?" There was a deep breach made which never was closed again. The intercourse of the sisters became stiff and