Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/417

Masham to have a peeress lie upon the floor and do several other inferior offices,' The queen, however, finally consented to it, on the condition that Abigail should still remain one of her bedchamber women (, vi. 36, note). Lady Masham is stated to have had previously to the treaty of Utrecht several interviews and some correspondence with Mesnager, who represents her as zealous in the cause of the Pretender (Minutes of the Negotiations, 1717, pp. 225–321). Oxford, however, as late as April 1714, told a Hanoverian correspondent that he was 'sure that Lady Masham, the queen's favourite, is entirely for 'the Hanoverian succession (, Original Letters, 2nd ser. 1827, iv. 270). Annoyed, it is said, by Oxford refusing her 'a job of some money out of the Asiento contract' (, i. 86–7, note), but more probably disgusted by Harley's habitual indecision, Lady Masham quarrelled with him and sided with Bolingbroke and the Jacobites. In June 1714 she informed Oxford that she would carry no more messages for him, and in the following month she told him to his face, 'You never did the queen any service, nor are you capable of doing her any' (, Works, xvi. 144, 173). Within a few days after this she procured Oxford's dismissal (27 July), and on 29 July wrote to Swift, imploring him to remain in England in order to help the queen with his advice (ib. xvi. 193–4). She attended the queen during her last illness with unremitting care. Upon the queen's death Lady Masham left the court and lived in retirement with her husband. She died after a long illness on 6 Dec. 1734 (Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. iv. p. 244), and was buried at High Laver, Essex. Lady Masham was a woman of good education, with considerable abilities and cultivated tastes, a plain face and a large red nose, which formed a fruitful subject for raillery in the whig lampoons. Dartmouth, who was not in her good graces, because he 'lived civilly' with her rival the Duchess of Somerset, declares that she was 'exceeding mean and vulgar in her manners, of a very unequal temper, childishly exceptious and passionate' (, vi. 37, note). Mesnager, on the other hand, wondered much 'that such mean things could be said of this lady as some have made pubiick. . . she seem'd to me as worthy to be the favourite of a queen as any woman I have convers'd with in my life' (Minutes of the Negotiations, 1717, p. 290).

Swift, who was very intimate with her during the last three years of the queen's reign, describes her as 'a person of a plain, sound understanding, of great truth and sincerity, without the least mixture of falsehood or disguise; of an honest boldness and courage superior to her sex, firm and disinterested in her friendship, and full of love, duty, and veneration for the queen her mistress' (Works, vi. 33). Swift attached so much importance to her influence over the queen that he actually complained of her for stopping at home in April 1713 in order to nurse her sick son, and declared that 'she should never leave the queen, but leave everything to stick to what is so much the interest of the public as well as her own. This I tell her, but talk to the winds' (ib. iii. 204). Four of Lady Masham's letters, the style of which is very superior to that of the ordinary correspondence of her day, are printed in Swift's 'Works' (xvi. 83–4, 193–4, 457, xviii. 167–8), two in the 'Minutes of the Negotiations of Monsieur Mesnager' (pp. 301, 310–12), and one in the 'Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough ' (pp. 187–9). A few are preserved among the 'Cæsar Correspondence' in the possession of Mr. C. Cottrell Dormer of Rousham, near Oxford (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. pp. 83–4), and there appears to be one in the Ormonde collection (ib. vii. 825). None seem to have found their way to the British Museum. A letter from Dr. Arbuthnot to Mrs. Howard gives a curious account of the duties of a bedchamber woman, the details of which he had obtained for her guidance from Lady Masham (Letters to and from Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk, &c, 1824, i. 292–4). Though Lady Masham promised to sit for Swift (Works, iii. 175), no portrait of her can now be traced.

, first (1679?–1758), the eighth son of Sir Francis Masham, bart., by his first wife, Mary, daughter of Sir William Scott, bart., was a remote kinsman of Queen Anne, by his descent from Margaret, countess of Salisbury, the daughter and coheiress of George Plantagenet, duke of Clarence. He was successively page, equerry, and groom of the bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, and in the spring of 1710 was gazetted a brigadier-general in the army. At the general election in October 1710 he was returned for the borough of Ilchester. On his appointment as cofferer of the household to Queen Anne in May 1711, he accepted the Chiltern hundreds, but was shortly afterwards returned for Windsor. He formed one of the batch of twelve tory peers, and was created Baron Masham of Oates in the county of Essex on 1 Jan. 1712, taking his seat in the House of Lords on the following day (Journals of the House of Lords, xix. 355). On the death of Simon, fifth viscount Fanshawe, in 1710, he