Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/406

Rh which he had received and expended during his command ; and as he had kept no accounts (, xxv. 36-7), his property was attached till he should have cleared up his pay-lists. For the next two years he was occupied with 'the compilation of ledgers,' the trouble of which was broken only by his domestic sorrows. In March 1709 his wife, to whom, notwithstanding his reputation for gallantry, he seems to have been soberly attached, died of a quinsy; and in the early months of 1710 his two sons, first the younger and then the elder, died of small-pox. But the change of ministry came as a relief to his distress, personal and financial. Within a week it was rumoured that he was to be general of marines and first lord of the admiralty. On 2 Nov. he was actually appointe'd captain-general of marines with the pay of 5l. a day. In December he was nominated ambassador extraordinary to Vienna, and was on the point of starting when, at the request of the House of Lords, he was stayed, pending a renewed inquiry into the conduct of the war in Spain. Peterborough and Galway both gave their account of what had taken place, and after a warm debate, extending over several days, Peterborough's account was approved, and in an address to the queen the lords expressed their admiration for the many great and eminent services he had performed 'during the time he had the honour of commanding the army in Spain.' 'The votes of the peers proved literally nothing,' except that sixty-eight of them were tories and only forty-eight were whigs (, p. 178). The majority voted panegyrics on Peterborough as implying censure on Marlborough. The mob, with whom Marlborough was out of favour, took the same view, and Peterborough was the idol of the hour. On one occasion, it is said, the mob mistook Peterborough for Marlborough, and were on the point of dragging him through the kennel, when Peterborough convinced them of their error by saying, 'In the first place, I have only five guineas in my pocket; and in the second, they are very much at your service.'

On 11 Feb. 1710-11, the day after the vote of thanks, Peterborough started for Vienna. The primary object of the mission was to get the ambassador out of London; the nominal end proposed was to bring about more cordial relations between the emperor and the Duke of Savoy. Peterborough's diplomacy seems to have been conducted with the same irregularity as his campaigning. Before his work at Vienna was half finished he went to Turin, and while there the death of the emperor Joseph I (6 April 1711) led him to recur to his former project of putting the Duke of Savoy on the throne of Spain. Returning to Vienna, he received despatches censuring his conduct. He started for England at once, and, travelling post, without stopping, landed at Yarmouth attended by only one servant. According to Swift (Works, xv. 455), he had scattered the rest of his suite in several parts of Germany. `He sent expresses and got here before them.' The next day he had an audience of the queen, who received him graciously. The ministers did not conceal their dissatisfaction; but, troublesome colleague as he was, they recognised that he might be still more troublesome as an adversary, and hastened to get him out of the country by appointing him ambassador extraordinary to the diet about to assemble at Frankfort for the election of the emperor. At Frankfort he plunged into a sea of intrigue about matters outside his instructions. He is said to have suggested that, in default of male heirs to the new emperor, Charles VI, the Elector of Saxony ought to be king of the Romans. His idea, for the moment, was to have `a levée of suppliant kings expecting their destinies from England.' He soon tired of the situation—everybody mistrusted him; and was glad to go to Italy on a nominal mission, the true object of which was to keep him out of the way.

During 1712 he was, for the most part, at Venice, busy over some make-believe political intrigue for his government, or engaged in some more real love intrigue for himself, possibly paying his court to Anastasia Robinson [q. v.], who was then living at Venice with her family. In January 1712-13 he returned to England, eager to be at work. Swift, who saw him on the afternoon of his arrival, wrote of him: `He left England with a bruise by his coach overturning that made him spit blood, and was so ill, we expected every post to hear of his death; but he outrode it, or outdrank it, or something, and is come home lustier than ever. He is at least sixty, and has more spirits than any young fellow I know of in England' (ib. iii. 94). During the session he occasionally spoke in the House of Lords, and especially on 28 May, against the Earl of Findlater's motion for the repeal of the union with Scotland (Parl. Hist. vi. 1217). In his brief periods of leisure about London he made famous his hospitality at Parson's Green, where his conversation and his cookery, his music and his wall-fruit delighted the artistic and literary society of Queen Anne. The ministers, however, were anxious to keep him well-disposed. He was appointed colonel of the royal horse guards, and on 4 Aug. was