Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne. Маргарет Олифант
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“Attempts,” Lady Marlborough tells us, “were made to draw his daughter into his designs. The king, indeed, used no harshness with her; he only discovered his wishes by putting into her hands some books and papers which he hoped might induce her to a change of religion, and had she had any inclination that way the chaplains about were such divines as could have said but little in defense of their own religion or to secure her against the pretenses of Popery recommended to her by a father and a king.” This low estimate of the princess’s spiritual advisers is whimsically supported by Evelyn’s opinion of Anne’s first religious preceptor,—Bishop Compton,—of whom the courtly philosopher declared after hearing a sermon from him that “this worthy person’s talent is not preaching.”
But Anne required no persuading to stimulate her in the fear of popery and narrow devotion to the church, outside of which she knew of no salvation. No doubt her father’s popish tracts, things which in that age were held to possess many of the properties of the dynamite of to-day, scared the inflexible and unimaginative churchwoman as much as if they had been capable of exploding and doing her actual damage. Her training, so wisely adapted to please the Protestant party, had probably been thought by her father and uncle to be a matter of complete indifference on any other ground; but in this way they reckoned altogether without their princess. With both James’s daughters the process was too successful. They feared popery more than they loved their father. There seems not the slightest reason to suppose that Anne was insincere in her anxiety for the church, or that the panic which she shared with the whole country was affected or unreal. It is impossible that she could expect her own position to be improved by the substitution of her sister and her sister’s husband for the father who had always been kind to her. The Churchills, whose church principles were not perhaps so undeniable, and whose regard for their own interest was great, are more difficult to divine; and yet it appears an unnecessary thing to refer their action to unworthy motives. It is asserted by some that they had some visionary plan after they had overturned the existing economy by the help of William, of bringing in their princess by a side wind and reigning through her over the startled and subjugated nation. But granting that such an imagination might have been conceived in the fertile and restless brain of a young and sanguine woman, it seems impossible to imagine that Churchill—a man of some experience in the world, and some knowledge of William—could even for a moment have believed that the grave and ambitious prince, who was so near the throne, could have been persuaded or forced to waive his wife’s claims, and those still more imperative ones which his position of Deliverer gave him, in order to advance the fortunes of any one else, least of all of the sister-in-law whom he despised.
It is half ludicrous, half pathetic, in the midst of all the tumult and confusion of the time, to note the constant allusions to the princess’s condition, which recurs whenever she is mentioned. There were always reasons why it should be especially cruel to disturb her, and her state had constantly to be taken into account. It was very natural in such circumstances that she should more and more cling to her stronger friend, and find no comfort out of her presence. “Whatever changes there are in the world, I hope you will never forsake me, and I shall be happy,” she writes during this period of excitement and distress. She herself was weak and not very wise. In a sudden emergency neither she nor her husband were good for much. They could carry on the routine of life well enough, but when unforeseen necessities came they stood helpless and bewildered; but Lady Churchill was quick of wit and full of inexhaustible resource. To her it was always given to know what to do.
It is unnecessary here to enter into the history of what is called the Great Revolution. It is the great modern turning-point of English history, and no doubt it is one of the reasons why we have been exempted in later days from the agitations of desperate and bloody revolutions which have shaken all neighboring nations. Glorious and happy, however, scarcely seem to be fit words to describe this extraordinary event. A more painful era does not exist in history. There is scarcely an individual in the front of affairs who was not guilty of treachery at one time or another. They betrayed one another on every hand; they were perplexed, uncertain, full of continual alarms. The king who went away was a gloomy bigot; the king who came was a cold and melancholy alien. Enthusiasm there was none, nor even conviction, except of the necessity of doing something of a wide-reaching and undeniable change. The part which the ladies at the Cockpit played brings the hurry and excitement of the movement to its crisis. Both in their way were anxious for their respective husbands, absent in the suite of James, and still in his power. When the report came that Lord Feversham had begged of James “on his knees two hours” to order the arrest of Churchill, Mrs. Freeman must have needed all her courage; while the faithful Morley wept, yet tried to emulate the braver woman, wondering in her excitement what her own heavy prince was doing, and eager for William’s advance, which, somehow or other, was to bring peace and quiet. That heavy prince meanwhile was mooning about with the perplexed and unhappy king, uttering out of his blond mustache with an atrocious accent his dull wonder, “Est il possible?” as every new desertion was announced, till mounting heavily one evening after dinner, warmed and encouraged by a good deal of King James’s wine, and riding through the cold and dark, in his turn he deserted too. When this event happened, the excitement at the Cockpit was overwhelming. The princess was “in a great fright.” “She sent for me,” says Lady Churchill, “told me her distress, and declared that rather than see her father, she would jump out of window.” King James was coming back to London, sad and wroth, and perhaps the rumor that he would have her arrested lent additional terrors to the idea of encountering his angry countenance. Lady Churchill went immediately to Bishop Compton, the princess’s early tutor and confidential adviser, and instant means were taken to secure her flight. That very night, after her attendants were in bed, Anne rose in the dark, and with her beloved Sarah’s arm and support stole down the back stairs to where the bishop, in a hackney coach, was waiting for her. Other princesses in similar situations have owned to a thrill of pleasure in such an adventure. No doubt at least she breathed the freer when she was out of the palace where King James with his dark countenance might have come any day to demand from her an account of her husband’s behavior, or to upbraid her with her own want of affection. Anyhow, the sweep of the current had now reached her tremulous feet, and she had no power any more than stronger persons of resisting it.
Anne’s position was very much changed by the Revolution. If any ambitious hopes had been entertained or plans formed by her household, they were speedily and very completely brought to an end. The dull royal pair with their two brilliant guides and counselors now found themselves confronted by another couple of very different mark: the serious, somewhat gloomy, determined, and self-concentrated Dutchman, and the new queen, Mary, a person far more attractive and imposing than Anne; two people full of character and power. We have no space here, however, to appropriate to these remarkable persons. William, in particular, belongs to larger annals and a history more important than these sketches. Mary has left an epitome of herself in her letters which is among the most wonderful of individual revelations; but this cannot now be our theme, though the subject is a most attractive one.
Two persons so remarkable threw into the shade even Churchill and Sarah, much more good Anne and George. We have no reason to suppose that Mary entertained any particular sentiment whatever toward her sister, from whom she had been entirely separated for the greater part of her life, and the history of their relations is a painful one from beginning to end. No doubt the queen regarded the household of the princess with the contempt which a woman with so entirely different a code would naturally entertain for a family in which the heads were so lax and secondary, the counselors so prominent. There was nothing in Mary which would help her to understand the feeling with which Anne regarded her friend
Mary. She had herself made use of their influence in the time when it was all important to secure every power in England for William’s service, but a proud distaste for the woman whom the princess trusted as her equal soon awoke in the bosom of the queen. The Churchills, however, served the new sovereigns signally by persuading the princess to yield her own rights, and consent to the conjoint reign, and to William’s life sovereignty—no small concession on the part of the next heir, and one which only the passive character of Anne could have made to appear insignificant.
Had she been a stronger and more intellectual woman, this act would have borne the aspect of a magnanimous and noble sacrifice to the good of the country, of her own interests, and that of her children.