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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF THE 
 REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE
 
 Frontispircf. 
 QUEEN ANNE 
 
 From a mezzotint, after a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller
 
 HISTORICAL SKETCHES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REIGN OF OUEEN ANNE 
 
 BY, ,-. ^ t^ 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT 
 
 LONDON 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1894
 
 04-7 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
 
 NOTE 
 
 These sketches were written a number of years ago for 
 the American magazine the Century, but the publication 
 of them was long delayed, and it was found in the end 
 that their length was too great to be consistent with 
 the amount of illustrations, which are a great feature 
 of that magazine. In these circumstances literature 
 had to give way to art, and the papers were ' cut ' as 
 remorselessly, but much more cleverly, than Mr. Puffs 
 play, the thread of the narratives being skilfully re- 
 tained, while all that an author prizes in the superfluous 
 way of literary style or ornament was cleared away. In 
 this succinct and concentrated form the Sketches of the 
 Reign of Queen Anne have been reproduced in America 
 in a handsome volume, which, were they important 
 enough to tempt any critic, it might be amusing to 
 compare with this present English edition, which con- 
 tains the chapters as they were written, untouched by 
 the stern scissors of a transatlantic Fate — who perhaps 
 might be found to be a deity benevolent to the reader, 
 and not, except to the author, the blind Ywxy with the 
 abhorred shears.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS,— I. 
 THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS,— H. 
 
 THE QUAKER,—! 
 
 THE QUAKER,— H 
 
 THE DEAN, 
 
 THE JOURNALIST, .... 
 THE HUMOURIST, .... 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 72 
 
 228 
 286 
 332
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Queen Anne, 
 
 Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 
 Princess Mary, . . . • . 
 
 Charles il, 
 
 James h., 
 
 Duke of Marlborough, . 
 Duchess of Marlborough, 
 
 William hi., 
 
 William Penn, .... 
 
 Sir William Penn, .... 
 Lord Jeffreys as Chief-Justice, . 
 
 Dean Swift, 
 
 Sir William Temple, 
 
 Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 
 
 Mr. Daniel De Foe, .... 
 
 Harley, Earl of Oxford, 
 
 Joseph Addison, .... 
 
 PAOt 
 
 Frontispiece 
 To face p. 8 
 i6 
 
 22 
 
 32 
 
 54 
 62 
 
 72 
 
 134 
 140 
 160 
 228 
 238 
 268 
 288 
 318 
 332 
 
 V
 
 THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS 
 
 The age of Queen Anne is one of the most 
 illustrious in English history. In literature it has 
 been common to call it the Augustan age. In politics 
 it has all the interest of a transition period, less 
 agitating, but not less important than the actual era 
 of revolution. In war it is, with the exception of 
 the great European wars of the beginning of this 
 century, the most glorious for the English arms of 
 any that have elapsed since Henry V. established 
 his supremacy in France. Opinions change as to the 
 advantage of such superiorities ; and still more as to 
 the glory which is purchased by bloodshed ; yet, 
 according to the received nomenclature, and in the 
 language of all the ages, the time of Marlborough 
 cannot be characterised as anything but glorious. A 
 great general, statesmen of eminence, great poets, 
 men of letters of the first distinction ; these are points 
 in which this period cannot easily be excelled. It 
 pleases the fancy to step historically from queen to 
 queen, and to find in each a climax of national 
 greatness knitting together the loose threads of the 
 general web, 'The spacious times of great Elizabeth' 
 bulk larger and more magnificently in history than those 
 of Anne, but the two eras have a certain balance 
 
 A
 
 The Reign of Otteen Anne 
 
 which is agreeable to the imagination. We can 
 scarcely help regretting that the great age of Words- 
 worth and Scott, Byron and Wellington should not have 
 been deferred long enough to make our Victorian age 
 the third noblest period of modern English history. 
 But time has here balked us. This age is not with- 
 out its own greatness, but it is not the next in natural 
 sequence to that of Anne, as Anne's was to that of 
 Elizabeth. In the reigns of both these queens the 
 country was trembling between two dynasties, scarcely 
 yet recovered from the convulsion of great political 
 changes, and feeling that nothing but the life of the 
 sovereign on the throne stood between it and unknown 
 rulers and dangers to come. The deluge in both cases 
 was ready to be let loose after the termination of the 
 life of the central personage in the state. And in 
 both cases it was upon the pivot of one and the same 
 family that all national fortunes turned. The new and 
 unfamiliar race which succeeded the elder queen — a 
 race between which and England there had been war 
 for many successive generations, the most prominent 
 member of which had just been executed on an 
 English scaffold for state necessities of England — a 
 race that had succeeded but indifferently in its native 
 home, and was altogether uncertain as to its adapt- 
 ability for the greater throne — was in the days of Anne 
 brought to a melancholy conclusion : the tragedy of 
 its existence being summed up between, in due develop- 
 ment and progression like a tale that is told. 
 
 A Scottish writer can scarcely speak without a 
 regret, without a prejudice in favour of the unfor-
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 tunate Stewarts. The Jameses in Scotland were 
 almost without exception on the better side. They 
 did their best for their country against a fierce and 
 rapacious nobility. Such amount of justice, wrong- 
 redressing, right-doing as was possible in these 
 tumultuous times came through them : they were 
 gallant mediaeval monarchs, heroes of romance, as well 
 as in their way defenders of the right, kings of the 
 commons, patriotic princes. That intimate knowledge 
 which so often takes down heroic proportions, does 
 not exist to lessen the grace of their old world knight- 
 hood. They were a handsome race, with much of that 
 natural fascination which is as characteristic as features 
 or complexion, and which made Queen Mary, who was 
 not in reality much more lovely than her cousin 
 Elizabeth, one of the beauties of the world. But these 
 graceful and winning Stewarts were not made for 
 England : their coming, their going, the struggle over 
 them was fatal to all connected with them, and to their 
 own honour and worth as well. They were ruined by 
 their great fortune. 
 
 This was the danger, as yet an unknown one, that 
 menaced England when all the glories of the national 
 genius burst forth to render the firm standing-ground 
 of that time of Elizabeth the best which England was 
 to know for so long, splendid and memorable among 
 the ages ; and they too, though Anne was one of them, 
 were the well comprehended danger which, after a lull 
 and breathing-time of comparative national harmony, 
 threatened again after her reign should be over. In both 
 cases a thrill of risk and probable evil to come enhanced
 
 The Reign of Qtieen Anne 
 
 the certainty of the moment. And especially in the 
 days of Anne, no one knew what gulf the country 
 might plunge into as soon as her mild personality was 
 withdrawn. It might be that all this settled order of 
 affairs, still so unwelcome to the minority, might fall 
 into chaos again in a moment. Even supposing the 
 Hanoverian succession safe, .vho could tell what figure 
 those little Electors might cut upon the throne of Great 
 Britain ? They were a necessity, but a necessity not 
 loved but hated : whereas, the exiled race, the unlucky 
 Stewarts, had a lingering tenderness in their favour 
 even among those who knew them to be impossible. 
 Thus Anne's life and her time, like those of Elizabeth, 
 were to her contemporaries the only piece of solid 
 ground amid a sea of evil chances. What was to 
 come after was clear to none. 
 
 In the midst of all the agitations of the period and 
 all its exuberant life, the wars abroad, the intrigues at 
 home, the secret correspondences, the plots, the breath- 
 less hopes and fears, the flutter of the court and the 
 courtiers, the energy of life outside, it is half ludicrous, 
 half pathetic, to turn to the central figure of all, Anne 
 Stewart, a fat, placid, middle-aged woman, full of 
 infirmities, with little about her of the picturesque yet 
 artificial brightness of her time or of her race, and no 
 gleam of reflection in her to answer to the wit and genius 
 which have made her age so illustrious, A monarch, 
 except when personally great, has the strangest fate 
 in this respect. As long as he or she lives he is the 
 conscious centre of everything, whose notice elates 
 and elevates the greatest ; but as soon as his day is
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 over, he becomes a mere image of state, visible among 
 his courtiers only as some unthought-of lackey, or some 
 faded gentleman, throws a ray of passing illumination 
 upon him. The good things of their lives are thus 
 almost unjustly counterbalanced by the insignificance 
 of their position afterwards. Anne was one of the 
 sovereigns who may without too great a strain of 
 hyperbole be allowed to have been beloved in her day. 
 She did nothing to repel the popular devotion. She 
 was the best of wives, the most sadly disappointed of 
 childless mothers. She made pecuniary sacrifices to 
 the weal of her kingdom such as no king or queen of 
 England had made before. And she was a Stewart, 
 Protestant and safe, combining all the rights of the 
 family with those of orthodoxy and constitutionalism 
 without even so much offence as lay in a foreign 
 accent. There was indeed nothing foreign about her, 
 a circumstance in her favour which she shared with 
 the other great English queens regnant who had 
 preceded her. All those points made her popular, 
 even it might be permissible to say beloved. If she 
 had been indifferent to her father's deprivation, she 
 had not at least shocked the popular feeling by 
 any immediate triumph in succeeding him as Mary 
 had done : and her mild Englishism was delightful 
 to the people after grim William with his Dutch 
 accent and likings. But the historians have not been 
 kind to Anne. They have lavished ill names upon 
 her : ' a stupid woman ' — * a very weak woman ' — 
 ' always governed blindly by some female favourite ' ; 
 nobody has a civil word to say for her. Yet there is
 
 6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 a mixture of the amusing and the tragic in the appear- 
 ance of this passive figure, seated in the midst of all 
 that life and movement, with her one great friendship, 
 her long anguish of motherhood, her hopes so often 
 raised, so often shattered, her stifled family feeling, her 
 profound and helpless sense of misfortune. There is 
 one bright light in the picture, and only one, but that 
 comes from one of the rarest and highest sentiments 
 of humanity, the passion of friendship of which women 
 are popularly supposed to be incapable, but which 
 never existed in more complete and disinterested 
 devotion than in the bosom of this poor queen. It 
 is sad that it should have ended in disloyalty and 
 estrangement: but curiously enough, it is not the breach 
 of this close connection, but the friendship itself which 
 has. exposed Anne to the censure and contempt of all 
 the biographers and historians. To an impartial mind, 
 we think few things can be more interesting than 
 the position of these two female figures in the fore- 
 ground of English life. Their friendship brought with 
 it no harm to England ; no scandal such as lurks about 
 the antechambers of kings, and has made the name of 
 a favourite one of the most odious titles of reproach, 
 could find footing in face of such a relationship ; the 
 contrast is perfect between the two, the development 
 of human character as highly marked and distinct as 
 if they had been the personages of a drama set forth 
 for our instruction. Never was there a more brilliant 
 figure than that of the great duchess, a woman more 
 beloved and hated than any woman in a drama, holding 
 a hero in her bonds on one side, and on the other
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 rousing to the height of adoration the mild and 
 obtuse nature of her royal mistress, keeping her place 
 amid all intrigues and oppositions, on no ground but 
 that of her own faculties and qualities for many of 
 the most remarkable years of English history, and 
 defending herself with such spirit and eloquence when 
 attacked, that her plea is as interesting and vivid as 
 any contemporary story in which the reader himself 
 may have been involved, and it is impossible to glance 
 at it without taking a side with more or less vehemence 
 in the antiquated quarrel. Such a woman, standing 
 like a beautiful Ishmael with every man's hand against 
 her yet fearing no man, and ready to meet every 
 assailant, cannot fail to attract the eye amid the 
 historical scenes which so seldom open up to exhibit 
 anything so living, so imperious, so bold and free. 
 That she has got little mercy and no indulgence, that all 
 chivalrous sentiment has been mute in respect to her, 
 and an angry ill-tongue becomes the endowment of 
 every historian who names her name, rather adds to 
 the interest than takes from it. Women in history, 
 strangely enough, seem always to impart to the 
 chronicle a certain heat of personal feeling to which 
 their companions are not subject. Whether it is that 
 the historian is impatient to find himself arrested by the 
 troublesome personality of a woman, and that a certain 
 resentment of her intrusion colours all his appreciation 
 of her ; or that her appearance naturally possesses an 
 individuality which breaks the line, it is difficult to 
 tell ; but the calmest chronicler becomes a partisan 
 when he treats of Mary and Elizabeth, and no one
 
 8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 can name Sarah of Marlborough without foaming at 
 the mouth. To us the unfailing animation and spirit 
 of the woman, the dauntless stand she makes, her 
 determination not to be overcome, evAi the virulence 
 of the opposition she raises, carry a grateful stir and 
 commotion into the mind. 
 
 And art could not desire a more curious contrast 
 than that of the figure by her side, with appealing eyes 
 fixed upon her, a little bewildered, not always quick to 
 understand, a woman born for far other uses, but 
 exposed all her harmless life to that fierce light that 
 beats upon a throne. For her part she has no defence 
 to make, no word to say. Let them spend all their jests 
 upon her, Anne knows no reply. Her slow under- 
 standing and want of perception give her a certain 
 composure which in a queen answers very well for 
 dignity ; yet there is something whimsically pathetic, 
 pitiful, incongruous in the fate which has placed her 
 there, which can scarcely fail to soften the heart of the 
 spectator. Her woman's tragedy had no utterance, and 
 there are no romantic particulars about her to attract 
 the lovers of the picturesque. Yet in the blank of her 
 humble intellect she discharged not amiss the duties 
 that were so much too great for her, and if she were 
 disloyal to her friend in the end, that betrayal only adds 
 another touch of pathos to the spectacle of helplessness 
 and human weakness. It is only the favoured few of 
 mankind who are wiser and better, not feebler and less 
 noble, as life draws towards its end. 
 
 Anne was, like Elizabeth, the daughter of a subject. 
 Her mother, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the great
 
 EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON 
 Frotn an origina! ens razing by David Loggan
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 Clarendon, had no doubt been exposed to all the 
 dangers of that moment of intoxication which followed 
 the Restoration, when the young princes, newly returned, 
 were the objects of worship everywhere. Historians 
 have not hesitated to sneer at the prudence with which 
 the young lady secured herself by marriage, when so 
 many, fairer than she, were less scrupulous ; a reproach 
 which is something unfair, considering what would 
 certainly have been said of her had she not done so. 
 Curiously enough, however, her own father, whether in 
 sincerity or pretence, seems at the moment to have been 
 her most severe critic, exculpating himself with un- 
 necessary energy from all participation in the matter, 
 and declaring that, if it were true, ' the king should 
 immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, 
 . . . and then that an Act of Parliament should imme- 
 diately be passed for cutting off her head.' It would 
 appear, however, from the contemporar}- narratives of 
 Pepys and Evelyn that he was not so bad as his 
 word, for he seems to have supported and shielded his 
 daughter during the period of uncertainty which pre- 
 ceded the acknowledgment of her marriage, and to 
 have shared in the general satisfaction afterwards. 
 But this great marriage was not of much advan- 
 tage to her family. It did not hinder Clarendon's 
 disgrace and banishment, nor were his sons after 
 him anything advantaged by their close relation- 
 ship to two queens. The Duchess of York does not 
 seem to have been remarkable in any way. She is 
 said to have governed her husband, and she died a 
 Roman Catholic, the first of the royal family to lead
 
 lo The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the way in that fatal particular. There was an interval 
 of three years between the girls. The elder was like 
 the Stewarts, with something of their natural grace of 
 manner. The younger was a fair English child, rosy 
 and plump and blooming. In later life they became 
 more like each other : but the chief thing they inherited 
 from their mother was what is called in fine language 
 'a tendency to embonpoint' with, it is said, a love of 
 good eating, which helped to ensure the other pecu- 
 liarity. 
 
 The princesses were put under the charge of a most 
 orthodox bishop, Compton, Bishop of London, a man 
 of good family, and who had been a soldier before he 
 was a priest, for their religious education. The other 
 particulars of their training were so much less impor- 
 tant that there seems no very clear information on the 
 point, except that they had the benefit of the instruction 
 of a well-known actress, identified as Mrs. Betterton by 
 Colley Gibber, but vaguely named by more dignified 
 authorities. Lord Dartmouth describes this as ordered 
 by King Charles because of the very sweet and melo- 
 dious voice possessed by his little niece Anne. In the 
 more definite story we are told that Mrs. Betterton 
 trained the princesses to take their part in a little court 
 performance when Anne was but ten and her sister 
 thirteen, which sounds more natural. The residence of 
 the girls was chiefly at Richmond, where they were 
 under the charge of Lady Frances Villiers, who had a 
 number of daughters of her own, one of whom, Eliza- 
 beth Villiers, went with Mary to Holland, and was in 
 some respects her evil genius. We have unfortunately
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 1 1 
 
 no court chronicle to throw any light upon the livelj' 
 scene at Richmond, where in their quaint childish state- 
 liness, dressed with as much stiffness as their mothers, 
 this little bevy of girls grew up together, conning their 
 divinity whatever other lessons there might be, taking 
 the air upon the river in their barge, following the 
 hounds in the colder season, for this robust exercise 
 seems to have been part of their training. When their 
 youthful seclusion was broken by such a great event as 
 the Court Masque in which they played their little parts, 
 Mrs. Blogge, the saintly beauty, John Evelyn's friend, 
 Godolphin's wife, taking the chief character, in a blaze 
 of diamonds ; or that state visit to the city when King 
 Charles in all his glory took the girls with him — no 
 doubt the old parlours and galleries rang with the 
 story for weeks after. Princess Mary, her mind perhaps 
 beginning to own a little agitation as to royal suitors, 
 would have other distractions ; but as for the Lady 
 Anne, no doubt it came to be her chiefest holiday when 
 the young Duchess of York, her stepmother, came from 
 town in her chariot, or perhaps by water in a great 
 gilded barge breasting up the stream, to pay the young 
 ladies a visit. For in the train of that princess was a 
 young maid-of-honour, a delightful brilliant espicglc, 
 full of spirit and wilfulness, bearing the undistinguished 
 name of Sarah Jennings, but bringing with her such 
 life and stir and movement as dispersed the dulness 
 wherever she went. 
 
 There is no such love as a young girl's adoration for 
 a beautiful young woman a little older than herself, 
 whom she can admire and imitate and cling to, and
 
 1 2 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 dream of with visionary passion. This was the kind oS. 
 sentiment with which the little princess regarded the 
 bright and animated creature who formed one of her 
 young stepmother's train. Mary of Modena was 
 really only a few years older than the girls at Rich- 
 mond. They were all young together, accustomed to 
 the perpetual gaiety of the court of Charles if kept 
 apart from its licence, and surrounded by court gossip 
 and all the quips and pranks of fashionable wit. Pro- 
 bably all this might sound heavy enough now if we had 
 a chronicle of it, for fun is apt to evaporate like cham- 
 pagne, and that which pleases one age is very stale in 
 the next ; but it made the atmosphere gay in those 
 days, and if the comfort was less, the surroundings, the 
 splendour of dress and equipage, the pictorial effects of 
 society, were much more brilliant than anything we are 
 cognisant of How every gazer in the streets would 
 rush now to see one such lumbering coach as those 
 which carried the court ladies on their commonest 
 errands, or to watch half a dozen gentlemen vapouring 
 about in their laced coats who were the most ordinary 
 appearances at that time! The lovely English land- 
 scape at Richmond, the winding river appearing and 
 disappearing in silver links among the trees, the great 
 oaks and elms forming stately avenues, the little groups 
 of children and growing girls in quaint stiff garments, 
 brocade ' that would stand alone,' head-dresses mount- 
 ing up to the skies, pattering with high-heeled shoes 
 along the terraces with perhaps a black page-boy in 
 gorgeous livery, the latest mode, in attendance, or sleek 
 court-usher learned in the scandal of the times— affords
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 the prettiest scene. There sometimes would come 
 perhaps Charles himself, a wolf among the lambs, 
 concerning whom the wise virgins of the court made 
 memorandums in their journals, 'Be sure never to talk 
 to the king'; or James, not much less dangerous, but 
 curbed and softened there by the presence of his chil- 
 dren — revolving his darker schemes, but all unconscious 
 of the part which these two blooming young creatures 
 in their curls were to play in the perplexed and pain- 
 ful history of the next twenty years. 
 
 Tragedy stands darkling behind us often in the most 
 simple combinations of common life, but seldom so per- 
 ceptibly as in these historic chapters. The Duke of York 
 was a kind father according to all information ; indeed 
 it must have been a hard-hearted man who would have 
 been less than kind to the motherless girls too young 
 to oppose his will, fair and sweet in their earliest bloom, 
 who were his only living children. They were the 
 heirs of England, but not with any oppressive certainty 
 of heirship, for was not there a young wife by his side, 
 smiling upon everybody, and restoring him to some- 
 thing of the standing and all the hopes of youth ? The 
 Lady Anne in particular, the rosy little princess, not 
 clever like her sister, but with her pretty voice and 
 good-tempered roundness, who could think of any 
 tragic importance attaching to her? She was far down 
 in the line of succession. Mary of Modena's children, 
 yet unborn, and those which Nature, who could doubt, 
 held in store for young Mary of England, as soon as a 
 fit husband should be found for her, stood in visionary 
 array between little Anne and any approach to the
 
 14 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 crown. She would be left to hang upon the arm and 
 bask in the smiles of her young stepmother's young 
 lady-in-waiting, with many a laugh at the premature 
 favouritism. ' We had used to play together when she 
 was a child; says the great duchess long after, in the 
 curious book written in her old age with the bold title 
 of 'An Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marl- 
 borough,' which every historian quotes, but all revile, 
 somewhat without reason it seems to us. ' She even 
 then expressed a particular fondness for me. This 
 inclination increased with our years. I was often at 
 court, and the princess always distinguished me by the 
 pleasure she took to honour me preferably to others 
 with her conversation and confidence. In all her 
 parties for amusement I was sure by her choice to be 
 one.' We cannot help thinking that it was a proof of 
 some discrimination on the part of the little princess, to 
 choose thus early for her favourite friend one who, what- 
 ever were her faults, must have been the most brilliant, 
 interesting, and amusing of companions. She for whom 
 her great general sighed like a lovesick boy whenever 
 he was absent from her, for whom some of the best men 
 of the time entertained a constant friendship — what a 
 refuge from the dulness of the ordinary world to have 
 such an animated and dauntless comrade amid the 
 superficial obsequiousness of the young court ladies, and 
 the admonitory discourses of the elder ones, bent on 
 reminding a little princess perpetually of her rank, and 
 what was due to it ! Upon no subject have historians 
 more consistently railed and blasphemed, but for our own 
 part it has always seemed to us one of the most charm-
 
 The Queen and the Dtichess 1 5 
 
 ing episodes in history, if it had not come to so dis- 
 agreeable an end. 
 
 Mistress Sarah was one of the actors in the masque 
 above referred to. She was in the most intimate circle 
 of the Duke of York's household, closely linked to all 
 its members with that relationship which belongs only 
 to a court, though every great household was in those 
 days a court so far as this was concerned. The attend- 
 ants of the royal household combined subordination 
 and equality, service and freedom, in a way which is 
 now impossible in any other rank. They were as good 
 gentlemen as the king, yet subject to him by a senti- 
 ment which made it not only natural but necessary that 
 they should be ready to sacrifice everything for him, 
 even their lives. They were his closest friends, his 
 counsellors, more near him than his nearest relations, 
 yet always his servants. Could it be possible to 
 establish such a relationship between ordinary masters 
 and servants, what a gain would it not be ! But there is 
 neither equality enough, nor difference enough to afford 
 any foundation for such a bond except in the surround- 
 ings of royalty. It is one of the fine things of the feudal 
 system which we have lost along with the evil things. 
 
 No doubt it added immensely to the attraction which 
 the bright and animated girl exercised over her play- 
 mates and companions that she had a romantic love- 
 story, and at a period when marriages were everywhere 
 arranged, as at present in continental countries, by the 
 parents, had made a secret marriage, under the most 
 romantic circumstances, with a young hero worthy, if 
 ever man was, to rank among the paladins. He was
 
 1 6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 not an irreproachable hero: court scandal had not 
 spared him. He was said to have founded his fortune 
 upon the bounty of one of the shameless women of 
 Charles's court. But the imagination of the period was 
 not over delicate, and probably had he not become so 
 great a man and acquired so many enemies we should 
 have heard little of John Churchill's early vices. His 
 sister, Arabella Churchill, has no glory to cover her 
 shortcomings, but it is a curious instance of the sudden 
 efflorescence now and then of a race, which neither 
 before nor after is of particular note, that she should 
 have been the mother of that one illegitimate Stewart 
 who might, had he been legitimate, have changed the 
 fortunes of the house, the Duke of Berwick. Had she, 
 instead of Anne Hyde, been the Pamela of James's 
 career, what a difference might that have made in 
 history ! Nobody had heard of the Churchills before : 
 they have not been a distinguished race since. It is 
 curious that they should have produced, all unawares, 
 without special preparation or warning, the two greatest 
 soldiers of the age. 
 
 This, however, is a digression. Young Churchill was 
 attached to the Duke of York's service as Sarah 
 Jennings was to that of the Duchess. He had served 
 abroad with distinction. In 1672, when France and 
 England, for once in a way, were allies against Holland, 
 he had served under the great Turenne, who called him 
 ' my handsome Englishman,' and vaunted his gallantry 
 in a way which might have inspired even a less power- 
 ful genius. He was but twenty-two when he thus gave 
 proofs of his future greatness ; when he returned after
 
 PRINCESS MARY 
 
 From an .tcJu..^ h A. Mon^^in. in ' Th. Port/olio; of a picture by Sir PcU, Uly a, Hampton Court
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 1 7 
 
 various other exploits and resumed his court service, 
 the young maid-of-honour, whom the Httle princess 
 adored, attained a complete dominion over the spirit 
 of the young soldier. There were difficulties about 
 their marriage, for he had no fortune, and his provident 
 parents had procured an heiress for him. How the girls 
 must have followed every breathless event in this little 
 drama, the quarrels, the reconciliations, the despair, 
 Sarah's quick offence and blaze of passion at every 
 hindrance, and the young colonel's devotion ! One 
 wonders whether Princess Anne had the high secret 
 confided to her of the marriage, accomplished so 
 privately that even the bride herself was not quite clear 
 of the date, but in the presence of Mary of Modena 
 herself, so that all was doubly right and honourable. 
 Sarah, if the dates are correct, must have been eighteen 
 at this period, and her little princess fourteen : at all 
 events it must have been a delightful interruption to 
 the dulness of Richmond to hear all about it when 
 the Duchess of York came with her train, and the 
 two girls could wander away together in some green 
 alley, till the mother of the maids grew uneasy, and 
 Lady Frances sent a page or an usher after them. 
 Mary of Modena must have been a lover of romance 
 and true love also, though her youth had fallen to such 
 a gruesome bridegroom as James Stewart. For not 
 only Sarah Jennings and her great general who was 
 to have so great a hand in keeping that poor lady's 
 son from his kingdom, but Mary Blogge and the states- 
 man who was to rule England so wisely in the interests 
 of the opposing side, were both married under the young 
 
 B
 
 1 8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 duchess's wing, secretly, she helping, planning, and 
 sanctioning the secret How many additional bitter- 
 nesses this must have put into her cup when she sat, a 
 shadow-queen at St. Germains, and all these people 
 whom she had served and caressed were swaying the 
 fortunes of England ! And who can tell what tender 
 recollections of his secret wedding and the sweet and 
 saintly prude whom King James's young wife gave him, 
 may have touched the soul of Godolphin in those 
 hankerings after his old masters which moved him from 
 time to time, great minister as he was, almost to the 
 verge of treachery ? His devotion to Mary of Este 
 has been represented, it is true, in a less austere light, 
 and his loves were more gross than romantic. The 
 Churchills, it must be owned, showed little gratitude to 
 their royal patroness. 
 
 When Princess Mary married and went to Holland 
 with her husband, the position of the little princess at 
 home became a more important one. She was now the 
 only daughter of the royal house in England, although 
 not even heiress-presumptive, and occasionally thrown 
 back by the birth of a baby brother into almost insig- 
 nificance. But the babies disappeared and the daughters 
 of England remained in the front of affairs. Anne was 
 not without some experiences of travel and those 
 educational advantages which the sight of foreign 
 countries are said to bring. She went to The Hague 
 to visit her sister ; she accompanied her father, sturdy 
 little Protestant as she was, when he was in disgrace 
 for his religious views, and spent some time in Brussels. 
 When she was a child she had been in France with her
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 1 9 
 
 relations there, in the household of her aunt, the 
 Duchess of Orleans, and under the care of her grand- 
 mother, Queen Henrietta Maria. From Brussels, when 
 she was fifteen, she wrote to one of the ladies about the 
 court a letter which has been preserved with just as 
 much and as little reason as any other letter of a fifteen- 
 year-old girl with, her eyes about her. In this the young 
 lady describes a ball she had seen, herself incognito, at 
 which some gentleman danced extremely well, ' as well if 
 not better than either the Duke of Monmouth or Sir E. 
 Villiers, which I think is very extraordinary,' says the 
 girl, no doubt serenely believing that the best of all 
 things was to be found at home. She is a little at sea 
 about her spelling, but that was common enough. ' As 
 for the town, it is a great fine town,' says the Princess 
 Anne. ' Methinks, though the streets are not so clean 
 as they are in Holland, yet they are not as dirty as ours; 
 they are very well paved and very easy — they onely 
 have od smells.' This is a peculiarity which has long 
 outlived her day ; and it would seem to imply that 
 England, even before the invention of sanitary science, 
 was superior in this respect at least to the towns of 
 the Continent. Any other information which we have 
 about the princess is of the vaguest description. Miss 
 Strickland embroiders this spare narrative with a vague 
 love-story for which there seems only the faintest 
 foundation. But at all events, Anne remained in the 
 shade until she married, in 1683, George, Prince of 
 Denmark, a perfectly inoffensive and insignificant 
 person, to whom she gave during the rest of her 
 life a faithful, humdrum, but unbroken attachment.
 
 20 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 such as shows to little advantage in print, but makes 
 the happiness of many a home. The marriage was 
 another sacrifice to the Protestantism of England, and 
 in this point of view pleased the people much. King 
 Charles, glad in his cynical wisdom to satisfy the country 
 by any act which cost him nothing, thought it 'very con- 
 venient and suitable.' James, unwilling but powerless, 
 grumbled to himself that ' he had little encouragement 
 in the conduct of the Prince of Orange to marry another 
 daughter in the same interest,' but made no effort 
 against it. The prince himself produced no very great 
 impression one way or another, as indeed he was little- 
 fitted to do. ' He has the Danish countenance, blond,' 
 said Evelyn in his Diary. * Of few words, spoke French 
 but ill, seemed somewhat heavy, but is reported to be 
 valiant' He had never any occasion to show his valour 
 during his long residence in England, but many to 
 prove the former quality, the heaviness, which was but 
 too evident. But Anne herself was not brilliant, and 
 she was made for friendship, not for passion in the 
 ordinary sense of the word. She never seems to have 
 been in the smallest way dissatisfied with her heavy 
 honest goodman. He was fond of eating and drinking, 
 but of no more dangerous pleasures ; her peace of mind 
 was fluttered by no rival, nor her feminine pride touched. 
 Her attendants might be as seductive as they pleased, 
 this sturdy stolid husband was immovable ; and it is to 
 be supposed that the princess found the advantage of 
 this immunity from one of the thorns which were then 
 planted in every other royal pillow. 
 
 Her marriage had another advantage. It eave her a
 
 The Queeji and the Dttchess 21 
 
 household and court of her own, and enabled her to 
 secure to herself the companionship of her always be- 
 loved friend. ' So desirous was she,' says Duchess 
 Sarah, ' of having me always near her, that upon her 
 marriage with the Prince of Denmark in 1683, it was at 
 her own earnest request to her father I was made one 
 of the ladies of her bedchamber. What conduced to 
 render me the more agreeable to her in this station was 
 doubtless,' she adds, with candour, * the dislike she con- 
 ceived to most of the other persons about her : and 
 particularly to the first lady of the bedchamber, the 
 Countess of Clarendon, a lady whose discourse and 
 manners could not possibly recommend her to so young 
 a mistress ; for she looked like a madwoman and 
 talked like a scholar. Indeed her Highncss's court was 
 so oddly composed that I think it would be making 
 myself no great compliment if I should say her choos- 
 ing to spend more of her time with me than with any 
 of her other servants did no discredit to her taste.' 
 Lady Clarendon was the wife of the great Chancellor's 
 son, and was the aunt by marriage of the princess, not 
 always a very endearing relationship. She was not a 
 great lady by birth, and though a friend of Evelyn's 
 and a highly educated woman, might easily be sup- 
 posed to be a little oppressive in a young household, 
 where her relationship gave her a certain authority, 
 and where it would be difficult for a grave matron to 
 avoid something of the unpopularity of a duenna. 
 
 The prince was dull, the princess had not many re- 
 sources. They settled down in homely virtue, close to 
 the court, with all its scandals and gaieties, but not quite
 
 2 2 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 of it, and nothing could be more natural than that Anne 
 should eagerly avail herself of the always amusing, always 
 lively companion who had been the chosen friend of 
 her youth. The Churchills were a handsome and dis- 
 tinguished couple, young, ambitious, and brilliant, accus- 
 tomed to court ways, and acquainted with all that was 
 going on, the gossip and th-^ wit, the fin mot of every 
 political situation, the whispers of the antechambers. 
 They brought their young mistress all the news, em- 
 bellished by daring comments and criticisms sharply 
 spiced with satire, seeing everything and hearing 
 everything with keen young eyes and ears, and turn- 
 ing her dull spectatorship into the breathless observa- 
 tion of one who knew every turn of the great drama 
 played before her eyes. They spared nobody, we may 
 be sure, in their talk ; they had nicknames for every 
 prominent individual, and flashed their keen animad- 
 versions and lively chronicles of every day's proceedings 
 over the heads of the uninitiated, as members of an 
 exclusive coterie delight to do, keeping their princess 
 always interested, always up to the current of affairs. 
 
 The Cockpit, which, undignified as it sounds, was the 
 house chosen as Anne's residence, had been built as a 
 royal playhouse, first for the sport indicated by its 
 name, then for the more refined amusement of the 
 theatre, but had been made into a private residence, and 
 was bought by Charles li. for his niece on her marriage. 
 It was exactly opposite to the palace of Whitehall, then 
 a stately building, facing on one side to the river, as 
 Somerset House does still, and of a similar order of 
 architecture. The Cockpit is said to have been on the
 
 CHARLE-S II. 
 
 Miniature by S. Cooper, in the Royal Collection at Windsor
 
 The Quee7i and the Duchess 
 
 other side of the existing street, opening from St 
 James's Park. The young household was thus planted 
 between the king's gay, crowded, luxurious and dis- 
 orderly dwelling, and the more modest establishment 
 of the Duke of York at St. James's Palace — witnessing 
 from its windows all the comings and goings, the fine 
 equipages, the court favourites, each with their train of 
 flatterers, and every commotion of the most extravagant 
 and lawless of royal houses. No doubt to hear Mrs. 
 Churchill's lively satirical remarks upon all this, and the 
 flow of her brilliant malice, and all her sharp commen- 
 taries, must have kept the house lively, and brightened 
 the dull days and tedious waitings of maternity into 
 which Anne was immediately plunged, drawing a laugh 
 even from stupid George in the chimney corner. And 
 there was this in it, to make the whole more piquant, 
 that it was virtue, irreproachable, and no doubt pleas- 
 antly self-conscious of its superiority, which thus de- 
 rived a keen amusement out of vice. The two young 
 couples on the other side of the way were immaculate, 
 devoted exclusively to each other, thinking of neither 
 man nor woman save their lawful mates. The atmo- 
 sphere of the time was not favourable to delicacy of 
 mind. Probably neither the princess nor her lady were 
 disgusted by gossip about the Portsmouths and Castle- 
 maines, but took these ladies to pieces with indignant 
 zest, and spared no gibe. 
 
 And though the remarks might be too broad for 
 modern liking and the fun sometimes unsavoury, we 
 cannot but think that amid the noisy and picturesque 
 life, full of corruption, yet so gay and sparkling to the
 
 24 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 spectator, of that wild Restoration era, this little house- 
 hold of the Cockpit forms one of the most attractive 
 pictures. A fine young soldier, already the most dis- 
 tinguished of his age, and a beautiful lively young 
 woman, overflowing with wit and energy, there was 
 not in all Charles's court so splendid a couple as these 
 young Churchills. And Anne was very young, in full 
 possession still of that beaute de diable which so long as 
 it lasts has its own charm. Along with her beauty of 
 colour and freshness and youthful contour, she had a 
 beautiful voice, the prettiest hands, and the most 
 affectionate heart. If she was not clever, how little 
 does that matter to a girl of twenty, taught by love to 
 be receptive, and called upon for no effort of genius. 
 Honest George was not much more than a back- 
 ground, but an inoffensive and amiable piece of still life, 
 taking nothing upon him. If there was calculation in 
 the steadfastness with which the abler pair possessed 
 themselves of the confidence and held fast to the ser- 
 vice of their royal friends, it would be hard to conclude 
 that there was not some affection too — at least on the 
 part of Sarah, who had known every thought of her 
 little princess's heart since she was a child, and could 
 not but be flattered and pleased by the love showered 
 upon her. At all events in Anne there was no un- 
 worthy sentiment. Everything about her appeals to 
 our tenderness. When she attained what seems to 
 have been the summit of her desires and secured her 
 type of excellence, the admired and adored paragon of 
 her childhood, for her daily companion, the formal 
 titles and addresses which her rank made necessary
 
 The Qtieen and the Dtichess 2 5 
 
 became irksome beyond measure to the simple-hearted 
 young woman, whose hard fate it was to have been 
 born a princess. The impetuosity of her affection, her 
 rush, so to speak, into the arms of her friend, her 
 pretty youthful sentiment, so fresh and natural, her 
 humility and simplicity are all pleasant to contemplate. 
 Little more than a year after her marriage, after this 
 close union had begun, she writes upon a temporary 
 absence as follows : — 
 
 ' If you will not let me have the satisfaction of hearing from 
 you again before I see you, let me beg of you not to call me 
 " your highness " at every word, but be as free with me as 
 one friend ought to be with another. And you can never give 
 me any greater proof of your friendship than in telling me 
 your mind freely in all things, which I do beg you to do : and 
 if ever it were in my power to serve you, nobody would be 
 more ready than myself. I am all impatience for Wednesday : 
 till when farewell.' 
 
 Upon this ensued a little sentimental bargain be- 
 tween the two young women. It was not according to 
 the manners of the time that they should call each 
 other Anne and Sarah : perhaps indeed the princess 
 was not prepared to go so far; at all events it was 
 not the mode of that artificial age. Had they been 
 French they might have been Araminta and Dorinda 
 after the fashion of the Prccieuses, but the English form 
 was different. 
 
 'She grew weary to be treated by me with the form and 
 ceremony due to her rank ; nor could she bear from me the 
 sound of words which implied in them distance and superi- 
 ority. It was this turn of mind which made her one day pro- 
 pose to me that whenever I should happen to be absent from
 
 26 The Reign of Qtteen Anne 
 
 her, we might in all our letters write ourselves by feigned 
 names, such as would impart nothing of distinction of rank 
 between us. Morley and Freeman were the names her fancy 
 hit upon, and she left me to choose by which of them I should 
 be called. My frank open temper naturally led me to pitch 
 upon Freeman, and so the princess took the other : and from 
 this time Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman began to converse 
 as equals, made so by affection and friendship.' 
 
 No doubt these were the names in some young-lady 
 book which had been in the young princess's childish 
 library, something a generation before the Spectator, 
 in which moral virtue and the sweet claims of friend- 
 ship were the subject, Morley is one of the typical 
 names which recall to us the literature of the eighteenth 
 century, and no doubt it was taken from some early 
 av ant-courier oi'&iQ. instructive and sentimental romances 
 that were to come. Mrs. Morley could be nothing less 
 than the gentle higenue, the type of modest virtue, and 
 Freeman was of all others the title most suitable for 
 Sarah the bright and brave. If the princess invented 
 them it says a great deal more for her imagination than 
 it has been supposed to deserve. The critics have not 
 been able to contain themselves for angry ridicule of 
 this little friendly travesty. To us it seems a pretty 
 incident ; the princess was twenty, the bedchamber 
 woman twenty-four ; their friendly traffic had not to 
 their own consciousness attained the importance of an 
 historical fact. 
 
 The spot in which all these things went on bore a 
 very different aspect then from its appearance now. It 
 is still to a stranger an impressive piece of street. 
 Opposite the not very dignified archways in which a
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 27 
 
 splendid horse-guard in full panoply stands all day- 
 long, holding in his charger for the admiration of her 
 Majesty's lieges, was bustling Whitehall, full of the most 
 animated life and the greatest finery that has ever been 
 in England, grand gilt coaches, such as survive only 
 in the Lord Mayor's show, rumbling in and out from 
 its gateways, groups of splendid persons coming and 
 going, the king himself with all his dogs and his 
 gentlemen, streaming across the road to his walk in 
 the Mall in a glory of velvet and satin, point lace 
 and gold. The doors were not closed as now by 
 unsociable Lord Chamberlains, watching over the 
 entries at Buckingham Palace, opening only for solemn 
 functions. Everybody, or at least everybody who was 
 anybody, was free to enter, to walk in the galleries 
 where a royal group might be encountered at any 
 moment, or the delighted spectator might look down 
 upon the very presence-chamber itself and see the 
 king receive an ambassador, or the queen in the 
 evening sit down to basset, while all the court amused 
 themselves in full view of the gazers. If such a fine 
 sight were possible now it is to be feared that the well- 
 dressed mob which pursues the royal footsteps where- 
 ever they go would make the life of the sovereign 
 impossible altogether. But such was the custom in 
 those days. Mr. Pepys ' carried my wife ' into one of 
 these galleries ' to see the Queen in her presence- 
 chamber and the maydes of honour and the young Duke 
 of Monmouth playing at cards;' and himself on another 
 occasion got into the very ballroom, 'crammed with 
 fine ladies, the greatest of the court' and beheld the
 
 28 The Reign of Queen Amie 
 
 king with all the dukes dancing the Branle. 'The 
 greatest pleasure,' he says, ' I could wish to see at 
 court.' Mr. John Evelyn was a greater personage to 
 whom all the ways of the court were open : but even to 
 his equal in the present day it would not be possible to 
 go in as he evidently did at his ease, without invita- 
 tion, on that last Sunday evening of King Charles's life, 
 into the midst of the scene of which he has left us so 
 painful a sketch : ' The king sitting and toying with his 
 concubines ; a French boy singing love-songs in that 
 glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great 
 courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset, 
 round a large table, a bank of at least ;^2O00 in gold 
 before them.' 
 
 All this was going on opposite the house where the 
 Princess Anne held her virtuous, mild little court, and 
 watched the courtiers streaming out and in, with endless 
 curiosity and amusement. But two years after her estab- 
 lishment there King Charles died. And then the scene 
 changed ; and it was the mass in the private chapel, and 
 the presence here and there of somebody who looked like 
 a Jesuit which alarmed the gazers, not the dissolute 
 amusements of the court. James was not virtuous any 
 more than his brother. One of the first acts which the 
 excellent Evelyn, one of the best of men, had to do in 
 the new reign, as one of the Commissioners of the Privy 
 Seal, was to affix that imperial stamp to a patent by 
 which one of the new king's favourites was made Coun- 
 tess of Dorchester : but James's immoralities were not 
 his chief characteristics. He was a more dangerous king 
 than his brother, who was merely selfish, dissolute, and
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 pleasure-loving. James was more. He was a bigoted 
 Roman Catholic besides, bent on making up for all his 
 peccadilloes by furthering his creed everywhere, and a 
 strenuous believer in that old family doctrine of divine 
 right which had already worked the Stewarts such 
 deadly harm. He had been obliged to withdraw from 
 the court two or three times in his brother's time, in 
 consequence of the popular fear and suspicion of him : 
 and no reign was ever begun under such gloomy 
 auguries. Judging him from our present point of view, 
 his first proceedings, except for the unconstitutional 
 mode of doing them, do not appear very alarming. 
 We have gone much further than James could have 
 imagined possible in the way of abolishing tests and 
 religious disabilities; but the mind of his time was very 
 different. When the bishops refused to read the 
 declaration of his will, it was upon the expressed 
 ground that he had of himself no right to promulgate 
 any law, or abolish without the consent of Parliament 
 any existing enactment : but this was not the real 
 motive of their conduct. It was not the assumption by 
 the king of the power to act on his own authority which 
 united the High Church Prelates with the bulk of the 
 nation. It was what he did, not the way in which he 
 did it, which set the country in flame. The mere 
 thought that the door which had been so bolted and 
 barred against Popery was now set open, filled all 
 England with the wildest panic. The nation felt itself 
 caught by the torrent which must carry it to destruction. 
 Men saw the dungeons of the Inquisition, the fires of 
 Smith field before them, as soon as the proscribed
 
 }0 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 priest was re-admitted and mass once more openly- 
 said at an unconcealed altar. Never was there a more 
 universal and all-influential sentiment. The terror, the 
 unanimity, are things to wonder at. Sancroft and his 
 bishops were not constitutionalists. The personal rule 
 of the king had nothing in it that alarmed them ; but 
 the idea of the re-introduction of Popery moved them 
 to a resistance which was in reality opposed to their 
 tenets; and for the first time absolutely unanimous 
 England was at their back. 
 
 When we take history piecemeal, and read it through 
 the individual lives of the chief actors, we perceive with 
 the strangest sensations of surprise that at this great 
 crisis not one of these men was sure what he wanted 
 or what he feared, or was even entirely sincere in his 
 adherence to one party against another. They were 
 the courtiers of James, and invited William — they were 
 William's ministers, and kept up a correspondence with 
 James. The best of them were not without a treacher- 
 ous side. They were never certain which was safest, 
 which would last, always liable to lend an ear to 
 temptations from the other party, never sure that they 
 might not to-morrow morning find themselves in open 
 rebellion against the master of to-day. Yet while 
 almost every individual of note was subject to this 
 uncertainty, this confused and troubled vacillation, there 
 was such a sweep of national conviction, so strong a 
 current of the general will, that the supposed leaders of 
 opinion were carried away by it, and compelled to 
 assume and act upon a conviction which was England's, 
 but which individually they did not possess. Nothing
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 can be more remarkable, or unexplainable under any 
 other interpretation, than the way in which his entire 
 court, statesmen, soldiers, all who were worth counting 
 and so many who were not, abandoned King James — 
 some with a sort of consternation, not knowing why 
 they did it, drawn by a force they could not resist. No 
 example of this can be more remarkable than that of 
 Clarendon, who received the news of his son's defection 
 to the Prince of Orange with what seems to be a heart- 
 broken outcry, ' O God, that my son should be a rebel!' 
 yet presently, ten days afterwards, is drawn away 
 himself in a kind of extraordinary confusion like a man 
 in a dream, like a subject of mesmeric influence, 
 although in all the following negotiations he maintained 
 James's cause as far as a man could who did not accept 
 ruin as the consequence. Scarcely one of these men was 
 whole-hearted or had any determined principle in the 
 matter. But in the mass of the nation behind them there 
 was a force of conviction, of panic, of determination, 
 which carried them off their feet. The chief names in 
 England appear little more than straws upon the current 
 indicating its course, but forced along by its fierce 
 sweep and impetus and not by any impulse of their own. 
 The Princess Anne occupied a different position from 
 that of these bewildered statesmen. She shared to the 
 fullest extent the convictions of the nation. She had 
 been brought up in the straitest sect of her religion, 
 Protestant almost more than Christian, a Church- 
 woman above all. When one is capable of thinking 
 about one's faith there is some reason to hope that one 
 may at least believe in the thoughts of other people and
 
 32 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 consider it possible that they in their own esteem, if not 
 in any one else's, may be right, which is the only true 
 foundation of toleration. But it is the people who 
 believe without thinking, who receive what they are 
 taught without exercising any judgment of their own 
 upon it, and cling to it with a certainty that its least 
 important detail is as necessary as its first principle, 
 who furnish that sancta simplicitas which makes the 
 cruellest persecution possible without turning the 
 persecuting community into fiends and barbarians. 
 Though her mother had been a Roman Catholic, and 
 her father was one, and though many of her relations 
 belonged to the old church, Anne was a Protestant of 
 this unyielding kind. She was in herself as good a type 
 of the England of the time as could have been found, 
 much better than her abler and larger-minded ad- 
 visers. The narrowness of her mind and the rigidity 
 of her faith were beyond all reassurances of reason, all 
 guarantees of possibility. She was as much dismayed 
 by her father's determination to liberate and tolerate 
 Popery as the least enlightened of his subjects. 
 ' Methinks it has a very dismal prospect,' she wrote as 
 early as 1686, only the year after James's succession. 
 '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 defence of their own
 
 JAMES II 
 Illumination on a letter fatent in the Public Record Office
 
 The Queeji and the Dutchess 
 
 religion, or to secure her against the practices 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 preaching to stimulate her in 
 her 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 unimagin- 
 ative Churchwoman as much as if they had been capable 
 of exploding and doing her external damage without 
 any participation of hers. 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 
 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, 
 but so far as he had been responsible for their training, 
 the fault was his own. 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 been always 
 
 C
 
 34 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 kind to her. The Churchills, whose Church principles 
 were not so undeniable, and whose regard for their own 
 interest was great, are more difficult to divine : and 
 yet it appears a harsh thing to refer their action to 
 unworthy motives alone. It is supposed that they had 
 some visionary plan, after the existing economy had 
 been overturned 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 for a moment have be- 
 lieved that the grav^e and ambitious prince who was so 
 near the throne would have been persuaded or forced 
 to waive his wife's claims, and those still more impera- 
 tive ones which his position of deliverer gave him, in 
 order to advance the fortunes of any one else, least of 
 all the sister-in-law whom he despised. The Duke of 
 York had advanced and caressed Churchill, and James, 
 when king, was likely to do so with still greater power. 
 Ingratitude is rarely wanton, it has some motive : and 
 the simple hypothesis that Churchill and his wife shared 
 the national sentiment, and feared Popery as the mass 
 of their contemporaries did, with a sincere panic and 
 conviction, is at least as reasonable as any other. The 
 fact that he at once announced, immediately after 
 James's accession, his determination not to go a step 
 beyond his conscience, seems entirely in favour of this 
 theory. Within these bounds he served James faith-
 
 The Q2iee7t mid the Duchess 
 
 fully enough : he crushed the Monmouth insurrection 
 as a man might crush a butterfly ; but he stood apart 
 from all the hasty proceedings of the Court, and showed 
 no courtier-like subservience when James revealed his 
 secret purpose. 
 
 As these purposes began to develop, no doubt there 
 was many an excited discussion in the Cockpit over the 
 state of affairs. When the crisis came to the worst we 
 have glimpses of anxious statesmen, Lord Clarendon 
 among them, going again and again with troubled faces 
 to entreat Anne to 'speak to' her reckless father, and 
 convince him of the terrible mistake he was making, a 
 request which the young lady rejected with great alarm, 
 saying, no doubt with perfect reason, that it neither 
 became her to do so, nor would her father pay any 
 attention to her. But before affairs went so far it is 
 impossible to doubt that all the indications of the rising 
 storm were studied and discussed in the household 
 which was so nearly concerned in it whatever might 
 happen. Bishop Compton, a most confidential adviser, 
 one of the seven bishops whose trial convulsed the 
 country, was one, also, of those who had signed the 
 invitation to William ; and Dykvelt, the Dutch ambas- 
 sador, who, no doubt, had been the medium of many a 
 communication between the sisters, would aid in keep- 
 ing so interested a looker-on au courant. The little 
 court of Anne watched with dismay, yet hope, the 
 excitement of the Churchmen's rebellion against the 
 divine right they had once so steadfastly upheld, and 
 all the hurrying steps by which James made it clear 
 that he was on the way to ruin. What the sentiments
 
 36 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 were that moved herself and her advisers, may be seen 
 from the following letter, written nearly a year and a 
 half before William's landing, and addressed to him by 
 Churchill : — 
 
 ' The Princess of Denmirk having ordered me to discourse 
 with Monsieur Dykvelt (the Dutch envoy), and to let him 
 know her resolutions so that he might let your highness and 
 the princess her sister know, that she was resolved by the 
 assistance of God to suffer all extremities, even to death itself, 
 rather than be brought to change her religion,— I thought it 
 my duty to your highness and to the princess-royal, by this 
 opportunity of Monsieur Dykvelt, to give you assurances 
 under my own hand, that my place and the king's favour I 
 set at nought in comparison of being true to my religion. 
 In all things but this the king may command me : and I 
 call God to witness that even with joy I should expose my life 
 for his service, so sensible am I of his favours. I know the 
 troubling you, sir, with thus much of myself, I being of so 
 little use to your highness, is very impertinent, but I think it 
 may be a great ease to your highness and the princess, to be 
 satisfied that the Princess of Denmark is safe in the trusting 
 of me, I being resolved, although I cannot live the life of a 
 saint, if there be ever occasion for it, to show the resolution of 
 a martyr.' 
 
 In these days it is easy to smile at Anne's determina- 
 tion to face ' even death itself rather than change her 
 religion, and at Churchill's eloquent declaration of his 
 own readiness to offer himself to martyrdom. But 
 they took it no more seriously than the nation did. 
 There was nothing mock-heroic in such professions to 
 the excited imagination of the day. It is likely enough 
 that Churchill knew he could not be called upon for 
 any such sacrifice, and had a tolerably clear perception
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 37 
 
 of the way in which to prevent it, but yet a very little 
 matter might have baffled all his calculations, and left 
 him at the mercy of the king. 
 
 When everything was thus at the point of explosion, 
 an event occurred, which in other circumstances might 
 have exercised a happy influence, but which was so 
 foolishly treated and talked of by the chief actors in 
 this great drama of fate that it brought the popular 
 passion to a climax. Mary of Modena, James's queen, 
 was still young, and he himself was little over fifty. 
 There was nothing unnatural, nor even unlikely, in the 
 fact that after an interval of five years she should bear 
 another child following upon several short-lived infants 
 born in the first years of her marriage. But the priests 
 who surrounded her, and anxious politico-religious 
 adherents of the proselytising party, had the folly to 
 treat this event as half miraculous, a special interposi- 
 tion of God, and to express their certainty beforehand 
 that this was to be the long-hoped-for Prince of Wales, 
 the heir-male who should revive the line. The idea 
 that the child was supposititious and its birth a criminal 
 fiction, which was suggested by all these confident 
 prophecies and ill-timed exultations, seized upon the 
 excited nation, ready to believe any harm of a Papist, 
 and especially of a Jesuit. The princess believed it 
 like all the rest of the world, and perhaps with more 
 warmth even than the general public, seeing her own 
 personal rights were in question, and it is certain that 
 she did not express herself prettily on this subject. 
 Were we to reproduce her language now, it would be 
 revolting to all ears: and it is difficult to imagine a
 
 38 The Reign of QiLeen Anne 
 
 gentlewoman, not to say a young princess, using such 
 expressions. But nobody was astonished in those days, 
 when speech was plainer than it is now. Afterwards, 
 when the national ferment cooled down, and the passion 
 of alarm and rage passed over, it was universally, if 
 tacitly, allowed that there was no real foundation for 
 the popular belief; but at the moment it was universal. 
 The Princess Anne, poor lady, was herself constantly 
 in the position which her young stepmother was sup- 
 posed to be feigning, and in the innocent indecency, 
 which was thought no harm at the time, expressed her 
 astonishment that she had not, a matron herself, and 
 already so deeply experienced in matters of the kind, 
 been taken into the closest confidence on so important 
 a subject. Perhaps Mary of Modena was more modest 
 than her age — Anne was not so. It is indeed half 
 ludicrous, half pathetic, in the midst of all the tumults 
 and confusion of the time, to note the constant allusions 
 to the princess's condition which recur whenever she is 
 mentioned : there were always reasons why it should 
 be specially cruel to disturb her, and her state had 
 constantly to be taken into account. How deeply this 
 must have added to her tremors in a time so dangerous 
 for England, and how natural it was in such circum- 
 stances that she should more and more cling to her 
 stronger friend and find no comfort out of her presence, 
 it is needless to say. ' 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
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 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 
 energy. To her it was always given to know what 
 to do. 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter into the history of the 
 Revolution. It is the great modern turning-point of Eng- 
 lish history, and no doubt it is the reason why we have 
 been exempted in latter days from those agitations of 
 deadly debate and bloody revolution which have shaken 
 all neighbouring nations. Glorious and happy, however, 
 scarcely seem to be fit words to describe this extraor- 
 dinary 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 one time or 
 another : they betrayed each other 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. Neither 
 of them understood the country they ruled, or had any 
 power of drawing to themselves the hearts of the people. 
 After the volcanic effort by which the change was 
 made, a chill came over the country. There were many 
 who thought in their disappointment when the Dutch 
 king proved himself so little sympathetic, when he 
 surrounded himself with his Dutchmen, and gave to 
 them the chief prizes in his power, that perhaps after 
 such a lesson James must have learned wisdom, and 
 that it might be better to have him back again. Queen 
 Mary's unseemly delight in taking possession of White-
 
 40 The Reign of Qiieeit Anne 
 
 hall, of which so much has been said, is almost the only 
 exhibition of pleasure which is to be found in all these 
 dreary records of deceit and treachery. The part 
 which the ladies at the Cockpit played brings the hurry 
 and excitement of the moment to a crisis. They had 
 to wait and watch as women generally have when the 
 course of events was at its height, with couriers coming 
 and going, and their nerves strung to the highest pitch. 
 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 flung 
 her handsome head high, yet not without a quiver of 
 alarm lest her soldier should have paused an hour too 
 long before taking the final step, so long anticipated and 
 so inevitable: while the faithful Morley wept, yet tried to 
 emulate her courage, wondering in her excitement what 
 her own heavy prince was doing, and eager for William's 
 advance, which somehow or other must mean peace and 
 quiet. That heavy prince meanwhile was moving about 
 with the perplexed and unhappy king, uttering out of 
 his blond moustache, with an atrocious accent, his dull 
 wonder, ' Est-il possible ? ' as every new desertion was 
 announced ; then 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 deserting 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 
 the window.' King James was coming back to London,
 
 The QtLeen and the Duchess 41 
 
 sad and wroth, and perhaps the rumour that he would 
 have her arrested lent additional terrors to the idea of 
 encountering his angry countenance. But this is not 
 needed to explain the princess's action. It cannot be 
 supposed that her husband's desertion was accidental 
 or that she was not aware of its likelihood to say the 
 least, but her nervous alarm when the event really 
 occurred is comprehensible enough, and her desire to 
 shun her father's presence. Lady Churchill went 
 immediately to the Bishop of London, Compton, the 
 princess's former tutor and devoted friend, who was no 
 doubt prepared for the emergency, and who took 
 measures instantly to secure her flight. And that night, 
 after her attendants were in bed, Anne rose in the dark, 
 and with her beloved Sarah's arm and support stole 
 down the backstairs to where in the November night 
 the bishop, in a hackney coach, was waiting for her. 
 Other princesses in similar circumstances have owned 
 to a thrill of pleasure in such an adventure. Perhaps 
 she breathed the freer when she was safely 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 behaviour, or to upbraid her 
 with her own want of affection. Anyhow the sweep of 
 the current had now reached her tremulous feet, and 
 no more than another was she capable of resisting it. 
 
 Anne's position was very much changed by the 
 Revolution, and if any ambitious hopes had been enter- 
 tained or plans formed by her household, they were 
 very speedily and very completely brought to an end. 
 The dull royal pair with their two brilliant guides and
 
 42 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 counsellors found themselves in front of 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, whom from a not very happy bride 
 he had managed so to appropriate and attract to him- 
 self that a wife more devoted, a love more impassioned, 
 is scarcely to be found in history. William belongs to 
 larger annals and a history more important than these 
 sketches. He is not to be judged solely by his connec- 
 tion with England, momentous as that was. His mind 
 and habits had been formed in another sphere, and he 
 was in full maturity of both before he was called upon 
 to interfere in the affairs of a country with which he had 
 no tender associations, and which he judged coldly as 
 a stranger. He was a man of the greatest faculties, and 
 capable, it is evident, of inspiring the warmest devotion. 
 He himself loved his wife and his friends with a steady 
 and enduring affection. A man must have high per- 
 sonal qualities of whom this can be said. But his heart 
 and all his amiable qualities were concentrated in this 
 narrow sphere, and he had no general friendliness, no 
 smiling accost, no charity for the masses. All the 
 clouds that bodily suffering is apt to bring about the 
 soul hung over him. He had none of that robust 
 satisfaction in everything that was his, that makes life 
 so much easier to the happily gifted. His temper was 
 that of a sickly man, his manners those of one accus- 
 tomed all his life to see everything give way to him. 
 He was cold and arbitrary, indifferent to the feelings of 
 others, and far more interested in other pursuits and
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 objects than in the country to which he had become 
 necessary, and which on that very ground he could 
 scarcely fail to half despise. Mary was of a very 
 different nature. She had the winning ways and genial 
 grace of her family, and won the hearts of the wider 
 common circle in an easy enthusiasm. She was herself 
 on the surface easily pleased, excited by novelty, and 
 delighted to come back as mistress to the high places 
 which in her youth had embodied all ideas of splendour 
 and greatness to her mind. Both friends and foes have 
 remarked upon her pleasure in taking possession of 
 Whitehall, her eager rush on the morning after her 
 arrival to examine everything, and delighted appropria- 
 tion of the apartments which her father and his family 
 had so recently left. Bishop Burnet, shocked like the 
 rest, gives the curious excuse that William had urged 
 upon her the necessity of putting on an air of satisfac- 
 tion, and that in her anxiety to please him she overdid 
 her part. But no one remembers that Mary had never 
 seen her father or stepmother in these rooms, that her 
 only association with them must have been the memory 
 of her uncle and his favourites, of whose evil recollec- 
 tion it must have been well in every way to cleanse 
 them. This apology for her seems to be more valid 
 than the other ; but the fact of her real pleasure in the 
 novelty, her readiness to smile and recommend herself 
 to the popular appreciation, her easy amiability and 
 winning manners, seem without dispute. 
 
 When we turn the leaf, however, and find ourselves 
 in the midst of Mary's own revelation of herself, the 
 mystery of her being comes upon us almost with pain,
 
 44 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 though nothing is disclosed that is not honourable to 
 her. This gracious royal lady, with her ready smiles 
 and facile grace, was a woman possessed by one absorb- 
 ing passion, in reality living alone, amid all her admir- 
 ing courtiers caring for neither man nor woman save 
 the husband to whom she had given her entire devotion 
 — a woman without a friend, opening her heart to no 
 one but him, parentless, childless, companionless, with 
 in all the world nothing that moved her but the thought 
 of a man who spent most of his time away from her, 
 and who, though he loved her, had been unfaithful to 
 her. Mary's letters are beautiful and touching ; they are 
 full of traces of intelligence, and fine sense and politi- 
 cal ability : but the wonderful thing in them is their 
 disclosure of a being entirely isolated, open to no senti- 
 ment and no sympathy save one. It is one of the 
 highest recommendations, yet at the same time one of 
 the least attractive aspects of marriage, that such a 
 development is not unique, perhaps even, if we could 
 know more universally, not uncommon. It is the pain- 
 ful side of that command to ' forsake father and mother 
 and cleave unto' the partner of one's individual life. 
 There was for Mary no relationship in the world but 
 this one. It is almost a mistake to blame her for her 
 shortcomings in other duties, for she was not conscious 
 of them, her whole soul with all its affections being 
 given to this. William repaid her after a sort ; he 
 admired her and trusted her, and understood what it 
 was to possess such a representative and deputy : and 
 when she died, it may almost be said without exaggera- 
 tion that his heart was broken. For this we mav for-
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 45 
 
 give him his harsh speeches to her, his infidelities, his 
 careless mastership : while with stronger reason we 
 may forgive her all her insensibilities of nature, for the 
 sake of love so transcendent that it absorbed her 
 every faculty, and made every individual power of her 
 being into a happy slave and contented bondservant 
 for him. 
 
 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 towards 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 her sister's household with the con- 
 tempt 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 counsellors so pro- 
 minent. Mary would be the last person in the world 
 to understand the feeling with which Anne regarded 
 her friend. She had herself made use of their influence 
 at 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 treated as 
 her equal soon arose 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
 
 46 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 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 those of her children. As it was, her self- 
 renunciation has got but little credit either then or now, 
 and it has been considered rather an evidence of the 
 discretion of the Churchills than of the generosity and 
 patriotism of the princess. These perhaps are rather 
 large words to use in speaking of Anne ; but it must be 
 remembered that a narrow mind is usually not less but 
 more tenacious of personal honour and advantage, and 
 that the dimmer an understanding may be, the less is it 
 accessible to higher reason and noble motive. This 
 sacrifice accomplished, however, there commenced a 
 petty war between Whitehall and the Cockpit, in which 
 perhaps Mary and Lady Churchill, now Marlborough, 
 were the chief combatants, but which from hencefor- 
 ward, until her sister's death, became the chief feature 
 in Anne's life. Continued squabbling is never lovely, 
 even when it is between queens and princesses ; but in 
 this case the injured person has had so little justice, 
 and the offender so many partisans, that it may not be 
 amiss to make Anne's side of the question a little more 
 apparent. 
 
 And here we come for the first time fully in sight of 
 the great duchess as set forth by her own pen. The 
 book already referred to, which was prepared late in her 
 life, long after her queen had forsaken her and her 
 power was over, furnishes us with the most lively 
 picture of her actions and motives. That it should 
 naturally represent these in the very best light, and that
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 47 
 
 every detail should be so skilfully arranged as to tell 
 to the advantage of the narrator, is what every reader 
 will expect to find. A statement of this description 
 generally betrays itself by too great plausibility and 
 deceives no one ; but though volumes have been written 
 to disprove it, and Lord Macaulay describes it as a 
 tissue of lies, he is himself obliged to have recourse 
 to it repeatedly, and no historian of the period can dis- 
 pense with this vivid and brilliant story, which, notwith- 
 standing its high tone of self-assertion, and the writer's 
 evident admiration of her own supreme part, affords us 
 the only picture we have of one of the most exciting 
 episodes of the time. It is somewhat droll to contem- 
 plate her in the character of an ingenue and innocent 
 believer in human nature, which is the first pose in which 
 she exhibits herself. William of Orange, as everybody 
 knows, had published a declaration on first setting foot 
 in England, describing his expedition as entirely dis- 
 interested, and disclaiming all intention of becoming a 
 candidate for the throne. There is a curious conversa- 
 tion recorded between Bentinck and Lord Clarendon, in 
 which both these statesmen gravely discuss the ques- 
 tion on this hypothesis, Bentinck declaring that ' though 
 there are not ill men wanting who give it out that the 
 prince aspires to the crown,' no insinuation could be 
 more wicked ; while Clarendon, more surprised than re- 
 assured, answers vaguely that in that case everything will 
 be easy. But there was at least one guileless spectator, 
 according to Lady Churchill, who believed the Dutch- 
 man. ' I do solemnly protest,' she says, ' that if there be 
 truth in any mortal, I was so simple a creature that I
 
 48 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 never dreamt of his being king, having never read, nor 
 employed my time in anything but playing at cards, 
 and, having no ambition myself, I imagined that the 
 Prince of Orange's sole design was to provide for the 
 safety of his own country by obliging King James to 
 keep the laws of ours : that there was no sort of dif- 
 ficulty in the execution of th's design, and that to do 
 so much good would be a greater pleasure to him than 
 to be king of any country upon earth. I was soon 
 taught the world better.' 
 
 This pretty simplicity, and the humbleness of the 
 author's feminine intelligence, sweetly conscious of its 
 incapacity to judge, and of the disadvantages of never 
 having read, or studied any subject more important 
 than cards, as well as the astounding description of 
 her as ' having no ambition myself,' will amuse the 
 reader, though it infuriated her contemporaries who 
 knew the lady, and still awakens more rage than amuse- 
 ment in the bosom of the serious historian who makes 
 little allowance for the pleasant wiles of the autobio- 
 graphist. Sarah Churchill (by this time Countess of 
 Marlborough) was no ingenue at any time of her histor>-, 
 and her assumption of simplicity would not deceive the 
 most credulous reader. She was an imperious woman, 
 carrying everything with a high hand, not too respect- 
 ful either of her royal mistress or of her great general, 
 whom she has the credit of having ruled as she ruled 
 Anne ; but though this innocent aspect of wonder sits 
 oddly upon her, it is one of the cleverest and keenest 
 shafts which could have been launched at the pretences 
 not less transparent on the other side, and does not
 
 The Queen mid the Duchess 49 
 
 invalidate one of the facts of the case. And though she 
 evidently was the chief cause of embroiling Anne with 
 her sister, it can scarcely be believed that the princess's 
 case would have been more satisfactory had she been 
 left in her helplessness to the tender mercies of William, 
 and entirely dependent upon his kindness ; which must 
 have happened had there been no bold and strong 
 adviser in the matter. There was no generosity in the 
 treatment which Anne received from the royal pair. 
 She had made a sacrifice to the security of their throne 
 which deserved some grace in return, but she did not 
 receive any. Her innocent fancy for the palace at 
 Richmond, where the sisters had been brought up to- 
 gether, was not indulged, and the squabblings about her 
 lodgings at Whitehall were undignified on both sides, 
 though it is quite possible that it was she who was in 
 the wrong. But she cannot be said to have been in the 
 wrong in the next question which occurred, which was 
 the settlement of her own income. This she had pre- 
 viously drawn from her father, as was the custom in the 
 royal family, and James had always been liberal and 
 kind to her. But it was a different thing to depend 
 upon the somewhat grudging hand of an economical 
 brother-in-law, who had a number of foreign dependants 
 to provide for, and a great deal to do with the money 
 granted to him. He alarmed his friends on this point 
 at once by a remark which he made to Clarendon as to 
 what the princess could want with so large an income 
 as thirty thousand a year, and he does not seem at 
 any time, or in any particular, to have shown considera- 
 tion for her. Perhaps the Churchills were afraid that 
 
 D
 
 50 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 their mistress would be less able than usual to help and 
 further their own fortunes, as is universally alleged 
 against them ; but had they been the most disinterested 
 couple in the world, it would still in all probability have 
 appeared to them a duty to secure her against any 
 caprice of the new king who had no right to be the 
 arbiter of her fate. Lady Marlborough's strenuous 
 action to bring the question to the decision of Parlia- 
 ment was nothing less than her mistress's interest 
 demanded. And the sense of the country was so far 
 with this, that the princess's income was settled with 
 very little difficulty upon a liberal basis, than which — 
 considering that she and the children of whom she was 
 every year becoming the mother were the only acknow- 
 ledged heirs of the throne — nothing could be more 
 natural or just. 
 
 But the king and queen did not see it in this light. 
 ' Friends ! what friends have you but the king and me ?' 
 Queen Mary asked, with indignation. It is not to be 
 supposed that she meant any harm to her sister, and 
 perhaps it is not unnatural that Anne's objection to 
 complete dependence upon herself should not have com- 
 mended itself to her mind. But nothing is more curious 
 than the strength of party feeling which makes Lord 
 Macaulay defend the somewhat petty attitude of his 
 favourite monarch on this occasion. Anne had fully 
 proved her capacity to consider the public weal above 
 her own ; and it was unworthy of William even to wish 
 to keep in the position of a hanger-on a woman who 
 had so greatly promoted the harmony of his own settle- 
 ment. Parliament finally voted her a revenue of fifty
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 5 1 
 
 thousand a year, as a sort of compromise between the 
 thirty thousand which King William grudged to her, 
 and the unreasonably large sum which some of her 
 supporters hoped to obtain ; but the king and queen 
 never forgave her, and still less did they forgive her 
 advisers, for what they chose to consider a want of con- 
 fidence in themselves. Lady Marlborough, it is not 
 denied, was the leading spirit of the whole transaction. 
 It was she who pushed her mistress's claims, and who 
 used every possible means to /aire valoir her previous 
 self-renunciation and services to the State. ' I employed 
 all the powers I was capable of exerting to advance the 
 design,' she herself says. And no impartial reader will 
 think that she did wrong. It was a bold thing to do in 
 face of a king not easily to be contradicted and a queen 
 who had taken up the matter as a personal offence. 
 Anne insisted upon giving her prime minister and cham- 
 pion an allowance of a thousand a year when the matter 
 was settled, and was always generous to her ; but it 
 cannot be said that any such reward was undeserved. 
 
 Here, however, began a series of struggles with the 
 Court which were both undignified and unseemly, espe- 
 cially on the part of the king and queen, both of whom 
 were cleverer persons than Anne. The quarrels over 
 the princess's lodgings have already been referred to. 
 Then came another as to the desire of Prince George of 
 Denmark to go to sea with the fleet. The king treated 
 him with scant ceremony when he accompanied him to 
 Ireland, but Anne's husband still longed to have a finger 
 in the pie. One does not see what harm the inoffensive 
 prince, who had enjoyed the reputation of being valiant
 
 52 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 when he came to England, could have done, and his 
 desire to do some work for England was creditable at 
 least. But it is comprehensible enough that William 
 should have been impatient of incapables, and the per- 
 mission was absolutely denied to him. In all these 
 claims and refusals the position of Lady Marlborough 
 as the princess's right hand had been completely 
 acknowledged by Queen Mary and her husband, who 
 had indeed conducted secret negotiations with her to 
 induce her to moderate Anne's claims, and to persuade 
 her into compliance with their wishes. ' She [the queen] 
 sent a great lord to me to desire I would persuade the 
 princess to keep the prince from going to sea, and this 
 I was to compass without letting the princess know it 
 was the queen's desire. . . . After this the queen sent 
 Lord Rochester to me to desire much the same thing. 
 The prince was not to go to sea, and this not going was 
 to appear his own choice.' Similar attempts were made 
 in the matter of the allowance. And it is easy to 
 imagine that Mary, a queen who was not without some 
 of the absolutism of the Stewart mind, became more 
 and more exasperated with the bold woman who thus 
 held up her sister's little separate court and interest, 
 and was neither to be frightened nor flattered into sub- 
 servience. And very likely this little separate court 
 was a thorn in the side of the royal pair, keeping con- 
 stant watch upon all their actions, maintaining a per- 
 petual criticism, no doubt levelling many a jibe at the 
 Dutch retainers, and still more at the Dutch master. 
 Good-natured friends even in the capacity of courtiers 
 were no doubt found to whisper in the presence-chamber
 
 The Qtieen and the Duchess 5 3 
 
 itself the witticisms with which Sarah of Marlborough 
 would entertain her mistress — utterances not very bril- 
 liant perhaps, but sharp enough ; and it would not 
 sweeten the temper of the queen if she found out that 
 her great William was known as Caliban in the cor- 
 respondence of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. A 
 hundred petty irritations always come in in such cir- 
 cumstances to increase a breach, and the situation was 
 strained and uneasy in every way. What the precise 
 occurrence was that brought about the final explosion 
 is not known, but one day after a stormy interview, 
 during which the queen had demanded the dismissal of 
 Lady Marlborough from her sister's household, an event 
 occurred which took away everybody's breath. 
 
 This was the sudden dismissal, without reason 
 assigned, at least so far as the public knew, of Lord 
 Marlborough from all his offices. He was lieutenant- 
 general of the army, and he was a gentleman of the 
 king's bedchamber. Up to this time there had been 
 nothing apparent to find fault with in his conduct. 
 William was too good a soldier himself not to appre- 
 ciate his military talents, and he had behaved with 
 good taste at least, in public matters. Except in the 
 great fact of his desertion of James, and the aid which 
 his powerful presence and influence had lent to the 
 bloodless victory of the Prince of Orange, Marlborough 
 had shown no hostility towards his old master. In the 
 Convocation he had voted for a regency ; and when it 
 became inevitable to accept William's terms uncon- 
 ditionally and receive him as king, he had refrained 
 from voting altogether. He had served with great
 
 54 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 distinction abroad in William's service, but would not 
 take part in Ireland, until James had withdrawn from 
 that kingdom, thus refraining from bearing arms actually 
 against his former sovereign. After this, however, he 
 had taken command of the English forces, and accom- 
 plished his campaign with his usual energy and success. 
 In short, his public aspect up to this time would seem 
 on the face of it to have been irreprochable. This being 
 the case, his sudden dismissal from court filled his friends 
 with astonishment and dismay. Nobody understood 
 the why or wherefore. 'An incident happened which 
 I unwillingly mention,' says Bishop Burnet, ' because it 
 cannot be told without some reflection on the memory 
 of the queen, whom I always honoured beyond all the 
 persons I have ever known.' This regretful preface 
 seems to afford some guarantee for the bishop's sin- 
 cerity ; but Lord Macaulay disingenuously omits his 
 statement of the case altogether while quoting passages 
 from the unpublished MS. which seemed to support his 
 own views. 'The Earl of Nottingham,' Burnet con- 
 tinues, ' came to the Earl of Marlborough with a mes- 
 sage from the king telling him that he had no more use 
 for his services, and therefore he demanded all his com- 
 missions. What drew so sudden and hard a messasrc 
 was not known ; for he had been with the king that 
 morning, and had parted with him in the ordinary 
 manner. It seemed some letter was intercepted that 
 gave suspicion ; it is certain that he thought he was too 
 little considered, and that he had upon many occasions 
 censured the king's conduct and reflected on the Dutch.' 
 Lord Macaulay, contradicting without explanation the
 
 DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH 
 
 From the picture by J. Closterman in the National Portrait Gallery
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 55 
 
 account thus given by the writer, of all others most 
 likely to know the best that was to be said for 
 William, assures his readers that the real ground of 
 the dismissal had been communicated to Anne on the 
 previous night (notwithstanding that the great general 
 had been privileged to put on the king's shirt next 
 morning as if nothing had happened), and was in reality 
 a truly imperial plot for James's restoration conceived 
 by Marlborough, and in which the princess herself was 
 implicated. The plot in question, had it ever come to 
 anything, was a most subtle one. It was said to be 
 Marlborough's intention to move in the House of Lords 
 an address to William requesting him to dismiss the 
 foreign servants who surrounded him, and of whom the 
 English were bitterly jealous. This scheme of reprisals 
 had a certain humour in it, and trenchant reversal of the 
 position, which looks as if Sarah herself had some hand 
 in its construction, if it ever existed. William was as 
 little likely to give up Bentinck and Keppel as Anne was 
 to sacrifice the friends whom she loved, and a breach 
 between the Parliament and the king would have been, it 
 was hoped, the natural result — to be followed by a coup- 
 d'etat in which James might be replaced under stringent 
 conditions upon the throne. The sole evidence for this 
 plot is King James himself, who describes it in his 
 diary. Lord Macaulay adds that ' it is strongly con- 
 firmed by Burnet ' ; but this we take leave to think is 
 not the case. At the same time there seems no reason 
 to doubt King James, who adds that this admirable 
 plan was defeated by the indiscreet zeal of certain of 
 his own most faithful supporters, who feared that
 
 56 The Reign of Qiieen Anne 
 
 Marlborough, were he once master of the situation, 
 would put Anne on the throne instead of her father. 
 
 Whether this plot was or was not the reason of 
 Marlborough's dismissal, it is clear enough that he had 
 resumed a secret correspondence with the banished 
 king at St. Germains, whom not very long before he 
 had deserted for William. But so had most of the 
 statesmen who surrounded William, and even the 
 admiral in whose hands the fate of England at sea 
 was soon to be placed. The sins of the others were 
 winked at, while Marlborough was thus made an 
 example of — and the reader will ask why ? Perhaps 
 because Marlborough was a more dangerous agent than 
 any of them : perhaps because he had involved the 
 princess in his treachery, persuading her to send a letter 
 and make overtures of friendship to her father. It is 
 possible that it was this very letter of which Burnet 
 says that it was intercepted, enclosed no doubt in one 
 of Marlborough's of more distinct utterance. Here is 
 Anne's mild performance, a thing not likely in itself to 
 do either good or harm : — 
 
 ' I have been very desirous of some safe opportunity to 
 make you a sincere and humble offer of my duty and submis- 
 sion to you, and to beg you will be assured that I am both 
 truly concerned for the misfortune of your condition, and 
 sensible as I ought to be of my own unhappiness. As to 
 what you may think I have contributed to it, if wishes could 
 recall what is past, I had long since redeemed my fault. I 
 am sensible it would have been a great relief to me if I could 
 have found means to have acquainted you earlier with my 
 repentent thoughts, but I hope they may find the advantage 
 of coming late — of being less suspected of insincerity than
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 57 
 
 perhaps they would have been at any time before. It will be 
 a great addition to the ease I propose to my own mind by 
 this plain confession, if I am so happy as to find that it brings 
 any real satisfaction to yours, and that you are as indulgent 
 and easy to receive my humble submissions as I am to make 
 them in a free, disinterested acknowledgment of my fault, for 
 no other end but to deserve and receive your pardon.' 
 
 This is the sort of letter which would raise the 
 smouldering dislike and hostility at Whitehall to the 
 point of explosion, but would give little satisfaction 
 where it was sent A disinterested acknowledgment 
 of a fault for no other end but to deserve and receive 
 pardon, would be but a poor compliment to the anxious 
 banished court at St. Gcrmains. To say so much, yet 
 to say so little, is a thing which must have taxed the 
 powers of the wisest conspirators. But there can be 
 little doubt that a penitent princess, thus ready to 
 implore her father's pardon, would be a powerful auxi- 
 liary with the country, just then in the stage of natural 
 disappointment which is prone to follow a great crisis ; 
 and that Marlborough was doubly dangerous with such 
 a card in his hand to play. 
 
 A little pause occurred after Marlborough's dismissal. 
 The court by this time had gone to Kensington, out of 
 sight and hearing of the Cockpit, Whitehall having 
 been burned in the previous year. The princess con- 
 tinued, no doubt in no very friendly mood, to go to the 
 suburban palace in the evenings and make one at her 
 sister's game of basset, showing by her abstraction, and 
 the traces of tears about her eyes, her state of depres- 
 sion yet revolt. But about three weeks after that great 
 event, something suggested to Lady Marlborough the
 
 58 The Reign of Qtieen Anne 
 
 idea of accompanying her princess to the royal pre- 
 sence. It was strictly in her right to do so, in attend- 
 ance on her mistress, and perhaps it was considered in 
 the family council at the Cockpit that such a state of 
 affairs could not go on, and that it was best to end it 
 one way or another. One can imagine the stir in the 
 antechamber, the suppressed excitement of the drawing- 
 room, when the princess, less subdued than for some 
 weeks back, her eyes no longer red, nor the corners of 
 her mouth drooping, came suddenly in out of the night 
 with a well-known, buoyant, and erect figure towering 
 after her, proud head thrown back and eyes aflame, her 
 mistress's train upon her arm, but the air of a triumphant 
 general on her countenance. There would be a pause 
 of consternation — and for a moment it would seem as 
 if Mary, thus defied, must burst forth in wrath upon 
 the culprits. What glances must have passed between 
 the court ladies behind their fans, what whispers in 
 the corners : the queen in the midst, pale with anger, 
 restraining herself with difficulty, the princess perhaps 
 beginning to quake, but Sarah undaunted, knowing no 
 reason why she should not be there, ' since to attend 
 the princess was only paying my duty where it was 
 owing'! But next morning brought, as they must 
 have foreseen it would bring, a royal missive meant to 
 carry dismay and terror, in which Mary commanded 
 her sister to dismiss her friend and make instant sub- 
 mission. ' I tell you plainly, Lady Marlborough must 
 not continue with you in the circumstances in which 
 her lord is,' the queen wrote ; * never anybody was 
 suffered to live at court in my Lord Marlborough's
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 59 
 
 circumstances.' There is nothing undignified in Mary's 
 letter. She was in all respects more capable of express- 
 ing herself than her sister, and she had so far right on 
 her side that Lady Marlborough's appearance at Court 
 was little less than a deliberate insult to her. ' I have 
 all the reason imaginable to look upon your bringing 
 her as the strangest thing that ever was done, nor 
 could all my kindness for you have hindered me show- 
 ing you that moment: but I considered your condition, 
 and that made me master myself so far as not to take 
 notice of it then,' the queen said. The princess's con- 
 dition had often to be taken into consideration, and 
 perhaps she was not unwilling that her superiority, in 
 this respect, to her childless sister should be fully 
 evident. She was then within a few weeks of her con- 
 finement, not a moment at which an affectionate and 
 very dependent woman could be parted from her bosom 
 friend. 
 
 This letter brought the situation to a climax. It was 
 not to be expected in any circumstances that Anne 
 would have submitted to a mandate which in reality 
 would have taken from her all power to choose her own 
 friends ; and her affections were so firmly fixed upon 
 her beloved companion that it is evident life without 
 Sarah would have been a blank to her. She answered 
 in a letter studiously compiled in defence both of her- 
 self and her retainer : ' I am satisfied that she cannot 
 have been guilty of any fault to you, and it would be 
 extremely to her advantage if I could here repeat every 
 word that ever she said to me of you in her whole life,' 
 says the princess ; and she ends by entreating her
 
 6o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 sister ' to recall her severe command,' and declaring 
 that there is no misery that I ' cannot readily resolve 
 to suffer rather than the thoughts of parting with her.' 
 But things had gone too far to be stopped by any such 
 appeal. The letter was answered by the Lord Cham- 
 berlain in person, with a message forbidding Lady 
 Marlborough to continue at the Cockpit. This was 
 arbitrary in the highest degree, for the house was 
 Anne's private property, bought for and settled upon 
 her by Charles il.; and it was unreasonable, for White- 
 hall was lying in ruins, and Queen Mary's sight at 
 Kensington could not be offended by the spectacle of 
 the couple who had so enraged her. The princess's 
 spirit was roused. She wrote to her sister that she 
 herself would be obliged to retire since such were the 
 terms of her continuance, and sent immediately to the 
 Duchess of Somerset to ask for a loan of Sion House. 
 It is said that William so far interfered in this squabble, 
 in which, indeed, he had been influential all along, as to 
 ask the Duke to refuse this trifling favour. But of all 
 English noble houses, the proud Somersets were the 
 last to be dictated to. And Anne established herself 
 triumphantly in her banishment on the banks of the 
 Thames with her favourite at her side. 
 
 Her infant was born some time after, and the queen 
 paid her an angry visit of ceremony upon that event, 
 saying nothing to her but on the vexed subject. ' I 
 have made the first step by coming to you,' INIary said, 
 approaching the bedside where the poor princess lay 
 sad and suffering, for the baby had died soon after its 
 birth, 'and I now expect you should make the next
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 6 1 
 
 by removing my Lady Marlborough.' The princess, 
 trembh'ng, and ' as white as her sheets,' stammered forth 
 her plaintive protest that this was the only thing in 
 which she had ever disobeyed, and that it was unreason- 
 able to ask it of her. Whereupon Mary without another 
 word left the room and the house. This was the last 
 time they ever met, unlikely as such a thing seemed. 
 Anne made various overtures of reconciliation, but as 
 unconditional obedience was promised in none, Mary- 
 resisted all and died at enmity with her sister. The 
 only justification that can be offered for the queen's 
 behaviour was that they had been long separated, and 
 had little except the formal tie of relationship to bind 
 them to each other. Anne had been but a child when 
 Mary married and left England. They were both 
 married and surrounded by other affections when they 
 met again. They had so much resemblance of nature 
 that each seems to have been capable but of one passion. 
 It was Mary's good fortune to love her husband with 
 all her heart, but to all appearance no one else. She 
 had not a friend among all the ladies who had shared 
 her life for years, neither intimate nor companion who 
 could give her any solace when he was absent. Natural 
 affection was not strong in their family ; they had no 
 mother, nor bond of common relationship except the 
 father whom they both superseded. All this explains 
 to a certain extent her coldness to Anne ; and it is 
 very likely that she thought she was doing the best 
 thing possible for her sister in endeavouring to separate 
 her from an evil influence, an inferior who was her 
 mistress. But this does not excuse the petty and cruel
 
 62 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 persecution to which Anne was henceforward exposed. 
 Every honour that belonged to her rank was taken 
 from her, from the sentry at her door to the text laid 
 upon her cushion at church, which was one of the privi- 
 leges of royalty. She was allowed no guard when she 
 went into the country ; the rural mayors were forbidden 
 to make addresses to her, o»- pay the usual honours 
 which mayors delight to pay. The great court ladies 
 were given to understand that whoever visited her 
 would not be received by the queen. A more irritating 
 and miserable persecution could not be, nor one more 
 lowering to the character of the chief actor in it. 
 
 Anne was but recovering from the illness which 
 followed her confinement, and with which her sister's 
 angry visit was supposed to have something to do, 
 when another blow fell upon the band of friends. 
 Marlborough was suddenly arrested and sent to the 
 Tower. There was reason enough, perhaps, for his 
 previous disgrace in the secret relations with St. Ger- 
 mains which he was known to have kept up, but it 
 happened unfortunately for his enemies that the con- 
 spiracy for which he was now taken, along with many 
 other personages of rank, was a fictitious one. 'A 
 dreadful plot broke out which was said to have 
 been hid somewhere, I don't know where, in a 
 flowerpot,' Lady Marlborough says with not unnatural 
 scorn. The plot was that which a certain Robert Young, 
 one of the many false accusers, of the class which 
 Dr. Titus Oates had originated, invented about this 
 time, supporting it with forged letters. It was during 
 William's absence on the Continent, when Mary was
 
 DUCHESS OF MARLROROUGH 
 
 From the picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller, in the National Fortran Gallery
 
 The Queen and the Dtichess 63 
 
 reigning alone in England, and at the moment when a 
 great expedition was preparing in France and the air 
 full of peril ; and the queen's advisers were sufficiently- 
 alarmed to urge the arrest of all the great personages 
 named. The moment, however, that the accused were 
 confronted with their accuser, the folly and falsehood of 
 the invented plot was discovered, and all the prisoners 
 were liberated — except Marlborough, who was kept, 
 with what it seems impossible to think of as anything 
 but a petty spitefulness, in prison until the end of the 
 term, when bail was accepted for him. Lady Marl- 
 borough left Sion and went to town to be near her 
 husband, and during this separation a little correspond- 
 ence sprang up between her and her royal patroness, 
 which reveals Anne very clearly in her affectionate 
 simplicity. It would appear that the arrest of Marl- 
 borough was attended by rumours of danger to Anne 
 herself, of which she speaks in the first letter of the 
 series. Lady Marlborough had no doubt hurried away 
 on the first receipt of the news, and it is from her cham- 
 ber that the princess sends these first words of consola- 
 tion and encouragement : — 
 
 ' I hear Lord Marlborough is sent to the Tower : and 
 though I am certain that they have nothing against him, and 
 expected by your letter it would be so, yet I was struck when 
 I was told it : for methinks it is a dismal thing to have one's 
 friends sent to that place. I have a thousand melancholy 
 thoughts, and cannot help fearing they hinder you from 
 coming to me: though how they could do that without 
 making you a prisoner I cannot imagine. I am just told by 
 pretty good hands that as soon as the wind turns westerly 
 there will be a guard set upon the prince and me. If you hear
 
 64 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 there is any such thing designed, and that 'tis easy to you, 
 pray let me see you before the wind changes : for afterwards 
 one does not know whether they will let one have opportuni- 
 ties of speaking to one another. But let them do what they 
 please, nothing shall ever vex me so I can have the satisfac- 
 tion of seeing dear Mrs. Freeman, and I swear I would live 
 on bread and water between four walls with her without 
 repining : for so long as you continue kind nothing can ever 
 be a real mortification to your faithful Mrs. Morley, who 
 wishes she may never enjoy a moment's happiness in this 
 world or the next if she proves false to you.' 
 
 Whether the wind proving ' westerly ' was a phrase 
 understood between the correspondents, or if it had 
 anything to do with the events of the impending battle 
 upon which the fate of England was hanging, it is 
 difficult to tell. If it was used in the latter sense the 
 victorious battle of La Hogue, by which all recent 
 discomfitures were redeemed, soon restored the govern- 
 ment to calm, and a consciousness of triumph ; and 
 made conspiracy comparatively insignificant. Before 
 this great deliverance was known Anne had written a 
 submissive letter to her sister informing her that she 
 had now recovered her strength * well enough to go 
 abroad,' and asking leave to pay her respects to the 
 queen, to which Mary returned a stern answer, declar- 
 ing that such civilities were unnecessary so long as her 
 sister declined to do the thing required of her. Anne 
 sent a copy of this letter to Lady Marlborough, an- 
 nouncing — as she was now * at liberty to go where I 
 please by the queen refusing to see me ' — her intention 
 to make an expedition to London and see her friend, 
 who was then in such trouble as the princess herself
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 65 
 
 was very familiar with, the loss of an infant. ' I am 
 sensibly touched with the misfortune that my dear Mrs. 
 Freeman has had in losing her son, knowing very well 
 what it is to lose a child,' the princess writes ; ' but she 
 knowing my heart so well, and how great a share I have 
 in all her concerns, I will not say any more on this 
 subject for fear of moving her passion too much.' 
 Throughout this separation these little billets were con- 
 tinually coming and going ; and I cannot do better 
 than transcribe for the reader some of those innocent 
 letters, so natural, and full of the writer's heart : — 
 
 ' Though I have nothing to say to my dear Mrs. Freeman, 
 I cannot help inquiring how she and her lord does. If it be 
 not convenient to you to write when you receive this, either 
 keep the bearer till it is, or let me have a word or two from 
 you by the very next opportunity — when it is easy to you ; for 
 I would not be a constraint to you at any time, much less 
 now, when you have so many things to do and think of. All 
 I desire to hear from you at such a time is that you and 
 yours are well ; which, next to having my Lord Marlborough 
 out of his enemies' power, is the best news that can come 
 to her who to the last moment of her life will be dear Mrs. 
 Freeman's.' 
 
 * I give dear Mrs. Freeman a thousand thanks for her kind 
 letter which gives me an account of her concerns : and that 
 is what I desire more to know than any other news. I shall 
 reckon the days and hours, and think the time very long till 
 the time is out for both your sake and my Lord Marlborough's, 
 and that he may be at liberty and your mind at ease. . . . 
 And dear Mrs. Freeman doesn't say when I can see you if I 
 come to town, therefore I ask which day will be most con- 
 venient for you. ... I confess I long to see you, but am not 
 so unreasonable to desire that satisfaction till it is easy to you. 
 
 E
 
 66 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 I wish with all my soul that you may not be a true prophetess, 
 and that it may soon be in our power to enjoy one another's 
 company more than it has been of late^ which is all I want in 
 this world.' 
 
 ' I am sorry with all my heart dear Mrs. Freeman meets 
 with so many delays ; but it is a comfort they cannot keep 
 Lord Marlborough in the Tower longer than the end of the 
 term, and I hope when the Parliament sits care will be taken 
 that people may not be clapt up for nothing, or else there will 
 be no living in quiet for anybody but insolent Dutch and smil- 
 ing mercenary Englishmen. Dear Mrs. Freeman, be assured 
 your faithful Mrs. Morley can never change : and I hope you 
 do not in the least doubt of her kindness, which if it be 
 possible, increases every day, and that can never have an end 
 but with her life. Mrs. Morley hopes her dear Mrs. Freeman 
 will let her have the satisfaction of hearing from her again to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' Dear Mrs. Freeman may easily imagine I cannot have 
 much to say since I saw her. However, I must write two 
 words. For though I believe she does not doubt of my con- 
 stancy, feeling how base and false all the world is, I am of 
 that temper I think I can never say enough to assure you of 
 it. Therefore, give me leave to assure you they can never 
 change me. And there is no misery I cannot readily resolve 
 to suffer rather than the thought of parting from you. And I 
 do swear I would sooner be torn in pieces than alter this my 
 resolution. My dear Mrs. Freeman, I long to hear from you.' 
 
 This pretty correspondence changed in tone a little, 
 but only to grow more impassioned, when the princess 
 had gone to Bath, and the friends were less near each 
 other. Anne had been pursued by the royal displeasure 
 in her invalid journey, and no less a person than Lord 
 Nottingham, the Lord Chamberlain, had been employed
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 67 
 
 to warn the mayor that his civilities to the princess 
 were ill-timed. Such a disclosure of the family quarrel 
 evinced a determination and bitterness which perhaps 
 frightened even Lady Marlborough, courageous as she 
 was ; or perhaps it was a still bolder stroke for sove- 
 reignty over the poor lady who had already suffered 
 so much for her. But it is evident that she had offered 
 her resignation, and indeed pressed it upon her adoring 
 mistress, as there are many letters with the same burden 
 as the following : — 
 
 ' I really long to know how my dear Mrs. Freeman got 
 home, and now I have this opportunity of writing she must 
 give me leave to tell her, if she should ever be so cruel as to 
 leave her faithful Mrs. Morley, she will rob her of all the joy 
 and quiet of her life ; for if that day should come, I could 
 never enjoy a happy minute, and I swear to you I would shut 
 myself up and never see a creature. You may easily see all 
 this would have come upon me if you had not been. If you 
 do but remember what the queen said to me the night before 
 your lord was turned out of all ; then she began to pick 
 quarrels ; and if they should take off" twenty or thirty thousand 
 pounds, have I not lived upon as little before ! When I was 
 first married we had but twenty (it is true, indeed, the king 
 was so kind to pay my debts), and if it should come to that 
 again, what retrenchment is there in my family I would not 
 willingly make, and be glad of that pretence to do it. Never 
 fancy, my dear Mrs. Freeman, if what you fear should happen, 
 that you are the occasion : no, I am very well satisfied, and so 
 is the prince too, it would have been so, however, for Caliban 
 is capable of doing nothing but injustice : therefore rest satis- 
 fied you are no ways the cause, and let me beg once more for 
 God's sake that you will never mention parting more, no, nor 
 so much as think of it : and if you should ever leave me, be 
 assured it would break your faithful Mrs. Morley's heart.'
 
 68 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 A still stronger expression of the same sentiment, 
 with a little gleam of some general principle of self- 
 assertion and sense of injured dignity follows, after the 
 princess had, as would seem, taken counsel with her 
 George. That heavy prince was fully acquiescent at 
 least, if nothing more, in his wife's devotion. 
 
 ' In obedience to dear Mrs. Freeman I have told the prince 
 all she desired me, and he is so far from being of another 
 opinion, if there had been occasion he would have strengthened 
 me in my resolutions, and we both beg you would never 
 mention so cruel a thing again. Can you think either of us 
 so wretched that for the sake of twenty thousand pounds, and 
 to be tormented from morning to night with flattering knaves 
 and fools, we should forsake those we have such obligations 
 to, and that we are so certain we are the occasion of all their 
 misfortunes ? Besides, can you believe we will truckle to 
 Caliban, who from the first moment of his coming has used us 
 at that rate as we are sensible he has done, and that all the 
 world can witness that will not let their interest weigh more 
 with them than their reason ? But suppose I did submit, and 
 that the king could change his nature so much as to use me 
 with humanity, how would all reasonable people despise me ? 
 How would that Dutch monster laugh at me, and please him- 
 self with having got the better ! And, which is much more, how 
 would my conscience reproach me for having sacrificed it, my 
 honour, reputation, and all the substantial comforts of this life, 
 for transitory interest, which even to those who make it their 
 idol can never afford any real satisfaction, much less to a 
 virtuous mind ! No, my dear Mrs. Freeman, never believe that 
 your faithful Mrs. Morley will ever submit. She can wait 
 with patience for a sunshine day, and if she does not live to 
 see it, yet she hopes England will flourish again. Once more 
 give me leave to beg you would be so kind never to speak of 
 parting more, for let what will happen, that is the only thing 
 that can make me miserable.'
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 69 
 
 These are the letters which Lord Macaulay described 
 as expressing ' the sentiments of a fury in the style of 
 a fishwoman.' It was not indeed pretty to call great 
 William Caliban, but Anne was fond of nicknames, and 
 the king's personal appearance was not his strong point. 
 To us these outbursts of indignation seem both natural 
 and allowable. She had been subjected to an inveterate 
 and petty persecution ; her little magnanimities had been 
 answered by exactions. We are all so ready to believe 
 that whenever a woman is involved she must be the 
 offender, that most readers will have set down the in- 
 sults to which Anne was subject to the account of Mary 
 — as indeed has been done in these pages. But it is 
 curious to note that by Anne herself all the blame is 
 thrown upon the harsh brother-in-law, the Dutch 
 monster, the alien who had made so many strangers 
 into English noblemen, and who identified Marlborough, 
 among all the other courtiers who had been as little 
 steadfast as he, as the object of a pertinacious persecu- 
 tion. The princess says nothing of her sister. It is 
 Caliban who is capable of nothing but injustice. It is 
 he who will laugh if he gets the better of her. Anne's 
 style is perhaps not quite worthy of the Augustan 
 age, but it is quite intelligible, and full of little in- 
 dividual tones which are more characteristic than the 
 smoother graces. That she loved her friend with her 
 whole heart, that she had a generous contempt for in- 
 terested motives, and, humble as she was, a just sense 
 of her own dignity, are all abundantly and very simply 
 manifest in them. We think they will give to the im- 
 partial reader the impression of a natural and artless
 
 70 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 character, with much generous feeling, and much tender 
 afifectionateness, tenacious of her rank and its observ- 
 ances, yet willing to throw all these trifles down at the 
 feet of her friend. Poor young lady ! when we recol- 
 lect how constantly the princess's ' condition ' had to be 
 thought of — how her long patience and many pains 
 ended constantly in the little waxen image of a dead 
 baby and nothing more — who can wonder that the 
 world seemed falling to pieces about her when she was 
 threatened with the loss of the one strong sustaining 
 prop upon which she had hung from her childhood, the 
 friend who had helped her to all her first experiences 
 in life, the companion who had amused so many weary 
 days, and made the time pass as no one else could do? 
 All these miserable disputes, however, end in a 
 moment, the interest fading out of them, when brought 
 into the cold twilight of a death-chamber, where even 
 kings and queens are constrained to see things at 
 their true value. Of all the royal personages in the 
 kingdom Mary's would have seemed to any outside 
 spectator the soundest and safest life. William had 
 never been healthy, and was consumed by the responsi- 
 bilities and troubles into which he had plunged. Anne 
 had those ever-succeeding maternities to keep her at a 
 low level. But Mary was young, vigorous, and happy — 
 happy at least in her devotion to her husband and his 
 love for her. It was she, however, who, to the awe and 
 consternation of the world, was stricken in her prime, 
 in a few days' illness, in the midst of her greatness. 
 Such a catastrophe no one could behold without the 
 profoundest impulse of pity. Whatever she had done
 
 The Qtieen and the Duchess 7 1 
 
 a week ago, there she lay now, helpless, all her 
 splendours gone from her, the promise of a long career 
 ended, and her partner left heart-broken upon the soli- 
 tary throne to which she alone had given him a right. 
 The catastrophe of a death so sudden and unlooked 
 for is tragic indeed, yet scarcely more so than the sight 
 of so forlorn a man, a powerful king, yet heart-broken, 
 without courage or strength for anything, the support 
 of love withdrawn, and a surging waste of alien minds 
 and doubtful counsellors round him. Anne on her part 
 was deeply shocked and startled by this dreadful event. 
 She sent anxious messages asking to be admitted to 
 her sister's bedside, and when all was over, partly no 
 doubt from policy, but we may be at least permitted to 
 believe partly from good feeling, presented herself at 
 Kensington Palace, to show at least that rancour was 
 not in her heart. Unfortunately there was no reconcilia- 
 tion between the sisters, Mary being most likely too 
 ill even to consider the prayer of Anne for a last meet- 
 ing. But when the forlorn and solitary king was roused 
 in his misery to receive his sister-in-law's visit, a sort 
 of peace was patched up between them over that un- 
 thought-of grave. There was no longer any public 
 quarrel or manifestation of animosity : and with this 
 melancholy event the first half of Anne's history may 
 be brought to an end.
 
 THE QUEEN AND THE DUCHESS 
 
 II 
 
 A YEAR after the accession of William and Mary, and 
 before any of the bitterness and conflicts above recorded 
 had openly begun, the only child of Anne on whose 
 life any hopes could be built was born. Her many 
 babies had died at the birth, or immediately after, and 
 their quick and constant succession, as has been said, 
 was the distinguishing feature of her personal life. But 
 after the Revolution, when everything was settling out 
 of the confusion of the crisis, and when as yet no 
 further troubles had disclosed the family rancours and 
 disagreements, in the country air at Hampton Court 
 where the new king and queen were living, a little 
 prince was born. Though he was sickly at first like all 
 the rest, he survived the dangers of infancy, and, called 
 William after the king, and bearing from the first day 
 of his life the title of Duke of Gloucester, was received 
 joyfully by the nation at large and everybody concerned, 
 as the authentic heir to the crown. This child kept a 
 little hold, it would seem, on the affections of the child- 
 less Mary during the whole course of the quarrel with 
 his mother, embittered as it was, and continued an 
 object of interest and kindness to William as long as he
 
 WILLIAM III 
 From a picture by Sir Godfrey Knelter at Windsor Castle
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 
 
 lived. The interposition of the quaint and precocious 
 child with his big head, his primitive enlightenment 
 as to what it was and was not prudent to say, his 
 sparkle of childish ambition, and all his old-fashioned 
 ways, makes a curious and welcome diversion in the 
 troubled scene where nothing is happy, not even the little 
 prince. He was the chief occupation of Anne's life 
 when comparative peace followed the warlike interval, 
 and a cold and proud civility replaced the active hostili- 
 ties which for years had been raging between the court 
 and the household of the princess. Anne has never got 
 much credit for her forbearance and self-effacement at 
 the critical moments of her career. But it is certain 
 that she might have given William a great deal of 
 trouble had she asserted her rights as Mary's successor, 
 as she might also have done at the time of the first 
 settlement. No doubt he would on both occasions 
 have carried the day, and with this certainty the his- 
 torians have been satisfied without considering that a 
 woman, who was not of lofty character and who was a 
 Stewart, must have found it doubly bitter to acknow- 
 ledge herself the subject of a gloomy brother-in-law 
 who slighted her, and who, her rasher partisans did not 
 hesitate to say, ought to have been her subject so long 
 as he remained in England after her sister's death. 
 The absence of any attempt on her part to disturb or 
 molest, nay her little advances, her letters of condo- 
 lence on his bereavement, and of congratulation the 
 first time that a victory gave the occasion, show no 
 inconsiderable magnanimity on the part of the passive 
 princess — all the more that she had not been in the
 
 74 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 habit (as is usual among women) of putting the scorns 
 she had suffered to another woman's account and hold- 
 ing Mary responsible, but had uniformly attributed to 
 the ' Dutch monster,' the * Caliban ' of her correspond- 
 ence, all the slights that were put upon her. 
 
 William did very little, however, to encourage any 
 overture of friendship. He received her after his wife's 
 death, and they are said by one of the attendants to 
 have wept together when the unwieldy princess, then 
 unable to walk, was carried in her chair into the very 
 presence-chamber. But if a touch of nature drew them 
 together at this moment, it did not last, and in the 
 diminished ceremonial of the widower's court Anne 
 had but scant respect and no welcome. But she 
 made no further complaint, even did what she could 
 to keep on terms of civility at least, and wrote him 
 her little letters of politeness notwithstanding the dis- 
 approval of Lady Marlborough, who was of no such 
 gentle temper, and the absence of all response from 
 William. He, with all his foreign wars and home 
 troubles, solitary, sad, and heart-broken, had little heart 
 we may suppose for these little commonplace advances 
 from a woman he had never been able to tolerate. 
 But though Anne's relations with the king were thus 
 but little modified, her position in respect to the cour- 
 tiers who had abandoned her in her sister's lifetime was 
 different indeed. Lady Marlborough describes this with 
 her usual force : — 
 
 ' And now it being quickly known that the quarrel was made 
 up, nothing was to be seen but crowds of people of all sorts, 
 flocking to Berkley House, to pay their respects to the prince
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 75 
 
 and princess : a sudden alteration which I remember occa- 
 sioned the half-witted Lord Caernavon to say one night to the 
 princess as he stood close by her in the circle, " I hope your 
 highness will remember that I came to wait upon you when 
 none of this company did," which caused a great deal of 
 mirth.' 
 
 Meanwhile the little boy, the heir of England, inter- 
 poses his quaint little figure with that touch of nature 
 which always belongs to a child, in the midst of all the 
 excitements and dulness — awaking a certain interest 
 even in the sorrowful and bereaved life of William, and 
 filling his mother's house with tender anxieties and 
 pleasures. He was sickly and feeble from his child- 
 hood, but early learned the royal lesson of self-conceal- 
 ment, and was cuffed and hustled by the anxious cruelty 
 of love into the use of his poor little legs years after 
 his contemporaries had been in full enjoyment of their 
 liberty. It is characteristic of the self-absorbed and 
 belligerent chronicler of the princess's household, whose 
 narrative of all the quarrels and struggles of the royal 
 households is so vivid, that she has very little to say 
 about either the living or dying of the only child who 
 was of such importance both to her mistress and to the 
 country. His little existence is pushed aside in Lady 
 Marlborough's record, and but for a squabble over the 
 appointment of the duke's 'family,' which she gives 
 with great detail, we should scarcely know that Anne 
 had tasted that happiness of maternity which is so 
 largely weighted with pains and cares. But the story 
 of little Gloucester's life as found in the more familiar 
 record of his waiting-gentleman, Lewis Jenkins, is both
 
 76 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 attractive and entertaining. The little fellow seems to 
 have been full of lively spirit and observation, active 
 and restless in spite of his feebleness, with a child's 
 interest in everything about him, and a singular share 
 of those faculties of precocious judgment and criticism, 
 which are sometimes so remarkably developed in chil- 
 dren. Some of the little stories which are told of him 
 put these powers in a startling light. ' Who has taught 
 you to say such words ? ' his mother asks him when the 
 child has been betrayed into some innocent repetition 
 of the oaths he had heard from his attendants. The 
 boy pauses before he replies, ' If I say Dick Denny,' he 
 whispers to a favourite lady-in-waiting, ' he will be sent 
 downstairs. Mamma, I invented them myself,' he adds 
 aloud. The little being hovering among worlds not 
 realised, learning to play his little part, taking his cue 
 from the countenances round him, forming his little 
 policy in the twinkling of an eye, could not have had 
 a better representative. His careless indifference to 
 his chaplain's religious services, but happy learning of 
 little prayers and verses with the old lady to whom 
 he had taken a fancy, his weariness of lessons, yet 
 eager interest in the diagrams that drop from Lewis 
 Jenkins's pocket-book, and in all the bits of history 
 he can induce his Welsh usher to tell him, awaken 
 in us an amused yet pathetic interest. A troublesome, 
 lovable, perverse, delightful child, not always easy to 
 manage, constantly asking the most awkward questions, 
 full of ambition and energy and spirit and foolishness, 
 the dull princess's somewhat tedious life brightens into 
 hope and sweetness so long as he is there.
 
 The Queen and the Dzichess 77 
 
 In every respect it was the brightest moment of 
 Anne's life. There was no longer any possibility of 
 treating the next heir to the crown, the mother of the 
 only prince in whom the imagination of England could 
 take pleasure, with slighting or contumely. She was 
 permitted to bear her share of the honours and com- 
 forts of English royalty. St. James's old red brick 
 palace — then, to be sure, the height of the fashion — was 
 given over to her, as became her position, and what was 
 more wonderful, Windsor Castle, one of the noblest of 
 royal dwellings, became the country house of Anne and 
 her boy. King William preferred Hampton Court, with 
 its Dutch gardens, in which he could imagine himself at 
 home : the great feudal castle, lifting its towers from 
 the gentle hill which has the value of a much greater 
 eminence in the midst of the broad plain that sweeps 
 forth in every direction round, was not apparently to 
 his taste : and few prettier or more innocent scenes 
 have been associated with its long history than those in 
 which little Gloucester was the chief actor. He had a 
 little regiment of boys of his own age, whom it was his 
 delight to drill and lead through a hundred mock battles 
 and rapid skirmishings — mischievous little urchins, who 
 called themselves the Duke of Gloucester's men, and 
 played their little pranks like their seniors, as favourites 
 will. When he went to Windsor, four Eton boys were 
 sent for to be his playmates, one of them being young 
 Churchill, the son of Lady Marlborough. Of all places 
 it was St. George's Hall which the little prince chose for 
 the scene of his mimic battles, and there the little army 
 stormed and besieged each other to their hearts' con-
 
 yS The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 tent. When his mother's marriage day was celebrated, 
 he received his parents with salvos of his small artillery, 
 and, stepping forth in his little birthday suit, paid them 
 his * compliment.' ' Papa, I wish you and mamma 
 unity, peace, and concord, not for a time, but for ever,' 
 said the serious little hero. One can fancy Anne smil- 
 ing and triumphant in her joy of motherhood, with her 
 beautiful chestnut curls and sweet complexion and 
 placid roundness, leaning on good George's arm, her 
 peaceful companion with whom she never had a quarrel, 
 and admiring her son's infant wisdom. It was their 
 happy time : no cares of state upon their heads, no 
 quarrels on hand, and Sarah of Marlborough, let us 
 hope, smiling too and at peace with everybody, her 
 Eton boy taking part in the ceremonial. The little 
 smoke and whiff of gunpowder, the little gunners at 
 their tiny artillery, the great hall still slightly athrill with 
 the mimic salute, adds something still to the boundless 
 hopefulness of the scene : for why should not this little 
 English William grow up as great a soldier and more 
 fortunate than his grim godfather, and subdue France 
 under the foot of England, and be conqueror of the 
 world ? All this was possible in these pleasant days. 
 
 On another occasion there was a great chapter of 
 the Knights of the Garter, and installation of little 
 Gloucester in knightly state as one of the order. The 
 little figure, seven years old, seated under the noble 
 canopy in St. George's beautiful chapel, gazing with 
 blue eyes intent in all the gravity of a child upon the 
 great English nobles in their stalls around him, himself 
 invisible behind the desk, upon which his prayer-book
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 79 
 
 was opened out, makes another touching picture. 
 King WilHam himself had buckled the garter round 
 the child's knee and hung the jewel about his neck 
 — St. George slaying his dragon, that immemorial 
 emblem of the victory over evil — and no doubt in 
 the vague grandeur of childish anticipation the boy 
 felt himself ready to emulate the career of his patron 
 saint. He was a little patriot too, eager to lend the 
 aid of his small squadron to his uncle when William 
 went away to the wars, and bringing a smile even upon 
 that worn and melancholy face as he manoeuvred his 
 little company, and showed how they would fight in 
 Flanders when the moment came. When William was 
 threatened with assassination, and the country woke up 
 to feel that though she did not love him it would be 
 much amiss to lose him, little Gloucester, at eight, was 
 one of the most loyal of Englishmen. Taking counsel 
 with his little regiment, he drew up a little memorial, 
 written out no doubt by the best master of the pen 
 among them, with much shedding of ink, if not of more 
 precious fluid. ' We, your majesty's subjects, will stand 
 by you while we have a drop of blood,' was the address 
 to which the Duke of Gloucester's men set all their tiny 
 fists. The little duke himself, not content with this, 
 added to it another address of his own : — 
 
 ' I, your Majesty's most faithful subject, had rather lose my 
 life in your Majesty's cause than in any man's else ; and I 
 hope it will not be long ere you conquer France. 
 
 ' Gloucester.' 
 
 Heroic little prince ! a Protestant William, yet a gay
 
 8o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 and gentle Stewart, with this heart of enthusiasm and 
 generous valour in him, what might he not have done 
 had he ever lived to be king ! These lost possibilities, 
 which are so common in life, are almost the saddest 
 things in it ; and that must be a heart very strong in 
 faith that is not struck dumb by the withdrawal from 
 earth's extreme need of so much faculty that seemed 
 wanted for her help and succour. It certainly awoke 
 a smile, and might have drawn along with it an iron 
 tear down William's cheek, to see this faithful little 
 warrior ready to 'lose his life' in his defence. And 
 the good pair behind him, George and Anne, who had 
 evidently suffered no treacherous suggestion to get to 
 the ear of their boy, no hint that William was an 
 usurper, and that little Gloucester had more right 
 than he to be uppermost, how radiant they stand in 
 the light of their happiness and hope ! The spectator 
 is reluctant to turn the page and realise the gloom 
 to come. 
 
 * When the Duke of Gloucester was arrived at an age 
 to be put into men's hands,' William's relentings and 
 change of mind were proved by the fact that Marl- 
 borough, who had been in disgrace all these years, and 
 whom only the constant favour of Anne had kept out 
 of entire obscurity, was recalled into the front of affairs 
 in order to be made 'governor' of the young prince. 
 He was at the same time restored to his place in the 
 privy council and to his military appointments, and 
 shortly afterwards received a still higher honour in 
 being named one of the supreme council of nine who 
 had charge of the kingdom as the king's deputies in his
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 8 1 
 
 absence. No distinct reason appears for this sudden 
 and extraordinary change. Marlborough's long con- 
 nection with the princess's family made him indeed 
 peculiarly suitable to have the charge of her son ; but 
 William had not hitherto showed any desire to humour 
 her likings, and this was not reason enough for all the 
 other marks of favour bestowed upon Marlborough, 
 which brought him back at once from private life and 
 political disgrace to a position as high as any in the 
 kingdom. Nor was William's temper of that generous 
 kind which cannot do enough to make up for an 
 estrangement. He acknowledged, however, Marl- 
 borough's qualifications in the most courtly manner. 
 ' Teach him,' William said, ' to be like yourself, and he 
 will not want accomplishments.' It is curious to find 
 Lady Marlborough, to whom this reinstalment of her 
 husband should, one would have thought, have been 
 a great triumph, narrating so remarkable a change 
 in the coolest manner, with an evident intention of 
 turning the thoughts of her reader from Marlborough's 
 recall to a little arbitrariness and caprice about the 
 appointment of the secondary members of the house- 
 hold, by which she declares it was intended to humiliate 
 and embarrass her mistress. Probably in her old age it 
 had escaped from her memory that this was the new 
 beginning of her husband's great career. But it was 
 indeed so, and the commanding figure of the great 
 general was brought back to the eyes of the world in a 
 moment, by the charge thus conferred upon him. No 
 doubt it was partially neutralised at the time by 
 William's choice of Bishop Burnet as little Gloucester's 
 
 F
 
 82 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 tutor. Burnet had been deep in William's counsels from 
 the beginning ; he had been Mary's confidant and 
 friend. He was a good Scotchman and a bad Church- 
 man, in evil odour with the ecclesiastical party to which 
 the princess clung, and it was universally supposed that 
 no appointment more disagreeable to her could have 
 been made. But there is no appearance that she made 
 any protest or showed any reluctance to accept him. 
 Burnet himself did by no means relish the honour thus 
 thrust upon him. He was almost disposed, he tells us, 
 * to retire from the court and town,' much as that would 
 have cost him, rather than take upon him such a charge. 
 But the pleasure of believing that ' the king would trust 
 that care only to me,' and also some unexpected ' en- 
 couragement ' received from the princess, decided him 
 to make the experiment. William had satisfied him 
 less of late years, and he was disappointed, Lord Dart- 
 mouth says, not to have got the see of Winchester, 
 which he would have much preferred even to a royal 
 tutorship. But no complaint or resistance seems to 
 have come from Windsor, which was within his diocese, 
 to simplify matters. The little pupil was about nine 
 when he came into the bishop's hands. 
 
 ' I had been trusted with his education now for two years, 
 and he had made amazing progress. I had read over the 
 Psalms, Proverbs, and Gospels with him, and had explained 
 things that fell in my way very copiously ; and was often 
 surprised with the questions that he put to me, and the 
 reflections that he made. He came to understand things 
 relating to religion beyond imagination. I went through 
 geography so often with him that he knew all the maps very 
 particularly. I explained to him the forms of government in
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 83 
 
 every country, with the interests and trade of that country and 
 what was both bad and good in it : I acquainted huii with all 
 the great revolutions that had been in the world, and gave him 
 a copious account of the Greek and Roman histories and of 
 Plutarch's lives : the last thing I explained to him was the 
 Gothic constitution and the beneficiary and feudal laws : I 
 talked of these things at different times, even three hours 
 a day • this was both easy and delighting to him. The king 
 ordered five of his chief ministers to come once a quarter and 
 examine the progress he made : they seemed amazed both at 
 his knowledge and the good understanding that appeared m^ 
 him : he had a wonderful memory and a very good judgment 
 
 Poor little Gloucester! the genial bishop, breaking 
 down all this knowledge into pleasant talks, so that it 
 should be both 'easy and delighting': and his lessons 
 in fortification, which were more delightful still, and his 
 own little private prince-like observations of men's 
 faces and minds, were all to come to nought. On his 
 tenth birthday, amid the feasting and joy, a sudden ill- 
 ness seized him-and a few days after the promising 
 boy had ended his bright little career. As a matter of 
 course blame was attached to the doctor who attended 
 him, and who had bled him in the beginning of a 
 fever but this was almost universally the case in the 
 then state of medical science. 'He was the only 
 remaining child,' the bishop says, ' of seventeen that the 
 princess had borne, some to the full time, and the rest 
 before it. She attended on him during his sickness 
 with great tenderness, but with a grave composure that 
 amazed all who saw it : she bore his death with a resig- 
 nation and piety that were indeed very singular. It 
 was small w^ondcr indeed if Anne were altogether
 
 84 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 crushed by such a calamity. It is said by some histor- 
 ians of the Jacobite party that her mind was over- 
 whelmed with a sense of her guilt towards her own 
 father, and sense of just judgment executed upon her in 
 the loss of her child ; and that she immediately wrote 
 to her father, ' pouring out her whole heart in penitence,' 
 and pledging herself to support the claims of her 
 brother 'should she ever come to the throne.' This 
 letter, however, has never been found, and does not seem 
 to be vouched for by witnesses beyond suspicion. But 
 for the fact that Anne was stricken to the dust no parent 
 will need further evidence. Her good days and hopes 
 were over : henceforward, when she wrote to her dearest 
 friend in the old confidential strain it was ' your poor 
 unfortunate Morley ' that the bereaved mother signed 
 herself Nothing altered these sad adjectives. She was 
 poor and unfortunate in her unutterable loss, and in 
 her lonely soul, as much when she was queen as if 
 she had been the humblest woman that ever lost an only 
 child. 
 
 Marlborough was absent when his little pupil fell ill, 
 but hurried back to Windsor in time to see him die. It 
 was etiquette in those days that in case of a death the 
 survivors should instantly leave the house in which it 
 had taken place, solemnly leaving the dead in posses- 
 sion, to lie in state there, and receive the homage of 
 curious or sad spectators. But Anne would not be per- 
 suaded to leave the place where her child was. Four 
 or five days after, Marlborough and the suite who had no 
 doubt built all their hopes of preferment upon the boy, 
 carried him solemnly by torchlight through the summer
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 85 
 
 woods, through Windsor Park, and by the river, and under 
 the trees of Richmond, to Westminster, a silent proces- 
 sion, passing slowly through the odorous August night. 
 His little body lay in state in Westminster Hall, a noble 
 chamber for such a little sleeper — for five days more : 
 when it was laid with the kings in the great Abbey 
 which holds all the greatest of England. A more 
 heartrending episode is not in history — so many hopes 
 went to the grave with him, so many more arose and 
 came to life again when his little life was over. At St. 
 Germains it is said there was joy, for the most danger- 
 ous rival of the so-called Prince of Wales was now 
 taken out of that luckless adventurer's way. 
 
 William did not take any notice of the announce- 
 ment of the death for a long time, which embarrassed 
 the ambassador at Paris greatly on the subject of 
 mourning, and has given occasion for much denuncia- 
 tion of his hardness and heartlessncss. When he 
 answered at last, however, and this was not till more 
 than two months after, in a letter to Marlborough, it 
 was with much subdued feeling : ' I do not think it 
 necessary to employ many words,' he writes, *in ex- 
 pressing my surprise and grief at the death of the Duke 
 of Gloucester. It is so great a loss to me as well as to 
 all England that it pierces my heart with affliction.' 
 William was ill, harassed, immersed in business, and his 
 temper was morose and uncertain. It seems impossible 
 that the loss of a child who had shown so touching an 
 allegiance to himself should not have moved him ; but 
 perhaps there was in him too a touch of satisfaction that 
 the rival pair, who had been thorns in his flesh since
 
 86 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 ever he came to England, were not to have the satisfac- 
 tion of carrying on the royal line. At St. Germains 
 this satisfaction was more marked still, and it was sup- 
 posed that the most dangerous obstacle in the way of 
 the young James Stewart was removed by the death of 
 his sister's heir. We know now how futile that hope 
 was, but at the time this wi.s not so clear: and the 
 anxiety of the English Parliament to get a formal 
 abjuration of the so-called Prince of Wales, shows that 
 the feeling had much foundation. 
 
 This, and the new and exciting combination of Euro- 
 pean affairs, produced by what is called the Spanish 
 Succession, occupied all minds during the two years that 
 remained of William's suffering life. It was a moment 
 of great excitement and uncertainty — Louis XIV., in 
 whose hands, as seemed likely, a sort of universal power 
 must fall if his grandson were permitted to succeed to the 
 throne of Spain, had just vowed at the deathbed of James 
 his determination to support the claims of his son, and 
 on James's death, had proclaimed the boy King of Eng- 
 land. Thus England had every reason of personal irrita- 
 tion and even alarm for joining in the alliance against 
 the threatening supremacy of France, whose power, had 
 she been allowed to place one of her princes peaceably 
 on the Spanish throne, to which the rich Netherlands 
 still belonged, would have been unprecedented in 
 Europe. It was on the eve of this great struggle that 
 William died. With a determination equal to that 
 with which he had made head against failing fortune on 
 many a battlefield, he fought for the life which at such 
 a crisis was doubly important to the country of his
 
 The Queen and the Duchess Z*] 
 
 birth and of his crown, and to the cause of the Protes- 
 tant reh'gion throughout Europe. There is something 
 pathetic in the struggle, in the statements of his case 
 under one name or another, as a private individual, that 
 there might be no doubt as to the frankness of the 
 opinion, which he caused to be made among the great 
 physicians of Europe. His life in itself could not have 
 been a very happy or desirable one. He had no longer 
 his popular and beloved Mary to leave behind him in 
 England as his representative when he set out for the 
 wars ; and there were few in England whom he 
 trusted fully, or who trusted him. To die at the 
 beginning of a great European struggle, leaving the 
 dull people whom he disliked to take his place in 
 England, and the soldier whom he had crushed and 
 subdued, and sternly held in the shade as long as he 
 was able, to assume his baton, and win the victories it 
 had never been William's fortune to gain, must have 
 been bitter indeed. It would appear even that he had 
 entertained some ideas of disturbing the natural order 
 of events that this might be prevented, and that it had 
 been suggested to the Electress Sophia, after poor little 
 Gloucester's death, that her family should be nominated 
 as his immediate successors, to the exclusion of Anne 
 — a proposal which the prudent Electress evaded with 
 great skill and ingenuity by representing that the 
 Prince of Wales, who must surely have learned, he and 
 his counsellors, wisdom from the failure of his father, 
 was the natural heir, and would no doubt do well 
 enough on a trial. Bishop Burnet denies that such a 
 design was ever entertained, but Lord Dartmouth in his
 
 88 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 note upon Burnet, gives the following very distinct 
 evidence on the subject : — 
 
 ' I do not know how far the Whig party would trust a secret 
 of that consequence to such a blab as the bishop was known 
 to be, but the dukes of Bolton and Newcastle both proposed 
 it to me, and used the strongest argument to induce me to 
 come into it ; which was that it would be making Lord Marl- 
 borough king at least for her time if the princess succeeded : 
 and that I had reason to expect nothing but ill-usage during 
 such a reign. Lord Marlborough asked me afterwards in the 
 House of Lords if I had ever heard of such a design : I told 
 him yes, but did not think it very likely. He said it was very 
 true : but by God, if ever they attempted it, we would walk over 
 their bellies.' 
 
 Thus until the last moment Anne's position would 
 seem to have been insecure ; but a more impossible 
 scheme was never suggested, for even the idea of Marl- 
 borough's triumph was unable to raise the smallest 
 party against the princess, and to the country in 
 general she was the object of a kind of enthusiasm. 
 They loved everything in her, even the fact that she 
 was not clever, which of itself is often highly ingratiating 
 with the masses. William, it is said, with a magnani- 
 mity which was infinitely to his credit, named Marlbor- 
 ough as his most fit successor in the command of the 
 allied armies before he died. The formal abjuration of 
 the Prince of Wales was made by Parliament only just 
 in time to have his assent, and thus all obstacles were 
 removed out of the princess's way. It was thought by 
 the populace that everything brightened for the new 
 reign. There had been an unexampled continuance of 
 gloomy weather, bad harvests, clouds, and storms. But
 
 The Queen and the Duchess S9 
 
 to greet Queen Anne the sun burst forth, the gloom 
 dispelled, the country broke out into gaiety and rejoic- 
 ing. A new reign full of new possibilities has always 
 something exhilarating in it, and William's greatness 
 was marred by many circumstances, and never heartily 
 acknowledged by the mass of the people. But Anne 
 had every claim upon the popular favour. She was a 
 woman, and a kind and simple one. That desertion 
 of her father, which prejudiced writers have condemned 
 so bitterly, had no great effect upon the contem- 
 porary imagination, nor, so far as can be judged, upon 
 her own ; and it was the only offence which could 
 be alleged against her. She had been unkindly treated 
 and threatened with wrong, which naturally made the 
 multitude strenuous in her cause — and everything con- 
 spired to make her accession happy. She was thirty- 
 seven, and though somewhat unwieldy in person, still 
 preserved her English comeliness, her abundant, beauti- 
 ful hair, and above all, the beautiful voice of which even 
 statesmen and politicians speak. ' She pronounced 
 this,' says Bishop Burnet, describing her address to the 
 Privy Council when they first presented themselves 
 before her, ' as she did all her other speeches, with great 
 weight and authority, and with a softness of voice and 
 sweetness in the pronunciation that added much life to all 
 she spoke.' The commentators who criticise so severely 
 the bishop's chronicles, are in entire agreement with 
 him on this subject. * It is a real pleasure to hear her,' 
 says Lord Dartmouth, ' though she had a bashfulness 
 that made it very uneasy to herself to say much in 
 public' Speaker Onslow unites in the same testimony :
 
 90 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 ' I have heard the Queen speak from the throne, and 
 she had all the author says here. I never saw an 
 audience more afifected : it was a sort of charm.' — ' She 
 received all that came to her in so gracious a manner 
 that they went from her highly satisfied with her good- 
 ness and her obliging deportment ; for she hearkened 
 with attention to everything that was said to her.' — 
 Thus everything smiled upon Anne in the morning of 
 her reign. Her coronation was marked with unusual 
 splendour and enthusiasm ; and though the queen her- 
 self had to be carried in a chair to the Abbey, her state 
 of health being such that she could not walk, this did 
 not affect the splendid ceremonial in which, even to the 
 Jacobites themselves, there was but little to complain of, 
 since their hopes that Anne's influence might advance 
 her father's young son to the succession after her were 
 still high, notwithstanding that the settlement of the 
 crown upon Sophia of Brunswick and her heirs had 
 already been made. 
 
 It is needless for us to attempt a history of the great 
 war which was one of the most important features in 
 Anne's reign. No student of history can be ignorant of 
 its general course, nor of the completeness with which 
 Marlborough's victories crushed the exorbitant power of 
 France, and raised the prestige of England. There are 
 no lack of histories of the great general and his career 
 of victory — how he out-fought, out-marched, out- 
 generalled all his rivals, and scarcely in the ten years 
 of active warfare encountered one check ; how, though 
 he did not accomplish the direct object for which all this 
 bloodshed and toil was undertaken, and, indeed, had his
 
 The Queen and the Duchess g i 
 
 efforts balked at the end by a disgraceful treaty and 
 hurried peace-making, he yet secured such respect for 
 the English name and valour as renewed our old 
 reputation, and made all interference with our national 
 settlement or intrusion into our private economy im- 
 possible. * What good came of it at last ? ' says the 
 poet, with more reason than usual. But the inquiry, 
 though so plausible, affecting at once humanity and 
 common-sense, is not perhaps so hard to answer as it 
 seems. Even up to this time it has been impossible to 
 procure, in the intercourse of nations, any other effectual 
 arbiter than the sword, a terrible one indeed, but 
 apparently as yet the only means of keeping a check 
 upon the rapacity of some, and protecting the weak- 
 ness of others. At all events, whatever individual 
 opinion may be on the point now, there was an un- 
 animous conviction then, and no one doubted at the 
 opening of the war that it was most necessary and just. 
 And of its conduct there has never been but one opinion. 
 Contemporaries accused Marlborough of every conceiv- 
 able wickedness — of peculation, treachery, even personal 
 cowardice ; but no one ventured to say that he was not 
 a great general ; and as we have got further and further 
 from the infuriated politics of his time, his gifts and 
 graces, his wisdom and moderation, as well as his 
 wonderful military genius, have been done more and 
 more justice to.^ His great fault was very patent and 
 apparent. He was never sure which side he was on 
 in one matter, and that the great one of the royal 
 
 ^ These pages were written before the appearance of Lord Wolseley's 
 work : which, however, is only a proof the more of what is above said.
 
 92 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 succession. He was not true, either to William or 
 James, but would fain have held both in hand. Nor 
 was he true to the Stewarts or the Brunswick party 
 in later days. This is the great indictment which 
 history makes against him : but at least the greater part 
 of his contemporaries shared his guilt. To Anne her- 
 self, his patroness and upholder so long, but the cause 
 of his final disgrace and fall, he never was untrue. 
 
 It is, however, with Marlborough's wife, and not with 
 himself, that we are chiefly concerned, and with the 
 change which took place in Anne's mind, and her many 
 conflicts with her friend and fate, rather than the battles 
 that were fought in her name. It is said that by the 
 time she came to the throne, her faithful affection to 
 her lifelong companion had begun to be impaired, but 
 the date of the first beginning of their severance will 
 probably never be determined, nor its immediate cause. 
 Miss Strickland professes to have ascertained that 
 certain impatient words used by Sarah of Marlborough, 
 which were overheard by the queen, were the occasion 
 of the breach; but as there is no very satisfactory found- 
 ation for the story, and it is added that Anne kept her 
 feelings undisclosed for long after, we may dismiss the 
 legend as possible enough, but no more. Other means 
 of disunion were in existence, more dignified at least, 
 and it is evident that whatever subjects of personal 
 offence there might be between them, there was one 
 difference of opinion in public matters which was very 
 likely to undermine afl'ection, and open the way for 
 those private frets and scorns which aggravate every 
 dispute — since when people are vexed with each other
 
 The Qtteen and the Duchess 93 
 
 at the discovery that they do not think alike, it is very 
 natural that they should give more importance to the 
 little carelessnesses of talk and criticism which,\vhen such 
 a separating process has commenced, come in so invari- 
 ably, with an appearance of proving that the affection 
 has never been genuine at all. It had been the universal 
 impression that the reign of Anne would mean the reign 
 of the Marlboroughs, and this, as has been shown, was 
 the argument used to detach from her the envious 
 generally, and especially those to whom Marlborough's 
 advancement meant failure or peril of their own preten- 
 sions. Lady Marlborough herself states very clearly this 
 general belief, and the speedy doubt thrown upon it. 
 
 ' The elevation of my mistress to the throne brought me 
 into a new scene of life, and into a new sort of consideration 
 with all those, whose attention either by curiosity or ambition 
 was turned to politicks and the court. Hitherto my favour 
 with her Royal Highness, though it had sometimes furnished 
 matter of conversation to the publick, had been of no moment 
 to the affairs of the nation, she herself having no share in the 
 counsels by which they were managed. But from that time 
 I began to be looked upon as a person of consequence, with- 
 out whose approbation, at least, neither places nor pensions 
 nor honours were bestowed by the crown. The intimate 
 friendship with which the Queen was known to honour me, 
 afforded a plausible foundation for this opinion. And I believe 
 therefore it will be a surprise to many to be told that the first 
 important step which her Majesty took after her accession to 
 the government was against my wishes and inclinations ; I 
 mean her throwing herself and her affairs almost entirely into 
 the hands of the tories.' 
 
 We need not specify here the difference between the
 
 94 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 terms Tory and Whig now and in Queen Anne's time : 
 Lord Stanhope and Lord Macaulay have both stated 
 them to mean very much the reverse of what they 
 mean now, though we think this is scarcely a correct 
 statement. The Tories, then as now, were emphatically 
 the Church party, which was to Anne the only party 
 in which safety could be found. The new queen had 
 little understanding of history or politics in the wider 
 sense of the words, but she was an excellent Church- 
 woman, and in this sphere of faith her conviction was 
 absolute. It had been believed, and no doubt by no 
 one more than Lady Marlborough herself, that the new 
 reign would produce an immediate change in the State 
 machinery, and that the Tory ministry left in possession 
 by William would soon be changed for another holding 
 the principles which were dear to herself, and support- 
 ing her lord through thick and thin. But Anne, like 
 so many heirs before her, on their accession, with that 
 timidity which an unaccustomed responsibility so often 
 brings with it, made no change, and soon found in the 
 sentiments of the Tory leaders something more in 
 accord with her own than the bolder spirit of Lady 
 Marlborough had ever manifested. ' These were men 
 who had all a wonderful zeal for the Church, a sort of 
 public merit that eclipsed all other in the eyes of the 
 Queen. . . . For my own part,' Lady Marlborough adds, 
 ' I had not the same prepossessions. The word Church 
 had never any charm for me in the mouths of those who 
 made the most noise with it ; for I could not perceive 
 that they gave any other distinguishing proof of their 
 regard for the thing, than a frequent use of the word
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 95 
 
 like a spell to enchant weak minds, and a persecuting 
 zeal against dissenters, and against those real friends of 
 the Church who would not admit that persecution was 
 agreeable to its doctrine.' 
 
 This difference had not told for very much so long as 
 neither the princess nor her friend had any share in 
 public affairs, but it became strongly operative as soon as 
 the business of the nation came into their hands. How 
 much the queen had actually to do with that business, 
 and how entirely it depended upon the influence brought 
 to bear upon her limited mind, who should be the 
 guiders of England at this critical moment, is abund- 
 antly evident from every detail of the history. Queen 
 Victoria, great as her experience is, and notwithstand- 
 ing the respectful attention which all classes of poli- 
 ticians would naturally give to her opinion, changes her 
 ministers only when that majority in Parliament which 
 is now accepted as the symbol of the voice of the people 
 requires it, and has only the very limited choice which 
 the known and acknowledged heads of the parties per- 
 mit when she transfers ofiice and power from one side 
 to the other. But Queen Anne had no compact body of 
 statesmen — one replacing the other as occasion served — 
 to deal with, but put in here one high official and there 
 another with the most extraordinary and arbitrary in- 
 dividualism, which we can only now look at with amaze- 
 ment — replacing a Tory with a Whig when she could 
 be persuaded to do so. In the ministry which she 
 found on her accession Marlborough and Godolphin, who 
 were more Whig than Tory, occupied a sort of isolated 
 position, both of them holding their ground from King
 
 g6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 William's appointment, and from the fact that there was 
 nobody fit to replace them, rather than from any con- 
 fidence of their colleagues or accord with the other 
 members of the Government. No doubt the general 
 impression was that this state of affairs would cease as 
 soon as Anne had the power to change it ; but it was 
 not so, and the curious struggle carried on between the 
 queen and her mistress of the robes on this question, 
 the dogged yet passive resistance of the weaker woman, 
 and the rising anger, wonder, and fiery indignation of 
 the other afford a strange spectacle to the historical 
 observer. The vulgar side of the matter, the imperious 
 termagant's struggle for power and gain, the rise of 
 the slipshod, stealthy waiting-woman into the post of 
 favourite, the weak and foolish queen, delivered over 
 to the domination of one or the other — is well known 
 to most readers. There is something about a quarrel 
 of women which always excites the bitterest scorn of 
 every chronicler — an insidious contempt, which pro- 
 bably no one would own to, for the weaker half of the 
 creation, lying dormant in the mind of the race generally, 
 even of women themselves. Had Anne been a king of 
 moderate abilities, and Marlborough the friend and 
 guide to whom he owed his prosperity and fame, the 
 relationship would have been noble and honourable to 
 both ; and, when the struggle began, the strenuous 
 efforts of the great general to secure the co-operation 
 of ministers with whom he could work, and whose 
 support would have helped towards the carrying out 
 of his great plans for the glory of his country and the 
 destruction of her enemies, would, whether the historical
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 97 
 
 critic had approved of them or not, have at least secured 
 his respect, and a dignified treatment. But when it is 
 Sarah of Marlborough, with all the defects of temper 
 that we know in her, who, while her lord fights abroad, 
 has to fight for him at home, to scheme his enemies out 
 of, and his friends into, power, to keep her hold upon 
 her mistress by every means that her imagination could 
 devise — the idea that some nobler motive than mere 
 aggrandisement may be in the effort occurs to no one, 
 and the hatred of political enmity is mingled with all 
 the ridicule that spiteful wit can discharge upon a 
 feminine squabble. 
 
 Lady Marlborough was far from being a perfect 
 woman. She had a fiery temper and a stinging 
 tongue. When she was thwarted on every side, and 
 found herself impotent where she had been all-powerful, 
 her fury was like a torrent against which there was no 
 standing. But, with these patent defects, it ought to 
 be allowed her, that the object for which she struggled 
 was, after all, not only a perfectly legitimate, but a 
 noble one. What the great William had spent his 
 life in innumerable campaigns in endeavouring to do, 
 against all the discouragements of frequent failure, Marl- 
 borough was doing, with a matchless and almost un- 
 broken success. It was no shame to either the general 
 or the general's wife to believe, as William did, that this 
 was the greatest work of the time, and could alone 
 secure the safety of England as well as of her allies : 
 and the gallant stand of Lady Marlborough for the 
 party and the statesmen who were likely to carry this 
 object out, should gain her at least some credit as an 
 
 G
 
 98 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 offset to the humiliating displays of temper which, no 
 doubt, she was betrayed into when she found her in- 
 fluence beginning to fail. 
 
 The beginning of Queen Anne's reign showed no 
 ignoble influence at work. One of the first things the 
 queen did was to abolish the old and obstinate practice 
 of selling places. At the time of Marlborough's dis- 
 grace under King William he had been bidden to ' sell 
 or dispose of the places he held — and it was the 
 understood and invariable process, there being not even 
 sufficient conscience of the evil to prompt concealment. 
 Thus Lady Marlborough quotes a letter to her from 
 Anne while still princess : ' Her highness wrote to me 
 that she intended to take two new pages of the back- 
 stairs, but that she would not do it till my Lady 
 Clarendon was gone, that I might have the advantage 
 of putting them in, meaning that I might have the 
 advantage of selling the places. For it must be 
 recounted that at that time no person who was in any 
 office at court, with places at his disposal, made any 
 more scruple of selling them than of receiving his 
 settled salary or the rents of his estates. It is no great 
 wonder, therefore,' adds Lady Marlborough ' that being 
 a young courtier, and not very rich, and having such an 
 express direction from my mistress, I followed the 
 prevailing custom and sold those two places. Yet it 
 was not long before I began to condemn in my own 
 mind this practice.' Whether it was in reality Lady 
 Marlborough who took the initiative or not in this 
 measure we cannot pronounce with certainty, as we 
 have only her own word for it. But it certainly was
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 99 
 
 one of the first acts of the queen, and the credit of such 
 a departure from the use and wont of courts, should at 
 least be allowed to the new reign. Anne did various 
 other things for which there was no precedent. When 
 her civil list was granted to her she gave up at once 
 ;^ 1 00,000 a year from it to aid the public expenses, 
 then greatly increased by the war ; and, shortly after, 
 sacrificed the ecclesiastical tribute of first-fruits and 
 tithes, namely, the first year's stipend of each cure to 
 which a new incumbent was appointed, and the tenth 
 of all livings to which the Crown, as succeeding the 
 Pope in the headship of the Church, had become 
 entitled. Anne resigned this for the augmentation of 
 small livings, and there can be little doubt that this act, 
 at least, was her own. The fund thus formed continues 
 to this day under the name of Queen Anne's Bounty, 
 and is still supposed to give grants to the poorer 
 livings. It remained quite inefficacious during Anne's 
 reign, in consequence of various difficulties in getting 
 the scheme under weigh, and has not been since by any 
 means the important agency she intended it to be. But 
 the intention was munificent and the desire sincere. 
 Throughout her life the Church was the power which 
 had most influence over Anne. She was willing to do 
 anything to strengthen it, and to sacrifice any one, even 
 her dear friend, in its cause. 
 
 During the first part of her reign, however, there was 
 no appearance of any intention to sacrifice that dear 
 friend. A very short time after her accession, Marl- 
 borough, who had at once entered upon the conduct 
 of foreign affairs and the preparations for the war, as
 
 100 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 William had arranged, received the Garter which Anne 
 and her husband had vainly asked for him in the 
 previous reign : and when he returned from his first 
 campaign, as was the usage in these times, when the 
 armies had got into winter quarters, and made them- 
 selves comfortable for the severe season, a dukedom 
 was bestowed upon him, with many pretty expressions 
 on Anne's part and the little pleasant mystery on all 
 sides of friends preparing a gratification which was also 
 intended to be a surprise. ' I am apt to think Mrs. 
 Morley may say something to you on this subject which 
 perhaps you may not like,' says Lord Godolphin, for 
 her confidants were aware that Lady Marlborough had 
 no desire at that moment for promotion in rank. The 
 queen's letter is pretty and tender, as usual : — 
 
 ' I have had this evening the satisfaction of my dear Mrs. 
 Freeman's of yesterday, for which I give you many thanks ; and 
 though I think it a long time since I saw you, I do not desire 
 you to come one minute sooner to town than it is easy to 
 you, but will wait with patience for the happy hour. . . . Lord 
 treasurer intends to send you a copy of the address from the 
 house of Lords, which is to be given me to-morrow, and that 
 gives me an opportunity of mentioning a thing to you that I 
 did not intend to do yet. It is very uneasy to your poor 
 unfortunate faithful Morley to think that she has so little in 
 her power to show how truly sensible I am of all my Lord 
 Marlborough's kindness, especially at the time when he de- 
 serves all that a rich crown could give. But since there is 
 nothing else at this time, I hope you will give me leave as soon 
 as he comes to make him a duke. I know my dear Mrs. 
 Freeman does not care for anything of that kind, nor I am 
 not satisfied with it, because it does not enough express the 
 value I have for Mr. Freeman, nor nothing ever can how 
 passionately I am yours, my dear Mrs. Freeman.'
 
 The Queen and the Duchess loi 
 
 This is another proof of the queen's gift of ' writing 
 pretty affectionate letters,' the only thing, according to 
 the duchess's opinion of her, expressed in later days, 
 that she could do well. A great number of these letters 
 followed her accession. She was as anxious as ever to 
 serve and please her friend and favourite. She prays 
 God, in her little note of congratulation after the siege of 
 Bonn in 1703, to send the great general 'safe home to 
 his and my dear adored Mrs. Freeman,' with all the 
 grace of perfect sympathy : for the great duke was as 
 abject in his adoration of that imperious, bewitching, and 
 triumphant Sarah as the queen herself With the 
 tenderest recollection of her friend's whims, the queen 
 gave her the rangership of Windsor Park,i in which was 
 included ' a lodge in the great park,' which the duchess 
 describes as * a very agreeable place to live in,' ' remem- 
 bering that when we used in former days to ride by it I 
 had often wished for such a place ' — although it was 
 necessary to turn out Portland, King William's friend and 
 favourite, in order to leave the dwelling free. No doubt, 
 however, this summary displacement of the Dutchman 
 added to the pleasure both of giving and receiving. 
 Lady Marlborough had a multiplicity of other offices in 
 addition to this, such as those of Mistress of the 
 Robes, Groom of the Stole, and Keeper of the Privy 
 Purse, offices, however, which she had virtually held for 
 years in the household of the princess, and from which 
 she could scarcely have been excluded. All this 
 brought her in a great deal of money, a matter to which 
 she was never indifferent. Along with the dukedom, 
 
 ^ She made an excellent and careful Ranger, paying great attention to 
 her duties, as some of her unpublished letters prove.
 
 I02 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the queen also gave Marlborough a pension of £5000 
 a year, which some authorities say was not allowed 
 until the next Parliament, but which finally became a 
 part of the overflowing revenues of the new ducal 
 house. They would seem by these posts and perqui- 
 sites alone to have had an income between them not 
 far short of ;^6o,ooo a year, an enormous income for 
 those times. The queen also gave a little fortune to 
 each of their daughters as they married — ;^5000 
 a piece, and offered a pension of i^2000 a year to 
 the duchess from the privy purse — a bounty which she 
 declined, but which afterwards, in the fiery passion that 
 possessed her at the final breaking up of their rela- 
 tions, she claimed the arrears of, amounting to ;^i 8,000, 
 a proceeding which sadly detracts from her dignity. 
 All these gifts and favours were poured upon her 
 in the early days of Anne's reign. Before this the 
 means of the pair had been but small. Marlborough 
 had only very recently been restored to place at all, 
 and the duchess informs us that all the offices for which 
 afterwards she was so highly paid she had discharged 
 in the princess's household on an allowance of ;^400 a 
 year. For this reason the dukedom was unwelcome to 
 her. ' I do agree with you,' her husband writes, ' that 
 we ought not to wish for a greater title till we have a 
 better estate,' and he assures her that ' I shall have a 
 mind to nothing but as it may be easy to you.' Never 
 was a woman more flattered, praised, and worshipped 
 by all who were nearest to her: her queen and her 
 duke vie with each other in tenderness : that her head 
 should have been turned by it all was the most natural 
 thing in the world, and that she should have thought
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 103 
 
 it impossible that love and service could ever fail her. 
 When Marlborough sets out on his first campaign in 
 this war, which was to cover him with glory, and in 
 which for the first time he was to have full scope for his 
 talents, this is how he writes to the companion of his 
 life (she had gone with him to Margate to see him 
 embark) — 
 
 ' It is impossible to express with what a heavy heart I parted 
 with you at the water's side. I could have given my life to 
 have come back, though I know my own weakness so much 
 that I durst not, for I know I should have exposed myself to 
 the company. I did for a great while with a perspective 
 glass look out upon the cliffs, in hopes I might have had one 
 sight of you. We are now out of sight of Margate, and I have 
 neither soul or spirits, but I do at this time suffer so much 
 that nothing but being with you can recompense it' 
 
 These lover-like words were written by a man of 
 fifty-two to his wife of forty-two, to whom he had been 
 married for nearly a quarter of a century. Through all 
 the roaring of the guns, amid the plans and combin- 
 ations of armies, and all the hard thinking and hard 
 fighting, the perpetual activity and movement of his 
 life for the next ten years, the same voice of passionate 
 attachment, love and longing, penetrates for us the 
 tumults of the time. On the plains of Flanders, in the 
 blazing heat, he is glad to think that the sun which 
 scorches him will be ripening the fruit at St. Albans, 
 and bids her think how happy he would be to be 
 walking there with her, for * no ambition can make 
 me amends for being from you.' When she is ill, he 
 tells her that 'you shall quickly see you are much 
 dearer to me than fame or whatever the world can say,' 
 and is ready to leave everything in order to be with her
 
 I04 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 ' All my happiness centres in living quietly with you,' 
 he cries. ' I love you above my life : my greatest 
 pleasure is writing to you or hearing from you.' When 
 her ' dear letters ' are kind (which it would appear they 
 were not always) his joy knows no bounds. ' I am so 
 entirely yours that if I might have all the world 
 given me I could not be happy but in your love.' If 
 there is a tone of anxiety in many of these epistles 
 lest the great writer should have been in any way so 
 unfortunate as to displease his dearest soul, the im- 
 pression given of absolute devotion to her is only the 
 more enhanced. If he has to allow to Lord Dartmouth 
 that ' a man must bear a good deal to be quiet at home,' 
 he never takes any such tone to himself Thus she was 
 flattered to the top of her bent, both by husband and 
 mistress; and if she came to think herself indispensable, 
 it is not much to be wondered at. 
 
 In the midst of all this prosperity, and the great 
 hopes which the queen's favour, and the great oppor- 
 tunity which at last, after long waiting, had come to 
 Marlborough, awakened, the same crushing calamity 
 which had previously fallen upon Anne, overwhelmed 
 her friends. Their only son, a promising boy of 
 seventeen, died at Cambridge, and both father and 
 mother were bowed to the dust. The queen's letter on 
 this occasion expresses her sense of yet another melan- 
 choly bond between them. It is evident that she had 
 offered to go to her friend in her affliction. * It would 
 have been a great satisfaction to your poor unfortunate 
 faithful Morley if you would have given me leave to 
 come to St. Albans,' she writes, 'for the unfortunate
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 105 
 
 ought to come to the unfortunate.' That such a blow 
 should have come upon them at the moment of their 
 opening fortune, when there was scarcely any limit to 
 the hopes they might have formed for the future, is but 
 another of those abounding examples of human vicissi- 
 tude which are the commonplaces of life. With a 
 heavy heart Marlborough changed his will, leaving 
 the succession of the titles and honours so suddenly 
 deprived of their pleasure to the family of his eldest 
 daughter, and betook himself sadly to his fighting, 
 deriving a gleam of satisfaction from the thought that 
 other children might yet be granted to him, yet adjur- 
 ing his wife to bear their joint calamity with patience, 
 ^ whatever might befall. She herself says nothing on 
 this melancholy subject. Perhaps in her old age, as 
 she sat surveying her life, that great but innocent 
 sorrow may no longer have seemed to her of the first 
 importance in a record crossed by so many tempests ; 
 perhaps it was of so much, that she does not trust her- 
 self to speak of it. Partisans were eager to point out 
 how both she and her mistress had suffered the penalty 
 of their sin against King James and his son, by being 
 thus deprived of their respective heirs. It was ' a judg- 
 ment,' a thing dear to the popular imagination, and 
 most easily concluded upon at all times. 
 
 It would not seem, however, that this natural draw- 
 ing of * the unfortunate to the unfortunate ' had the 
 effect it might have had in further cementing the union 
 of the queen and the duchess. The 
 
 ' Little rift within the lute 
 That by-and-by will make the music mute,'
 
 io6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 begins to be apparent almost immediately after Anne's 
 accession — not in lessening the warmth or tenderness of 
 her letters, but by betraying a division of opinion of 
 which we had not heard before. ' I cannot help being 
 extremely concerned you are so partial to the Whigs, 
 because I could not have you and your poor unfortunate 
 faithful Morley differ in the least thing. And, upon my 
 word, my dear Mrs. Freeman,' adds Queen Anne, ' you 
 are mightily mistaken in your notion of a true Whig. 
 For the character you give of them does not in the 
 least belong to them, but to the Church,' — which was 
 no doubt a character of ideal excellence set forth by 
 both as belonging to her favourites. Soon, however, 
 the queen cannot avoid seeing that her dear Mrs. Free- 
 man does differ with her. On the subject of the Bill of 
 Occasional Conformity — a bill which was aimed at the 
 Dissenters, disallowing the expedient formerly admitted 
 for the use of Nonconformists, of periodical compliance 
 with the ceremonies of the Church, and with penal 
 enactments against those who, holding any office under 
 Government, should be present at any conventicle, or 
 assembly for worship in any form but that of the 
 Church of England — the queen writes as follows : — 
 
 ' I must own to you that I never care to mention anything 
 on this subject to you, because I know you would not be of 
 my mind ; but since you have given me this occasion, I can't 
 forbear saying that I see nothing like persecution in this bill 
 You may think it is a notion Lord Nottingham has put into 
 
 my head, but, upon my word, it is my own thought I 
 
 promise my dear Mrs. Freeman faithfully I will read the book 
 she sent me, and beg she would never let difference of opinion 
 hinder us from living together as we used to do. Nothing
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 1 07 
 
 shall ever alter your poor unfortunate faithful Morley, who 
 will live and die, with all truth and tenderness, yours.' 
 
 As the differences went on increasing, however, Queen 
 Anne gradually changed her ground. She " hopes her 
 not agreeing with anything you say will not be imputed 
 to want of value, esteem, or tender kindness for my 
 dear, dear Mrs. Freeman.' She is grieved that her 
 friend should refrain from writing with the idea that 
 her letters are troublesome, ' since you know very well 
 they are not, nor ever can be so ' : but at the same time 
 Anne finds courage enough to declare roundly that 
 whenever public affairs are in the hands of the Whigs, 
 ' I shall think the Church beginning to be in danger.' 
 
 Thus the political situation became more and more 
 difficult. The Tories opposed and thwarted Marl- 
 borough's plans, and did what they could to throw 
 discredit on them, though he belonged to their party ; 
 and made such a systematic assault upon Godolphin, 
 that it was with difficulty that able minister could hold 
 head against them. But Marlborough, at least, had no 
 desire to throw himself into the arms of the Whigs, 
 whither his wife would so fain have led him. He was 
 almost as little encouraging to her political partialities 
 as the queen was. ' I know,' he says, ' they would be 
 as unreasonable as the other in their expectations if I 
 should seek their friendship : for all parties are alike.' 
 It was thus a hard part the duchess had to play, 
 between the queen's determination that the Whigs were 
 the enemies of the Church, and her husband's convic- 
 tion that all parties were alike. He, perhaps, was the 
 more hard to manage of the two. He voted for the
 
 io8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Occasional Conformity Bill against which she was so 
 hot, and trusted in Harley, who indeed owed his first 
 beginnings to Marlborough's favour, but whom the 
 duchess saw through. In young St. John, too, the 
 great general had perfect faith. * I am very confident 
 he will never deceive you,' he wrote to Godolphin, 
 Thus the husband warmed in his bosom the vipers 
 which were to sting him and bring a hasty end to his 
 career, while his wife, more clear-sighted, and more 
 high-tempered, always on the spot, and jealously watch- 
 ful of everything that passed, stormed and entreated, 
 and wrote a hundred letters, and used every art, both of 
 war and peace, in vain. 
 
 It is easy to see how the duchess's continued letter- 
 writing, her argumentative anxiety to prove that her 
 correspondent was in error and she right, and her itera- 
 tion of the same charges and reproaches, must have 
 exasperated the queen, and troubled Marlborough in 
 the midst of the practical difficulties of his career ; but 
 yet her position, too, is such as to call for sympathy. 
 For she foresaw what actually did happen, and perceived 
 whither the current was tending, but was refused any 
 credit for her prognostications or help in subduing the 
 dangerous forces she dreaded. How irritating this 
 position must have been to a fiery temper it is needless 
 to point out, and the duchess would not permit herself 
 to be silenced by either husband or queen. Lord Mac- 
 auley's description of the astonishing state of affairs, by 
 which two of the ablest statesmen in Europe were 
 obliged to have recourse for the conduct of the imperial 
 business to the influence of one woman over another,
 
 The Quee7i and the Duchess 109 
 
 was thus far less true even than it seems on the surface. 
 For Sarah of Marlborough suspected trouble when no 
 one else did, fought violently against her husband's 
 enemies before they had disclosed themselves, and 
 dragged into office the men who could help him, by a 
 pertinacious and unending struggle, moved by her own 
 intuitions alone. Sometimes she frightened the queen 
 by threats of resignation, until Anne abandoned all her 
 new-born independence in terror at the suggestion ; and 
 anon, out of that ever-varying, all-energetic, capricious, 
 imperious personality of hers, which kept everybody in 
 movement, would send to her general, in the midst of 
 his army, such a letter as almost made him weep for 
 joy. ' I would not for anything in my power it had 
 been lost,' he cries, 'for it is so very kind, that I would 
 in return lose a thousand lives, if I had them, to make 
 you happy. Before I sat down to write this letter I 
 took yours that you wrote at Harwich (evidently by no 
 means so sweet) out of my strong-box, and have burnt 
 it : and if you will give me leave, it will be a great 
 pleasure to me to have it in my power to read this dear, 
 dear letter often, and that it may be found in my 
 strong-box when I am dead.' It is touching to read 
 such words from such a man, and it is touching, too, in 
 its way, to hear Anne protesting on the other side, when 
 she is threatened with the loss of both husband and 
 wife. ' As for your poor unfortunate Morley, she could 
 not bear it : for if ever you should forsake me I would 
 have nothing more to do with the world, but make 
 another abdication : for what is a crown when the sup- 
 port of it is gone ? ' A woman who calls forth such a
 
 I lo The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 warmth of feeling cannot be summarily dismissed as a 
 compound of vulgar rage, spite, and scheming. There 
 must have been something more in her. 
 
 Meanwhile Marlborough was going on in his career 
 of victory. It was a very costly luxury, but the pride of 
 England had never been so fed with triumphs. Queen 
 Anne was in her closet one day at Windsor, a little turret 
 chamber, with windows on every side, looking over the 
 green and fertile valley of the Thames, with all the trees 
 in full summer foliage, and the harvest gathering in 
 from the fields, when there was brought to her a scrap 
 of crumpled paper bearing upon it the few hurried lines 
 addressed to the duchess, which told of the 'glorious 
 victory' of the battle of Blenheim. It had been torn 
 off in haste from a memorandum-book on the field, and 
 was scribbled over with an inn reckoning on the other 
 side. The commotion it caused was not one of unmixed 
 joy : for though the queen wrote her thanks and con- 
 gratulations, and there was a great thanksgiving ser- 
 vice at St. Paul's which she attended in state, the party 
 in power did all that in them lay to depreciate the im- 
 portance of the victory. When, however, Marlborough 
 appeared in England with his prisoners and trophies — a 
 marshal of France, and many standards taken in the 
 field — the popular sentiment burst all bounds, and his 
 reception was enthusiastic. The Crown lands of Wood- 
 stock were bestowed upon him, and the queen herself 
 commanded a palace to be built upon that estate at 
 the expense of the Crown, to be called Blenheim, in 
 commemoration of this extraordinary victory. The 
 quit-rent for this royal fief was to be a banner em-
 
 The Qtiee^t and the Duchess 1 1 1 
 
 broidered with three fleurs-de-Hs, the then cognisance 
 of France, to be presented on every anniversary of the 
 battle. Not very long ago the present writer accom- 
 panied a French lady of distinction through some part 
 of Windsor Castle under the guidance of a high official. 
 When the party came into the armoury, on each side 
 of which, a vivid spot of colour, hung a little standard, 
 fresh in embroidery of gold, the kind cicerone smiled 
 and whispered aside, ' We need not point out these to 
 her.' One of them was the Blenheim, the other the 
 Waterloo banner, both yearly acknowledgments, after 
 the old feudal fashion, for fiefs held of the Crown. 
 
 One of the other honours done to Marlborough at 
 this triumphant moment when, an English duke, a 
 prince of the holy Roman Empire, the greatest soldier 
 of his time, he came home in glory to England, were 
 the well-known verses with which Addison saluted 
 him. There were plenty of odes piping to all the 
 winds in his honour, but this alone worthy of record. 
 After describing the events by which ' great Marl- 
 borough's mighty soul was proved' — the bold and 
 splendid image with which he concludes has definitively 
 taken its place in English poetry : — 
 
 ' So when an angel by divine command 
 With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
 Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, 
 Calm and serene he drives the furious blast, 
 And pleased the Almighty's orders to perform. 
 Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.' 
 
 There is a greater amount of truth than is usual in 
 complimentary verses comparing men to angels in this 
 description. Whatever Marlborough's faults may have
 
 112 The Reign of Quee7i An7ie 
 
 been, his attitude during this wonderful war is scarcely 
 too magnificently described by the image of a calm and 
 superior spirit beholding contemporary events from a 
 higher altitude than that of common men, executing 
 vengeance, and causing destruction without either rage 
 or fear, in serene fulfilment of a great command, and in 
 pursuance of a noble purpose. His unbroken temper 
 his patience and courtesy in the midst of all con- 
 tentions, the fine composure with which he supports 
 all the burdens thrown upon him, appeals from home 
 as well as necessities abroad, might well suggest a 
 spirit apart and independent, not moved like lesser men. 
 No man ever bore so many conflicting claims more 
 calmly, and his prudence was equal to his endurance : 
 even the adjurations, the commands, the special plead- 
 ings of his ' dearest soul,' do not lead him a step 
 further than he thinks wise. 'When I differ from you,' 
 he says, 'it is not that I think those are in the right 
 whom you say are always in the wrong ; but it is 
 that I would be glad not to enter into the unreason- 
 able reasoning of either party : for I have trouble 
 enough for my little head in the business which of 
 necessity I must do here.' There could not be a 
 greater contrast than between the commotion and 
 whirlwind that surrounds Duchess Sarah and the great 
 general's calm. 
 
 It is not necessary for our purpose to enter into those 
 changes of ministers which temporarily consolidated 
 the Marlborough interest, but only to yield again to 
 the opposing party. It is not to be supposed that 
 these fluctuations were wholly owing to the influences
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 113 
 
 brought to bear upon the queen ; but that her per- 
 sonal dispositions influenced public matters in a way 
 almost inconceivable to us is very evident, as also that 
 her prevailing disposition to uphold the party which to 
 her represented the Church kept the continuance of 
 the war and the entire policy of the country in con- 
 stant danger. 
 
 Even this, however, is not so full of interest for our 
 present purpose as the revelation of another side of 
 Anne's nature which gradually becomes apparent in 
 the course of the heated discussions that rise about her. 
 The yielding and gentle temper, the humility of mind 
 and softness of disposition, the clinging affectionateness 
 and self-devotion which formed the better side of her 
 character have been fully evident in the first half of her 
 career: but that underneath those lovable qualities 
 there was a narrowness and obstinacy, a sullen in- 
 capacity to be reasoned with or convinced by any 
 argument, were things which had showed very rarely, 
 and then only in circumstances which made them half 
 virtues. But there is nothing so remorseless, so in- 
 accessible as weakness when once it has turned to bay. 
 Even so dull a brain as Anne's could scarcely fail at last 
 to receive the impression of the despotism and coercion 
 increasing every day, which her friend, spoilt on her 
 side by continual indulgence, now exercised over her. 
 The placid soul was slow to take that new imprint, but 
 when it had done so was like steel in the novel attitude 
 into which she had been forced, and from which, once 
 taken, no manipulation would move her. The process 
 was probably a slower one than we can follow, and many 
 
 H
 
 114 ^-^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 a line had been scored in the once so plastic material 
 before it suddenly stiffened into the permanent mould, 
 and became like a rock amid all the violences of the 
 waves, unmoved by them, however high they might 
 dash and rage. It is the most curious sight to see 
 Anne's soft and smiling countenance turn into that 
 mask of sullen obstinacy, and her easy too-persuadable 
 mind shut itself up in bolts and bars against every in- 
 fluence. Reason had held no great sway over her at 
 any time. She had yielded to it when it bore a form 
 she loved, she was as adamant to it when it had no such 
 recommendation ; and it is almost appalling to see this 
 other side of the narrow and limited nature turned 
 to us, dull, immovable, which had once been so smil- 
 ing and so bright, yet to know that the brightness had 
 involved the gloom all the time. The duchess, though 
 violent, is more or less as she always is through the 
 whole : it is in Anne, the stupid and gentle, that the 
 mystery of a complete revolution appears. 
 
 It is only in 1707, five years after Anne's accession, 
 that we are made aware of the entry of a new actor 
 upon the scene in the person of a smooth and noiseless 
 woman, always civil, always soft spoken, apologetic, and 
 plausible, whose sudden appearance in the vivid narra- 
 tive of her great rival is in the highest degree dramatic 
 and effective. This was the famous Abigail who has 
 given her name, somewhat injuriously to her own posi- 
 tion, to the class of waiting-women ever since. She was 
 in reality bed-chamber woman to the queen, a post now 
 very far removed from that of waiting-maid, and even 
 then by no means on the level, notwithstanding the
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 1 1 5 
 
 duchess's scornful phrases, of those attendants to whom 
 has been appropriated Mrs. Hill's remarkable name. 
 Her introduction altogether and the vigorous mise en 
 scene of this new episode in the history prove a high 
 quality of dramatic workmanship in Duchess Sarah. 
 Her suspicions, she informs us, were roused by the in- 
 formation that this personage had been privately 
 married to Mr. Masham, who was one of the queen's 
 pages ; but there are allusions before this in her letters 
 to the queen to * flatterers,' which point at least to some 
 suspected influence undermining her own. She tells us 
 first in a few succinct pages who the person was whose 
 private marriage excited so much wonder and indigna- 
 tion in her mind. Abigail Hill was the first cousin of 
 Sarah Jennings, the daughter of her father's sister, a 
 lady who as being one of twenty-two children had but 
 'five hundred pounds for her portion,' yet was of as 
 good blood as the duchess herself, though she had 
 married ' a merchant in the city ' and fallen into 
 poverty. Lady Churchill, then young, recently married, 
 and but lately appointed to Princess Anne's household, 
 heard accidentally of these poor relations of whom she 
 had known nothing, and immediately sent them money, 
 and took upon herself the charge of the eldest daughter, 
 who henceforward lived with her, taking care of her 
 children, and treated, she tells us, as her sister, until, 
 a vacancy occurring among the princess's bedchamber 
 women, she asked for and obtained the appointment 
 for Abigail. The rest of the family seem also to have 
 owed their establishment in life to the active generosity 
 of the duchess. The younger sister was made laundress
 
 1 1 6 The Reign of Queen An7ie 
 
 to the Duke of Rochester (not a very dignified office, 
 though no doubt its duties were done by proxy), and 
 afterwards pensioned. The elder son got a post in the 
 custom-house ; the younger Lady Marlborough put to 
 school at St. Albans under her own eye, and clothed 
 and cared for with ill-repaid kindness. Thus she had 
 been the making of the family, and her discovery of 
 the secret marriage, which no doubt gave force to other 
 suspicions, was an irritating incident. Harley, who was 
 at this time Secretary of State and aiming at higher 
 place, was related in the same degree on the father's 
 side to Mrs. Abigail ; so that, first cousin to the great 
 duchess on one hand and to the leader of the House of 
 Commons on the other, though it suits the narrator's 
 purpose to humble her, Mrs. Hill was no child of the 
 people. It is curious to remark here that Harley too 
 had come to his advancement by Marlborough's means, 
 who did not for a long time cease to trust in him. 
 
 ' The first thing which led me into inquiries about her con- 
 duct was the being told that my cousin Hill was privately 
 married to Mr. Masham. I went to her and asked her if it 
 were true ; she owned it was, and begged my pardon for having 
 concealed it from me. As much reason as I had to take ill 
 this reserve in her behaviour, I was willing to impute it to 
 bashfulness and want of breeding, rather than to anything 
 worse. I embraced her with my usual tenderness, and very 
 heartily wished her joy; and then, turning the discourse, 
 entered into her concerns in as friendly a manner as possible, 
 contriving how to accommodate her with lodgings by remov- 
 ing her sister into some of my own. I then inquired of her 
 kindly whether the queen knew of her marriage, and very 
 innocently offered her my service if she needed it to make 
 that matter easy. She had by this time learnt the art of
 
 The Queen and the Dztchess 1 1 7 
 
 dissimulation pretty well, and answered with an air of un- 
 concernedness, that the bedchamber women had already ac- 
 quainted the queen with it, hoping by this answer to divert 
 any further examination into the matter. But I went pre- 
 sently to the queen, and asked her why she had not been so 
 kind as to tell me of my cousin's marriage, expostulating with 
 her upon the point, and putting her in mind of what she used 
 often to say to me out of Montaigne, that it was no breach of 
 promise of secrecy to tell such a friend anything, because it 
 was no more than telling it to one's-self. All the answer I 
 could obtain from her majesty was this, " I have a hundred 
 times bid Masham tell it you, and she would not." ' 
 
 These curious circumstances piqued the duchess's 
 curiosity, who never let the grass grow under her feet, 
 and soon she discovered that the private marriage had 
 been celebrated at Windsor in the rooms of Dr. 
 Arbuthnot, and that the queen herself had honoured 
 the occasion by her own presence ; also that Abigail 
 had ' become an absolute favourite ' and spent hours 
 alone with the queen, and that the other cousin on the 
 other side of the house, the ambitious Harley, had been 
 through her brought into closer relations with their 
 royal mistress. This on a sudden cleared up all that 
 was mysterious in the severance which had gradually 
 been taking place between Mrs. Freeman and her 
 unfortunate faithful Morley. The friend of her youth, 
 whose frank dictation the Princess Anne had received 
 with such tender docility, had evidently hurt the 
 queen's pride when Anne began in her humility to 
 entertain and act upon opinions of her own. And Mrs. 
 Abigail was gentle and insinuating, a creature who 
 stole about the dull rooms and up the back stairs with
 
 1 18 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 noiseless steps of velvet, and took her majesty's opinions 
 for gospel, and no doubt now and then ventured a scoff 
 at her imperious cousin, or told some gossip's tale of 
 her which diverted her majesty and permitted her the 
 guilty pleasure of a laugh at the infallible. The duchess 
 had been just then interfering with one of Anne's most 
 cherished privileges — the appointment of bishops, which 
 she was anxious to keep in her own hands — and indeed 
 had hectored and bullied the queen in a way which the 
 meekest of women could scarcely bear with tranquillity. 
 ' Mrs. Morley,' she says on one occasion, ' has never been 
 able to answer any argument, or to say anything that 
 has the least colour of reason in it, and yet will not be 
 advised by those that have given the greatest demon- 
 strations imaginable of being in her interest' After 
 reading such a sentence as this in a long and vehement 
 letter, it would be little wonder if the queen, all tears 
 and outraged feeling, had retired to the soothing of the 
 kinder attendant who would take her part and soothe 
 her ruffled pride. 
 
 From the moment of this discovery Duchess Sarah 
 gave her mistress little peace. Fiery letters fast and 
 furious were showered upon the queen ; nothing was 
 allowed to pass without a hasty visit, a long epistle. If 
 it were not for the wearisome pertinacity with which 
 people in a quarrel return to one subject, these letters, 
 so vigorous and full of force, would be equally full of 
 interest ; and evidently (as is very usual in a quarrel) it 
 was a pleasure to the duchess to pour forth page upon 
 page, flying to her desk at every new incident with the 
 hot and eager pleasure of controversy, delighting to
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 119 
 
 show Godolphin, or even Marlborough, though so much 
 further off, how she had confuted all her adversaries. 
 But the record of stormy scenes, one following another, 
 is apt to become monotonous in the end. The duchess 
 could never accept defeat. Every new affront, every 
 symptom of failure in the policy which she supported 
 with so much zeal, made her fly, if possible, to the pre- 
 sence of the queen, with a storm of remonstrances, re- 
 proaches and invective, with tears of fury and outcries of 
 wrath ; or to the pen, with which she reiterated the same 
 burning story of her wrongs. The appearance of the 
 queen throughout has a stolid and passive resistance in 
 it which gives us a certain sympathy with the weeping, 
 raging, passionate woman, whose eloquence, whose argu- 
 ments, whose appeals and entreaties all dash unheeded 
 against the rock of tranquil obstinacy which is no more 
 moved by them than the cliff is moved by the petulances 
 of the rising tide ; though on the other hand the same 
 sympathy may be called forth for the dull and placid 
 soul which could get no rest, and which longed above all 
 things for tranquillity, for gentle attentions and soft 
 voices, and the privilege of nominating bishops and 
 playing basset in peace. Poor lady ! on the whole it is 
 Queen Anne who is the most to be pitied. She was 
 often ill, always unwieldy and uncomfortable ; she had 
 nobody but a soft, gliding, smooth-tongued Abigail to 
 fall back upon, while the duchess had half the great men 
 of the time fawning upon her, putting themselves at her 
 feet, her husband prizing a word of kindness from her more 
 than anything in the world, her daughter describing her 
 as the dearest mother that ever was ; and money accumu-
 
 I20 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 lating in her coffers and great Blenheim still a-building, 
 and all kinds of noble hangings, cut velvets and satins, 
 pictures and every fine thing that could be conceived 
 getting collected for the adornment of that great house. 
 Nevertheless there can be little doubt that Duchess 
 Sarah represented a nobler idea and a grander national 
 policy than that into which her mistress was betrayed. Her 
 later intercourse with Anne was little more than a persecu- 
 tion, and yet what she aimed at was better than the dis- 
 honouring and selfish policy by which she was finally con- 
 quered. The Marlboroughs were not of those who pressed 
 the German heir upon the queen, or would have compelled 
 her to receive that visit which she passionately declared she 
 could not bear ; but they were determined, all treasonable 
 correspondence notwithstanding, upon the maintenance 
 of the Protestant succession, upon the firm establishment 
 of English independence and greatness — the objects 
 which alone had justified the Revolution, and made the 
 stern chapter of William's life and reign anything better 
 than an accidental episode. Though he had been false 
 to William, as everybody was false in those days, and 
 had lain so long in the cold shade of his displeasure, 
 Marlborough had in his whole magnificent career been 
 little more than the executor of William's plans, the 
 fulfiller of his policy. The duchess on her side, with 
 much love of power and of gain, with all the drawbacks 
 of her temper and personality, still bent every faculty to 
 the work of backing him up, keeping his friends in 
 power and his enemies harmless, and thus bringing the 
 war to an entirely successful conclusion. A certain 
 enlightenment was in all her passionate interferences
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 121 
 
 with the course of pubHc affairs. The men whom she 
 laboured to thrust into office were the best men of their 
 time, the ascendency she endeavoured so violently to 
 retain was one under which England had been elevated 
 in the scale of nations, and all her liberties confirmed. 
 Such persecuting and intolerant acts as the bill against 
 Occasional Conformity, which was a test of exceptional 
 severity, had her strenuous opposition. In short, had there 
 been no Marlborough to carry on the war at William's 
 death, and no Sarah at Anne's ear, to inspire the queen's 
 sluggish nature with spirit and to keep her up to the 
 mark of the larger plans of her predecessor, England 
 might have fallen into another drivelling period of foreign 
 subserviency, into a new and meaner Restoration. 
 
 That the reader may see, however, to what an ex- 
 traordinary pass the friendship had come which had 
 been so intimate and close, we add the duchess's account 
 of the concluding interview. In the meantime, it need 
 not be said, many exasperating circumstances of all 
 kinds had accumulated between the former friends. 
 There had been violent meetings, violent letters by the 
 score ; even in the midst of a thanksgiving service 
 Sarah had taken her mistress to task, and imperiously 
 bidden her not to answer. Indeed the poor queen was 
 more or less hunted down, pursued to her last circle 
 of defence, when the Mistress of the Robes made her 
 sudden appearance at Kensington one April afternoon, 
 in the year 17 10, when everything was tending towards 
 her downfall. 
 
 ' As I was entering the queen said she was just going to 
 write to me. And when I began to speak she interrupted me
 
 122 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 four or five times with these repeated words : - Whatever you 
 have to say you may put it in writing." I said her majesty 
 never did so hard a thing to any, as to refuse to hear them 
 speak, and assured her that I was not going to trouble her 
 upon the subject which I knew to be so ungrateful to her, but 
 that I could not possibly rest till I had cleared myself from 
 some particular calumnies with which I had been loaded. I 
 then went on to speak (though the queen turned away her 
 face from me) and to represent my hard case, that there were 
 those about her majesty who had made her believe that I said 
 things of her, which I was no more capable of saying than of 
 killing my own children . . . The queen said, without doubt 
 there were many lies told. I then begged, in order to make 
 this trouble the shorter and my own innocence the plainer, 
 that I might know the particulars of which I had been accused. 
 Because if I were guilty that would quickly appear, and if I 
 were innocent this method alone would clear me. The queen 
 replied that she would give me no answer, laying hold on a 
 word in my letter, that what I had to say in my own vindica- 
 tion would have no co?iseguence in ol>liging her majesty to answer, 
 etc., which surely did not at all imply that I did noi desire to 
 know the particular things laid to my charge, without which 
 it was impossible for me to clear myself. This I assured 
 her majesty was all I desired, and that I did not ask the 
 names of the authors or relaters of those calumnies, saying 
 all that I could think reasonable to enforce my just request . . 
 . . I protested to her majesty that I had no design, in giving 
 her this trouble, to solicit the return of her favour, but that 
 my sole view was to clear myself ; which was too just a design 
 to be wholly disappointed by her majesty. Upon this the 
 queen offered to go out of the room, I following her, and 
 begging leave to clear myself ; and the queen repeating over 
 and over again : " You desired no answer, and shall have 
 none." When she came to the door I fell into great disorder ; 
 streams of tears flowed down against my will, and prevented my 
 speaking for some time. At length I recovered myself and ap- 
 pealed to the queen, in the vehemence of my concern, whether
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 123 
 
 I might not still have been happy in her majesty's favour, 
 if I could have contradicted or dissembled my real opinion of 
 men, or things ? whether I had ever, during our long friend- 
 ship, told her one lie, or played the hypocrite once ? whether 
 I had offended in anything, unless in a very zealous pressing 
 upon her that which I thought necessary for her service and 
 security ? I then said I was informed by a very reasonable 
 and credible person about the court that things were laid to 
 my charge of which I was wholly incapable ; that this person 
 knew that such stories were perpetually told to her majesty to 
 incense her, and had begged of me to come and vindicate my- 
 self ; that the same person had thought me of late guilty of 
 some omissions towards her majesty, being entirely ignorant 
 how uneasy to her my frequent attendance must be, after 
 what had happened between us. I explained some things 
 which I had heard her majesty had taken amiss of me, and 
 then, with a fresh flood of tears and a concern sufficient to 
 move compassion, even where all love was absent, I begged to 
 know what other particulars she had heard of me, that I might 
 not be denied all power of justifying myself. But still the only 
 return was: "You desired no answer, and you shall have none." 
 I then begged to know if her majesty would tell me some 
 other time ? " You desired no answer, and you shall have 
 none." I then appealed to her majesty again, if she did not 
 herself know that I had often despised interest in comparison 
 of serving her faithfully and doing right ? and whether she did 
 not know me to be of a temper incapable of disowning any- 
 thing which I knew to be true ? " You desired no answer, and 
 you shall have none." This usage was so severe, and these 
 words, so often repeated, were so shocking (being an utter 
 denial of common justice to one who had been a most faithful 
 servant, and now asked nothing more), that I could not con- 
 quer myself, but said the most disrespectful thing I ever spoke 
 to the queen in my life, and yet, what such an occasion and 
 such circumstances might well excuse, if not justify ; and that 
 was, that " I was confident her majesty would suffer for such 
 an instance of inhumanity." The queen answered : " That
 
 124 ^'^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 will be to myself." Thus ended this remarkable conversation, 
 the last I ever had with her majesty.' 
 
 After this there was no reconciliation possible ; 
 attempts of all kinds were made, and there is even 
 a record of a somewhat pitiful scene in which great 
 Marlborough himself, on his return from the wars, 
 appears on his knees pleading with Queen Anne to 
 take back into favour her old companion, but without 
 effect. The reason of this unbecoming humility how- 
 ever was, not the great general's desire to force his wife 
 upon her majesty, but the general sense of all that his 
 own services were indispensable to the country, and that 
 he could hardly continue in his position if his wife's 
 dismissal actually took place. But Queen Anne stood 
 immovable before great Marlborough on his knees, 
 and whereas she had demanded the gold key which 
 was the duchess's symbol of office in three days, now 
 insisted that it should be delivered to her within two, 
 by way of showing how little weight she attached to 
 the prayers of the commander-in-chief Coxe says 
 that it was sent back the same evening in indignant 
 resentment when Duchess Sarah knew what had 
 happened, and Lord Dartmouth in those curious 
 gossiping comments on Burnet's history which throw 
 so much light upon the transactions of the time, affords 
 a brief but graphic picture of her grace's final yield- 
 ing. 'When the Duke of Marlborough told her the 
 queen expected the gold key, she took it from her 
 side and threw it into the middle of the room, and 
 bid him take it up and carry it to whom he pleased.' 
 The state of furious excitement in which she was is
 
 The Queen and the Dtcchess 125 
 
 described in another note, which no doubt affords 
 a very fair idea of the agitated house which was all 
 the great general had at this moment to represent 
 the peace and tranquillity for which in all his letters 
 he sighs. 
 
 ' Lord Cowper told me he went at this time to the Duke of 
 Marlborough and found him in bed, with a great deal of 
 company in his chamber, and the duchess sitting at his 
 bedside, railing in a most extravagant manner against the 
 queen, and said she had always hated and despised her: 
 but that fool, her daughter Henrietta (who stood by) had 
 always loved her, and did so still, which she should never 
 forgive her. That surprised him very much, though he had 
 heard more of her temper than he believed; but the duke 
 told him he must not mind what she said, for she was used 
 to talk at that rate when she was in a passion, which was a 
 thing she was very apt to fall into, and there was no way to 
 help it.* 
 
 Marlborough unfortunately for himself did not resign 
 at this turning-point, being persuaded both by friends 
 and foes not to do so ; and with the evident risk before 
 his eyes of hazarding all the combinations of the war 
 and giving a distinct advantage to the enemy against 
 whom he had hitherto operated so forcibly. He con- 
 tinued therefore for the public interest rather than for 
 his own, and returned when the season of warfare 
 recommenced to the post which all these events made 
 uneasy for him, and where his credit was shaken and 
 his prestige diminished by the disfavour of the Court 
 and the ministry, and all the indignities to which he 
 had been subjected. The responsibility was therefore 
 left upon Anne and her ministers of dismissing
 
 126 The Reign of Quee7i Anne 
 
 him, which they accordingly did in the end of 171 1, 
 to the consternation of the allies, the delight of the 
 French, and the bewilderment of the nation. The 
 party plots by which this came about are far too 
 long and involved to be capable of explanation here, 
 as are also the semi-secret negotiations for the peace 
 secured by the Treaty of Utrecht, which were carried 
 on unknown to Marlborough, to the destruction of 
 the alliance and confusion of all his plans. Never 
 perhaps was so great a man treated with such con- 
 tumely. His associate in his work, the Lord Treasurer 
 Godolphin, the great financier of his time, had already 
 fallen, leaving office so poor a man that he would have 
 been dependent upon the Marlboroughs but for the 
 unexpected death of his brother, which left him the 
 possessor of a small fortune. To show the manner in 
 which in those days ministers fell, we may cite the final 
 end of Godolphin after a period of wavering tenure and 
 failing favour. 
 
 'From the queen's coldness, from the secret opposition 
 to which he here adverts and from other causes, the Trea- 
 surer seems to have suspected her intention to dismiss him ; 
 for the same day he had another audience of two hours in 
 which he took the resolution of representing the mischievous 
 consequences of secret counsels, and her want of confidence 
 in her ostensible ministers. He concluded with submitting 
 to her decision whether he should continue in office, 
 offering to serve or not, as she should deem it fit for her 
 interest, concluding with the categorical question, ' Is it the 
 will of your majesty that I should go on?' The queen 
 replied without hesitation 'Yes.' With this answer the 
 minister was satisfied and quitted her presence, though he 
 observed in her looks and manners unusual symptoms of
 
 The Queen ajid the Duchess 127 
 
 embarrassment and gloom. He was therefore equally sur- 
 prised and confounded when the next morning a servant in 
 the royal livery left a note with his porter dated on the 
 evening after the audience. 
 
 'Kensington, August 7th (1710). — The uneasiness which 
 you have showed for some time has given me very much 
 trouble, though I have borne it ; and had your behaviour 
 continued the same as it was for some years after my coming 
 to the crown, I could have no dispute with myself what to 
 do. But the many unkind returns I have received since, 
 especially what you said to me personally before the lords, 
 makes it impossible for me to continue you any longer in my 
 service ; but I will give you a pension of four thousand a year, 
 and I desire that instead of bringing your staff to me, you 
 will break it, which I believe will be easier to us both.' 
 
 Here we see that instead of a government hanging 
 together and going out and in by parliamentary action 
 in a body, the ministry was composed of independent 
 individuals, each of whom his colleagues, taking ad- 
 vantage of the mood of majesty, could push out of his 
 position when occasion served. Thus man after man 
 was discharged from the queen's service, always with 
 some personal offence on his part to give colour to the 
 dismissal. Anne herself was no doubt little more than 
 a puppet in the hands of successive ministers ; but yet 
 the fight there was around her, the maintenance by 
 every circle of somebody who could influence her, the 
 conflict for her ear and favour show her immense im- 
 portance in the economy of public life. Queen Victoria 
 is the object of universal veneration and respect, but 
 not the smallest official in her government need fear 
 the displeasure of the queen, as the highest minister
 
 1 28 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 had to fear the offence of Anne, for whom no one 
 entertained any particular respect. 
 
 And yet there are no indications of an evil nature in 
 the unfortunate woman who, badgered on all sides and 
 refused both peace and rest, sank slowly into disease 
 and decay during the two years which followed the 
 disgrace of the friend of her youth. She had no longer 
 an audacious Freeman, once adored, to tell her un- 
 welcome truths and tease her with appeals and re- 
 proaches. Her soft-voiced Abigail, her cunning 
 Duchess (of Somerset) gave her flattery and soothing 
 at home, but never was a head that wore the crown 
 more uneasy. She held fast to the power which she had 
 been persuaded she was to get into her own hands when 
 she was delivered from the sway of the Marlboroughs, 
 and believed it possible that she could reign unaided, 
 which brought her many mortifications. Her death 
 was hastened, it is said, at last by a violent altercation 
 in her presence between Harley and St. John, when 
 the inevitable moment came of conflict between the 
 two who had pushed all competitors out of place. 
 They wrangled over the staff of office in Anne's very 
 presence, overwhelming her with agitation and excite- 
 ment. But for these wild waves of political tumult 
 which poured on her from time to time, her royal 
 existence was dull enough. When Dean Swift was 
 hanging on at Windsor, following Harley and waiting 
 for the decision of his Irish business, he affords us 
 occasional glimpses which show the tedium of the court. 
 ' There was a drawing-room to-day,' he says, ' but so few 
 company that the queen sent for us into her bed-
 
 The Q^ieen and the Duchess 129 
 
 chamber, where we made our bows, and stood about 
 twenty of us round the room while she looked at us 
 round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute 
 said about three words to some that were nearest her, 
 and then she was told dinner was ready and went out' 
 The same authority mentions her way of taking 
 exercise, which was a strange one. ' The queen was 
 hunting the stag till four this afternoon,' he says, ' and 
 she drove in her chaise about forty miles, and it was 
 five before we went to dinner.' ' She hunts in a chaise 
 with one horse which she drives herself, and drives 
 furiously like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter like Nimrod.' 
 Windsor's great park and forest must have afforded 
 room and space for some part at least of this course, 
 and a hunt in August would need to have been con- 
 fined to ground less cultivated than that of the smiling 
 plain which skirts the castle hill on the other side. 
 Queen Anne's ride and Queen Anne's drive are still 
 well-known names in the locality where the strange 
 apparition of the queen, solitary in her high chaise, and 
 * driving furiously ' after the hunt, must once have been 
 a familiar sight. 
 
 Her ending days were agitated, above and beside all 
 the tumults of party in which she took so continual a 
 part, by private and public contentions over the ques- 
 tion of her successor. In public there was but one 
 name that any one ventured to name, which was that 
 of the family of Hanover, the Electress Sophia and her 
 son and grandson, who were prayed for in the churches, 
 and recognised by acts of parliament and by the general 
 consent of England. Anne did not love the idea of a 
 
 I
 
 130 The Reign of Quee7i Anne 
 
 successor at all. She had declared to Marlborough 
 passionately that such a thing as the visit of the 
 Hanoverian prince in the capacity of heir was a thing 
 she could not bear, not for a week ; and a severe letter 
 which she wrote on the subject to his grandmother, the 
 old Electress Sophia, was supposed to have had some 
 share in causing the old lady's death. But indoors in the 
 secret chambers and by the backstairs came whispers 
 now of another name, that of James Stewart, more 
 familiar and kindly, the boy-brother whom Anne had 
 believed the prevailing fable about, for whom she had 
 invented the name of the Pretender, but who now in her 
 childless decay began to present himself to her as the 
 victim of a great wrong. Poor queen ! she was torn 
 asunder by all these crosses and contradictions, her 
 heart melting towards her father's son, her intellect 
 perceiving that he was impossible, her confidante urging 
 every argument in his favour upon her. Marlborough 
 first with all his faction and his foes, then Harley and 
 St. John quarrelling in her very presence-chamber ; and 
 when the closet door was shut and the curtains drawn, 
 and all the world shut out save Abigail lying on a 
 mattress on the floor to be near her mistress, then 
 would come up the most momentous question of all : 
 the Stewart or the German ! Little wonder if Anne was 
 harassed beyond all endurance, and the powers of life 
 worn out before their time. The hopes of the Jaco- 
 bite party were rising higher every day as the end 
 approached ; but the other side were on the alert, and 
 George I. was peacefully proclaimed as soon as the 
 queen out of her lethargy had slipped beyond the 
 boundaries of any earthly kingdom.
 
 The Queen and the Duchess 131 
 
 The Marlboroughs, who had been living on the Con- 
 tinent since their disgrace, came back with this new 
 change. The duke's entry into London, ' in great state, 
 attended by hundreds of gentlemen on horseback, and 
 some of the nobility in their coaches,' a few days after, 
 is reported by one of the chroniclers of the time. The 
 duchess followed him soon after ; and whether her 
 temper and disposition had so far mended as to allow 
 him to enjoy the peace he had so often hoped for by 
 the side of her he loved, he had at least a tranquil even- 
 ing-time among his friends and dependents, and the 
 grandchildren who were to be his heirs, for only one of 
 his own children survived at his death. Duchess Sarah 
 lived long after him. She was sixty-two when he died, 
 but nevertheless, in spite of temper and every other 
 failing, was still charming enough to be sought in mar- 
 riage by two distinguished suitors, one of them that 
 proud Duke of Somerset, whose wife had supplanted 
 her at court, and who must have known everything 
 about Sarah of Marlborough. She answered this poten- 
 tate in the only way consistent with the dignity of a 
 woman of her age and circumstances, but added, with a 
 noble pride which sat well upon her, that had she been 
 but half her age, not the emperor of the world should 
 ever have filled the place sacred to great Marlborough. 
 It is a pity we could not leave her here in this glow of 
 proud tenderness and constancy. She was capable of 
 that, and many other noble things ; but not of holding 
 her tongue, of withdrawing into the background, or 
 accepting in other ways the natural change from 
 maturity to age. Her restless energies had some legiti- 
 mate outlets. She finished Blenheim. She wrote
 
 132 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 innumerable explanations, memorandums, finally shap- 
 ing themselves into that 'Account of the conduct of 
 the Duchess of Marlborough from her first coming to 
 court,' which is one of the most interesting of all 
 m^moires pour servir. This was published in her 
 eighty-second year, and it is curious to think of the 
 vivacious and unsubdued spirit which could throw itself 
 back so completely out of the calm of age into the con- 
 flicts and the very atmosphere of what had passed 
 thirty years before. And she did her utmost to prepare 
 for a great life of Marlborough, which should set her 
 hero right with the world. But her time was not always 
 so innocently employed, and it is to be feared that she 
 wrangled to the end of her life. The ' Characters ' of 
 her contemporaries which she left behind are full of 
 spite and malice. There was no peace in her soul. A 
 characteristic little story is told of her in an illness. 
 * Last year she had lain a great while ill without speak- 
 ing : her physician said she must be blistered or she 
 would die ; she called out, " I won't be blistered, and I 
 won't die ! '" and apparently for the moment kept her 
 word. She lived long enough to be impaled by Pope, 
 in verses which an involuntary admiration for this 
 daring, dauntless, impassioned woman makes us reluc- 
 tant to quote. She survived almost her entire genera- 
 tion, and was capable of living a hundred years more 
 had nature permitted. She was eighty-four when she 
 succumbed at last in the year 1744, thirty years after 
 the death of her queen.
 
 THE QUAKER 
 
 I 
 
 It is perhaps straining a little the limits of a historical 
 period to place William Penn among the characteristic 
 figures of the reign of Anne. His active career was 
 almost over by the time she came to the throne, and he 
 had little to do with the public service, and nothing at 
 all with the perfidies and intrigues of the time. He 
 belongs, however, to the last fatal and melancholy- 
 chapter of the history of the Stewarts which ends in 
 her ; and in many of the scenes through which we have 
 tried to trace her uncertain figure was an actor more 
 conspicuous and interesting. The paradox which his 
 life presents is chiefly brought about by his attachment 
 to the race, or at least to one, the least attractive member 
 of it. No more strange position could well be than that 
 in which he stands, attached at once to the old and the 
 new world — the founder of a republic, the courtier of a 
 tyrannical monarch : a rebel against not only rule but 
 courteous custom, and all the gentle traditions of social 
 respect : and yet the partisan and counsellor of the last 
 king who has tried to maintain absolute power and 
 divine right in England. The antagonistic forces be- 
 tween which he stood, sympathising with both, not only 
 
 133
 
 134 Th^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 combated but denounced each other as the accursed 
 thing, and tore the world asunder, without disturbing 
 the faith or losing the support of this man — at once a 
 Quaker and a Cavalier, a missionary preaching to the 
 poor and an agent in the intrigues of a tyrant. 
 
 It may lessen the wonder somewhat when we know 
 that the tyrant whom he ser/ed was a fatherly friend, 
 showing his best side to the eyes of his champion ; and 
 that Penn's republic was tempered by the intended 
 supremacy of a governor paternal and authoritative. 
 But, when all is said that can be said, his life remains 
 a problem, full of contradictions, which it is sometimes 
 difficult to reconcile with entire good faith — contradic- 
 tions so undisguised and simple that they suggest a 
 naivete and artlessness of character scarcely compatible 
 with the knowledge and experience of a man of the 
 world. That this simple explanation might be the last 
 word of the enigma is, however, not an explanation 
 likely to content the world, which believes in every- 
 thing rather than in simplicity of mind — a quality 
 indeed not much to be expected from a man who had 
 known the court of Charles and lived in that of James, 
 and acquired polish and grace in the society of Ver- 
 sailles in the great days of Louis Quatorze. Notwith- 
 standing the contradictions in his life, no one has received 
 a more abundant meed of approval and admiration in 
 history. We may take from Macaulay, who is not his 
 friend nor favourable to him, a summary of Penn's great 
 reputation, made with that brilliancy of words, in those 
 finely balanced sentences which linger on the ear, and 
 sway the judgment more or less, even when the sense is
 
 WILLIAM PENN 
 
 Portrait in the National Museum, Philadelphia
 
 The Quaker 135 
 
 little in accord with the reader's prepossessions ; for who 
 can altogether refuse to be affected by what is so finely 
 said ? In the present case no lover of Penn will object 
 to the terms in which his great critic sets him forth. 
 
 * England is proud of his name. A great Commonwealth 
 beyond the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to 
 that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans 
 for Quirinus. The respectable society of which he was a 
 member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other 
 persuasions he is generally regarded as a bright pattern of 
 Christian virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different 
 sort have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of 
 the eighteenth century pardoned what they considered his 
 superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for 
 priests and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially ex- 
 tended to all men and all creeds. His name has thus become 
 a synonym for polity and philanthropy.' 
 
 So splendid a reputation can scarcely exist without 
 assailants and detractors, and in human nature there is 
 always alloy ; but the consent of so many authorities is 
 a guarantee of fame, and the tradition of faith in the 
 founder of an ideal community is hard to break. No 
 one is likely again to attack the reputation of the great 
 Quaker with more fervour or greater power than Macaulay, 
 and Macaulay's assault cannot be said to have been suc- 
 cessful. It threw an unpleasant doubt upon some pas- 
 sages in the life of the courtier-evangelist which had 
 always been questionable, and it made perhaps more 
 evident the ambiguous character of certain exceptional 
 acts ; but there was nothing more to be done, and even 
 Macaulay could do no more. 
 
 William Penn was the eldest son of a sailor distin-
 
 136 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 guished in his generation, a self-made man of extra- 
 ordinary energy, and determination to advance himself 
 and his belongings in the world. They were descended 
 from a family of homely but undeniable gentry ; yet the 
 father of Sir William was but a merchant captain, and 
 the future admiral received his earliest training in the 
 rough and often dangerous work of a trading vessel. 
 His training cannot, however, have lasted long, since he 
 is recorded as having been a captain at twenty-one, 
 Rear- Admiral (of Ireland) at twenty-three, and to have 
 obtained the final distinction of Vice-Admiral of Eng- 
 land at the early age of thirty-one. Like so many of 
 his time, he had alternated between the Commonwealth 
 and the King, according as one or the other came upper- 
 most, but with so much more excuse than most, that a 
 sailor employed against the enemies of his country in 
 general may well believe his duty on the high seas to 
 be little affected by political changes even of the greatest 
 magnitude at home. At all events it is evident that he 
 was thought none the worse of at the court of Charles II. 
 in consequence of his commerce with the Protector, and 
 that the restored king had the good sense to see that a 
 capable man was worth securing at a time when there 
 were not many such, and the prestige of England on 
 the seas, as well as elsewhere, had fallen so much. Mr. 
 Samuel Pepys, that great authority upon the men of his 
 time, did not like Sir William, who was hot-tempered 
 and something of a marplot in society, checking the 
 gaiety of a merry party when he appeared, and in 
 public matters interfering with my Lord of Sandwich 
 and others of Mr. Pepys's friends in the navy ; so that
 
 The Quaker 137 
 
 there is no very favourable account of the admiral 
 to be obtained from him. But it seems acknowledged 
 that he was a good sailor among many who were not 
 good, and took a considerable part in the naval move- 
 ments — which were not, however, of a nature of which 
 Englishmen can be proud. At all events he was a 
 highly successful man, and had every reason to hope 
 that his son, following in his steps, with the favour of 
 the king and the heir to the throne, might become a 
 very important person, and carry the family fortunes 
 high. There was even word of a peerage in those days, 
 and, with court favour, everything was possible to a man 
 who knew how to take advantage of the opportunities 
 before him. 
 
 Young Penn, however, as it turned out, was in many 
 respects of a very different nature from his father. 
 While the sailor was fighting his way into notice and 
 credit, often absent at sea, and pushing to the front when 
 at home among courtiers and place-hunters, his boy had 
 been quietly bred under influences more salutary. Per- 
 haps his Dutch mother, of whom there is little record, 
 had tempered with mild Teutonic sentimentalism, and 
 religious visionariness, the energetic development of the 
 paternal race. When he told the story of his con- 
 version to the noble ladies whom he visited as an 
 evangelist in Germany, many years later, he informed 
 them that 'the Lord first appeared to me anno 1655, 
 which was about the twelfth year of my age.' At this 
 early period, we are told by his biographers, he was not 
 only * suddenly surprised with an inward comfort ' but 
 beheld 'an external glory in the room,' which proved
 
 1 38 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the reality of the visitation. These experiences con- 
 tinued till his fifteenth year, during which time he was 
 educated partly at Chigwell Grammar School in Essex, 
 and partly in Ireland, whither the family had removed, 
 a grant of an Irish estate having been made to the 
 admiral. William Penn was but fifteen when he was 
 sent to Oxford, where the only proof of his scholarship 
 that has been preserved is a copy of Latin verses 
 written on the occasion of the death of the Duke of 
 Gloucester, which is not inferior to the average of sixth 
 form compositions. He does not seem to have been an 
 idle boy, since he is reported to have made good pro- 
 gress both in classical and modern languages, and 
 though he is said to have been disorderly, it was not 
 at all in the usual way. He was fined with several 
 others for absenting himself from chapel, and fre- 
 quenting instead the preaching of a poor and unknown 
 notary called Thomas Fox, a member of the new sect 
 of Quakers, whose tenets, especially concerning vestments 
 and external decorations, pleased the lads all the more 
 that orders had come from court (as was said) to en- 
 force the wearing of the gown by the undergraduates. 
 It would be curious to inquire why this regulation 
 should have always been so distasteful to the young 
 men at our universities ; perhaps in the present day the 
 extreme ugliness of the garment in use may afford a 
 reason, but in Penn's day the robe was full and flowing. 
 The youths of Puritan tastes, however, those whose train- 
 ing still retained the bias of the Commonwealth, and 
 whose fathers had shed their blood in opposition to the 
 vanities of vestments, mitres, and crowns, were roused to
 
 The Quaker 139 
 
 boyish passion by this order. Perhaps the pleasure of a 
 row, which nature at sixteen, however pious, loves, added 
 to the force of religio-political sentiment. ' The young- 
 sters paraded the streets in a threatening manner,' says 
 Mr. Hepworth Dixon. ' They not only refused to wear 
 the gown themselves, but they declared war against all 
 who did.' ' Tearing ' the gowns * everywhere over their 
 heads,' says another authority, which it must be allowed 
 was a strong measure. Young Oxford now, though it 
 shirks the use of its academical costume by every 
 ingenious device, has no thought of going so far as this. 
 But it would appear that Penn's mind was peculiarly 
 sensitive on the point of costume. The university of 
 Oxford has been unfortunate in its victims, and Penn 
 is an instance in point. He and his fellow rioters were 
 summarily expelled by their colleges, and thus his 
 university career and the rebellion against the gown 
 came to a premature end. 
 
 Such an event is always terrible to a parent. It looks 
 like disgrace even when to the consciousness of the 
 young hero it is a holy martyrdom — and ruin to the 
 career which seems thus nipped in the bud. The ad- 
 miral was very angry, and for a time the young man's 
 fate was uncertain. Sir William consulted Pepys about 
 sending his son to Cambridge, always considered by her 
 children as more wise, as well as more liberal, than 
 Oxford. This, ' I now perceive, is the cause that hath 
 put Sir William so long off the hooks,' Pepys says when 
 finally taken into the admiral's confidence. Trans- 
 gressions to be forgiven and debts to be paid would 
 have been more in his way, and would not have spoilt
 
 140 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the boy's career as this peevish Puritanism was likely 
 to do. Sir William, however, was better inspired than 
 to wait till the naval secretary could remember a tutor 
 at Cambridge to whose care to commit the rebel. He 
 adopted the expedient of sending his son off to France, 
 a plan which seemed for a time to be thoroughly 
 successful. Young Penn appeared at the splendid 
 court of the Grand Monarque with all the advantages 
 which his father's position could secure to him, and 
 made acquaintance with all that was fine and glorious 
 in the gay capital, the very centre of the world for 
 pleasure and grandeur, in which there was as yet no 
 whisper of retribution to come. He was but seventeen, 
 a little too young for the role of hero, but that is a fault 
 which is easily pardoned ; and young Penn fell into the 
 ways of his kind, and received his initiation into fine 
 society without any protest against the splendours and 
 luxuries around him. Perhaps he felt that in a country 
 not his own his conscience was clear of responsibility, 
 and that Paris was not likely to be moved out of her 
 gay course by anything he could do or say. 
 
 After this brilliant beginning, the young man went 
 to the country, to Saumur, where he pursued his studies 
 under a famous scholar, a French Calvinist professor, 
 then much frequented by young men in search of 
 learning. He returned to London in about two years 
 with much increase in knowledge, and still more in 
 what his father prized most, the accomplishments proper 
 to his age and position. * His carriage was such as 
 justly entitled him to the character of a compleat young 
 gentleman,' says an early and anonymous biographer.
 
 SIR WILLIAM PEXN 
 
 Sir Piter Lelj.J'Oix. From tlu future in Greamich HospUal
 
 The Quaker 141 
 
 Indeed Mr. Pepys found him almost too fine a gallant. 
 * Comes Mr. Penn to visit me,' he says, * I perceive some 
 thing of learning he hath got ; but a great deal, if not 
 too much of the vanity of the French garb, and affected 
 manner of speech and gait' Mrs. Pepys was of a similar 
 opinion without the censure. 'Young Mr. Penn is a 
 most modish person grown,' she says, * a fine gentleman.' 
 The agreement of two such authorities, both with a 
 secret grudge against the admiral, which no doubt 
 extended to his son, may be taken as the most com- 
 plete of testimonials. And no doubt the father's mind 
 was relieved and triumphant, arguing everything that 
 was successful for the youthful hero. Sir William was 
 then at the very height of his own reputation and im- 
 portance, just setting out on the great expedition against 
 the Dutch, which a little consoled England in her low 
 estate, and felt like one of her accustomed triumphs. 
 The Duke of York was the nominal head of the fleet, 
 but Sir William accompanied him with the somewhat 
 magniloquent title of ' Great Captain Commander,' and 
 naturally was the real leader of the expedition. In his 
 paternal pride and pleasure he took young William 
 with him, in the ' Royal Charles,' where the young man 
 remained for about three weeks in constant intercourse 
 with the brilliant staff which surrounded the Duke of 
 York. No better opportunity could have been for pre- 
 senting him to the notice of James, with whom old 
 Penn was clearly a great favourite. When the impres- 
 sion he desired had been thus made, the clever admiral 
 sent his son home with despatches to the king, carry- 
 ing news of some successful skirmishings with the
 
 142 The Reign of Quee7t Anne 
 
 enemy. Charles got out of bed in his eagerness to 
 receive the report of the young emissary, and gave 
 him a most gracious reception. That William Penn 
 should in after days recall these memories warmly, and 
 see in the bigot and would-be despot, James II., the same 
 face as that which had looked so kindly on his youth, 
 is not a thing at which any one need to wonder, were it 
 not that loyal personal regard of any kind was rare and 
 feeble in those days. 
 
 The admiral himself returned home shortly after at 
 the height of triumph, having achieved a great victory 
 over the Dutch, though that misguided nation, as Pepys 
 tells us, would not allow it, but claimed to be themselves 
 victorious. But while the fleet was still at sea, ominous 
 notes appear in the Diary of Mr. Pepys mingled with the 
 rumour of news from the ships and anxious surmises as 
 to their fortune : * The ships are near the Dutch coast, 
 within the Texel : but there are great fears of sickness 
 in the city, it being said that two or three houses are 
 already shut up. God preserve us all ! ' he cries. Six 
 weeks later he records with a thrill of alarm, which some- 
 how reaches us at this distance through his words : 
 * This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane 
 see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon 
 the doors, and " Lord have mercy upon us," writ there, 
 which was a sad sight.' . . . That terrible visitation of 
 the plague, of which we have so many distinct yet closely 
 resembling pictures in almost all the great cities of 
 mediaeval times had made its last great historical appear- 
 ance in London. Among all the records known of such 
 a calamity, Defoe's imaginary, but most real, History of
 
 The Quaker 143 
 
 the Plague, is perhaps the most effective, but even in the 
 slight references of Pepys, made in few words, yet im- 
 pressive in their simpHcity, the magnitude of the great 
 national misfortune is very evident. Young Penn, 
 whom his travels and the novelties with which he had 
 been surrounded, and all the exciting circumstances of 
 his beginning of life, had diverted from those deep 
 religious impressions which had swayed his early youth, 
 was profoundly moved by the terror and gloom around 
 him. The air was full of tales of horror ; a frolicsome 
 young gallant riding with a party of his friends met, as 
 he supposed, a fine lady carried by in her chair, and 
 thrusting his head, with the licence of the time, within 
 its curtains found himself face to face with a plague- 
 stricken patient on her way to the hospital ; Mr, Pepys's 
 coachman fell ill upon the box of his master's coach. 
 The closed houses with their red crosses, the terrible bill 
 of mortality, rising daily higher and higher, the news 
 whispered with bated breath of this one and that who 
 had been struck down, were enough to move the 
 strongest spirit. In the midst of it the admiral came 
 home flushed with victory, with dreams of a peerage, and 
 happy in the thought of the elegant young gallant, who 
 was so well qualified as his heir to make a figure in the 
 world. But he found a sad change come over the 
 ' modish person,' the ' compleat young gentleman ' whom 
 he had parted with so short a time before. A ' deep 
 sense of the vanity of this world and the irreligiousness 
 of the religions in it ' had again become the predominant 
 thought in young William's mind. His prattle of 
 society, and those French graces which had disgusted
 
 144 '^^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Mr. Secretary Pepys were laid aside ; the young man 
 had gone back to all his Puritan ways. Had he been a 
 gay profligate, one of those pretty fellows who astonished 
 Mr. Pepys himself by their licence, yet amused him 
 by their mirth, Sir William would not have found in 
 that any great drawback to his son's advancement. 
 But what could he do with a boy thus penetrated by 
 the gravity, the tragedy of life ? 
 
 It is difficult not to feel a little sympathy with the 
 father notwithstanding the virtue of the son. The pang 
 with which such a man sees himself balked in all his 
 hopes for his boy is real enough and perhaps as keen, if 
 less noble, than his who sees his higher ideal come to 
 nothing in the more vulgar way. But the admiral was 
 a man of many resources, and did not easily accept 
 defeat. He had sent his son to France to have his head 
 turned with gaiety and splendour on the first disclosure 
 of his too serious tendencies; now he sent him to Ire- 
 land, to plunge him into work and responsibility, where 
 there was a little court far more pure but not less gay 
 than that of Whitehall, to persuade the youth back to 
 the common ways of life. As a portion of the rewards 
 that fell to his share for public services Sir William had 
 an estate in Ireland, which required looking after, as 
 Irish estates always do. And here he had the occasion 
 ready to his hand. Penn was accordingly sent to Ire- 
 land, and once more the balance turned. He found 
 himself among young men as highly trained and full of 
 spirit as those he had left, but under the better control 
 of that good Duke of Ormonde whose presence made a 
 bright spot in the dark history of the time, Penn be-
 
 The Quaker 145 
 
 came once more a courtier ; he became, what was still 
 more wonderful, a soldier — and distinguished himself in 
 the quelling of a small insurrection, one of the accidents 
 that were always occurring in that always troubled and 
 uneasy country. Not only so, but pleased with his own 
 powers, the future Quaker, the man of peace, made up 
 his young mind to join the army, waited impatiently for 
 his father's permission to do so, and was deeply dis- 
 appointed when that permission was refused. Perhaps, 
 with one of the amiable weaknesses of youth, he was 
 pleased with his own appearance in the warlike uniform 
 which in those days was more awe-inspiring, more sub- 
 lime even than the scarlet — for it is curious to find that 
 the only portrait existing of him was painted at this 
 time, and in armour. The spectator now looking at the 
 youthful figure in this garb of mail is prone to think 
 of something symbolic, the emblematical apparel of a 
 Christian warrior. But William Penn at twenty-one 
 actually wore an iron breastplate, and liked his own 
 looks in it, and had himself painted so for the admiration 
 of all men. Over this hauberk, so strangely inappro- 
 priate, looks out upon us a young countenance, simple, 
 gentle and ingenuous, with large mild eyes, and an air of 
 sweetness and purity almost feminine : a face to make a 
 mother glad, one of those which show in every line a 
 mind constitutionally incapable of vice and inclined to 
 goodness. 
 
 Such he was, when he made this innocent proclama- 
 tion of a liking hitherto undeveloped for activity and 
 real work, for war the most real of all things and the 
 most serious, when it is not a mere matter of parades
 
 146 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 and uniforms. Perhaps it was to please the mother at 
 home, and sister Peg who was often so merry in Mr. 
 Pepys's good company, that the picture was done. Any- 
 how it stands there a record of the still unconverted Penn 
 as nature made him, looking out for his right way in 
 life, and believing that he might find it in those risks 
 and dangers which for once in a way had heated his 
 young blood, and filled him with the fervour of action. 
 Penn would not have been the first soldier, nay hero, 
 who with a boy's face, which might have been taken 
 for his sister's, had gone in his innocence to a quick 
 death, and so got rid of all the problems. A Maid of 
 Arc, but boy instead of girl — never meant to be vul- 
 garised into a man of ordinary aims, but to be killed 
 in his first battle in defence of everything that is most 
 high and dear. Such was not at all Penn's fate, nor 
 his character as declared in after years ; but that is how 
 he looks at twenty-one, at the last moment of his cheer- 
 ful youth, before the influences which had already showed 
 themselves had taken possession altogether of his heart 
 and mind. 
 
 This was the moment when the fortunes of the family 
 were at their highest, and all both within and without 
 was going well. William Penn made a short visit to 
 London in the midst of his Irish affairs, and showed 
 himself to his father, once more a ' compleat young 
 gentleman ' in the way of every good fortune, having 
 laid all his extravagances by. The admiral too was 
 high both in fortune and in hope. Pepys, always with 
 a grudge, comments upon the too great splendour with 
 which he had prepared for the marriage of his daughter,
 
 The Quaker 147 
 
 and the triumphant sailor might well suppose that now 
 all things were going well with him, and that he had 
 shaken himself free from the troubles of life. 
 
 Young Penn returned to Ireland to the duties of his 
 office, perhaps a little elated too with all the good things 
 that had fallen and were falling to his share. His busi- 
 ness, however, took him frequently into Cork, and on 
 one of his visits there, he heard of a preaching which 
 was to be held that same night in the town. By what 
 means the news could be spread about and reach the 
 ears of a young gallant of the Court party it is diffi- 
 cult to imagine ; for conventicles were illegal, and such 
 a fine gentleman not likely to be in the secrets of the 
 humble religionists. However Penn did hear of it, 
 and the name of the preacher, who was no other than 
 Thomas Fox, the poor Quaker who had stimulated him 
 to his first rebellion in Oxford. For a peaceful and 
 humble missionary, this man had already brought his 
 young disciple into trouble enough. But Penn prints 
 his name in the solemn importance of capitals, fine 
 sonorous black letters, good enough for any person of 
 distinction — so that it is evident Fox held a great place 
 in his estimation. The text which this wandering evan- 
 gelist took for his address was one that went straight 
 to the heart of his self-convicted hearer : ' There is a 
 faith that overcomes the world, and there is a faith that 
 is overcome by the world.' Penn must have felt in the 
 sudden rush of associations, in the remembrance of his 
 past fervour and present backslidings, that his was of 
 the latter kind — a faith overcome but too easily by the 
 charms and temptations of external life. He listened
 
 148 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 no doubt with a profound certainty that God Himself 
 had sent this same preacher once more to confound and 
 overwhelm him in the midst of his pleasures. He 
 came back again and again to the little meeting, so 
 private, almost secret, the assembly of the few who 
 were bold enough to venture within reach of fine and 
 prison for the sake of their faith. How long this went 
 on we are not told, but early in September 1687 a 
 company of soldiers burst into the little conventicle 
 and carried off the entire company before the mayor, 
 where they were indicted for riot and tumultous assem- 
 bling. The astonishment of the Mayor of Cork when he 
 saw before him, among all those humble people, the fine 
 young cavalier in his laced coat, who was known to be 
 one of the gallants of the court, may be imagined. 
 ' The Mayor observing that his dress discovered not the 
 Quaker, would have set him at liberty upon bond for 
 his good behaviour : which he, refusing, was with about 
 eighteen others committed to prison.' 
 
 Here, however, young Penn, we are sorry to say, soon 
 repented of his valorous determination to share the 
 sufferings of the conventicle. With that mixture in 
 him, which always continued apparent, of the great 
 man's son, the member of a ruling class, unaccustomed 
 to anything but command, with the humility and sub- 
 mission of a sufferer for conscience sake, he changed 
 his mind after the first flush of willing martyrdom. No 
 doubt if it had been a question of going to the stake 
 at once, Penn would have been ready ; but a noisome 
 prison, abominable as prisons were in those days, and 
 all the indignities involved in detention there, were more
 
 The Quaker 149 
 
 than he could bear. He wrote from his cell to Lord 
 Orrery, the son of the Lord-Lieutenant, and one of 
 his acquaintances, appealing with indignant grandeur 
 to his sense of justice. ' The occasion may seem as 
 strange as my cause is just,' he says. ' Religion, which is 
 at once my crime and mine innocence, makes me a 
 prisoner to a mayor's malice, but mine own freeman ; 
 for being in the assembly of the people called Quakers 
 there came several constables backed by soldiers, rudely 
 and arbitrarily requiring every man's appearance before 
 the mayor, and amongst others violently haled me with 
 them.' He then relates how he had argued the ques- 
 tion with the mayor, and found his only authority to be 
 an act of 1660 directed against ' Fifth Monarchy Killing 
 Spirits,' and in no wise against such a conscious loyalist 
 and good servant of the king as William Penn ; and 
 indignantly demands a ' speedy releasement.' ' It is,' 
 he says in conclusion, * a bad argument to invite 
 English hither' in order to treat them in so un- 
 worthy a way. 
 
 This letter of course was immediately successful in 
 procuring the release of Mr. Penn ; whether it had the 
 same good effect in the case of the others is not re- 
 corded. These small sufferers are altogether of little 
 account in the story. Perhaps it would have been 
 more consistent had the young gentleman shared their 
 fortunes instead of freeing himself thus by personal 
 favour ; but he was still very young, very indignant, 
 and ignominy was new to him. This brief imprison- 
 ment however settled the matter at once and for ever. 
 There was to be no more begging of the question. He
 
 1 50 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 was henceforward a Quaker, bound to the Quakers with 
 every tie. 
 
 The consequences, as may be supposed, were not 
 pleasant. He was jeered and jibed at, ' His compan- 
 ions ' wonted compliments and caresses were changed 
 into scoffs and derision. He was made a bye- 
 word, scorn and contempt both to professors and 
 profane ; to the latter for being religious, and to the 
 former for having a better rank than theirs.' The 
 usual good-natured friend who delights in conveying 
 disagreeable information, in this case ' a nobleman of 
 his acquaintance,' wrote to the admiral telling him what 
 had happened ; and the young man was summoned 
 home. Mr. Pepys on his side gives an account of this 
 sad occurrence sympathetically, but not without an 
 under-current of satisfaction in Sir William's discomfiture. 
 ' She tells me,' he says, ' that Mr. William Penn who is 
 lately come over from Ireland is a Quaker again or some 
 such melancholy thing ; that he cares for no company nor 
 comes into any ; which is a pleasant thing after his 
 being abroad so long ; and his father such a hypo- 
 critical rogue,' he adds with savage criticism, ' and at 
 this time an atheist' Poor Sir William had enough 
 to bear without this secret attack which his enemy has 
 sent down to echo through distant generations. All his 
 expedients, all his precautions, were come to nothing. 
 After so many slips he had reason to believe that his 
 virtuous prodigal was landed at last on safe ground ; 
 and now in a moment, at the height of his hopes, all 
 was over, and no expedient or resource left in which he 
 could put any hope. The boy was no longer of an age
 
 The Quaker 151 
 
 to be whipped and punished. What was to be done 
 with him ? The simple yet elaborate story has a 
 certain pathos in its details. 
 
 ' My pen is diffident of her abilities to describe that most 
 pathetic and moving contest which was between his father 
 and him ; his father actuated by natural love, principally 
 aiming at his son's temporal honour ; he guided by a divine 
 impulse having chiefly in view his own eternal welfare ; his 
 father grieved to see the well-accomplished son of his hopes, 
 now ripe for worldly promotion, voluntarily turning his back 
 upon it ; he no less afflicted to think a compliance with his 
 earthly father's pleasure was inconsistent with his obedience 
 to his heavenly one ; his father pressing his conformity to the 
 customs and fashions of the time : he modestly craving leave 
 to refrain from what would hurt his conscience ; his father 
 earnestly entreating him and almost on his knees beseeching 
 him to yield to his desire; he of a loving and tender dis- 
 position in an extreme agony of spirit to behold his father's 
 concern and trouble ; his father threatening to disinherit him ; 
 he humbly submitting to his father's will therein ; his father 
 turning his back on him in anger ; he lifting up his heart to 
 God for strength to support him in the time of trial.' 
 
 We have here a formal yet graphic record of one of 
 those conferences which are of continual recurrence in 
 life, forming sometimes a turning-point to the young, 
 always one of the most heart-breaking experiences to 
 the old. The agitation and anxious reasoning of the 
 father, his entreaties and arguments, falling at last into 
 threats and fury, in hopeless conflict with the youth's 
 pious obstinacy which was beyond both threats and 
 flatteries, will find a parallel in many memories. Sir 
 William might have been a better man, and young 
 Penn a much worse one without changing the situation.
 
 152 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 And in this case at least there is a sort of exasperated 
 patience and desire to make the best of it in the be- 
 haviour of the father. Finding that he could do no 
 better, he seems to have offered a complete condonation 
 of all offences on the condition, which seems simple 
 enough, that Penn would consent to uncover in the 
 presence of the king, the duke, and himself. The hot- 
 tempered sailor even waited with what patience he 
 might until his son took time to consider this request, 
 which, after much thought, he rejected. Then Sir 
 William could bear no more. 'When all endeavours 
 proved ineffectual to shake his constancy, and his father 
 saw himself utterly disappointed of his hopes, he could 
 no longer endure him in his sight but turned him out 
 of doors the second time.' And thus all the poor 
 admiral's expectations, his fond fancies and pride in 
 his son, came to an end. 
 
 There is something tragi-comic in the cause of all 
 this misery. ' The ceremony of the Hat ' seems a poor 
 reason enough to call forth so much feeling, and how- 
 ever we may respect the young man's piety and his 
 determination not again to be drawn away from the 
 paths of righteousness, yet this impassioned resistance 
 to the commonest forms of courtesy is very confusing 
 and indeed ludicrous to the spectator at this distance. 
 The Quakers except at the very moment of their for- 
 mation as a sect have always been very well treated by 
 the world ; they have been the objects of a good- 
 humoured toleration in which perhaps a certain sense 
 of amusement has had no small share. Their inner 
 creed has been but little studied, while those highly
 
 The Quaker 153 
 
 distinctive outward peculiarities, which now have almost 
 fallen into oblivion, pleased the general mind by per- 
 mitting a gentle ridicule such as tends to charity, 
 ridicule much encouraged by the fact that in later times 
 the Quaker simplicity of garb was but another word for 
 the finest and costliest raiment that could be procured, 
 the richest sober-coloured silk, the most delicate lawn, 
 the finest broad-cloth, a modest splendour which cost 
 more thought and care, as well as money, than the 
 ordinary habiliments, the wearing of which was de- 
 nounced by the sect as pomps and vanities of the world ; 
 but the placid, wealthy, highly-educated Friends with 
 their guileless mock humility were very different from 
 the restless and impassioned band whose principle it 
 was to offer insult, or what was invariably taken as 
 such, to all dignitaries both official and natural. It 
 would require a deeper study of the peculiarities of the 
 time than our space permits to show how many con- 
 flicting influences combined to make possible such a 
 curious outburst of the eccentric in the accessories of 
 pure religion, how the exasperating assumptions of 
 divine right on one hand, and the justification and 
 greatness of rebellion on the other, touched the hot 
 temper and inspired the visionary imagination, so that 
 it was a relief to the spirit to level every distinction, 
 and instead of endeavouring to prove who had the best 
 right to respect, to respect none, so far as external dis- 
 tinctions went, and refuse all outward sign of honour 
 save to God alone. In this point of view the sentiment 
 was fine ; but when it was translated into practice, for- 
 biddinsf the son to take off his hat to his father or the
 
 1 54 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 subject to his sovereign, it is almost impossible for 
 those who have no temptation to be angry to treat it 
 with perfect gravity, or to understand how such a 
 curious punctilio could be worth the sacrifices it entailed. 
 We are bound to add, however, that Penn paid few of 
 these penalties. He was turned out of doors and 
 exposed to the charity of his friends, having no other 
 subsistence (except what his mother privately sent him) ; 
 but he was the son of a rich and important personage, 
 and his friends were many, and probably not too credu- 
 lous of the father's lasting severity. As a matter of 
 fact, almost invariable in such cases, the parental sever- 
 ity did not last. ' After a time,' we are told, ' his father's 
 wrath became somewhat mollified, so that he wished 
 for his return to and continuance in the family, and al- 
 though he did not publicly seem to countenance him, yet 
 when imprisoned for being at meetings,he would privately 
 use his influence to get him released.' Thus ' the bitter 
 mockings and scornings that fell upon me, the dis- 
 pleasure of my parents, the invectives and cruelty of the 
 priests, the strangeness of my companions,' all of which 
 sad things Penn related to the admiring community 
 gathered round him at Wiewart in Holland some ten 
 years after, were probably not so terrible as they seem. 
 The hat, however, and the eccentric outside of the new 
 sect, though most prominent to the public eye,were,it need 
 scarcely be said, a small part of its real meaning. And 
 there was enough in the shameless vice and as shameless 
 obsequiousness of the times to warrant any extrava- 
 gance of revolt from it. To young Penn, brought up 
 upon the edge of that corrupt court, and seeing behind
 
 The Quaker 155 
 
 the scenes by what unscrupulous means every man 
 struggled for his own advancement and the overthrow 
 of his neighbour, there was indeed a double reason for 
 the righteous scorn of formal teachings which had no 
 connection with practice, and professions of respect 
 which concealed nothing but loathing, hostility, or con- 
 tempt. A young and candid soul, with no natural 
 inclination to share in the abominations of fashionable 
 life, must have recoiled from them with a warmth of 
 impassioned horror which milder manifestations of ini- 
 quity do not call forth. And there was no longer either 
 in his mind or life any echo or possibility of compro- 
 mise. In 1668, immediately after these events, he 
 became a fully authorised preacher and minister of his 
 sect — an office which conveyed no sort of clerical separa- 
 tion, yet gave a certain authority to his missionary work 
 — and from that time threw himself entirely into evan- 
 gelical labours, both with tongue and pen — notably with 
 the latter, his industry being almost as great in the pro- 
 duction of religious treatises as is in these days the 
 industry of the young novelist eager to build up a repu- 
 tation. Mr. Pepys expresses but a poor opinion of his 
 first production : ' A ridiculous, nonsensical book set out 
 by William Penn for the Quakers ; but so full of nothing 
 but nonsense that I was ashamed to read in it ' ; but 
 changes his mind when another, called The Sandy 
 Foundations Shaken, and especially treating of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, fell into his hands. This the 
 candid critic found ' so well writ as I think it is too 
 good for him ever to have writ it ; and it is a serious 
 kind of book,' he adds, * and not fit for everybody to
 
 156 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 read.' This little work was very serious indeed to Penn, 
 and laid him under the first real persecution to which he 
 was subjected. 
 
 It sprang from a public debate got up with a Non- 
 conformist called Vincent, from which, finding himself 
 to have the worst of it, Penn's opponent is said to have 
 retired summarily, in a dishonourable way, after having 
 put a question as to the Quaker's belief in the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. Unable by this flight to get full expres- 
 sion for his sentiments, Penn put them into print, and, 
 with elaborate arguments as to the impossibility of three 
 Persons forming one, assailed, and, to his own satisfac- 
 tion, confuted the orthodox view. ' Which,' says the 
 Life, ' gave great offence to some then at the Helm of 
 the Church, who presently took the old method of 
 reforming what they called error, by advancing at 
 once their strongest argument, viz. an order for im- 
 prisoning him in the Tower of London.' 
 
 •There was he under close confinement, and even denied 
 the visits of his friends ; but yet his enemies attained not 
 their purpose ; for when after some time his servant brought 
 him word that the Bishop of London was resolved he should 
 either publickly recant or die a prisoner, he made this reply : 
 " All is well : I wish they had told me so before, since the 
 expectation of a release put a stop to some business. Thou 
 mayest tell my father, who I know will ask thee, these words : 
 that my prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot ; 
 for I owe my conscience to no mortal man ; I have no need 
 to fear, God will make amends for all. They are mistaken in 
 me ; I value not their threats and resolutions ; for they shall 
 know I can weary out their malice and persistences ; and in 
 me shall they all behold a resolution above force ; conscience 
 above cruelty, and a baffle put to all their designs by the
 
 The Quaker 157 
 
 spirit of patience, the companion of all the tribulated flock of 
 the blessed Jesus, who is the author and finisher of the faith 
 that overcomes the world, yea, death and hell too. Neither 
 great nor good things were ever attained without loss and 
 hardships. He that would reap and not labour must faint 
 with the wind and perish with disappointments ; but an hair 
 of my head shall not fall without the providence of my Father 
 who is over all." ' 
 
 The reader of the present day might be disposed to 
 think that the young gentleman did protest too much, 
 and that his conscious superiority to everybody who 
 disagreed with him is scarcely in accord with his tenets 
 of universal brotherhood. But a young man who had 
 so distinctly turned his back upon the world and its 
 most flattering promises of advancement had some ex- 
 cuse, when he found himself shut up in the Tower and 
 actually a martyr, for the use of strong language. He 
 took to the prisoner's best consolation, the pen, as soon 
 as he knew that he was likely to be kept there, and 
 produced, among other works, the only one which has 
 had anything like a permanent survival, the No Cross, 
 No Crown, which is still occasionally read by other than 
 enthusiastic historical students. He also produced a 
 little treatise of self-defence, entitled Innocency with Her 
 Open Face, to which, in the Life, his liberation is proudly 
 attributed. * In this Apology he so successfully vindi- 
 cated himself that soon after the publication of it he was 
 discharged from his imprisonment, which had been of 
 about seven months' continuance,' The facts of the 
 case, however, would seem to be, that his father, perhaps 
 at first not displeased to have the young man feel what 
 were the penalties of his breach with the world, came
 
 158 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 after a while to the rescue, and as — though himself in 
 very deep waters and threatened with impeachment — 
 he still retained his favour with the king and Duke of 
 York, he attained at last the release of his son. The 
 court chaplain, Stillingfleet, was sent to talk with the 
 recusant, and smooth over his heresy, and Penn was set 
 free. 
 
 We need not follow him in his succeeding journey to 
 Ireland, where, the admiral's confidence in his business 
 powers not being lessened by his eccentricities in reli- 
 gion, he was sent to look after the Irish estate, and on 
 his return was received fully into parental favour, and 
 recognised as the staff of their old age by his parents. 
 Sir William indeed never attained old age ; but his life 
 had been hard and full of risks, and he was a prema- 
 turely broken man. He died in 1669, at the age of 
 forty-eight, making an edifying end, and adjuring his 
 son to continuance in well-doing with a piety which 
 is a little odd when we reflect how earnestly he had 
 attempted to turn him away from it. ' Son William,' 
 he is recorded to have said (with a late yet compre- 
 hensible conviction that after all William was in the 
 right, which is more natural than his exhortations to 
 ' Have a care of sin ! '), ' if you and your friends keep to 
 your plain way of preaching and your plain way of 
 living, you will make an end of priests to the end of the 
 world.' 
 
 Sir William was no prophet, nor were any such gifts 
 to be expected from him ; but no doubt it was profoundly 
 consolatory to his son to receive this sanction of his 
 conduct after so many troubles. * The tenderness of my
 
 The Qtiaker 159 
 
 father to me before and at his death, and how through 
 patience and long-suffering all opposition was con- 
 quered,' is one of the points upon which he dwells in 
 his after narrative to his Dutch friends. 
 
 It was, however, before his father's death that Penn 
 had the triumphant encounter with the authorities, 
 which gives us so curious a glimpse into the law courts of 
 England at that period of lawlessness and disorder — 
 the one time in English history in which the officers of 
 justice have descended from their high estate. The 
 Conventicle Act had just been renewed with a fresh and 
 full authority, and there could be little doubt that the 
 preaching in Gracechurch Street, in the act of which 
 Penn was apprehended, was illegal ; but the wrangle of 
 the prisoners at the bar with the magistrates, Lord 
 Mayor and Alderman, who probably were not very 
 strong in points of law, and with the Recorder, who was 
 no less a person than Jeffreys, afterwards so notorious ; 
 the yells of rage that proceed from the latter, the mutual 
 taunts exchanged between the bench and the dock, are 
 almost too wonderful to be credible. ' Take him away,' 
 shrieks the Recorder when Penn, a most exasperating 
 criminal, has made a point. ' My lord, if you take not 
 some course with this pestilent fellow to stop his mouth, 
 we shall not be able to do anything to-night. Pull that 
 fellow down, pull him down ! ' * I will cut his nose,' 
 says the Mayor. ' Stop his mouth, jailor ; bring fetters 
 and stake him to the ground.' Nor is the conversation 
 between the judge and jury less remarkable. The bench 
 foams at the mouth when the jurors return again and 
 again with their verdict, finding that Mr. Penn spoke in
 
 i6o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Gracious Street, but refusing to add the words, ' in an 
 unlawful assembly.' ' Sir, you are the cause of this dis- 
 turbance, and an abettor of faction ; I shall set a mark 
 upon you. Sirrah, you are an impudent fellow, I will put 
 a mark upon you,' the Recorder and Mayor in chorus 
 say to the foreman. * Gentlemen,' shouts the Recorder, 
 ' you shall not be dismistt till we have a verdict that 
 the court will accept .... I say you shall together 
 and bring in another verdict, or you shall starve ; and I 
 will have you carted about the city as in Edward the 
 Third's time.' Exasperated in their turn, the jury at 
 length acquitted both prisoners, with a manly deter- 
 mination not to be bullied which does them credit, 
 upon which the following scene ensued : 
 
 ' Recorder. " I am sorry, gentlemen, you have followed your 
 own judgments and opinions rather than the good and whole- 
 some advice which was given you. God keep my life out of 
 your hands ; but for this the court fines you forty marks a 
 man, and imprisonment till paid." 
 
 * At which Penn stept towards the bench and said : 
 
 ' Fenn. " I demand my liberty, being found by the jury." 
 
 ' Mayor. "No, you are in for your fines." 
 
 ' Penn. " Fines for what ? " 
 
 ' Mayor. " For contempt of court." 
 
 ' Pen7i. " I ask if it be according to the fundamental laws 
 of England that any Englishman should be fined or assessed 
 but by the judgment of his peers or jury? since it expressly 
 contradicts the fourteenth and twenty-ninth chapters of the 
 Great Charter of England, which says : * No freeman ought 
 to be assessed but by the oath of good and lawful men of his 
 vicinage.' " 
 
 ' Recorder. " Take him away, take him away, put him out 
 of court." '
 
 LORD JEFFREYS AS CHIEF-JUSTICE 
 
 From an etigra'-in!; by R. White after Sir Godfrey Kneller
 
 The Quaker i6i 
 
 The end of this extraordinary trial is that both the 
 acquitted prisoners and the jury were committed to 
 Newgate, Penn and his friend refusing to pay the fines. 
 These were, however, privately paid for them, presum- 
 ably by the admiral, then very near his death ; and 
 they were liberated. ' As to the poor jurymen,' says 
 Clarkson in his Life of Penn, * who had been fined at the 
 same time, I can nowhere hear what became of them or 
 how long they were allowed to languish in their prison.' 
 They were the real heroes of the occasion, though their 
 stand for their rights has hardly taken its due place in 
 history. Let us hope they were men of substance to 
 whom forty marks was not an overwhelming penalty. 
 
 The admiral, on his deathbed, feeling no doubt that 
 his son's tendency to get into prison was a dangerous 
 one, and that it might not be so easy to get out again when 
 he himself was no longer at hand to make interest, com- 
 mended William to the protection of the Duke of York, 
 making him Penn's guardian, as some say ; but that was 
 scarcely possible at the age to which the young man had 
 now attained. James was always kind to his old friend's 
 son, whom he had known so long, and transferred to him 
 the interest which he had always taken in his father. 
 Neither of them, it is evident, could forget the cruise in 
 the ' Royal Charles.' The link between them was purely 
 personal — an old acquaintance, a traditionary and in- 
 herited friendship. It seems scarcely possible that such 
 a link can exist between a royal personage and a sub- 
 ject without a certain amount of illusion, a pardonable 
 glamour in the eyes of the lowlier friend, an inclination 
 to see in the best light all that is done by the prince 
 
 L
 
 1 62 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 who must surely mean well to everybody, being so 
 wisely appreciative of one. It is right that this should 
 be taken fully into account in the consideration of that 
 connection with the court which has brought so much 
 criticism upon Penn's career. 
 
 His father's death left him in possession of an income 
 of about fifteen hundred a year —a much larger fortune 
 in those days than now — but did not much change his 
 position in other respects, as he had fully enfranchised 
 himself from any parental control. For some years his 
 history is but a record of incessant preachings, con- 
 flicts, imprisonments, the life of a fighting man in the 
 exercise of very sharp weapons of offence, though he was 
 a man of peace. We are constantly reminded of the bland 
 reproof of a certain famous head of a college in Oxford 
 to an undergraduate who had associated himself in 
 youthful zeal with the so-called Salvation Army : ' I am 
 glad to see that you take so great an interest in religious 
 matters,' said this awful dignitary, ' but you know, Mr. 
 So-and-So, it is contrary to politeness, as well as to Uni- 
 versity etiquette, to call the Vice-Chancellor a child of 
 sin.' Penn was not moved by any such prejudices. 
 When he found that his brothers were mobbed and ill- 
 treated at Oxford, he assailed the Vice-Chancellor of 
 the day in the frankest language. * Poor mushroom, 
 wilt thou war against the Lord ? ' he writes. ' Shall the 
 multiplied oppressions which thou continuest to heap 
 upon innocent English people for their peaceable reli- 
 gious meetings pass unregarded by the Eternal God ? ' 
 Indeed the peace which Penn preached never showed in 
 his words ; no more exasperating defendant ever stood
 
 The Quaker i6 
 
 J 
 
 at a bar. His legal knowledge, his fluent power of 
 language, his cool head, not to speak of the charm of 
 personal appearance, and of disinterested suffering in 
 the cause of religion, which has always an efiect upon 
 the popular imagination — all united to drive to the 
 borders of frenzy the hapless magistrates who had to do 
 with him in the several prosecutions to which he was 
 subject. Here is an example : 
 
 ' Sir J. Robinson. " Do you yet refuse to swear ? " 
 
 ' Fenn. "Yes, and that upon better grounds than those for 
 which thou would'st have me swear." 
 
 ' Sir/. Robinson. " I am sorry you should put me on this 
 severity ; it is no pleasant work to me." 
 
 ' Fenn. " These are but words ; it is manifest that this is a 
 prepense malice." 
 
 ' Sir J. Robinson. " I wish you wiser." 
 
 ' Fe7in. " And I wish thee better." ' 
 
 Not much wonder if they sent him to Newgate ; forthe 
 pestilent fellow was generally in the right, which gives a 
 sting to everything. He was not less decided in his letters 
 than in personal encounter. Here is a little example 
 of his manner of speech to so respectable an antagonist 
 as Richard Baxter, with whom he had desired a public 
 argument on the peculiarities of the Quakers' creed, 
 which Baxter seemed to him unwilling either to grant 
 or openly deny. It is in reply to a letter of Baxter 
 which Penn insinuates has been purposely delayed in 
 the delivery : 
 
 ' The beginning of this unhappy youth tells me : " If I 
 have not yet enough " — of what ? Railings, Slanders, Inter- 
 ruptions, dirty Reflections : Yes, too much had R. B. pleased. 
 But of Reason, Good Language, Order, and Personal Civility,
 
 164 The Reign of Queeft Anne 
 
 little or none fell from R. B., I affirm. Well, but " my vain 
 ostentation of my Forwardness to another meeting shall be 
 no cover to my shame." I thought I had been shameless. 
 There is Hope of me, I see. But, R. B., why ashamed ? For 
 thy senseless, headless, tailless talk ? I profess I was more 
 than ashamed, for I was grieved that my last kind letter had 
 no better success. I perceive the Scurvy of the Mind is thy 
 distemper. I fear it 's incurable ; I would say I had rather to 
 be Socrates at the Day of Judgment than R. Baxter ; but that 
 he would tell me that I am nearer a-kin to Heathens than to 
 Christians — and the Truth is for such merely nominal ones, 
 I desire to be. Thus much at present from 
 
 'Thy friend, W. P.' 
 
 This is how religious controversy was conducted in 
 the seventeenth century, for it is evident from the quo- 
 tations from Baxter's letters, that they were couched in 
 similar terms. The extraordinary fluency with which 
 page upon page of pious vituperation is poured forth, 
 and minute points of controversy argued, makes the 
 reader stand aghast. There was a perpetual war of 
 pamphlets, of treatises, of polemical replies, of letters 
 public and private. Scores of forgotten publications 
 rise in the dim air like gnats in a summer mist, when 
 we penetrate among those shadows. What fiery cer- 
 tainty of faith, what ardour, what conviction, what 
 boundless assurance of being right, what righteous wrath 
 against the opponent's wrong ! Who is there among us 
 so sure of anything as Penn was of everything } or who 
 dares suggest, as influencing the greatest criminal, 
 motives which he attributes with colloquial freedom to 
 the best of men ? 
 
 We must not, however, linger upon the endless con- 
 troversies which are buried in the two hugfe volumes
 
 The Quaker 165 
 
 of his life and works, published shortly after his death. 
 When we come to read them, the dry bones, the dry 
 leaves rustle with inextinguishable echoes of a life 
 more vehement than ours — the voices rise menacing, 
 denouncing, with command, as it were, of the very 
 thunderbolts of heaven. The smallest matters rise into 
 importance, the minutest shade of difference showing 
 like a hostile flag, the divergences of individual opinion 
 becoming matters to stand for death and life upon. The 
 hat, that venerable symbol, is no bad representative of 
 the standards for which so many were ready to live and 
 die — a thing of entire unimportance in itself, yet stand- 
 ing in their fervid imaginations and zealous souls for so 
 much. Perhaps, when our own age comes to be looked 
 on from the heights of the twenty-first century, there 
 may be a similar impression of a Babel of contending 
 tongues and opinions ; but the warmth will be far less, 
 the actions fainter, the murmur and commotion much 
 less persistent and sincere. 
 
 Penn made many missionary journeys during this 
 period of his life, and preached and pleaded everywhere 
 the cause of true religion, always fervent in that cause, 
 if a little too warm in reprobation of everything with 
 which he disagreed. Of one of these journeys, to 
 Holland and Germany, he kept a journal, which though 
 too entirely evangelical, and with more of the missionary 
 than the man in it, yet sets forth the life of the wander- 
 ing apostles with a few human touches which are grate- 
 ful to us. He and his companions seem to have gone 
 only to places where there existed already a nucleus of 
 Friends, that name now beginning to be used among
 
 1 66 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 them — or at least of devout persons to whom their 
 special teaching was likely to be welcome. The chief 
 among these was the Princess Palatine (as she is called), 
 Elizabeth, the daughter of the Elector Palatine and 
 Elizabeth Stewart the ill-fated King and Queen of 
 Bohemia, and the sister of Prince Rupert, whose fiery 
 character is so well known, and who had been the enemy 
 of Sir William Penn. The princess, however, and her 
 devout lady-in-waiting had probably little knowledge 
 of English politics, and received Penn with that special 
 regard which from the time of the apostles has been 
 shown by honourable women to the bearers of a religious 
 message. There are one or two pretty and touching 
 pieces of narrative, as when Penn, always asking in 
 apostolic fashion, what worthy people there may be in 
 the place at which he arrives, finds himself in the little 
 religious community constituted by a certain French 
 preacher, de Labadie, in which there is much that is 
 congenial to him, and where he tells to the interested 
 circle that story of his conversion and persecutions from 
 which we have repeatedly quoted ; one of the principal 
 members of this community was a certain Anna Maria 
 Schurman, ' an ancient maid about sixty years of age, 
 of great note and fame for learning in languages and 
 philosophy, and hath obtained a considerable place 
 among the most learned men of this age.' It is to the 
 princess, however, that he returns again and again, find- 
 ing much refreshment in her gracious sympathy. Here 
 is one tender little scene : 
 
 ' As soon as the meeting was over the princess came to me 
 and took me by the hand (which she usually did to us all
 
 The Quaker 167 
 
 coming and going) and went to speak to me of the sense she 
 had of that power and presence of God which was amongst 
 us, but was stopped, and turning herself to the window broke 
 forth in an extraordinary passion, crying out I can^iot speak to 
 you, my heart is full : clapping her hands upon her breast. 
 
 She melted soon into a deep and calm tenderness, in which 
 I was moved to minister a few words softly to her, and after 
 some time of silence she recovered herself, and as I was 
 taking leave of her she interrupted me thus : Will ye not come 
 hither agaiti ? Fray call here as ye return out of Germany. I 
 told her we were in the Hand of the Lord, and being His 
 could not dispose of ourselves. But the Lord had taken care 
 that we should not forget her and those with her. For He 
 had raised and begotten an heavenly concernment in our 
 souls for her and them : and we loved them all with that love 
 wherewith God loved us : with much more to that purpose. 
 
 She then turned to the rest of the Friends and would have 
 had us all go into supper with her. But we chose rather to 
 be excused ; we should eat a bit of her bread and drink a 
 glass of her wine if she pleased in the chamber where we were. 
 ... So we left them in the love and peace of God, praying 
 that they might be kept from the evil of this world.' 
 
 Wherever the missionaries passed they lighted upon 
 devout companies of their own way of thinking, or at 
 least with minds open to the truth, although in one 
 instance Penn makes a mild complaint of one of the 
 ladies who opened her house to him, that she was ' a 
 woman certainly of great wit, high notions, and very 
 ready utterance : so that it was hard for us to obtain a 
 true silence, a state in which we could reach to her.' 
 But even this difficulty was overcome, the too eloquent 
 lips stilled, and ' a sweet time of refreshment ' followed. 
 In most places the universal fervour was so great that 
 * life ran as oil and swam atop of all.' On one occasion,
 
 1 68 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 indeed, they were turned off his lands by an angry Graf 
 whom they refused to salute when they met him, and 
 who perhaps had a better reason for his anger, since they 
 were on their way to a private meeting with the young 
 countess his daughter, whose religious principles he 
 objected to. Thus the Quaker apostles made their way, 
 generally very well received, and always very sure that 
 their way was the way of salvation. 
 
 On Penn's return to England he married Sulestura or 
 Suli Springett, the daughter of one of Cromwell's officers, 
 who had been brought up as a girl under the shadow of 
 Milton in his country retirement at Chalfont in Bucks : 
 about whom there is not very much to tell, though 
 Mr. Hepworth Dixon in his life of Penn tells all and 
 perhaps a little more. She was already a Quaker, and 
 the match was suitable in every way, the bride being 
 young, fair, and well endowed. The bridegroom was 
 still but twenty-eight, notwithstanding all his experiences. 
 His marriage made but little difference in his life — he 
 still travelled and held meetings, sometimes accompanied 
 by his wife, and still wrote and printed pamphlets and 
 letters upon the religio-political conflicts which tore the 
 country asunder. Great was the agitation of the time, 
 in which every Nonconformist worshipped God on 
 sufferance at the mercy of the nearest magistrate, who 
 might disperse the meeting as an unlawful assembly 
 and put the preacher in prison, and yet England swarmed 
 with Nonconformists holding their meetings everywhere ; 
 when the indulgence which the king proclaimed was 
 denied by the angry and alarmed Parliament, which saw 
 in this apparent toleration only a way of freeing from
 
 The Quaker 169 
 
 all restrictions the hated and dreaded Church of Rome, 
 as well as that beginning of independent action on the 
 part of the monarch which was the beginning of des- 
 potism ; and when dissenters themselves refused the 
 help held out to them for both these reasons, and pre- 
 ferred the Conventicle Act under which they suffered 
 legally to the ease given to them despotically, and which 
 Roman Catholics were to share ; and the Test Act was 
 passed which did all any act could to make life impos- 
 sible to those who did not conform. Penn and his 
 friends suffered almost more than any other sect, being 
 the youngest and most zealous of any, and his life was 
 one continued protest against not only persecution, but 
 the principle of persecution, in his own and every other 
 case. He was, to his honour be it said, almost the only 
 man not a Roman Catholic in England who was steadily 
 of opinion that even the Catholics had a right to worship 
 God in their own way. To no other leader of religious 
 opinion was this grace given ; and the result of his impar- 
 tiality was that he was called Papist and Jesuit, even by 
 those who had reviled his Quakerism and laughed most 
 at those eccentricities which were as deeply opposed to 
 Romanism as night to day. 
 
 After a long interval of absence from the court, Penn 
 presented himself there for the purpose of obtaining the 
 release of George Fox. After some little difficulty he 
 saw the Duke of York and speedily obtained what he 
 sought. ' A great lord, a man of a noble mind,' he says 
 in his letter announcing to Fox his liberation, ' did as 
 good as put himself in a losing way to get thy liberty. 
 He prevailed with the king for a pardon, but that we
 
 1 70 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 rejected. Then he pressed for a more noble release that 
 better answered both. He prevailed and got the king's 
 hand to a release.' It would seem certain from other 
 accounts that it was James himself who had taken this 
 upon him. And thus after a considerable interval the 
 links of ancient friendship were again drawn close by a 
 benefit, between the Catholic prince and the Quaker 
 courtier. It may not be amiss here to continue the 
 history of this connection, leaving to another chapter 
 the narrative of Penn's proceedings in America, to 
 many the most interesting portion of his career. There 
 he found himself in presence of a new world where 
 everything was to make and set in order, without the 
 embarrassment of existing society or conventional rules. 
 Constitutions, laws, national customs and routine had 
 all to be invented for the novel state. It was a romance 
 of legislation, of formation, an ideal state, not of mere 
 speculation like those of Plato, More, and Bacon, but 
 real and in the hands of a man with very distinct views 
 on the subject. But in the old world his feet were beset 
 by thorns ; his path led him through complications 
 innumerable, and paradoxes almost more than human 
 intelligence and virtue are able to carry a man safely 
 through. 
 
 Penn left England for his American possessions in 
 1682. He returned in little more than a year and a 
 half for various urgent reasons ; his own boundaries were 
 questioned by his neighbour. Lord Baltimore, who had 
 gone home to plead his cause, and the Friends were in 
 trouble and distress in England and stood in need of 
 their powerful champion.
 
 The Quaker 171 
 
 The moment of Penn's arrival was a very critical one. 
 The death of Charles 11, took place shortly after, and 
 James, unpopular, feared, almost hated, came to the 
 already tottering throne with every prognostic of evil 
 that could attend a king. In the Quaker narrative, 
 however, and in Penn's Life, this gloomy tyrant, this 
 plotter against the constitution of England, he who was 
 unseated from his throne with more unanimous consent 
 and less resistance than ever king was — bears an aspect 
 very different from that in which we commonly see 
 him. It is difficult, especially in the record of a life 
 which is to a certain extent an apology, to refrain from 
 partisanship. If Penn did not believe James to be 
 sincere in his proclamation of freedom of conscience, 
 then it is very hard to believe in Penn's own sincerity 
 and greatness of character, and the apologist would be 
 compelled to allow that his hero considered something 
 else than moral excellence necessary in a friend of such 
 rank, and winked at many errors in a king which he 
 would have denounced in an ordinary companion. The 
 latter fact of course in any case is indisputable. There 
 were, however, as has been seen, many reasons for Penn's 
 personal attachment to James, an older man than him- 
 self, and one to whom he was not called upon to preach, 
 but only to influence when he could, for the advantage 
 of the faithful. No petition of his seems ever to have 
 been refused by his royal friend. One of the first acts 
 of the new king's reign was to remit the penalties im- 
 posed upon those who had refused to take the oath of 
 allegiance, by which act twelve hundred Quakers at once 
 were set free from prison. Until we are made aware
 
 172 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 that this boon was of advantage to Roman Catholics 
 and Quakers alone, the other Protestant sects having 
 never objected to the oath, either as an oath or as a 
 bond of allegiance, the act seems one of pure justice and 
 specially honourable to the monarch as pardoning an 
 offence against himself. The further proclamation of 
 March 1687, proclaiming what in its formal aspect was 
 really liberty of conscience, requires a full knowledge of 
 all the conflicting circumstances of the time to reveal its 
 hidden effects and drawbacks. As a matter of fact, it 
 gave, though illegally, complete emancipation for the 
 moment, and, although done in the interests of the most 
 intolerant of creeds, the one with which persecution is 
 a principle and duty, accorded absolute toleration. The 
 Quaker apologists may be pardoned if they accept this 
 without searching deeper ; and it is quite credible that 
 Penn believed it. He thought even that his own 
 voluminous writings, especially a certain plea for modera- 
 tion, had convinced the new king ; and how sweet this 
 thought must have been to a religious polemic it needs 
 little insight to divine. Even before these public evi- 
 dences that James was 'really principled for granting 
 liberty of conscience,' Penn had been constantly success- 
 ful in his personal applications for mercy. And with 
 the flattering sense of power which is so apt to turn all 
 heads, he had no doubt a most true and earnest desire 
 to do what he could for suffering Friends, and even 
 within limits for sufferers in general — and last (but, to 
 do him justice, least), to promote a private cause of his 
 own. It is very natural in these circumstances that 
 the king's friend, intending his residence in England 
 to be short, should have removed his family from the
 
 The Quaker 173 
 
 country and established himself close at hand where he 
 could show himself at Whitehall and be at hand when the 
 king wanted him every day : though it is a curious detail 
 in the jumble of his existence at the time. This had been 
 his father's dearest wish for him, which in his hot-headed 
 youth he had balked ; and to carry it out now, without 
 bating a jot of his own principles and pretensions, must 
 have been sweet. And Penn had the gratification of 
 feeling that his courtiership was entirely disinterested. 
 He might have put 'twenty thousand pounds in his 
 pocket and a hundred thousand in his province,' 
 Macaulay quotes, disingenuously attributing this loss to 
 bribes refused. But the true meaning of the words 
 seems to be, that had he encouraged the panic felt at 
 James's accession and augmented the general uneasiness 
 by encouraging multitudes upon the wing, he might, as 
 he himself said, have put many thousands of people 
 into his province as well as pounds into his pocket. He 
 took an opposite course : he proclaimed his belief in 
 James's good intentions boldly, he carried all sorts of 
 petitions to him and received many boons. He freed 
 his own brethren from all penalties, he did good to all 
 men (with exceptions) so far as it was in his power. He 
 did not interfere, so far as we are told, on behalf of 
 Richard Baxter, and though he did obtain a pardon for 
 Locke, he does not seem, as in the case of George Fox, 
 when Locke refused to accept a pardon, to have pushed 
 his interest for ' a more noble release.' These were 
 perhaps superfluities of kindness which even from a 
 good man like Penn it might be too much to expect. 
 
 There are, however, shadows in the picture very much 
 more dark than these. Macaulay represents Penn to us
 
 174 The Reign of Queen An7ie 
 
 as a man carried away by court favour, unable to see 
 through the disguises and specious pretences under 
 which James concealed his unrelenting determination 
 to secure the triumph of his Church, and entirely un- 
 concerned by the king's infringement of the constitution. 
 The only plea that can be produced against these accu- 
 sations is that Penn was deceived — with a completeness 
 unworthy of his understanding. No doubt liberty of 
 conscience was more dear to him than the constitution, 
 and he hated the Test and Conventicle Acts more than 
 he dreaded the exercise of the king's prerogative. But 
 these, though errors in judgment, might have been par- 
 donable errors. It is, however, beyond measure strange 
 to see this rebel against all conventional rules, this 
 preacher of boundless charity and toleration, taking his 
 way from the galleries at Whitehall, or from the king's 
 closet, whence he carried the assurance of a friend served 
 or a boon granted, to the gibbet in Cheapside where 
 Cornish was hanged opposite to his own windows, or the 
 stake at Tyburn where Elizabeth Gaunt was burnt for 
 Christian piety and hospitality. The Quaker with his 
 mild eyes, lingering by Cornish's gibbet to the last, then 
 hurrying in his coach across London to see the fire take 
 light around the other victim, and breathe the smoke of 
 human sacrifice, is a picture too wonderful, too revolting 
 to find a place in the record of a good life. He did it, 
 his apologists tell us, to be able to tell the king, who 
 had refused his prayers in their behalf, how both these 
 sufferers asserted their innocence to the last. But how 
 such a man, after such a sight, could have returned to 
 James at all, without flinging his allegiance in his face
 
 The Quaker 175 
 
 and throwing off his service for ever, is a thing which it 
 is very difficult to understand. It would have been 
 better that a hundred Quakers had died in gaol than 
 that their apostle should give the sanction even of an 
 explanation to such scenes. It is curious also to note 
 that no allusion to the Bloody Assize or the massacre of 
 the unfortunate retainers of Monmouth is to be found in 
 Penn's life. Macaulay's accusation against him as having 
 had to do with the cruel proceedings in the case of the 
 Maids of Taunton seems too vague to be worthy of belief, 
 and quite unlike all that we know of Penn. But it is 
 very extraordinary that he should have lived through 
 all these horrors at James's elbow, yet never given 
 audible evidence of his disapproval. This is a worse 
 thing than any such definite offence. 
 
 ' These events (the expeditions of Monmouth and 
 Argyle) belong to the domain of general history,' says 
 Mr. Hepworth Dixon. That is very true ; and Penn's 
 special subject was religious liberty. But after the 
 sickening barbarity of reprisals, which no historian has 
 been found to defend, how could the champion of the 
 oppressed, the pleader for mercy, who, ' so far as can be 
 known,' no doubt exercised his influence more or less on 
 behalf of the sufferers (which is all that the hottest 
 partisan can say) — how could the gentle Quaker, the 
 man of peace, hold his place, and come and go, and 
 believe and sanction the good intentions, the merciful 
 meaning of the king ? This is a great mystery, and one 
 which it is not easy to solve. Had the prophet never 
 any impulse to say, * Thou art the man,' when he came 
 smiling into the royal closet ? Did no ghost flit across
 
 176 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 his path, when so many were being violently severed 
 from their house of flesh ? Did he go and watch Alice 
 Lyle in the fire as he watched Elizabeth Gaunt ? and 
 never find himself able to save one of them, yet accept 
 all these dreadful scenes without an animadversion ? 
 A man so fond of lifting up his testimony, always ready 
 to remonstrate ; and yet he says not a word. This 
 silence is more derogatory to Penn than anything that 
 has been said against him. 
 
 We need not add, since there is nothing very 
 certain to say, to the evidence concerning the case 
 of the Fellows of Magdalen, in Oxford, for whom he 
 interfered at a later period, with an almost ostentatious 
 confidence in his power of setting all right. When 
 King James, after introducing Roman Catholic heads 
 in Christ Church and University, attempted to do the 
 same at Magdalen, the Fellows, to frustrate his inter- 
 ference, hastily elected a head of their own choosing — 
 Dr. Hough — and withstood the summary orders given 
 them to annul his election. Penn (according to the 
 story of Clarkson) rode to the college, had an interview 
 with the threatened dons, and wrote a letter to the king on 
 their behalf, which was to set all right. It did not succeed 
 in doing so, however ; and, after various other incidents, a 
 deputation came to Windsor to represent their case once 
 more to their advocate. The conversation reported 
 between Penn and the Fellows is not agreeable to 
 read. ' Majesty did not love to be thwarted,' he told 
 the troubled scholars. And with a little bravado of his 
 own principles of universal toleration, which to them in 
 their actual circumstances could scarcely be called less
 
 Ike Quaker I'jy 
 
 than insulting, he expressed his hope that they would 
 not succeed in securing the two universities as invincible 
 bulwarks for the Church of England, as if none but they 
 were capable of giving their children a learned education. 
 ' I suppose,' he continued with what seems the strangest 
 levity, ' two or three colleges will content the Papists — 
 Christ Church is a noble structure : University is a 
 pleasant place : and Magdalen College is a comely 
 building.' If this meant anything, it must have meant 
 that the beautiful college for which his petitioners were 
 pleading was already doomed, and that he thought their 
 pertinacity in its defence something amusing. ' When I 
 heard him talk at this rate I concluded he was either off 
 his guard or had a mind to droll with us,' said Dr. Hough ; 
 and the conclusion he carried away, that ' the Papists 
 were resolved to have our college,' will probably seem to 
 the reader quite warranted. Penn does not come well out 
 of this interview. His aspect does not seem to us that 
 of a trafficker in simony, as Macaulay calls him, nor yet 
 of a royal tool attempting to cajole or frighten his victims 
 into compliance with his master's will, so much as that of 
 one who had overshot his mark, who had represented him- 
 self as capable of good offices and services which really 
 were not in his power, and who now could reply to the 
 anxious men in peril with nothing but platitudes about 
 himself and his good intentions, and the inexpediency of 
 endeavouring to 'thwart majesty.' * He gave us a histori- 
 cal account of his acquaintance with the king,' wrote Dr. 
 Hough, who evidently had no admiration for his would- 
 be benefactor, and entered into unnecessary explana- 
 tions as to the foolish popular rumour that he was a 
 
 M
 
 178 The Reign of Qtieen Anne 
 
 Papist, or even a Jesuit in disguise. The conclusion we 
 draw from the tale is that Penn had been made to see 
 the length of his tether, and that his ofificiousness in 
 interfering on behalf of the Magdalen Fellows had pro- 
 duced some very clear intimation on the part of King 
 James that though he might defend his Quakers as much 
 as he pleased, he was not to m-^ddle in the case of larger 
 game. 
 
 Penn continued faithful to the king till the end. When 
 all his courtiers forsook him, the Quaker still remained 
 constant, and never gave up his belief in the sincerity of 
 James's motives, or took any steps to make himself 
 agreeable to his successors, by whom indeed he was 
 arrested again and again for correspondence with James 
 and supposed devotion to his interests. At the same 
 time, he was never accused of conspiring in any way 
 against the existing powers or plotting to bring back 
 his friend and patron. He was not a politician save in 
 so far as politics are connected with religious questions ; 
 but the steady and quiet friendship which he never dis- 
 avowed shines fair in comparison with the almost uni- 
 versal treachery of the time. 
 
 The other side of his life, with its great enterprise, its 
 kingship in a way, its conflicts too with recalcitrant 
 parliaments, its fine ideal of primitive right and justice, 
 affords in many respects a more agreeable theme.
 
 THE QUAKER 
 
 II 
 
 It was in the year 1676 that Penn was first drawn into 
 his connection with the great continent beyond seas, 
 which had already for fifty years been, as it were, the 
 safety-valve of English society, — the harbour of refuge 
 for the persecuted, the Utopia of the visionary. A great 
 new world of boundless fertility and freedom, hampered 
 by no heritage from the past, open to all the theories of 
 the future, America was at this moment the great and 
 real romance of the English race, as well as a shelter, 
 nowhere else to be hoped for, for all to whom their 
 own country had become impossible through the many 
 troubles of that period of convulsion. The despair which 
 had driven the Pilgrim Fathers forth to the untrodden 
 wilderness was no longer the motive of the emigrants. 
 Persecution, indeed, had scarcely slackened, and showed 
 little appearance of ending, even the spasmodic intervals 
 of indulgence having no foundation. But the first bands 
 of exiles, the forefathers of the New World, had proved 
 that the risk of emigration was worth running, and all 
 the first dangers of colonisation had been overcome. 
 Things were indeed just at the point which was specially 
 delightful to a theorist, confident of having principles 
 
 179
 
 i8o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 and a system by which the perfect Hfe both for a com- 
 munity and for individuals is to be obtained. The first 
 colonists had demonstrated, not only the practicability 
 of the experiment, but also the errors and mistakes into 
 which men are at all times too likely to fall, and those 
 of what we may call the second generation had warning 
 as well as encouragement in their example. Penn's 
 first essay in the work of colonisation was not in his 
 own interest. The New World was at that time a most 
 welcome resource to the prodigal court of England, by 
 which the king paid debts and rewarded courtiers, and, 
 still more desirable, procured for himself a little ready 
 money as occasion served, while those to whom he 
 granted the new-found provinces followed his example, 
 and divided and subdivided the endless wastes, indif- 
 ferent in most cases to any natural rights. In this way 
 a Friend, Edward Byllinge or Billing by name, acquired 
 from Lord Berkeley a portion of the state of New 
 Jersey, but being apparently a somewhat thriftless 
 Friend — a character not at all common — soon parted 
 with a portion of it to another Quaker, John Fenwick, 
 and afterwards was compelled to place it all in the 
 hands of trustees for the satisfaction of his creditors. 
 Penn, who though without any official rank was the 
 chief man among the Quakers, became in the first place 
 the arbitrator between Billing and Fenwick, settling by 
 solid arguments, let us hope, and also by one or two 
 letters in his usual imperative and authoritative style, a 
 disagreement between them ; and afterwards acting as 
 principal trustee in the final arrangement. 
 
 Into this work he seems to have entered with the 
 greatest vigour and goodwill. In all his independent state-
 
 The Quaker 18 1 
 
 ments, his letters and published work, it is very apparent 
 that Penn was disposed to take very high ground as a 
 teacher ; and though profoundly tolerant in principle, 
 and with the unusually enlightened conviction — a con- 
 viction shared by very few even of those who knew the 
 sharpness of religious persecution in their own persons 
 — that Papists themselves ought not to be whipped for 
 being Papists, was yet devoutly certain that his own 
 way was the right way, and that other professions of 
 Christianity were but little to be trusted to. It was 
 natural that he should seize upon the opportunity of 
 setting forth a model state, in which his own people 
 should find the happiest refuge that yet had been 
 established. The early emigrants had formed their con- 
 stitution after they had reached their new habitation 
 and overcome those early initiatory difficulties which 
 go before politics, and some of them had showed little 
 more of the faculty of learning by their own sufferings 
 than kings are supposed to do. In New England, for 
 instance, Quakers were by law prohibited from entering 
 the sacred territory of the Nonconformist state, and, if 
 found there, were subject to instant imprisonment, with 
 almost greater severity than had been exercised in 
 England. In these circumstances a special refuge for 
 the Quakers was a matter of necessity ; and the exer- 
 cise of a magnanimity which conceived no possibility of 
 reprisals was now in Penn's power. His very first step 
 was to draw out an elaborate constitution for this new 
 colony establishing its liberties, and especially the 
 freedom of religious conviction, with every possible 
 guarantee. 
 
 It must be added, however, that he was not the first to
 
 1 82 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 carry the principle of toleration to America. Lord Balti- 
 more, his future neighbour and opponent, though himself 
 a Roman Catholic, had learned his lesson better than 
 the pious dissenters of Massachusetts, and in his domain 
 there was no question what was the religion of the 
 colonists. Here the two extremes of religious belief 
 seem to have changed places. The tolerant Catholic 
 finds little praise from the historians. His motive is 
 supposed to be the business - like one of drawing the 
 best men to his colony ; and perhaps the fierce old 
 Independent is a more characteristic figure who with his 
 last breath adjures his community : 
 
 ' Let men of God in court and churches watch 
 O'er such as do a toleration hatch, 
 Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice 
 To poison all with heresy and vice.' 
 
 Toleration, however, was the first principle in Penn's 
 constitution ; no test or question of faith such as that 
 which made membership of the Church essential to the 
 rights of citizenship in Massachusetts was so much as 
 admitted in the new state. The franchise was founded 
 on the old English basis of property, each distinct terri- 
 tory returning a member to the Assembly, for whom 
 every honest man under these conditions had a right to 
 vote, and the Assembly in its turn electing ten com- 
 missioners who were to wield the executive power. The 
 institution of the jury, which from the early days in 
 which an honest jury had been sent to prison for 
 acquitting him had been held in special honour by 
 Penn, was elevated into judicial power, and some special 
 laws for the protection of orphan children, and of the 
 unfortunate generally, most beneficial and necessary in
 
 The Quaker 
 
 an infant community, were added to the simple charter. 
 This brief document was, as soon as completed, pub- 
 lished, along with a description of the natural advan- 
 tages of the new settlement, its climate and fertility 
 and space, and circulated far and wide. America was 
 no longer an unknown country, the last resource of men 
 in despair. So many as twenty thousand Englishmen 
 had got themselves established there before the fate of 
 Charles I. had been accomplished ; and it was with none 
 of the shiverings of the first pilgrims, setting out towards 
 the unknown, but rather with the eagerness of men 
 who saw before them an excellent chance of making 
 their fortunes, that the new world beyond the seas was 
 regarded. 
 
 When the letter of the Quaker managers and trus- 
 tees was thus spread abroad, offers came from every 
 part of the country for lots in the new colony. Two 
 companies consisting of Friends were established at 
 once for the purpose of sending out settlers, and to one 
 of these a tenth part of the whole land was allotted. A 
 curious anecdote is told of the setting out of the first 
 ship, which carried the commissioners appointed by 
 Penn and the other trustees to set the colony agoing, 
 along with a considerable number of emigrants. While 
 it lay in the Thames, just about to set sail, the king's 
 barge passed by. King Charles saw the group upon 
 the decks and the solemn bustle of departure, and with 
 that good humour and friendliness which in a monarch 
 covers a multitude of sins had himself rowed alongside, 
 to ascertain where the travellers were going. When he 
 was told their destination and intention he asked if 
 they were all Quakers : then gave them ' his blessing,'
 
 184 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 as all the historians tell us. Perhaps some royal joke 
 at the groups of grave faces under the shadow of that 
 Hat which Penn had made familiar, drew from the 
 courtiers a titter, as this unusual benediction was 
 bestowed. The emigrants did not uncover, but no 
 doubt were as much pleased, being Englishmen and 
 made of ordinary flesh and blood, by the episode as if 
 they had been as obsequious as other men ; and the 
 ship went her way with a little excitement and gratifi- 
 cation on board over this special farewell. The Quakers 
 knew, perhaps, that they were, in some way or other, 
 favourites of the king, that their sufferings were none of 
 his doing, and that he had again and again exercised 
 his prerogative in their favour — all which was no doubt. 
 owing to the fact that Penn had once been a youth 
 about the Court, and that King Charles had kept up a 
 kind recollection of his old admiral's son. 
 
 Very likely it was his employment in the affairs of 
 New Jersey, and the success which attended his arrange- 
 ments, which directed the mind of Penn towards the 
 greater work with which his name is so entirely con- 
 nected, and which is his chief title to recognition by 
 posterity. The story of Pennsylvania has been often 
 told, but is still probably better known on the American 
 side of the Atlantic than to Englishmen. During the 
 final settlement of his father's affairs, Penn discovered 
 that the king owed to the admiral the large sum of 
 i^i 6,000, no trifle even now, but then a much greater 
 matter. Payment from Charles was never very hopeful, 
 but here was this vast pocketful of land, this big conti- 
 nent, from which all embarrassing claims might be 
 satisfied. Penn had been going deeply into the sub-
 
 The Quaker 185 
 
 ject, and had acquired a certain knowledge of the 
 geographical features of the unallotted states. He must 
 have known roughly that though less attractive than 
 the other portions of territory which had been already 
 occupied, there were many advantages and much natural 
 wealth waiting discovery in the as yet virgin soil to 
 which his attention was directed. To secure it, how- 
 ever, was not altogether an easy process. Parting with 
 value of any kind was disagreeable to a court so 
 entirely out at elbows, and the personal interests of the 
 Duke of York, hitherto Penn's unfailing patron, were in 
 some degree involved — not to say that there had been 
 a certain coolness between the prince and his protege in 
 consequence of the strong steps taken by Penn to free 
 New Jersey from the tribute demanded by James as 
 suzerain, the entire territory having been in the first 
 place granted to him as lord. The proceedings on 
 account of this and other hindrances were somewhat 
 lengthy, but the result at last satisfied all Penn's hopes. 
 He got the land he asked for — the huge province now 
 known by his name — and after some further delays an 
 additional grant from James of a property called the 
 Territories, but now forming the state of Delaware. 
 The grant was in extent almost equal to a European 
 kingdom, and probably now both in population and 
 wealth Pennsylvania might take a favourable place 
 among the smaller countries of the Old World. But at 
 that time it possessed nothing save the undisclosed 
 riches underground, the forests in which the scanty 
 tribes of the native Indians hunted and squatted, and 
 a few insignificant settlements of Dutch and Swedish 
 colonists, of whom nobody took any notice — certainly
 
 1 86 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 not the authorities in the far-away imperious island to 
 which America seemed the most natural of possessions. 
 The tradition which attaches to the choice of a name 
 for this new possession makes a pretty story enough, and 
 as it is given by all the historians, there seems no reason 
 to doubt its truth. The first settlers do not seem to have 
 exercised their imaginations lo any great purpose in re- 
 spect to the nomenclature of the new continent, Virginia 
 was an apt and graceful compliment to the maiden 
 monarch who took so much pains to call the notice of 
 the world to her celibacy ; but it is very curious to find 
 the names of Charlestown and Jamestown given to their 
 settlements by the loyal rebels whom Charles and James 
 drove out of their native country. These awkward com- 
 binations of royal names, and the more reasonable and 
 tender fancy of transferring the names of their homes in 
 England to their new homes in America, seem to have 
 been all the new settlers were equal to. But Penn's pro- 
 vince was christened in a more splendid way by the great 
 Cabal itself in council assembled. It is said that he 
 wished to call it New Wales, but that the secretary of 
 the council, who was a Welshman, objected, though it 
 seems strange to tell why. Some one then suggested 
 Sylvania, on account of the forests with which it was 
 covered ; and this title was received with general favour. 
 Upon which the king himself, ' who never said a foolish 
 thing,' and whose humour lent him a charm to his own 
 generation, despite of all his evil ways — a charm which 
 has scarcely yet died altogether from his memory — 
 added ' Penn,' with half a grateful recollection of his old 
 admiral and half a good-humoured laugh at the courtier
 
 The Quaker 187 
 
 sectary who still stood with his hat on in the king's pre- 
 sence, yet perhaps by that very piece of obstinacy tickled 
 the good-humoured monarch. A less authentic tale de- 
 scribes Charles himself on this occasion as taking off his 
 hat, on the ground that it was the custom of the place 
 that only one man at a time should be covered. One of 
 Penn's biographers insists on the objections which the 
 modesty of his hero raised to the name. He tried, it is 
 said, to bribe the Welsh secretary into the resubstitution 
 of the other title, but was unsuccessful ; and even had 
 recourse to the king, who perhaps might have been less 
 incorruptible, but who would not give up his joke. And 
 certainly the combination was more felicitous than any 
 other of the invented titles given to the other new 
 settlements. If an English critic may venture to say as 
 much, the absence of a happy knack in this direction, 
 which characterised the early colonists, is one unde- 
 sirable feature in the inheritance they have left to their 
 descendants. West Fifty-sixth Street is perhaps rather 
 worse than the Jamestowns and Charlestowns which 
 contrast so unfavourably with the flowing melodious 
 syllables of the native names ; so that there seems 
 reason to believe that the defect has been inherited. 
 
 Here, however, Penn found himself at once converted 
 into a sort of little king, autocrat, and legislator. He 
 who had all his life fought against every title and sign 
 of dignity was now Penn of Pennsylvania ; King Charles 
 of England had not a more characteristic title. He was 
 but thirty-seven, in the prime of manhood. He had 
 what was equal to a clan behind him, bound to him by 
 many services, and by what is still stronger, the bond of
 
 1 88 The Reign of Queen Ann^ 
 
 mutual faith — to many of whom he was not only a libe- 
 rator from prisons and penalties past, but the deliverer 
 from the land of bondage, the leader under whom they 
 were to find new homes, mild laws, and an atmosphere 
 of peace and security. To a man neither old enough 
 nor unfortunate enough to have lost his ideal, what a 
 position in which to stand ! His previous life, in spite of 
 its occasional persecutions and imprisonments — afflic- 
 tions which gave a very fair equivalent in mental satis- 
 faction and the glory which is dear even to the best of 
 men — had not been anything less than a happy and 
 prosperous life. But now had come his crown of exist- 
 ence. He stood upon that edge of fulfilment which is 
 to most men the highest good ever reached on earth. 
 He was the happy warrior preparing to shape his 
 future life upon the plan which pleased his childish 
 thought ; a man of peace who was about to have it in 
 his power to ensure peace on earth, at least in his own 
 chartered and safe possessions ; a man of fervent faith 
 about to mould all things that most concern human 
 life in accordance with his belief 
 
 It is impossible to imagine a more perfect moment 
 than that in which he sat down in his pleasant house in 
 the country which was the resort of all who were of his 
 way of thinking, full of hospitality, full of Friends and 
 children and enthusiastic sympathisers, to form for his 
 new kingdom a constitution which should be as free 
 from stain as the soil upon which it was to be estab- 
 lished. Nothing that is accomplished ever gives the 
 unalloyed delight which is in such an anticipation. 
 With reality all the complications of human individu-
 
 The Quaker 189 
 
 ality and the contradictions of circumstances come in ; 
 but at that dazzling moment all was without check, 
 without fear, a perfect ideal and hope. The saddest of 
 all modern poets, the Italian Leopardi, proclaims in 
 lovely verse the blessedness of the evening before the 
 village holiday, when all is anticipation and delight. 
 Penn was now at the eve of the festa, with such power 
 of realising all his good hopes and good intentions as 
 comes to few men in this life. 
 
 The biographers of Penn are eager to defend him 
 from any imputation of seeking profit for himself in the 
 matter ; and without doubt, if pecuniary profit is what 
 is meant, neither now nor at any other period of his life 
 does he show much thought of that. But there is not 
 the least evidence that Penn was unsusceptible to the 
 glory of the position or to the pleasure of being himself 
 the means of doing a great work and teaching a great 
 lesson. He desired the possession of the ' New Land,' 
 as he tells a friend, that he might so use it as a man not 
 unworthy of God's love, and striving to further His kind 
 providence and serve His truth and people : ' that an 
 example may be set to the nations . . .' ' for there is 
 room there, though not here, for such an holy experi- 
 ment.' Throughout all the liberal meaning and enlight- 
 ened statesmanship of his beginning, there runs the 
 solemn yet simple strain of self-complacency which 
 belongs to the man, and which rises into a sort of 
 lyrical outburst in the first exaltation of fulfilment before 
 trouble came. His ' holy experiment,' his ' example to 
 the nations,' inspires him to a declaration of his own 
 worth and works, which is so genuine in its great yet
 
 190 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 simple assumption that, though prematurely, we may 
 quote it here. It was written from Pennsylvania, in 1682, 
 to one of those many good-natured friends who are 
 always ready to present a mean view of the conduct and 
 motives even of a man who feels himself an emissary 
 from heaven. 
 
 ' I could sp.ak largely of God's dealings with me in getting 
 this thing; what an inward exercise of faith and patience 
 it cost me in passing. The travail was mine as well as the 
 debt and cost, through the envy of many, both professors, 
 false friends and profane. INly God has given it me in the 
 face of the world, and it is to hold it in true judgment as a 
 reward of my sufferings : and that is seen here, whatever some 
 despisers may say or think : the place God hath given me, and I 
 never felt judgment for the power I kept, but trouble for what 
 I parted with. It is more than a worldly title or patent that 
 hath clothed me in this place. Keep thy place ; I am in 
 mine, and have served the God of the whole earth since I have 
 been in it ; nor am I sitting down in a greatness that I have 
 desired. I am, day and night, spending my life, my time, my 
 money, and am not sixpence enriched by this greatness — costs 
 in getting, settling, transportation, and maintenance now in a 
 public manner at my own charge duly considered : to say 
 nothing of my hazard and the distance I am at from a con- 
 siderable estate, and, which is more, my dear wife and poor 
 children. 
 
 ' Well, the Lord is a God of righteous judgment. Had I 
 sought greatness I had stayed at home, where the difference 
 between what I am here, and was offered and could have been 
 there in power and wealth, is as wide as the places are. No, 
 I came for the Lord's sake, and therefore have I stood to this 
 day, well and diligent and successful. Blessed be His power.' 
 
 This is, however, an anticipation. Penn withdrew with 
 his charter from the king, as soon as he had secured it,
 
 The Quaker 191 
 
 to his house in Sussex, and there began the delightful 
 work of making a constitution for his new dominions. 
 It was drawn upon the same lines as his earlier sketch 
 of a constitution for the state of New Jersey to which 
 we have referred ; but with many additional details. 
 Mr. Hepworth Dixon has done his best to prove that 
 Penn was largely aided in this by a personage of very 
 different calibre and meaning — the austere and reserved 
 patriot, Algernon Sidney, who had but recently returned 
 from exile. It is difficult to imagine two such men 
 working together in the intimacy and harmony sug- 
 gested ; or to believe the statement that Penn, always a 
 favourite at court, and at this special moment the object 
 of the king's bounty, could have been recognised as one 
 of the heads, with Sidney, of the republican party, 
 which is what his biographer claims. The political 
 history of the time, however, is full of confusion, and the 
 changes and travesties endless. Penn would seem to 
 have done his best to procure Sidney's election on both 
 the occasions when he attempted to obtain a seat in 
 Parliament ; but the only warrant for attributing the con- 
 stitution of Pennsylvania to Sidney is a letter in which 
 Penn very warmly complains of some animadversions 
 that he had made on this subject, saying that the laws 
 which Penn had formed were ' not to be endured or 
 lived under, and that the Turk was not more absolute 
 than I,' This is but poor proof of co-operation on the 
 part of so unlikely a pair. 
 
 Penn's constitution indeed seems to have been as 
 democratic as heart could desire. If Sidney really 
 made the jeering remark that ' the Turk was not more
 
 192 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 absolute than I,' it was no doubt because his keen per- 
 ceptions had noted the almost absurdity of the position 
 of a hereditary governor who was at the same time 
 proprietor of the province, at the head of an assembly 
 elected by universal suffrage, with full power to alter 
 and modify, yet always under the veto, or with the 
 consent, of this governor, a species of benevolent tyrant, 
 an unremovable hereditary head, with more powers 
 than (now at least) belong to any constitutional 
 monarch — this singular post being held by the chief 
 member of a sect which acknowledged no dignitary and 
 in which the most complete equality was the rule. The 
 governor, however, with his three votes, and his privi- 
 lege of taking, along with his council, the initiative in 
 all measures, was the only incongruous element. 
 Universal suffrage, the ballot, a system of continual re- 
 election, calculated to keep the blood in circulation in 
 the political body, were the foundations of the new 
 economy. Of the two legislative chambers, the council, 
 which was the smallest and most dignified, was at the 
 same time the most important, all measures originating 
 in it, while the larger Assembly could only accept or 
 reject and had no initiative power, thus resembling 
 rather the Consiglio Maggiore of the Italian states than 
 the Commons of England. 
 
 The machinery altogether, in short, had a greater re- 
 semblance to that of Venice than of England, as is 
 invariably the case in a freshly-manufactured constitution, 
 where logic and theory take the place of natural develop- 
 ment. Its broad basis and popular form are to be attri- 
 buted not only to the character of the prevailing religious
 
 The Qztaker 193 
 
 opinion of the Quaker colony in which every Friend stood 
 on the same level, but perhaps to a natural recoil from 
 the extraordinary mediaeval system which had been put 
 forth by Locke and Shaftesbury some time before for 
 the state of Carolina. How strange would have been 
 the difference in modern life had America approved and 
 set up the oligarchical scheme of the philosopher, with 
 its hereditary earls and barons, under whom the lesser 
 proprietors were to be bound to the soil with a more 
 than feudal subjection to their suzerains, and where the 
 lines of demarcation between class and class were to be 
 fixed and unchangeable ' to all generations ' — a severity 
 which never has held under the most despotic regime ! 
 On Penn's side all except himself were on the basis of 
 equality, everything was representative. Even cases in 
 law were to be decided by juries instead of judges, the 
 officers of justice being rather advisers than directors 
 of the popular tribunal and appointed for short periods 
 only — a system always considered incompatible with the 
 higher interests of law in England, though adopted in 
 many other communities. The governor was the only 
 member of this hierarchy who was unchangeable. But 
 the privileges he retained for himself were not great. He 
 retained the right of taking the initiative in every new 
 measure, but only in conjunction with the council. He 
 had the privilege of nominating half of the judges 
 and justices : and he had three votes in the superior 
 chamber. But no ordinance of his was of any value 
 unless it had the approbation of the assembly : and his 
 power was thus practically controlled. * For the matters 
 of liberty and privilege,' he says in one of his letters, 
 
 N
 
 194 '^^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 ' I propose that which is extraordinary, and leave my- 
 self and my successors no power of doing mischief, that 
 the will of one man may not hinder the good of a whole 
 country.' These are noble words, and Penn deserves to 
 have the full credit of them. They were very novel in 
 the ears of Europe : and though perhaps they went a 
 little beyond the fact which, for the moment, had he so 
 minded, might have left him considerable powers of mis- 
 chief, they were perfectly true to his intention. He had 
 very soon occasion to prove their sincerity, and the 
 magnanimity with which he addressed himself to the 
 work he had taken in hand, as well as the failure of 
 that magnanimity when the circumstances were more 
 strained than flesh and blood could bear. 
 
 These loftier pre-occupations did not prevent or forestall 
 the business-like proceedings formerly resorted to in the 
 case of the New Jersey settlement. As soon as he had 
 finally secured the grant, he presently published an 
 account of the province of Pennsylvania, with the 
 king's patent and other papers relating thereto, describ- 
 ing the country and its produce, and proposing * an 
 early purchase of lands, and good terms of settlement 
 for such as might incline to transport themselves.' This 
 appeal was immediately responded to. His name and 
 his position among the Quakers indicated from the 
 beginning the class of colonists to which he looked ; 
 and the Friends, though they are said to have cooled 
 much in their approval of Penn in view of his connec- 
 tion with King James, yet flocked like doves to take 
 advantage of this new kingdom in which their harmless 
 peculiarities should not only do them no damage but be 
 considered as the rule of the perfect life, and their
 
 The Quaker 195 
 
 admirable gifts should have full reward. Before 'the 
 first adventurers and freeholders of that Province' set 
 sail, their governor made them subscribe to the draft of 
 the constitution, the first article of which secured full 
 religious freedom to 'every person who useth not this 
 Christian liberty to licentiousness or the distraction of 
 others, that is to say, to speak loosely and profanely or 
 contemptuously of God, Christ, the Holy Scriptures and 
 religion, or commit any moral evil or injury against 
 others in their conversation,' This, perhaps, is not 
 exactly the toleration which we understand nowadays, 
 nor was its further development more liberal, A 
 clause was added indeed, to the effect that none ' should 
 be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any 
 religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever,' But 
 on the other hand all the officials of the state, and even 
 the electors (under the law of universal suffrage), were 
 to be men of professed faith in Jesus Christ. Toleration 
 meant only the freedom of all kinds of worship, not the 
 liberty to throw off all bonds of belief altogether. This 
 was as far as charity had yet learned to go. Much less 
 was it concerned for those whose profane teachings 
 might tend to the 'destruction of others.' The un- 
 believer, especially if he were a teacher of unbelief, was 
 no more encouraged or protected in Penn's state than in 
 other communities. 
 
 Penn's circulars met with even greater success for 
 Pennsylvania than for New Jersey. His land was 
 offered on very favourable terms, with the burden of a 
 shilling of quitrent for every hundred acres, and was 
 taken up readily, not only by private persons, but in one 
 case by a trading company of Bristol Quakers, and in
 
 196 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 another by a similar company from Germany. Three 
 shiploads of colonists, after having signed the draft of the 
 constitution and given their adhesion to it, set sail in 
 168 1. They were accompanied by Penn's agent and 
 cousin. Colonel Markham, who was not a Quaker, but a 
 trusted and confidential friend of the governor, an able 
 and honest man. This first band made so good a begin- 
 ning- that when Penn himself followed them in about a 
 year, they had not only provided for their own immediate 
 shelter and sustenance, but had already built many 
 houses, and among others had almost finished * a fair 
 mansion house,' to be called Pennsburg, as a residence 
 for the governor. 
 
 This new flight of population into the wilds had some 
 unique features. They carried no arms or means of 
 defence, and set out with the determination of trusting to 
 nothing but justice and fair dealing for their protection 
 against the aborigines and all other possible enemies. 
 The Indians, whom the colonists of the ' Mayflower ' had 
 conciliated anxiously, had since that time met with worse 
 treatment, and had greatly harassed and troubled the 
 young communities with continual reprisals — bad faith 
 and cruelty on one side producing treachery and murder 
 on the other, with an ever-growing exasperation and 
 mutual hatred. Penn did not, as everybody seems 
 disposed to think, introduce an entire novelty in 
 colonial principles when he made justice and kindness 
 to the native population a part of his code ; but he was 
 wise enough to see after the experiences of the past 
 that this justice must not be left to the good-feeling of 
 the individual settlers, but must be enforced by law, and
 
 The Quaker 197 
 
 defended by the same penalties which keep men in 
 ordinary societies at peace with each other. Feeling is 
 a doubtful guide where property and acquisition are 
 concerned, and the first flush of honourable regard 
 towards the simple natives of the soil had been proved 
 to be a very evanescent sentiment. Both principle and 
 feeling combined in Penn's circumstances to make this 
 part of the question important. He was himself a man 
 of a mild and just disposition to whom harshness was 
 odious (except in controversy), and his community had 
 abjured the ordinary means of defending itself. To 
 make their position secure, it was absolutely essential 
 that the Indians should be made friends and not, as had 
 so often happened, enemies to the newcomers. His 
 conduct and the fidelity with which he kept his engage- 
 ments, and the care he took to have them fulfilled by 
 others, are much to his credit ; but he was not the first 
 to conceive the idea of keeping faith and dealing justly 
 with these wild inhabitants, neither were his proceedings 
 entirely disinterested. We are apt to think of them as 
 dictated by pure benevolence ; they were in reality not 
 only the best but the sole policy in his circumstances. 
 When it so happens (as it may very well happen) that 
 what is done out of a good heart and because it is right, 
 is the best policy, the result is all the more happy that 
 it was not consciously the object of the effort. And we 
 may allow to Penn the full credit of a determination to 
 do justice to the Indians and treat them as brethren, 
 whatever the consequences might have been. But he is 
 one of the fortunate men who manage to do a right thing 
 in such a way as to secure the attention and admiration
 
 198 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 of the world, a success by no means universal or even 
 general, and, we may add, scarcely ever accorded except 
 to those whose estimate of themselves is a high one, and 
 who are fervently of opinion that no one has ever seen 
 before them what was the right thing to do. Penn was 
 of this conviction in many other matters besides his 
 treatment of the Indians. Ke thought that he and his 
 brotherhood were custodians of the truth par excel- 
 lence, and that the greater part of the world, especially 
 ' Priests and Professors,' lay in darkness. And when he 
 wrote the letter to the Indians, which Colonel Markham 
 and his band were charged to deliver, he announced 
 himself to them at once as a contrast and exception to 
 all the other colonists they knew. ' I am very sensible,' 
 he said, 'of the unkindness and injustice which have 
 been too much exercised towards you by the people 
 of these parts of the world, who have sought to make 
 great advantages by you rather than to be examples of 
 goodness and patience unto you. But I am not such a 
 man.' This letter laid the foundations of the peace 
 between the Quaker community which wore no swords 
 and the wild and wandering population to which the 
 tomahawk was the most familiar tool. But the very fact 
 that a letter could be sent, and that civilised methods of 
 communication were practicable, shows of itself how 
 much the position had improved from that of those 
 early pilgrims, whose sole means of conciliating the 
 tribes of which they knew so little was by means of a 
 chance savage who had picked up a few words of 
 English, and whose absence left them entirely helpless 
 in front of an uncomprehended race.
 
 The Quaker 199 
 
 Within a year of the starting of the first colonists, Penn 
 himself, as has been said, went to visit his kingdom. It 
 may be doubted whether he ever intended to take up his 
 residence permanently there, for he left his wife and chil- 
 dren behind him, to whom, such a voyage being a very 
 serious matter, a solemn adventure, from which he might 
 never return, he left letters of guidance, and directions 
 during his absence,']which were very judicious and tender, 
 if now and then somewhat amusing in their details. 
 Nothing can be more charming than the way in which 
 he addresses his wife : ' Remember thou wast the love 
 of my youth and the joy of my life : the most beloved 
 as well as the most worthy of all my earthly comforts ; 
 and the reason of that love was more thy inward than 
 thy outward excellencies, which yet were many ; God 
 knows, and thou knowest, I can say it was a match of 
 Providence's making, and God's image in us both was 
 the first thing and the most amiable and engaging 
 ornament in our eyes. Now I am to leave thee, and 
 that without knowing whether I shall ever see thee 
 more in this world, take my counsel into thy bosom and 
 let it dwell with thee in my stead while thou livest' 
 From the directions that follow it may perhaps be 
 gleaned that Madam Penn had a few feminine failings. 
 Her husband exhorts her to be regular in hours, with 
 certain fixed rules, so that her times for work, for walk- 
 ing, for meals, ' may be certain, at least as near as may 
 be.' ' And grieve not thyself with careless servants,' he 
 says. He requests her also to ' guard against encroach- 
 ing friendships : keep them at arm's end . . . and let 
 thy children, good meetings, and friends be the pleasure
 
 200 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 of thy life.' Had she an amiable weakness in the way 
 of society, and not too much discrimination therein? 
 Nay, was it possible that the lighter graces of the world 
 sometimes led her imagination astray from the drab- 
 coloured routine of the community ? ' I need not bid 
 thee be humble, for thou art so : nor meek and patient, 
 for 'tis much of thy natural disposition,' he adds tenderly. 
 She is to bring up her children liberally ; sparing no 
 cost on their education, though on other accounts he 
 bids her ' live low and sparingly till my debts are paid.' 
 In education he recommends * the useful part of mathe- 
 matics in building houses or ships, measuring, survey- 
 ing, dialling, navigation.' ' But agriculture is especially 
 in my eye : let my children be husbandmen and house- 
 wives : it is industrious, healthy, honest, and of good 
 example.' The children he exhorts to the fear of God, to 
 live sober and moderate lives, to obey their mother, and 
 when they themselves marry, to bring up their children 
 in the same virtues. ' Read my No Cross, no Crown. 
 There is instruction,' he says with simple certainty. 
 
 ' And as for you,' he adds, ' who are likely to be con- 
 cerned in the government of Pennsylvania and my parts 
 of East Jersey, especially the first, I do charge you 
 before the Lord God and his holy angels, that you be 
 lowly, diligent, and tender, fearing God, loving the 
 people, and hating covetousness. Let justice have its 
 impartial course and the law free passage. Though to 
 your loss, protect no man against it : for you are not 
 above the law, but the law above you. Live therefore 
 the lives yourselves you would have the people live, and 
 then you have the right and boldness to punish the
 
 The Quaker 201 
 
 transgressor. Keep upon the square, for God sees you : 
 therefore do your duty and be sure you see with your 
 own eyes and hear with your own ears. Entertain no 
 lurchers, cherish no informers for gain or revenge ; use 
 no tricks, fly to no devices to support or win injustice : 
 but let your hearts be upright before the Lord, trusting 
 in Him above the contrivances of men.' 
 
 All these precautions against the perils of the enter- 
 prise were taken before he left England to survey and 
 set in order his new territory, in September 1682. 
 ' After a prosperous voyage of six weeks they came 
 within sight of the American coast,' says his earliest 
 biographer, * from whence the air at twelve leagues 
 distance smelt as sweet as a new-blown garden.' When 
 the ship appeared in the Delaware River with the 
 governor on board, making its way up between the 
 pleasant banks, the inhabitants, as many as there were, 
 came out from every cluster of houses to meet and 
 welcome him ' with demonstrations of joy and satisfac- 
 tion.' The fertile country, the brilliant autumn woods, 
 the scent of the sweet earth which had blown so far 
 out to sea, the grateful sense of reaching land and home 
 after a long voyage, combined with the cheers and joy- 
 ful tumult,' to elate the new comers. All was happiness, 
 prosperity, and hope. Everything had gone well with 
 the first band of colonists ; the previous settlers had 
 received them with open arms ; the Indians had listened 
 with wonder and satisfaction to the letter which the 
 chief of the whites had sent before him ; and now his 
 grateful office was to confirm and approve and perfect 
 what had been done in his name.
 
 202 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Shortly after Perm's landing an assembly was called for 
 the purpose of ratifying the constitution ; somewhat pre- 
 maturely, as it turned out. It sat for three days only, and 
 for this purpose alone, and its members evidently dis- 
 persed with their minds full of the code which they had 
 thus summarily adopted, but upon which they deliberated 
 at leisure after they had returned to their house-building 
 and their fields, with already a little tide of opposition 
 to the gentle, god-like Chief creeping up in their spirits. 
 One of the next of Penn's public duties was the meeting 
 with the Indians which he had promised, and the rati- 
 fication of the treaty with them which had been made 
 by Colonel Markham. The winter was over and it was 
 in the genial season when this celebrated meeting took 
 place. He had already ingratiated himself with the 
 tribes, trusting himself in their society, witnessing their 
 games, even, it is said, sharing in these, and exhibiting 
 his own agility among the braves, to the delight of the 
 Indians, if somewhat to the scandal of the graver 
 brethren. He met the chiefs and their followers in a 
 clearing among the woods, the precise locality of which 
 is not now to be identified in the suburbs of Philadelphia, 
 but which was then on the edge of the primeval forests 
 which had given the state its name. ' On his arrival 
 he found the Sachems and their tribes assembling 
 They were seen in the woods as far as the eye could 
 reach and looked frightful both on account of their 
 number and their arms.' The governor and his retinue 
 were unarmed, and comparatively few in number, 
 though they must have been within easy reach of the 
 mass of the colonists, in case of any alarm.
 
 The Quaker 203 
 
 Clarkson records the fact that Perm's only mark of 
 dignity as governor was a sky-blue sash round his 
 waist ; and a profane reader might figure to himself the 
 appearance of the great man as not unlike that of M. le 
 Maire in a French village, dressed in his scarf of office, 
 especially as Penn was no longer the slim, half-angelic 
 youth of his early portraits, but a portly personage 
 inclining to the comely plumpness of middle age. 
 
 There is a suggestion of the purchase of lands at this 
 meeting which is too vague to dwell upon ; but presents 
 at least were exchanged, and the treaty, engrossed on 
 parchment, was delivered to the principal chief after 
 various speeches. There are so few romantic scenes in 
 the modern history of the western world that a great 
 deal has been made of this, of which West painted a 
 bad picture, and which a eulogist so unlikely as Voltaire 
 went out of his way to applaud. But oddly enough, it 
 is not even mentioned in the plain record of the acts of 
 Penn, which forms his first and most authentic biography. 
 The writer of this life gives Penn's original letter to the 
 Indians, in which, so far from acknowledging them as 
 the proprietors of their soil, he informs them, that 'the 
 king of the country wherein I live has given me this 
 great province.' But no further reference is made to 
 the matter and no mention of the famous assembly. 
 There are, however, other records of bargains made 
 with the Indians, and land bought from them, which 
 open a rather difficult question. One feels disposed to 
 ask which, in such a case, is the more honest way of 
 dealing : to act upon the good old rule that ' he should 
 take who has the power *" ; or to go through the form of
 
 204 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 purchasing from the ignorant for a handful of rubbish 
 the land of which they do not know the value ? The 
 Sachems in their savage gravity and simplicity, accord- 
 ing to the record of one transaction, sold as much land 
 ' as a man could ride over in two days ' for a hetero- 
 geneous collection of articles, knives, tomahawks, 
 blankets, kettles, looking-glasses, down to ' a hundred 
 Jew's harps and a hundred strings of beads.' Of the 
 two dishonesties we cannot but think that the first way 
 is the least objectionable ; and that such a semblance of 
 a bargain as the latter was more likely to rouse indig- 
 nation and resentment in the minds of the red men, 
 when — if ever — they knew better, than the simple as- 
 sumption of conquest and superior power in which no 
 delusion was involved. 
 
 Something more remarkable but much less remarked 
 took place when Penn met the first parliament of his 
 state elected according to his own institutions. They 
 began by electing a smaller number of representatives 
 than had been settled by the laws, and speedily showed, 
 though with all outward deference and respect, that they 
 were not satisfied with the charter of their liberties. 
 One cannot but feel that this must have been a painful 
 shock to the magnanimous governor in high tide of 
 conscious greatness, believing that he had done every- 
 thing for them that enlightened liberality could do. 
 But he was neither arbitrary in action nor did he — a 
 greater wonder — show any signs of wounded feeling. He 
 had informed them at once that they were at liberty to 
 ' amend, alter, or add, for the public good,' and on see- 
 ing the signs of dissatisfaction asked them 'whether
 
 The Quaker 205 
 
 they chose to have the old or a new charter.' The 
 assembly unanimously requested a new one with such 
 amendments as had been already agreed upon. To 
 this Penn gave his consent, making them a speech in 
 which he warned them to exercise their powers as a 
 serious duty, and adding an assurance of his ' willingness 
 to oblige ' them, and a hope that their differences might 
 be found reconcilable. So far as appears, no very great 
 difference was made ; the number of the representatives 
 to be elected was lessened, along with other alterations 
 not of primary importance ; and certain taxes upon the 
 future imports and exports were suggested in order to 
 form a revenue for the governor ; but this Penn rejected. 
 The other additions to the constitution were wholly 
 domestic. Arbitrators were appointed according to 
 Quaker usage to prevent as far as possible all recourse 
 to courts of law ; and Penn's benevolent stipulations in 
 respect to orphans were formulated into a court of pro- 
 tection and oversight. It is not, however, of very much 
 consequence what these changes were. The fact that 
 Penn permitted without complaint his work which had 
 occupied him so long to be put aside, and something 
 which, even though preserving most of his views, was 
 not his, to be substituted, is more honourable to him, 
 and a far greater effort than the much vaunted and 
 picturesque incidents of his intercourse with the savages. 
 The natural bonhomie of his character, and the pleasure 
 of generous and friendly communication with an attrac- 
 tive and unsophisticated race, as well as the obvious 
 policy of making friends rather than enemies of the 
 armed and ubiquitous tribes who might have tormented
 
 2o6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the peaceful community beyond endurance, fully account, 
 both on the worldly and unworldly side, for his action 
 in respect to the Indians. But that he should have 
 given up his cherished plans, should have allowed sacri- 
 legious hands to touch his sacred constitution, and sac- 
 rificed several of the features of his ideal state, the 
 darling of his imagination, was indeed worthy of ever- 
 lasting remembrance. Penn proved himself of the 
 noblest mettle by this act of self-abnegation. 
 
 In the meantime he had a very busy and in many 
 ways triumphant life. ' The country was unexception- 
 able,' says the early historian. ' The air exceeding 
 clear, sweet and healthy, and provisions, both meat and 
 drink, good and plentiful.' Penn planned the city of 
 brotherly love with great zeal and zest, intending that 
 it should, with its gardens and shady avenues and 
 public squares, occupy a very large area. ' Thou, Phila- 
 delphia, the virgin settlement of this province, named 
 before thou wert born,' he says apostrophising the new 
 creation. In the intervals of his many occupations, he 
 paid visits to New York : in one instance as a mark of 
 respect to his patron the duke ; in another to Lord 
 Baltimore in Maryland, where there were troubles 
 brewing about the mutual boundaries ; but all was old- 
 fashioned courtesy and politeness in the actual meeting, 
 Maryland convoying Pennsylvania upon his way with 
 every demonstration of kindness. Penn also surveyed 
 and visited his own province, making notes of all its 
 characteristics with an elation and enthusiasm which 
 runs over in his letters. ' Oh, how sweet is the quiet of 
 these parts,' he cries, 'freed from the anxious and
 
 The Quaker 
 
 207 
 
 troublesome solicitations, worries, and perplexities of 
 woful Europe.' And on another occasion : ' With the 
 help of God and such noble friends I will show a pro- 
 vince in seven years equal to her neighbours of forty- 
 years planting,' he declares. Notwithstanding the self- 
 will of the assembly, it was still the ideal state to Penn. 
 ' Of all the places I have seen in the world I remember 
 not one better seated,' he says of Philadelphia ; and 
 nothing can exceed his content with all the natural 
 features of the country. ' Thus he proceeded to settle his 
 government and province and to establish a good corre- 
 spondence with his neighbours,' says his early biographer. 
 The cause of his return to England in the midst of 
 all these manifold occupations has been differently 
 stated. The first historian treats it as a matter of 
 course, * Having settled all things in a prosperous and 
 thriving condition,' that he should go back to England, 
 where his home and family and many interests were. 
 Subsequent writers, however, have found with more or 
 less reason, specific motives for this step, which to them 
 seems an interruption, unintended, of his career. His 
 object was, some say, to settle the boundaries about 
 which Lord Baltimore's agents were making trouble in 
 London, while some are of opinion that the persecutions 
 by which the Quakers were once more specially suffering, 
 and in which he was almost their only hope, compelled 
 his hasty return. Probably both these motives told with 
 him, though of the former we hear very little afterwards ; 
 but we can scarcely doubt that he had always intended 
 a speedy return, none of his affairs in England being 
 wound up, nor anything done that pointed to a final
 
 2o8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 and permanent expatriation. He returned home accord- 
 ingly, after a stay of two years in Pennsylvania, and 
 resumed, though under curious circumstances, the thread 
 of his life. These circumstances we have already re- 
 marked upon. He came back to find Charles dying, 
 and James on the point of ascending the throne. And 
 during the reign of the most unpopular king England 
 has ever had, Penn, the] virtuous, the magnanimous, the 
 law-abiding, he who had conciliated the Indians, who 
 had yielded his own pet scheme to the wish of his 
 colonists, who had loved mercy and peace all his life, 
 was suddenly turned into a court favourite, the confi- 
 dant and companion of a prince with whom divine right 
 was a religion and intolerance piety. To believe, as we 
 do, and as we think all unbiassed spectators must do, 
 that Penn continued an honest man through all, and 
 that his position is to be accounted for by motives 
 which, if not so elevated as in other parts of his career, 
 were yet fully justified to himself, and capable of ex- 
 planation to posterity, is to state one of those paradoxes 
 which are peculiar to human life and action, but alto- 
 gether contrary to theory, and to the consistency which 
 is required by an absolute ideal. Penn was influenced 
 no doubt by motives less than noble. He was flattered 
 by court favour, a curious intoxication which the strong- 
 est heads seem unable to resist. His self-complacency, 
 always an evident feature in his character, and his be- 
 nevolence, were pleased by the power of doing good, 
 which he evidently possessed to some degree, and 
 believed in to a much greater. He had an affectionate 
 regard for James, and believed that he did good to him
 
 The Quaker 209 
 
 also as well as to the persecuted Quakers and others, 
 whom he was able to deliver from persecution. His 
 love to be busy, his kind officiousness and satisfaction 
 in feeling himself a source of universal benefit, united in 
 retaining him in this equivocal position. Sometimes 
 there is no greater snare than the desire to do good to 
 everybody. Penn was carried away by it. He never 
 failed in his duty to his own people, and there is no 
 evidence that he derived any advantage, except that of 
 gratified pride, from his friendship with the king. But 
 still the position was very equivocal, and it would have 
 been better for his general reputation, and for the re- 
 spect we bear him, had he never left Pennsylvania, or 
 had he known no more of James than any other Quaker 
 of his time. We must add, however, that it would have 
 been much worse for the Quakers had this been the 
 case, and perhaps for others to whom Penn stood a 
 friend. 
 
 As strange as any other circumstance in this period 
 of his life is the summary way in which his connection 
 with James seems to have come to an end. While 
 almost every other important personage of the time 
 owned the confusion and bewilderment of the transition, 
 by a series of treacheries sickening to contemplate, 
 and yet partially explaining themselves by the giddy 
 poise of sentiment and interest between the old and the 
 new, Penn seems to have held the balance even by an 
 entire withdrawal from the excitements of public life, 
 neither seeking to recommend himself to William nor 
 to help James ; far less to do both, as was the fashion 
 among his contemporaries. If this was simple high 
 
 O
 
 2IO The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 principle on his part, the refusal on one side to help to 
 re-establish a power which the country had rejected, or 
 on the other to seek favour with the supplanter of his 
 patron, he got no credit for such exalted feeling ; but 
 was compelled to pay the penalties and run the risks of 
 a conspirator without having done anything to warrant 
 suspicion. Again and again he was arrested and brought 
 before the authorities ; at one time before William him- 
 self, on the charge of conspiring in favour of, or holding 
 correspondence with James, no one of all the plotters 
 and traitors of the age being able to conceive of neutral- 
 ity in such circumstances. Nothing, however, could ever 
 be proved against him except that he had received a 
 letter from his former patron. When charged with this, 
 Penn made the obvious reply that he could not prevent 
 James from writing to him, and confounded his accusers 
 by admitting that no doubt it was aid in compassing his 
 restoration that James expected from him. But evi- 
 dently the expectation was quite unfounded. This 
 sudden conclusion of a friendship so warm and so un- 
 likely is as remarkable as anything about it. There exists, 
 on Penn's part at least, no sign of further intercourse. He 
 suffered for his friendship, but he did not continue it. 
 His connection with the patron of his early manhood, 
 the indulgent friend who had never refused to listen 
 to his intercessions, might, so far as we are informed, 
 have been severed from the day when James left 
 England and his throne. 
 
 The history of Pennsylvania during this period of 
 agitation at home was an unhappy one. From the 
 moment of Penn's departure those oppositions which
 
 The Quaker 211 
 
 had already broken out against him increased and 
 strengthened. It would be hopeless to enter here into 
 the chaos of political struggles in the new community, 
 or to inquire what reason the colonists had for their 
 opposition to the governor. So much had been given 
 as to make that which was withheld an intolerable 
 deprivation ; and it might have been foreseen from the 
 beginning that a governor who had the power, which 
 Penn presently exercised, of turning everything upside 
 down, was entirely incompatible with a representative 
 legislation supposed to be formed for the purpose of 
 making the laws and controlling in every way the manage- 
 ment of the province. And how Penn's own mind may 
 have been affected by the influences to which he was 
 subjected in the court of James, and the manner in 
 which his royal master and friend (with, as he believed, 
 the best of motives) conducted his imperial business, it 
 is difficult to tell. These must, however, one cannot 
 but think, have told upon him, and along with the dis- 
 respect and unfaithfulness of his Pennsylvania subjects 
 moved him to arbitrary measures which seem a direct 
 contradiction to his boast of having left to himself and 
 his successors ' no power of doing mischief.' However 
 this may be, the fact is certain that Penn suddenly 
 changed his tactics altogether, and in a moment by the 
 exercise of his own will changed the government of his 
 province, setting up five officials of his own appointment 
 in place of the elective council which had opposed him, 
 and giving these new representatives, not of the people, 
 but himself, authority to ' declare my abrogation of all 
 that has been done in my absence.' This sudden
 
 212 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 change takes away the spectator's breath. No absolute 
 monarch could have been more arbitrary. He dismissed 
 the assembly by the same decree, as Charles and James 
 had so often dissolved parliament with the hope of find- 
 ing more complacence in the next. This was done in 
 1686 at the height of his court life and favour ; and it is 
 almost impossible to believe that William Penn in the 
 quiet of Worminghurst, with no councillors but the 
 honest good citizens and pious Friends who were his 
 natural companions, would have taken such a step. 
 Thus it will be seen that the mild Quaker could be as 
 despotic as any king when he saw occasion for it, and 
 that Sidney's saying (if he did say it), that Penn was as 
 absolute as the Turk, was not without discrimination. 
 
 The change, however, does not seem to have had 
 much effect ; parliaments are not easily managed any- 
 where, and in a new country least of all. Penn made a 
 second alteration in his executive, placing the power in 
 the hands of three persons only, his deputy governor 
 and two councillors ; but still with no improvement in 
 the state of affairs. And things in Pennsylvania were 
 still going from bad to worse when the Revolution 
 changed everything in a moment in England, and 
 brought all Penn's pretensions to the ground along with 
 those of so many others. What his feelings were on 
 this .occasion we have no information. He neither fled 
 with James nor lamented him, nor conspired for him, as 
 we have said. And he was always able to meet with 
 calm and defeat the proceedings against him. But at 
 last a moment came when it seemed expedient that he 
 should show himself no longer in Whitehall or the other
 
 The Quaker 213 
 
 public places where he was so well known. The imme- 
 diate reason of the withdrawal is not made very clear. 
 It was after an accusation made against him by a cer- 
 tain Fuller, who was proved so soon to be a liar and 
 impostor that the impeachment could not be very 
 serious. He thought it, however, advisable to ' retire for 
 a time' and 'appeared but little in public for two or 
 three years.' This is all that is said. He lived retired 
 like a guilty man, in hiding, though innocent. It is 
 painful to follow him to this low and dejected state in 
 which one blow seems to follow another, and he was 
 gradually deprived of everything — honour, credit, work 
 and friends. Means had failed him among other things. 
 His preaching and ministerial labours had to be sacri- 
 ficed to the necessity of concealment, he was separated 
 from his sick wife, his active outdoor life suspended, his 
 energies all restrained. Even 'Friends' turned against him 
 in this period of calamity. How had he offended them, 
 unless perhaps by those assiduities at court which were in 
 their interest, we are not told, but there is in existence 
 the draft of a letter, very much resembling a confession, 
 ' a tender reconciling epistle to all Friends,' which a 
 certain Thomas Jones, son-in-law of George Fox, had 
 drawn out for Penn's adoption, with a view to his recon- 
 ciliation with the offended sect, for which he had done 
 far more than any man living. Quakers, with all their 
 excellencies, were not, apparently, any more than other 
 human communities, exempt from the temptation of 
 kicking a man when he is down. The climax of Penn's 
 misfortunes came when, his difficulties in Pennsylvania 
 being known, and the Quaker colony having refused to
 
 214 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 take any part in the struggle with France which had 
 begun, and was being carried on as hotly in America as 
 elsewhere, King William took the government of his 
 province out of Penn's hands and deprived him of all 
 authority in Pennsylvania. This was a crushing and 
 apparently unexpected blow. Penn's first impulse was 
 to escape, to rush to his ungrateful people, now passed 
 under the iron yoke of a military governor and forced to 
 contribute to the war-expenses, if not to bear arms ; 
 but they refused him even the loan for which he asked 
 to enable him to go. His fortunes had thus reached the 
 lowest ebb in every way. 
 
 Yet the spirit of the man was not crushed. In his 
 retirement he took to the only instrument that remained 
 to him, and wrote, as of old, treatise after treatise with 
 courage and energy unbroken. Alone, almost friendless, 
 everybody standing aloof from him, in the hiding-place 
 which was not much better than a prison, his faithful 
 wife lying ill in the country, his loneliness interrupted 
 only by now and then a stealthy and cautious visitor, 
 the dauntless Quaker, as steadfast, as patient, as wordy 
 as ever, composed among other works, a little book 
 entitled Fruits of Solitude, in the preface of which it 
 was still in him to write as follows : 
 
 ' The Enchiridion, reader, I now present thee with is the 
 fruit of solitude, a school few care to learn in though none 
 instructs us better. Some parts of it are the results of serious 
 reflection, others the flashing of lurid intervals written for 
 private satisfaction and now published as a help to human 
 conduct. 
 
 ' The author blesses God for his retirement and kisses that 
 gentle Hand which led him into it : for though it should
 
 The Quaker 215 
 
 prove barren to the world, it can never do so to him. He 
 has now had some time he could call his own, a property he 
 was never so much master of before, in which he has taken a 
 view of himself and the world and observed wherein he has 
 hit or missed the mark : what might have been done, what 
 mended and what avoided in human conduct : together with 
 omissions and excesses of others as well societies and govern- 
 ments as private families and persons. And he himself 
 thinks, were he to live his life over again, he could not only 
 with God's grace serve Him, but his neighbour and himself 
 better than he hath done, and have seven years of his time to 
 spare. And yet, perhaps, he hath not been the worst or idlest 
 man in the world, nor is he the oldest. And this is the 
 rather said that it might quicken the reader to lose none of 
 the time that is yet thine.' 
 
 Thus always ready to point a moral though at his 
 own expense, always improving the occasion, ever 
 disposed to believe that there must be something by 
 which the world may learn in the experiences of such a 
 man as he, Penn consoled himself in the depth of his 
 darkest distress. There is something in his indomitable 
 spirit, patience, and cheerful complacency, which in such 
 a moment of downfall is almost sublime. He further 
 tackled a still more difficult question in ' An Essay 
 towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe,' which 
 at the opening of an interminable war, and in days so 
 little harmonious with his views, is a very remarkable 
 production. No Peace Society, so far as we are aware, 
 has yet ventured on suggesting such a system of provi- 
 sion for all occasions of quarrel as that which he puts 
 forth in the boldness of innocence. It was thus that he 
 whiled away the heavy days. 
 
 At last there came the moment which, if an injured
 
 2 1 6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 man has the courage and strength to wait for it, arrives 
 for almost every martyr. It seems to have suddenly 
 occurred to a number of spectators, noble and otherwise, 
 that Penn had done nothing to deserve such a fate and 
 that it was preposterous as well as cruel to persecute 
 such a man. Two or three noblemen fired by this idea 
 went in a body to King William. There was nothing, 
 they said boldly, against the man, but what had been 
 said by false witnesses, and such accusations could never 
 be proved. They themselves, all statesmen deeply 
 engaged in the history of the past period, had known 
 Penn, some of them for thirty years. ' And they had 
 never known him to do an ill thing.' King William 
 probably was suddenly struck by the same idea, for such 
 movements are contagious. He had not a word to say 
 against their statement, but answered with confusion that 
 William Penn was his old acquaintance too, that there 
 was nothing against him, nor any reason why he should 
 not move about as freely as ever. It is not often that a 
 great mistake is so evident or so frankly acknowledged, 
 nor indeed are there many mistakes in public life so 
 little justified as this had been when they came to think 
 of it. The imperial authorities for once in a way were 
 ashamed of themselves. They must have felt their pro- 
 ceedings ridiculous as well as without cause. 
 
 Thus the darkness dispersed and Penn walked out 
 into the daylight a free man. But he went from his 
 seclusion to the bedside of his wife who died not more 
 than a month after his release. She had been a tender 
 and faithful wife to him, and not only so but, according 
 to the formal yet touching account of her last days 
 which he published afterwards, ' an active and constant
 
 The Quaker 217 
 
 Friend of more than common capacity, of great modesty 
 and humility, yet most equal and undaunted in courage.' 
 She said on her deathbed, with a confidence unlike the 
 self-accusations of so many other excellent persons, ' I 
 never did in my knowledge a wicked thing in my life.' 
 Penn lamented her no doubt with much sincerity ; but 
 with an ease not uncommon in such circumstances found, 
 little more than a year after, a devout and comely 
 maiden called Hannah Callowhill in Bristol who con- 
 soled him for her loss. His eldest son, Springett, so 
 called after his mother's family, died shortly after the 
 second marriage, a youth of twenty-one, full of that 
 saintly piety which those who die early so often mani- 
 fest. He had two children left : a son, William, who was 
 of a very different mind, a clever, gay and much beloved 
 prodigal who gave his father much grief and trouble, and 
 a daughter, Letitia, His new wife, however, brought him 
 several children, a sort of postscriptal family, in his old age. 
 And now that he had arrived at this stage, there 
 happened to him as to Job a complete change in his 
 life. As one trouble had accumulated upon another 
 going from bad to worse, so, when the brighter impulse 
 had been given, everything went up again almost as 
 continuously for a time. He resumed his labours with 
 great success, the Bishop of one place to which he 
 went in the course of his missionary journeys com- 
 plaining that he had been left to preach to the bare 
 walls in his cathedral while everybody went to hear the 
 Quaker. In other places, not only the general crowd, 
 but dignitaries of the Church attended his services. 
 Probably he regained command at the same time of his 
 Irish estates, which in the confusion of the times had
 
 2 1 8 The Reign of Queen A^me 
 
 brought in nothing or next to nothing. And some time 
 later he managed so fully to justify himself before 
 Queen Mary during her regency that he was fully 
 restored to his supreme rights in Pennsylvania, and 
 all again went well. 
 
 In the year 1699, six years after his liberation and 
 new beginning of life, he paid his second visit to Penn- 
 sylvania with his wife, young children, and daughter 
 Letitia. There the old system of affairs had been in 
 some manner restored, with this great difference : that 
 the assembly had secured for itself, during the temporary 
 reign of the authorities appointed by William, and still 
 retained, the right of the initiative in law making, and now 
 stood in the place of the English House of Commons, 
 instead of that of the Florentine Parliaments or Venetian 
 Consiglio Maggiore. Penn had the wisdom to accept this 
 alteration. He was received with many demonstrations 
 of joy, and settled down for a little while into something 
 of his old life, occupying the ' fair Mansion House ' at 
 Pennsburg, travelling about the country, preaching, 
 resuming his old intercourse with the Indians, and 
 pondering upon all that was best for the colony. His 
 troubles with the assembly, however, continued with 
 little intermission: he succeeded in putting down piracy 
 and smuggling, in which his people had offended ; but 
 when he began to urge upon them the proper care and 
 instruction of the negroes, whom he found to have been 
 introduced in large numbers during his absence, the 
 legislature would neither listen to his advice nor make 
 his proposals into law. Penn had formed no opinions 
 at that time on the general subject of slavery. To him
 
 The Quaker 219 
 
 it meant the subjection under mild paternal law of a 
 race without knowledge or training, it meant conver- 
 sion and instruction in Christianity. He neither asked 
 for freedom to the negroes nor political rights. He 
 asked that their morals should be cared for and regu- 
 lated by the same code, especially in respect to marriage, 
 as those of Christian men, and that means of instruc- 
 tion should be open to them. The assembly began the 
 long conflict between light and darkness on this question 
 by refusing to adopt Penn's suggestion. The governor 
 thus felt, with all the bitterness of a good purpose 
 defeated, that the real power had passed from his hands. 
 During the whole time that he remained in Penn- 
 sylvania the conflict went on between him and the 
 assembly. They made yet another new charter, establish- 
 ing themselves in the rights of which they had got posses- 
 sion ; and notwithstanding their experience of a sway 
 less gentle than that of their founder, it is evident that 
 they took every means of vexing and harassing him in 
 the changed circumstances. Among other things they 
 attempted to regulate the further sale of his lands at a 
 fixed and arbitrary rate, and to appropriate a large por- 
 tion of it as common land. Perhaps he was not sorry to 
 have a peremptory call back to England, where a scheme 
 was being considered to do away with proprietary pro- 
 vinces altogether, and to join them all in one under the 
 Crown. To oppose this was the cause of his return ; but 
 probably in his disappointment with the state of affairs 
 it was a relief to have such an excuse, and his family 
 were unfeignedly glad. He returned to England in the 
 end of 1 70 1, having once more spent two years with
 
 2 20 The Reign of Qtieen Anne 
 
 little satisfaction in the province which had cost him so 
 much. He never went back. Before he left Phila- 
 delphia amid the quarrels and squabbles of the different 
 factions, he had signed a third charter. He expresses 
 no disappointment at these untoward circumstances in 
 the history of his holy experiment ; yet it is impossible 
 not to feel that he must have turned his back upon the 
 land of so many hopes with a heavy heart. 
 
 He sent his son William to the colony some time 
 after, for the sake of the young man himself as well as 
 of the state. Young William had shown himself to be 
 not without ability, and the father hoped that in a new 
 place and among surroundings so different, that change 
 which a parent hopes for so long as hope is possible 
 might come. Penn's letters on this subject are most 
 pathetic. He implores the good man to whose special 
 care he consigns his son to exercise the minutest and 
 most impossible oversight over him. ' Weigh down his 
 levities,' writes the anxious father, ' Watch him, outwit 
 him honestly for his good. Fishings, little journeys to 
 see the Indians, etc., will divert him. . . . Pennsylvania 
 has cost me dearer in my poor child than all other con- 
 siderations. The Lord pity and spare in His great 
 mercy ! I yet hope, O Pennsylvania ! ' he cries in 
 another letter, 'what hast thou not cost me? About 
 ;^30,ooo more than I ever got : two hazardous and 
 fatiguing voyages : my straits and slavery here : and my 
 child's soul almost.' Probably in the midst of his bitter 
 anxiety he reproached himself that his province and his 
 cares had kept him from watching sufficiently over the 
 beginnings of evil. But the father's prayers and hopes
 
 The Quaker 221 
 
 were in vain. Young Penn used his liberty for his own 
 destruction and filled Philadelphia with the sound of 
 his riot and dissipations, covering with shame the name 
 which deserved from the colonists at least nothing but 
 respect and honour. Such experiences are more bitter 
 than any worldly losses. 
 
 Penn returned to England with much trouble of all 
 kinds to bear. The proposed annexation and confisca- 
 tion of the provinces was not carried out, but he had the 
 alarm and the preparations for defence to add to his 
 other difficulties. He seems now to have been almost 
 in the position of a poor man, with mahy debts on his 
 head, ' hardly to be answered,' he says, * from the diffi- 
 culty of getting in what I have a right to — twice its 
 value : which is like starving in the midst of bread.' . . . 
 ' I never was so reduced,' he says on another occasion, 
 ' for Ireland, my old peaceful possession, has hardly any 
 money.' Thus two of his resources were cut off. Penn- 
 sylvania gave him nothing, and misfortune thus sud- 
 denly overwhelmed him in the weakness of his declining 
 years. He had been carrying on a dangerous, long-con- 
 tinued, never settled account with his steward Ford, 
 who, like Glossin in Guy Mannering and many another 
 petty villain in romance, had by pretence of continual 
 advances and false reckonings swallowed up his em- 
 ployer's estate and absorbed every profit into his own. 
 When this man died, his widow and son brought forward 
 an astounding claim for ;^ 14,000, to the consternation of 
 Penn, who was totally unaware of any such debt. It 
 was afterwards settled by a compromise, but in the 
 meantime the governor of Pennsylvania, the friend of
 
 2 22 The Reign of Que eft Anne 
 
 princes, who had begun life as a rich man, and was the 
 nominal owner of a province overflowing with wealth, 
 had to remove from his house to the confines of the 
 Fleet Prison, amid all the filth and misery of that 
 degraded quarter, in order to escape worse indignities 
 still. He had commodious rooms, it is said ; but that 
 such a man should have been thus humiliated in his old 
 age is a pitiful lesson upon the vicissitudes of life. He 
 was obliged to mortgage the province in order to obtain 
 money to satisfy Ford's claim. The Quakers, now 
 beginning to be, as they have always been since, a 
 wealthy body, lent him on this security the money, 
 i^6,ooo, of which he stood in need. One would have 
 thought they might have served so far without any 
 security a man who had done so much for them ; but 
 there is a limit to religious brotherhood which alas 1 
 but seldom vanquishes the percentages of civilised life. 
 The reader who may perhaps have seen in Mr. Besant's 
 story. The Chaplam of the Fleet, a graphic picture of 
 that lawless place in the eighteenth century, may form 
 some idea of what Penn's feelings must have been when 
 forced to live among such sounds and sights. 
 
 Just before this reverse of fortune he had been enjoy- 
 ing some degree of that royal favour which had once 
 been so pleasant to him. Queen Anne came to the 
 throne soon after his return from America. She had 
 known him as her father's friend and must have seen 
 him constantly at Whitehall in former days. There 
 were no longer any urgent suits to be carried to court, 
 any imprisoned Quakers to be pleaded for ; but the old 
 courtly haunts must have been grateful to the exile who
 
 The Quaker 223 
 
 had gone through so many agitations since he was 
 driven from them. 'Being in the queen's favour,' his 
 historian says, ' he was often at court ; and for his con- 
 veniency took lodgings at Kensington.' If he did this, 
 ' as seems to be implied, to be near her, the queen's 
 favour must have been great. We have no further 
 details, however, except that Anne was favourable to 
 him in all the further questions that came into discus- 
 sion. Thus he ended his public life as he had begun 
 it, in enjoyment of that fickle brightness which so seldom 
 ripens any substantial fruit, but which, having once 
 enjoyed and lost it, the wisest of men feels himself dimin- 
 ished and disappointed without. It is pleasant to think 
 that it shone on Penn and warmed and lighted up the 
 end of his career. How it was that he, a man who refused 
 to acknowledge any earthly precedence or greatness, and 
 who made his family miserable, and to all appearance 
 ruined his own prospects rather than take off his hat, the 
 slightest and easiest of civilities, so much as to the king 
 and his own father, should have made his way so suc- 
 cessfully into the favour of kings is a problem which we 
 need not attempt to solve. Perhaps the little show 
 of Quaker resistance to the flatteries and servility of 
 that atmosphere tickled royalty, and was a grateful 
 and piquant change from the obsequiousness of the 
 common courtier — especially as the plain man's real 
 sentiments were not so rebellious to courtly precedent 
 as his manners and speech. 
 
 After Penn was liberated from his unwholesome re- 
 sidence ' within the rules of the Fleet ' he went further 
 out of London than even the ' lodging at Knightsbridge
 
 224 The Reign of Qiteen Anne 
 
 over against Hyde Park Corner,' which had been his 
 former dwelling, and sought a semi-country life in 
 Brentford ; but finding after a while ' the air near 
 London no longer agreeable to his declining constitu- 
 tion, took a handsomer seat at Rushwood near Twyford, 
 in Buckinghamshire,' where he ended his life. We may 
 believe that his affairs must have been more comfortably 
 settled before he was able to make this move, though 
 his wife complains of their 'shrunk income.' Events, 
 however, become few as the busy day draws to a close. 
 He travelled and preached as long as he was able, and 
 struggled almost to the last against that contradiction 
 of sinners in the colony which had brought so much 
 trouble into his life. A great deal of bargaining went 
 on between Penn and the government about the sale of 
 Pennsylvania, which he was greatly tempted to resign 
 for a compensation in money ; but he would not do so 
 unless he could secure to his colonists the undisturbed 
 enjoyment of the privileges of the constitution, which 
 though they had altered it so often was not with his will 
 to be taken from them. These negotiations failed, the 
 government refusing to accord so much unwonted 
 liberty. It was on this failure, or while the negotiations 
 were still going on, that Penn wrote his last letter to his 
 people. It is a letter full of dignity, of sad acknowledg- 
 ment of his failure among them, and a serious, almost 
 solemn, exhortation to consider what they were about. 
 At last the heart of the ungrateful colony was touched. 
 The old man's remonstrance produced so great an effect, 
 that at the election of the next assembly, only represen- 
 tatives who were of Penn's party were chosen, and for
 
 The Quaker 225 
 
 the first time the legislature of his province was in full 
 accord with the governor. But like so many things in 
 this life, the change came too late. Penn had been 
 stricken with paralysis in the act of writing privately to 
 one of the colonists, before he could hear of that happy 
 alteration, and he never seems to have recovered his 
 mental powers sufficiently to understand what had taken 
 place. 
 
 He was a long time dying, like so many whose life 
 has been full of work and agitation. His half life was 
 a gentle twilight through which gleams of consciousness 
 still came. He was able to talk of the events of his past 
 existence, though he did not remember the names of his 
 anxious friends, and would shuffle about the spacious 
 rooms at Rushwood, and sometimes utter ' very sound 
 and savoury expressions ' or even speak ' several sensible 
 sentences when he was taken to Reading to the meeting 
 of the Friends.' But this is but a sad and broken reflec- 
 tion of existence, though it does not seem to have been 
 painful to him. He died in 1718 at the age of seventy- 
 four, after five years of this gradual and gentle decay. 
 
 So ended a life full of exertion, often noble, always 
 friendly, good-natured and helpful to other men. If 
 we can scarcely see at this distance the splendours of 
 apostleship which many have found in it, it is at least 
 a career which no one can follow without respect and 
 interest. If his life and actions in England were some- 
 times a little questionable, for his colony he was perfect, 
 serving it with devotion and patience unfailing, giving 
 both in hope and in failure the best of all he had and 
 was to its service, growing wise and noble for its sake, 
 
 P
 
 226 The Reign of Queen Ajine 
 
 and shaking from him on its behoof all littlenesses and 
 asperities. He founded it in freedom and peace, and 
 till the last moment of his conscious life he never inter- 
 mitted his efforts to preserve it in the same. He died 
 upholding its liberties, and protesting with his last 
 breath against that accursed thing which has wrought 
 America so much harm, which had crept into Penn- 
 sylvania, but which the Quaker parliament, moved at 
 last by his words and example, were the first to dis- 
 countenance and put down. Slavery had come in so 
 insidiously, with so much the air of a possible advantage 
 to the heathen races thus brought into a Christian land, 
 that Penn himself had been deceived at first. But he 
 saw more clearly before his death and left his en- 
 lightened views as a heritage to his people. For all 
 this, America, and especially his own province, has 
 good reason to regard William Penn as one of her 
 purest heroes. 
 
 At home there was a great deal more of him to 
 criticise ; and though his defenders have wiped off some 
 of the particular accusations made against him, there yet 
 remains a great incongruity in his life which the most hot 
 apologist can scarcely ignore. Perhaps an explanation 
 of much that is equivocal in it may be found in that 
 unfriendly description given by Bishop Burnet. ' He 
 had such an opinion of his faculty of persuading that he 
 thought none could stand before it, though he was 
 singular in this opinion.' A hostile eye sometimes sees 
 the characteristic weakness which is veiled to more charit- 
 able regards ; and there is a truth in this which those 
 who have read Penn's numberless addresses will recog--
 
 The Qtiaker 227 
 
 nise. He thought that his ' faculty of persuading ' 
 might save King James, as it certainly did save multi- 
 tudes of his fellow-believers with King James. He 
 thought he had but to speak (for one instance) and the 
 fellows of Magdalen would be delivered. He thought 
 again that he had but to represent to them the circum- 
 stances, and that he should persuade them to submission. 
 In both cases he failed, but in both cases an amiable 
 complacency was his chief fault, a conviction that ' none 
 could stand before ' the voice of the charmer in his own 
 person. That he had this faculty of persuading, though 
 not to the extent he believed, is evident enough in his 
 life. He won over his father, a jovial and irascible 
 sailor, he won the gloomy and cruel James, he prevailed 
 with the simple-minded Indians so that he was to them 
 as an angel from heaven. He had good reason to have 
 faith in this particular in his own powers ; but such 
 powers have always a limit beyond which they cannot 
 pass ; and there is nothing so difficult as to convince a 
 man who has succeeded often when he arrives against the 
 blank wall of human unpersuadableness at the last.
 
 THE DEAN 
 
 There are few figures in history, and still fewer in 
 literature, which have occupied so great a place in the 
 world's attention, or who retain so strong a hold upon 
 its interest as that of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. 
 Patrick's. It is considerably more than a century since 
 he died, old and mad and miserable, a man who had 
 never been satisfied with life or felt his fate equal to his 
 deserts, who disowned and hated (even when he served 
 it) the country of his birth, and with fierce and bitter 
 passion denounced human nature itself, and left a sting 
 in almost every individual whom he loved : a man 
 whose preferment and honour were far from the centre 
 of public affairs, and who had no hereditary claim on 
 the attention of England. Yet when the English 
 reader, or he who in the furthest corner of the New 
 World has the same right to the literature of his native 
 language as we have, reads the title at the head of this 
 page, neither the one nor the other will have any diffi- 
 culty in distinguishing among all the ecclesiastical dig- 
 nitaries of the age of which we treat, who it is that 
 stands conspicuous as the Dean. Not he of royal West- 
 minster or Windsor, not the ruler of any great cathedral 
 
 228
 
 DEAN SWIFT 
 From a copperplate engraving by Pierre Fourdrinier after a painting by Charles Jervas
 
 The Dean 229 
 
 in the rich English midlands, where tradition and 
 wealth and an almost catholic supremacy unite to 
 make the great official of the Church as important as 
 any official of the State — but far from these influences, 
 half as far apart as America is now from the centre of 
 English society, and the sources of power — a native and 
 an ecclesiastic of a country which, the most obstinate 
 Conservative of to-day will not hesitate to allow, was 
 then deeply wronged and cruelly misgoverned by Eng- 
 land, many and anxious as have been her efforts since 
 to make amends. 
 
 I feel that almost an apology is due to the reader 
 from every writer who undertakes to discuss over again, 
 without any pretence to original lights, or serious indi- 
 vidual investigations, the character and story of Swift. 
 It has been already so often dealt with, by those most 
 able to form a literary opinion, so often discussed with 
 the minutest examination of every incident, that there 
 seems nothing now left to say, nothing that can throw 
 any further light upon a problem which has baffled 
 every student. These excellent arguments against 
 reopening the subject, especially by a hand without 
 authority or pretension, are however no more effectual 
 than are the other excellent arguments against doing 
 that which it specially pleases us to do which abound 
 in every path. I am aware of all the risks of criticism 
 I undergo. But I may take refuge in the disrespectful 
 description given, I believe, many years ago of a similar 
 collection of historical sketches, in which the writer was 
 compared to the domestic cicerone in a great house, the 
 respectable housekeeper giving her guidance through
 
 230 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the picture gallery of the historical mansion to a crowd 
 ever renewed of sight-seers. The gentle reader is, like 
 the tourist, a person who is continually renewed. Some- 
 times the voice of the housekeeper, who shows him the 
 gallery, is not without instruction to him, sometimes it 
 amuses him in the plenitude of his superior knowledge. 
 It is her part to indicate all the personages who stand 
 stately on the walls, and the extreme humility of leav- 
 ing out one, who may be supposed too great for her 
 comprehension, is a moral virtue not required from her. 
 I venture, with a humble mind, in the same way to say : 
 This is the great Jonathan Swift, once Dean of St. 
 Patrick's, a man of whom most people have already ex- 
 pressed their opinions, of whom I hold my small opinion 
 also. His is one of those mysteries of human nature 
 which will never be found out. Nothing new is ever 
 likely now to turn up to make it more comprehensible. 
 But its interest is endless, even when it is an imperfect 
 hand which traces the strange outline once again. 
 
 Among the many strange examples of that far more 
 than republican power (not always most evident in 
 republics) by which a man of native force and genius, 
 however humble, finds his way to the head of affairs 
 and impresses his individuality upon his age, when 
 thousands born to better fortunes are swept away as 
 nobodies, Swift is one of the most remarkable. His 
 origin, though noted by himself, not without a certain 
 pride as from a family of gentry not unknown in their 
 district, was in his own person as lowly and poor as it 
 was almost possible to be. The posthumous son of a 
 poor official in the Dublin law courts, owing his educa-
 
 The Dean 231 
 
 tion to the kindness, or perhaps less the kindness than 
 the family pride, of an uncle — Swift entered the world as 
 a hanger-on, waiting what fortune and a patron might 
 do for him, a position scarcely comprehensible to young 
 Englishmen nowadays, though then the natural method 
 of advancement. Such a young man in the present 
 day would betake himself to his books with the practical 
 aim of an examination before him, and the hope of 
 immediate admission through that gate to the public 
 service and all that its chances can bestow. It is amu- 
 sing to speculate what the difference might have been 
 had Jonathan Swift, coming raw with his degree from 
 Trinity College, Dublin, shouldered his robust way to 
 the head of an examination list, and thus made himself 
 at a stroke independent of patronage, and gone forth to 
 reign and rule and distribute justice in India, or pushed 
 himself upwards among the gentlemanly mediocrities of 
 a public office. One asks, Would he have found that 
 method more successful, and endured the desk and the 
 routine of his office, and ' got on ' with the head of his 
 department, better than he did the monotony and sub- 
 jection, the possible slights and spurns of Sir William 
 Temple's household, which he entered half servant half 
 equal, the poor relation, the secretary and companion of 
 that fastidious philosopher? The question may be cut 
 short however by the almost certainty that Swift could 
 not have gained his promotion in any such way. His 
 age had not learned the habit of utilising education, and 
 he was one of the idle youths of fame. ' He was stopped 
 of his degree,' he himself writes in his autobiographical 
 notes, ' for dulness and insufficiency : and at last hardly
 
 232 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 admitted in a manner little to his credit, which is called 
 in that college speciali gratia' Recent biographers 
 have striven to prove that this really meant nothing to 
 Swift's discredit ; but it is to be supposed that in such a 
 matter he is himself the best authority. 
 
 The life of the household of dependents at Moor 
 Park, where young Swift attended Sir William's pleasure 
 in the library, while Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, the 
 waiting-gentlewomen of a system which now lingers only 
 in courts, hung about my lady, her relations, gossips, 
 servants, is to us extremely difficult to realise, and still 
 more to understand. This little cluster of secondary 
 personages, scarcely at all elevated above the servants 
 with whom they sometimes sat at table, and whose 
 offices they were always liable to be called upon to per- 
 form — yet who were all cousins, with gentle blood in 
 their veins and a relationship more or less distinct with 
 the heads of the house, is indeed one of the most curious 
 peculiarities of the age. When we read in one of 
 Macaulay's brilliant sketches, or in Swift's own words, 
 or in the indications given by both history and fiction, 
 that the parson, chaplain perhaps at the great house, 
 humble priest of the parish, found his natural mate in 
 the waiting-maid, it is generally forgotten that the wait- 
 ing-maid was thus in most cases quite as good as the 
 parson, a gently bred and well-descended woman, like 
 her whom an unkind yet not ignoble fate made into the 
 Stella whom we all know, the mild and modest star of 
 Swift's existence. It was no doubt a step in the transi- 
 tion from the great medieeval household where the squire 
 waited on the knight with a lowliness justified by the
 
 The Dean 233 
 
 certainty of being himself knight in his turn, and where 
 my lady's service was a noble education, the only school 
 accessible to the young gentlewomen of her connection 
 — down to our own less picturesque and more indepen- 
 dent days, in which personal service has ceased to be com- 
 patible with the pretensions of any who can assume by 
 the most distant claim to be gentlefolk. The institution 
 is very apparent in Shakespeare's days — the waiting- 
 gentlewomen who surround his heroines being of en- 
 tirely different metal from the soubrettes of modern 
 comedy. And even such a fine gentleman as John 
 Evelyn, in no need of patronage, was content and proud 
 that his daughter should enter a great household to learn 
 how to comport herself in the world. 
 
 In the end of the seventeenth century the depen- 
 dents perhaps were more absolutely dependent. But 
 even this like most things had its better and worse 
 sides. That a poor widow with her child, like Stella's 
 mother, should find refuge in the house of her wealthy 
 kinswoman, at no heavier cost than that of attending 
 to Lady Temple's linen and laces, and find there 
 such a training for her little girl as might have ended 
 indeed in the rude household of Parson Trulliber, but 
 at the same time might fit her to take her place in 
 a witty and brilliant society, and enter into all the 
 thoughts of the most powerful genius of his time — was no 
 ill fate ; nor is there anything that is less than noble and 
 befitting (in theory) in the association of that young man 
 of genius, whatever exercises of patience he might be 
 put to, with the highly cultured man of the world, the 
 ex-ambassador and councillor of kings, under whose
 
 234 The Reign of Qtteen Anne 
 
 auspices he could learn to understand both books and 
 men, and see the best company of his time, and acquire 
 at second hand all the fruits of a ripe experience. So 
 that perhaps there is something to be said after all for 
 that curious little community at Moor Park where Sir 
 William, like a god, made the day good or evil for his 
 people according as he smiled or frowned, and his 
 young Irish secretary, looking out uneasily upon a world 
 in which his future fate was so unassured, had yet the 
 wonderful chance, once if no more, of explaining Eng- 
 lish institutions to King William : and in his leisure the 
 amusement of teaching little Esther how to write, and 
 learning from her baby prattle — which must have been 
 the delight of the house, kept up and encouraged by her 
 elders — that ' little language ' which has become a sort 
 of synonym for the most intimate and endearing utter- 
 ances of tenderness. No doubt Sir William himself 
 (who left her a modest little fortune when he died) must 
 have loved to hear the child talk ; while even Lady 
 Gififord and the rest, having no responsibility for her 
 parts of speech, kept her a baby as long as possible, and 
 delighted in the pretty jargon to which foolish child- 
 lovers cling in all ages after the little ones themselves 
 have grown too wise to use it more. 
 
 Swift left Ireland along with many more in the com- 
 motion that succeeded the Revolution of 1688, a very 
 poor and homely lad with nothing but the learning, such 
 as it was, picked up in a somewhat disorderly university 
 career. Through his mother, then living at Leicester, 
 and on the score of humble relationship between Mrs. 
 Swift and Lady Temple, of whom the reader will re-
 
 The Dean 235 
 
 member the romance and tender history, lately placed 
 before the world in her delightful letters, he was intro- 
 duced to Sir William Temple's household, but scarcely 
 it would appear at first to any permanent position there. 
 He was engaged, an unfriendly historian says, ' at the 
 rate of ;^20 a year ' as amanuensis and reader, ' but Sir 
 William never favoured him with his conversation, nor 
 allowed him to sit at table with him.' Temple's own 
 account of the position, however, contains nothing at all 
 derogatory to the young man, for whom about a year 
 after he endeavoured, no doubt in accordance with 
 Swift's own wishes, to find a situation with Sir Robert 
 Southwell then going to Ireland as Secretary of State. 
 Sir William describes Swift as of ' a good family in 
 Herefordshire.' * He has lived in my house, read to me, 
 writ for me and kept all my accounts as far as my small 
 occasions required. He knows Latin and Greek, some 
 French, writes a very good account hand, is very honest 
 and diligent, and has good friends, though they have for 
 the present lost their fortunes,' the great man says, and 
 he recommends the youth ' either as a gentleman to wait 
 on you, or a clerk to write under you, or upon any estab- 
 lishment of the college to recommend him to a fellowship 
 there, which he has a just pretence to.' This shows how 
 little there was in the position of ' a gentleman to wait 
 upon you,' of which the young suitor need have been 
 ashamed. 
 
 Swift's own account of his speedy return to Ireland is 
 that it was by advice of the physicians ' who weakly 
 imagined that his native air might be of some use to re- 
 cover his health,' which he was young enough to have
 
 o 
 
 6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 endangered by the temptations of Sir William's fine 
 gardens : a ' surfeit of fruit ' being the innocent cause to 
 which he attributes the disease which haunted him for 
 all the rest of his life. His absence, however, was of 
 very short duration — Sir Robert Southwell apparently 
 having no use for his personal services, or means of pre- 
 ferring him to a fellowship : and he returned to Moor 
 Park in 1690, where he remained for four years. It is 
 quite clear, whatever changes might arise in his politics, 
 that he identified himself entirely with his patron's 
 opinions and even prejudices, and was a loyal and de- 
 voted retainer, both then and afterwards. When Sir 
 William became involved in a literary quarrel with the 
 great scholar Bentley, young Swift rushed into the field 
 with a jeu d' esprit which has outlived all other records 
 of that controversy. The Battle of the Books could 
 scarcely have been written in aid of a hard or con- 
 temptuous master. And years after, when he had a 
 house of his own, and had entered upon his independent 
 career, he turned his little rectory garden into a humble 
 imitation of the Dutch paradise which Temple had made 
 to bloom in the wilds of Surrey, with a canal and willow 
 walk like those which were so dear to King William and 
 his courtiers. When Temple died, it was to Swift and 
 not to any of his nephews that Sir William committed 
 the charge of his papers and literary remains. This 
 does not look like a hard bondage on one side or any 
 tyrannical sway on the other, notwithstanding a few 
 often quoted phrases which are taken as implying com- 
 plaint. 'Don't you remember,' Swift asks long after, 
 ' how I used to be in pain when Sir William Temple
 
 The Dean 237 
 
 would look cold and out of temper for three or four 
 days, and I used to suspect a hundred reasons.' But 
 these words need not represent anything more than that 
 sensitiveness to the aspect of the person upon whom his 
 prospects and comfort depended, which is inevitable to 
 any individual in a similar position however considerate 
 and friendly the patron may be. The hard-headed and 
 unbending philosopher, James Mill, was just as sensi- 
 tive to the looks of his kind friend and helper in the 
 early struggles of life, Jeremy Bentham, in whose smug 
 countenance Mill divined unspoken offences with an 
 ingenuity worthy of a self-torturing woman. It was 
 natural indeed that a high-spirited young man should 
 fret and struggle as the years went on and nothing 
 happened to enlarge his horizon beyond the trees of 
 Moor Park. He was sent to King William, as has been 
 said, on one occasion when Temple was unable to wait 
 upon his majesty, to explain to him the expediency of 
 a parliamentary measure ; and this was no doubt in- 
 tended by his patron as a means of bringing him under 
 the king's notice. William would seem to have taken a 
 kind of vague interest in the secretary, which he ex- 
 pressed in an odd way by offering him a captain's com- 
 mission in a cavalry regiment — an offer which did not 
 tempt Swift : and by teaching him how to cut asparagus 
 * in the Dutch way,' and to eat up all the stalks, as the 
 dean afterwards in humorous revenge made an unlucky 
 visitor of his own do. But William, notwithstanding 
 these whimsical evidences of favour, neither listened to 
 the young secretary's argument nor gave him a prebend 
 as had been hoped.
 
 -o< 
 
 The Reign of Queen Afine 
 
 In 1694 there seems to have arrived another crisis 
 in Swift's affairs, when the unprogressive nature of his 
 life and the absence of any opening into the greater 
 world produced in him that fiery impatience which be- 
 longed to his character and a determination to do some- 
 thing, whatever that something might be. Up to this 
 time he had not taken orders, though his mind must 
 have been quite made up to do so, and he was now 
 supposed to be waiting for the prebend still expected 
 from the king. The result, however, of his restlessness, 
 and no doubt remonstrances, was that Sir William 
 Temple, with perhaps a certain exasperation, offered him 
 ' an employ of about ^120 a year ' in the Rolls office in 
 Ireland, of which Temple held the sinecure office of 
 master. ' Whereupon,' says Swift's own narrative, 
 ' Mr. Swift told him that since he had now an oppor- 
 tunity of living without being driven into the Church for 
 a maintenance, he was resolved to go to Ireland and 
 take holy orders.' This arbitrary sort of decision to 
 balk his patron's tardy service and take his own way in 
 spite of him, was probably as much owing to a character- 
 istic blaze of temper as to the somewhat fantastic disin- 
 terestedness thus put forward, though Swift was never 
 a man greedy of money or disposed to sacrifice his pride 
 to the acquisition of gain, notwithstanding certain traits 
 of miserliness afterwards developed in his character. Sir 
 William was ' extremely angry,' hurt no doubt as many 
 a patron has been by the ingratitude of the dependent 
 who would not trust everything to him, but claimed 
 some freewill in the disposition of his own life. The 
 circumstances both on one side and the other are quite
 
 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE 
 
 Front the picture hy Sir Peter Lely in the National Portrait Gallery
 
 The Dean 239 
 
 within the reach of human experience, and were it not 
 that a great many writers have emulated each other in 
 explaining and re-explaining, this early incident in 
 Swift's life would be simple enough : the young man 
 on the one hand feeling his youth glide away from him, 
 and eager to strike in for himself into the great battle- 
 ground of human affairs instead of continuing the mere 
 confidant and audience of another man, while Temple 
 on the other, wounded by the defection of the youth for 
 whom no doubt he felt that he had done much, and in- 
 tended to do more, still refused to be drawn into any 
 engagement as to what he would do for him, and took 
 as a personal offence his natural desire to be free and 
 his own master. Had they been uncle and nephew, 
 or even father and son, the same thing might easily have 
 happened. 
 
 Swift set out for Dublin full of indignation and excite- 
 ment, ' everybody judging I did best to leave him ' — 
 but alas, in this as in so many cases pride was doomed 
 to speedy downfall. On reaching Dublin, and taking 
 the necessary steps for his ordination, Swift found that 
 it was necessary for him to have a recommendation and 
 certificate from the patron in whose house so many years 
 of his life had been spent. No doubt it must have been 
 a somewhat bitter necessity to bow his head once more 
 before the protector whom he had left in anger, and ask 
 for this. Macaulay describes him as addressing his 
 patron in the language ' of a lacquey or even of a beggar,' 
 but we doubt greatly, if apart from prejudice or the 
 tingle of these unforgetable words, any impartial reader 
 would form such an impression. ' The particulars
 
 240 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 expected of me,' Swift writes, ' are what relates to 
 morals and learning, and the reasons of quitting your 
 honour's family — that is whether the last was occasioned 
 by any ill action.' ' Your honour ' has a somewhat 
 servile tone in our days, but in Swift's the formality was 
 natural. Lady Gifford, Temple's sister-in-law, in the 
 further quarrels which followed Sir William's death spoke 
 of this as a penitential letter, and perhaps it was not 
 wonderful that she should look on the whole matter 
 with an unfavourable eye. No doubt the ladies of the 
 house thought young Swift an unnatural monster for 
 wishing to go away and thinking himself able to set up 
 for himself without their condescending notice and the 
 godlike philosopher's society and instruction, and were 
 pleased to find his pride so quickly brought down. Sir 
 William, however, it would seem, behaved as a phi- 
 losopher and a gentleman should, and gave the required 
 recommendation with magnanimity and kindness. 
 
 Thus the young man had his way. He got a small 
 benefice in the north of Ireland, the little country parish 
 of Kilroot, in which doubtless he expected that the sense 
 of independence would make up to him for other 
 deprivations. It was near Belfast, among those hard- 
 headed Scotch colonists whom he could never endure. 
 And probably this had something to do with the speedy 
 revulsion of his mind. He remained in this banishment 
 for a year ; and it was during this period that he seems 
 for the only time in his life to have thought of marriage. 
 There is in existence a ferv^ent and impassioned letter 
 addressed to the object of his affections, a Miss 
 Joan Waring, whom after the fashion of the time he
 
 The Dean 241 
 
 called Varina. But he does not seem in this first attempt 
 to have had the usual good fortune which attended 
 his relationships with women. Miss Waring did not 
 respond with the same warmth, indeed was discourag- 
 ing and coldly prudent. He was still pleading for a 
 favourable answer when there arrived a letter from 
 Moor Park inviting his return, Sir William's pride too 
 having apparently broken down under the effect of the 
 blank made by Swift's absence. He made instant use 
 of this invitation, which must have soothed his injured 
 feelings and restored his self-satisfaction as nothing else 
 could, to shake the resolution of the ungrateful Varina. 
 ' I am once more offered,' he says, ' the advantage to 
 have the same acquaintance with greatness which I 
 formerly enjoyed, and with better prospects of interest,' 
 and though he offers magnanimously ' to forego it all 
 for your sake,' yet it is evident that the proposal had set 
 the blood stirring in his veins, and that the dependence 
 which he had broken loose from, with a kind of despera- 
 tion, once more seemed to him, unless Varina had been 
 melted by the sacrifice he would have made for her, to 
 be the most desirable thing in the world. 
 
 Notwithstanding the evidence thus afforded by his 
 own words and actions, Macaulay and, after him, 
 Thackeray still persistently represent this period of 
 Swift's life as one of unmitigated hardship and suffering. 
 His return to Moor Park is to them a mere return to 
 bondage, and * the advantage of the acquaintance with 
 greatness,' of which he himself boasts, is not allowed to 
 count in his favour. I have no desire to throw any of 
 the usual stones at Lord Macaulay. When all is said 
 
 Q
 
 242 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 against him that can be said there still remains a great 
 gratitude due to the brilliant historian who first made 
 English history breathe and burn with all the fascination 
 of the most enthralling tale. But when he studiously 
 shuts out all those higher lights which he can use so 
 wonderfully, and chooses the most contemptuous com- 
 monplace of description to reduce and nullify a character 
 or scene which he does not love, the effort is no doubt 
 very exasperating. It is never more so than when, scorn- 
 ing the guidance of facts as well as the sentiment of 
 humanity, he tells us that ' the humble student ' made 
 love to a pretty waiting maid who was the chief orna- 
 ment of the servants' hall — by way of explaining one of 
 the chief incidents of Swift's renewed residence at Moor 
 Park, as well as the exquisite tender story, itself of a 
 more pathetic sweetness than any mere romance of love 
 and marriage, which has since made the name of Stella 
 so well known. There is something in that story which 
 makes it peculiarly barbarous and inhuman to associate 
 it with the common or ridiculous. Marriage, as we are 
 all aware, is the state pronounced to be honourable even 
 by an authority so little inclined to it as S. Paul ; but 
 there is a subtle and delicate charm about a relationship 
 in which there was so profound an affection, such per- 
 fect confidence, freedom and faith, such playfulness and 
 such devotion, as may be allowed once in a way to stand 
 above the more usual attraction of the common love-story. 
 Hester Johnson was a child of seven when young Swift, 
 ' the humble student,' went first to Moor Park, She was 
 only fifteen when he returned, no longer as a sort of 
 learned man of all work, but on the entreaty of the
 
 The Dean 243 
 
 patron who felt the want of his company so much as 
 to forget all grievances. He was not now a humble 
 student, Temple's satellite and servant, but his friend 
 and coadjutor, fully versed in all his secrets, and most 
 probably already chosen as the guardian of his fame and 
 the executor of his purposes and wishes — therefore it 
 is not possible that Macaulay's reckless picturesque 
 description could apply to either time. Such an easy 
 picture, however, has more effect upon the general 
 imagination than more careful outlines, and the sting of 
 those terms remains even among those readers who are 
 well enough aware that Swift was not a sort of literar)^ 
 lacquey nor Stella an Abigail. 
 
 Whatever the drawbacks were, however, of this second 
 residence at Moor Park, they did not last long. The 
 young Irish clergyman returned eagerly to his acquaint- 
 ance with greatness in 1695 J ^rid Sir William Temple 
 died, as Swift records affectionately, on the morning of 
 the 27th January 1699, ' and with him all that was good 
 and amiable among men,' He died, however, leaving 
 the young man who had spent so many years of his life 
 under his wing scarcely better for that long subjection. 
 Swift had a legacy of ;^ioo for his trouble in editing 
 his patron's memoirs, and he got the profits of these me- 
 moirs, amounting, Mr. Forster calculates, to ;^6oo, which 
 was no inconsiderable legacy ; but no one of the many 
 appointments which were then open to the retainers 
 of the great, and especially to young men of letters, 
 had come in Swift's way. He himself, it is said, ' still be- 
 lieved in the royal pledge for the first prebend that should 
 fall vacant in Westminster or Canterbury ' ; but this
 
 244 '^^^^ Reign .of Queen Anne 
 
 was a hope which 'had accompanied him ever since he 
 expounded constitutional law to King William six years 
 before, and could not be very lively after this long interval. 
 Thus his life came to a sudden and complete break. 
 The great household, with its easy and uneasy jumble 
 of patrons and dependents, fell asunder and ceased to 
 be. The younger members of the family were jealous 
 of the last bequest, which put the fame of their distin- 
 guished relative into the hands of a stranger, and did 
 their best to set Swift down in his proper place and to 
 proclaim how much he was the creature of their uncle's 
 bounty. In the breaking-up which followed there were 
 many curious partings and conjunctions. Hester John- 
 son, the pet of the great house, to whom Sir William 
 had left a little independence, left her mother's care and 
 joined her fortunes to those of Mrs. Dingley, another de- 
 pendent and relative of the family, who had also, it would 
 appear, some small means, enough for a spare feminine 
 living, while the girl's mother remained, notwithstanding 
 a second marriage, in the changed household. Perhaps 
 Mrs. Dingley and the girl whom he had taught and 
 petted from her childhood had taken Swift's side in the 
 Gifford-Temple difference, and so got on uneasy terms 
 with the rest of the household, always faithful to my 
 lady ? At all events, at the breaking-up, Hester, with 
 her little fortune, separated herself from the connection 
 generally, and, with her elder friend, made an indepen- 
 dent new beginning, as Swift was compelled to do. 
 There have been many discussions of almost every 
 point of the relationship between these two ; but no one, 
 so far as we are aware, has thrown any light on the ques-
 
 The Dean 245 
 
 tion why at eighteen the girl should have left her mother 
 and launched herself upon the world, which seems the 
 first thing to be explained, as it afforded a reason for 
 Swift's first interference in her affairs, and threw them 
 into a combination which lasted all their lives. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the excitement and 
 sense of novelty which was in that universal breaking- 
 up ; the troubles and tumults of the departing ; the 
 angry lady vexed beyond measure that it should be 
 Swift, the secretary, whose defection she had resented, 
 whom probably she had never forgiven, who had so 
 much power put into his hands and authority what to 
 produce and what to leave out in the great man's 
 memoirs ; the partisans on either side hot, angry, in- 
 dignant ; the freshness and expectation of the wide 
 outer world around, in which fortunes had now to be 
 carved out, with no refuge to fall back upon and no 
 means of postponing the inevitable struggle. Swift was 
 thirty-one ; too old to be beginning his career, yet young 
 enough to turn with eager zest to the unknown, and not 
 yet embittered by disappointment, although the results 
 of his service with Sir William Temple had come to 
 nothing. A kind of irresistible fate seemed to impel 
 him back to his native country, though he did not love 
 it, and forced him to be an Irishman in spite of himself 
 The only post that came in his way was a chaplaincy, 
 conjoined with a secretaryship, in the suite of the Earl 
 of Berkeley, appointed one of the Lords-Justices in 
 Ireland, and just then entering upon his duties. Swift 
 accepted the position in hopes that he should be 
 continued as Lord Berkeley's secretary, and possibly go
 
 246 The Reign of Queen Ajme 
 
 with him afterwards to more stirring scenes and a larger 
 life ; but this expectation was not carried out. That a 
 man thus struggling for a humble post, and anxious to 
 link himself on to a second patron, should have made an 
 application at the same time for the vacant deanery of 
 Derry is a curious example of that topsy-turvy which 
 seems always to have reigned In Irish affairs. He did 
 not get the deanery of Derry, as how should he ? a 
 young man quite unqualified for any such post ; but he 
 did succeed in getting another Irish living, with a better 
 stipend and in a more favourable position than Kilroot — 
 the parish of Laracor, within twenty miles of Dublin, 
 which, conjoined with a prebend in St. Patrick's and 
 other small additions, brought him in ^^250 a year — not 
 a bad income for the place and time, and proving that 
 after all, notwithstanding all failures, his time had not 
 been altogether lost. 
 
 Swift was naturally, as Lord Berkeley's chaplain, re- 
 stored to the society he loved, and found a place in the 
 midst of the first company that Ireland could boast, one 
 of a court more extended than Sir William Temple's. 
 And here, for the first time, his sportive faculties, the 
 somewhat lumbering fun which pleased the age, the 
 puns and quips in which the men emulated each other, 
 the merry rhymes that pleased the ladies, came into full 
 play. Swift was always popular with women. He 
 treated them roughly, on many occasions with an arro- 
 gance which grew with age ; but evidently possessed that 
 charm — a quality by itself and not dependent upon any 
 laws of amiability — which attracts one sex to the other. 
 Lady Berkeley he describes as a woman of ' the most
 
 The Dean 247 
 
 easy conversation joined with the truest piety ' ; and her 
 young daughters were h'vely and charming companions 
 with whom the chaplain soon found himself at home. 
 Notwithstanding his disappointment in respect to the 
 deanery which Lord Berkeley might have procured for 
 him and did not, it would seem that this period of hang- 
 ing on at the little Irish court was amusing at least. 
 The lively little picture of the inferior members of a 
 great household, which Swift made for the entertainment 
 of the drawing-rooms, on the occasion when Mrs. Francis 
 Harris lost her purse, is one of the most vivid and amu- 
 sing pictures possible. 
 
 His stay in Ireland at this period lasted about two 
 years, during which time the Lady Varina, or Miss 
 Waring, for whom he had been ready to forgo the 
 advantages of Sir William Temple's house and society, 
 seems to have thought better of her decision against 
 him, probably considering the Vicar of Laracor more 
 worthy of her attention than the humble incumbent of 
 Kilroot. But Swift was evidently no longer in the con- 
 dition of mind which had determined him to be ' all 
 hers ' for the rest of life, and probably felt that a wife 
 would clog his own progress in the world ; and he was 
 not a man to hesitate in putting the state of matters 
 clearly. Laracor had little accommodation for domestic 
 life ; the parsonage was in a ruinous condition, the 
 church a miserable barn, the congregation numbered 
 about twenty persons. All kinds of stories have been 
 collected of Swift's sudden appearance to take posses- 
 sion, alarming the humble curate and his wife who were 
 already there, of his mode of travelling, and of his abrupt
 
 248 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 eccentric proceedings, which startled the country-side. 
 The well-known anecdote which describes him as find- 
 ing his congregation to consist only of his clerk, and 
 beginning the service gravely with ' Dearly beloved 
 Roger,' has found a permanent place in the memory of 
 the world. In all probability it is true ; but if not, is 
 so bene trovato as to be as good as true. There were not 
 very many claims upon the energies of such a man in 
 such a parish, and when Lord Berkeley was recalled to 
 England, his chaplain went with him. There is no very 
 distinct record of this period of his life. He went to 
 court, always hoping to recall himself to the recollection 
 of the king : he waited on various great personages who 
 might have helped him to promotion but did not ; and 
 made the usual appeals for notice which a hanger-on in 
 society is compelled to make ; but without any apparent 
 success. He was not yet publicly known as a writer. 
 His Battle of the Books, written in defence of Temple 
 against the assaults of Bentley and other critics — or 
 perhaps it is more just to say written in defence of 
 ancient literature against the attacks of the moderns — 
 had been handed about in manuscript for several years, 
 and thus was no doubt known to the true arbiters of 
 literary fame in that age ; but it had not yet been 
 printed. He produced, however, at this time his first 
 political pamphlet, which he called Contests and Dis- 
 sentions of the Nobles and Coimno7ts in Athens and Rome, 
 thus satirising and commenting upon the existing state 
 of politics ; and this, it is said, produced a great sensa- 
 tion, being attributed to several important persons, but 
 did not suffice to introduce its author to fame or success.
 
 The Dean 249 
 
 Another incident, however, involving a very different 
 kind of interest, made his visit to England in 1700 of 
 the highest importance in Swift's life. The other two 
 members of Sir William Temple's household who had 
 left Moor Park when Swift did, had gone to live very 
 humbly in the little town of Farnham, close to their old 
 home ; and there he found them in an uncomfortable 
 lodging, hampered for money and without any object in 
 their lives. Perhaps the object of his visit was to advise 
 and help them ; at all events it was most natural that 
 their mutual affairs and prospects should be the subject 
 of many consultations. They had lived together for 
 years, knew everything about each other, and Hester had 
 grown up from childhood under Swift's eyes, his pupil, his 
 favourite and playfellow. She was now, it is true, arrived 
 at an age when other sentiments came in. She must have 
 been about twenty, while he was thirty-four. There 
 was no reason in the world why they should not have 
 married then and there had they so wished. But there 
 seems no appearance or thought of any such desire, and 
 the question was simply, What should they do for the best 
 arrangement of their affairs and pleasantest occupation 
 of their lives ? Farnham had not been successful ; where 
 should they go ? Why not to Ireland, to the neigh- 
 bourhood of their friend, who could help them into 
 society and give them his own companionship as often 
 as he happened to be there ? Here is his own account 
 of the decision : 
 
 ' I prevailed with her and her dear friend and companion, 
 the other lady,' he says, ' to draw what money they had into 
 Ireland, a great part of their fortunes being in annuities upon
 
 250 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 funds. Money was then ten per cent, in Ireland, besides the 
 advantage of returning it, and all necessaries of life at half the 
 price. They complied with my advice, and soon after came 
 over ; but I happening to continue some time longer in 
 England, they were much discouraged to live in Dublin, 
 where they were wholly strangers. But the adventure looked 
 so like a frolic, the censure held for some time as if there were 
 a secret history in such a removal ; which, however, soon blew 
 off by her excellent conduct. She came over with her friend 
 in the year 1700, and they both lived together until the day of 
 her death (1728).' 
 
 This was then the moment which began that which 
 is called the ' sad and mysterious history ' of Swift and 
 Stella ; a story so strangely told, so obstinately insisted 
 upon as miserable, unnatural, and tragical, that the 
 reader or writer of to-day has scarcely the power of 
 forming an impartial judgment upon it. We have not 
 a word from the woman's side of the question, who is 
 supposed to have passed a melancholy existence of un- 
 satisfied longings and disappointed love by Swift's side, 
 the victim of his capricious affection, neglect, cruelty, 
 and fondness. That she should have wished to marry 
 him, that the affection was passion on her side, and her 
 whole life blighted and overcast by his fantastic repug- 
 nance to the common ties of humanity, has been taken 
 for granted by every historian. These writers differ as 
 to Swift's motives, as to the character of his feelings, and 
 even as to the facts of the case ; but no one has the 
 slightest doubt what the woman's sentiments must have 
 been. But as a matter of fact we have no evidence at 
 all what Stella's sentiments were. By so much written 
 testimony as remains we are fully entitled to form such
 
 The Dean 2 5 1 
 
 conclusions as we please on Swift's side of the question ; 
 but there is actually no testimony at all upon Stella's side. 
 Appearances of blighted life or unhappiness there are 
 none in anything we know of her. She and her com- 
 panion had a bad moment when they arrived alone in 
 Dublin, their friend who had promised them so much, 
 being absent ; but that temporary inconvenience was 
 soon overcome. As the ladies appear reflected in that 
 Journal to Stella, which is the Dean's only claim upon 
 our affections, they seem thereafter to have lived a most 
 cheerful, lively life. They had a number of friends ; they 
 had their little tea-parties, their cards, their circle of witty 
 society, to which the letters of the absent were a con- 
 tinual amusement and delight. But it is the man, not 
 the woman, who complains of not receiving letters ; it is 
 he, not she, who exhausts every playful wile, every 
 tender art, to keep himself in vivid recollection. Is it 
 perhaps a certain mixture of masculine vanity and 
 tenderness for the gentle feminine creature who never 
 succeeded in getting the man she loved to marry her, 
 and thus failed to attain the highest end of woman, 
 which has moved every biographer of Swift, each man 
 more compassionate than his predecessor, thus to ex- 
 haust himself in pity for Stella ? Johnson, Scott, Mac- 
 aulay, Thackeray, not to mention many lesser names, have 
 all taken her injured innocence to heart. And nobody 
 notes the curious fact that Stella herself never utters 
 any complaint, nor indeed seems to feel the necessity 
 of being unhappy at all, but takes her Dean most cheer- 
 fully — laughing, scolding, giving her opinion with all 
 the delightful freedom of a relationship which was at
 
 252 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 once nature and choice, the familiar truth and tender- 
 ness of old use and wont enhanced by the charm of 
 voluntary association. We see her only as reflected in 
 his letters, in the references he makes to her, and all the 
 tender, sportive allusions to her habits and ways of 
 thinking. The reflection is not in rigid lines of black 
 and white, but an airy and radiant vision, representing 
 anything in the world rather than a downcast and dis- 
 appointed woman. It is not that either of a wife or a 
 lover ; it is more like the wilful, delightful image of a 
 favourite child, a creature confident that everything she 
 does or says will be received with admiration, from the 
 mere fact that it is she who says or does it, and who tyran- 
 nises, scoffs, and coaxes with all the elastic brightness of 
 unforced and unimpassioned inclination. It is through 
 this medium alone that Stella is ever visible ; and he 
 too laughs, teases, fondles, and adores with the same 
 doting, delightful ease of affection. By what process 
 there has been found through this representation a 
 victim in Stella, and in Swift a tyrannous secret lover 
 crushing her heart, we cannot tell. The external cir- 
 cumstances of their conjunction were no doubt very 
 unusual, and might have lent occasion to much evil 
 speaking. But they did not do so ; nobody ventured to 
 assail the good fame of Stella, and Swift took every 
 means to make the perfect innocence of their friendship 
 apparent. She cannot be made out to have suffered in 
 this vulgar way ; but it is perhaps to do her a more 
 subtle and less effaceable wrong to represent her as 
 Swift's victim by what is supposed to be a long martyr- 
 dom of the heart.
 
 The Dean 253 
 
 One can well imagine, however, when the two ladies 
 arrived in Dublin, where their friend had no doubt re- 
 presented to them his power to gain them access into 
 the best society, and found that he did not come, and 
 that they were stranded in a strange place knowing 
 nobody there, some annoyance and disappointment and 
 perhaps anger must have been in their thoughts, and 
 that P.D.D.R., as he is called in the little language, faith- 
 less rogue ! had his share of abuse : and no doubt it 
 would be believed by good-natured friends that their 
 object in coming was to hunt down the parson and 
 secure him either for the young and lovely girl or the 
 elder woman who was scarcely older than Swift ; if not 
 indeed that some ' secret history ' more damaging still 
 was at the bottom of the adventure. Insensibly, how- 
 ever, Mrs, Johnson and Mrs. Dingley found a place and 
 position for themselves. Swift was often away in the 
 following years, spending about half his time in London ; 
 and when he was absent they took possession of his 
 newly repaired and renovated house, or occupied his 
 lodging in Dublin, and gathered friends about them, and 
 went out to their card parties, and played a little and 
 talked, and lived a pleasant life. When he returned 
 they removed to their own rooms. Thus there could be 
 no doubt about the close association between them, 
 which, when it was quite apparent that it meant nothing 
 closer to come, no doubt made everybody wonder. But 
 we have no contemporary evidence that Stella was an 
 object of pity, and her aspect as we see her in all Swift 
 says of her is exactly the reverse, and gives us the im- 
 pression of a charming and easy-minded woman, a
 
 2 54 '^^^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 queen of society in her little circle, enjoying everything 
 that came her way. 
 
 As Swift's relations with Stella are the great interest 
 of his life, the subject which occupies every new writer 
 who so much as touches upon him, it is needless to make 
 any excuse for entering into it with an amount of detail 
 which our limited space woula otherwise scarcely justif}\ 
 The mystery about it lends it an endless attraction, and 
 as, whatever it was, it is the one great love of his life, 
 and represents all the private satisfation and comfort he 
 got by means of his affections, it has a permanent in- 
 terest which most readers will not find in the Tale of a 
 Tub or any other of the productions which made the 
 middle period of his life remarkable. For a number of 
 years his life was spent in continual expeditions to 
 London, and struggles for promotion. Though he had 
 begun to make Laracor a sort of earthly paradise with 
 a Dutch flavour, such as he had learnt from his early 
 master, and though it was ' very much for his own satis- 
 faction ' that he had procured the establishment of Stella 
 in Ireland, yet neither of these reasons was enough to 
 keep him in the rural quiet among his willows, though 
 he loved them. He hankered after society, after fame 
 and power. He liked to meet with great men, to hear 
 the news, to ride over weaker reasoners, to put forth his 
 own vigorous views on the subjects he cared for, and 
 whip with sharp satire the men who displeased him. 
 Tradition and habit had made him a Whig, and he saw 
 every crevice in the Tory armour, and sent his arrows 
 unerringly to those undefended places. But the Whigs 
 neglected Swift though he was so ready to devote his
 
 The Dean 255 
 
 talents to their service. They did nothing for himself; 
 and though he is by no means the model of a church- 
 man, it is yet certain that he had a great loyalty to the 
 Church, and that the Whig neglect and indifference to 
 her claims moved him deeply. Always eager to under- 
 take great enterprises, and show his power, he had 
 undertaken to procure for the Irish Church that remis- 
 sion of the offering of first fruits which Queen Anne on 
 her accession had given to the Church of England ; and 
 his credit in Ireland was deeply involved in this as much 
 as his personal satisfaction was involved in the promo- 
 tion he sought. But the existing government played 
 both with him and with his cause. They flattered him 
 with hopes of a bishopric up to the very moment when 
 it was given to another, and made him believe that his 
 suit in respect to the Irish Church was actually won 
 when it was as far from being so as ever. These con- 
 tinual deceptions and disappointments worked upon his 
 passionate temper and that impatience with his actual 
 lot, which grew more desperate with every year of 
 obscurity ; and when he set out to London in the autumn 
 of 17 10 after the many years that he had waited upon 
 Providence in the ante-rooms of Halifax and Somers 
 and Godolphin, it was with the half threat, half hope : 
 ' I will apply to Mr. Harley who formerly made some 
 advances towards me, and unless he has altered will, I 
 believe, think himself in the right to use me well.' 
 Harley's short day of power was then beginning, and 
 Swift's keen eye perceived the turning of the tide. 
 
 By this time he was no longer an insignificant hanger- 
 on, or a poor Irish parson merely gaping for^ preferment.
 
 256 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 The Tale of a Tub, one of the greatest of his productions, 
 had been published nearly six years before, and had 
 been received by the world with such universal plaudits 
 as few works even of genius have met with. It was the 
 very incarnation of the time, in its tastes and prejudices, 
 coarseness and learning, as well as such an assault as 
 had never been before made in English upon those 
 falsehoods and vain pretences which are in all genera- 
 tions the unfailing objects of the satirist. Swift caught 
 the follies of his age with a mockery so brilliant, so 
 bitter, so keen and careless, such a riot and madness 
 of fierce laughter and wild banter, the coarsest meta- 
 phors, the finest wit, the most terrible and scathing in- 
 sight, as English satirical writing had never reached 
 before. His object was to set forth the superiority of 
 the Anglican Church above all others by the extra- 
 ordinary and laborious parable of the three brothers, 
 Peter, Jack, and Martin, of whom Peter, who covered the 
 original coat left to these three by their father with 
 every kind of frippery and ornament, represented the 
 Church of Rome, and Jack, who tore these trappings 
 off so rudely as to rend the garment, the dissenters ; 
 while the wise and prudent Martin, keeping but enough 
 for the sake of seemly ornament and running into no 
 violent extremes, was the comely and sober Church as 
 established in England and Ireland, the happy, mode- 
 rate, unexaggeratedyV/i"/^ milieu, the safest of guides and 
 refuges. This tale, however, is broken up by a thousand 
 digressions upon the general characteristics of man- 
 kind and the age, which are more powerful than the 
 fable itself, throwing into fierce relief as by a blighting
 
 The Dean 257 
 
 illumination the spiritual landscape of the time, as the 
 blaze of a storm sometimes throws a momentary gleam 
 over the face of a country, making the spectator in an 
 instant aware of its geographical formation, its gleams 
 of water and marshy wastes and pale wild line of sea. 
 The lightning, however, lacks that human power of grim 
 enjoyment and laughter which attends the revelations 
 of the satirist. The Tale of a Tub made the most ex- 
 traordinary commotion in its day. On some readers 
 apparently its effect was pleasurable as of a delightful 
 piece of wit. William Penn sent to the author from 
 America a gammon of bacon, on the score of having 
 been ' often agreeably amused by thy tale ' ; and a hun- 
 dred years later it ' delighted beyond description ' the 
 robust mind of William Cobbett so that he forgot that 
 he had not supped and preferred the book to a bed. 
 But the effect upon the general mind was perhaps not 
 pleasurable. Many were horrified by its audacious 
 treatment of sacred things, and even the unbounded 
 admiration which it called forth in others was 
 quickened by a certain thrill of horror as the rags of 
 decorum were torn off every figure. The book, now 
 that it has come to the calmer judgment of minds 
 unmoved by the passions of that age, is one of those 
 which form a touchstone of mental character. Like the 
 weird mariner with his mystic tale who knew the man 
 that must hear him wherever encountered, the reader 
 of the Tale of a Tub, as perhaps also of Rabelais, must 
 be born with the faculty necessary to understand and 
 admire. To those who have not this qualification it is 
 as impossible to communicate it as it is to explain the 
 
 R
 
 258 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 story of the albatross and the curse that accompanied 
 its slayer. The greater part of the public take both 
 for granted, and remain in a respectful ignorance. To 
 such, Swift's work is little better than a dust trap of 
 genius in which there are diamonds and precious things 
 embedded, which flash at every turning over ; but the 
 broken bits of treasure are mixed up with choking 
 dust and dreary rubbish as well as the offensive gar- 
 bage which revolts the searcher. The dedication of the 
 work to Prince Posterity is thus wholly justified and 
 yet a failure. It stands in the highest rank of classic 
 satire, and yet to the mass of readers it is nothing but 
 a name. 
 
 This work had been published while Swift was going 
 and coming to London in those endless unfruitful pil- 
 grimages, seeking some work more fit for him than the 
 charge of his half-score of parishioners in Laracor. He 
 did not own it, nor was it indeed ever publicly acknow- 
 ledged as his, but it was known by many that the Irish 
 visitor who appeared in town from time to time, always 
 in pursuit of something which he never obtained, was 
 the author of the book which had made more commotion 
 than any other of its day, and that he had been hailed 
 by Addison as 'the most agreeable companion, the 
 truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.' Such 
 a verdict from such an authority must have moved the 
 world of wits to respect and envy, even if his own master- 
 ful and imperious character had not very soon made 
 itself felt. There is a story told by all Swift's bio- 
 graphers of his first appearance at the St. James's 
 Coffee House, which is amusing if true ; though it is a
 
 The Dean 
 
 259 
 
 little difficult to imagine that Sir William Temple's 
 secretary could be so entirely unknown among the kind 
 of company who frequented the place. 
 
 ' They had for several successive days observed a strange 
 clergyman come into the coffee-house who seemed entirely 
 unacquainted with any of those who frequented it, and whose 
 custom was to lay down his hat on a table and walk back- 
 wards and forwards at a good pace for half-an-hour or an hour, 
 without speaking to any mortal, or seeming in the least to 
 attend to anything that was going forward there. He then 
 used to take up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk 
 away without opening his lips. The name he went by among 
 them in consequence was " the mad parson." One particular 
 evening as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they 
 saw him cast his eyes several times on a gentleman in boots 
 who seemed to be just out of the country, and at last 
 advance as intending to address him. Eager to hear what this 
 dumb mad parson had to say, they all quitted their seats to 
 get near him. Swift went up to the country gentleman, and 
 in a very abrupt manner without any previous salute, asked 
 him, " Pray, sir, do you remember any good weather in the 
 world % " The country gentleman, after staring a little at the 
 peculiarity of his manner, answered, " Yes, sir, I remember a 
 great deal of good weather in my time." "That is more," 
 rejoined Swift, "than I can say. I never remember any 
 weather that was not too hot or too cold or too wet or too 
 dry ; but, however, God Almighty contrives at the end of the 
 year 'tis all very well." With which remark he took up his 
 hat and without uttering a syllable more, or taking the least 
 notice of any one, walked out of the coffee-house.' 
 
 This whimsical humour and love of making the 
 spectators stare was very characteristic of Swift. When 
 he came to town, however, in 17 10, the mad parson, 
 dumb no longer, was well-known, admired and feared
 
 26o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 among those classic circles of the Augustan age, where 
 Addison liked nothing so well as to find himself tcte-^ 
 tete with the Irishman, and the best of the literary kind 
 surrounded him with good fellowship and admiration. 
 It was the turning-point of his life. He came upon the 
 scene with a fixed and fierce determination in his mind 
 to succeed at all hazards, throwing his previous politics 
 to the winds, and ready for any new opening that 
 might occur to him. Harley, to whom he had made up 
 his mind to turn, gave him a very different reception 
 from that which he had been accustomed to in the ante- 
 chambers of the other statesmen. Himself on his pro- 
 motion, and catching at every feasible means of securing 
 and establishing his power, he recognised at once the 
 capabilities of the new instrument thus placed at his dis- 
 posal. Before long the Irish adventurer, the discontented 
 parson, found himself admitted to the closest inter- 
 course with the heads of the government, the bosom 
 friend, called by his Christian name, and sharing the 
 most private consultations of the chief minister, and 
 with at last, so far as appeared, the ball at his foot. 
 He was admitted, or supposed himself to be admitted, 
 to all the secrets of the state, and began instantly to 
 employ his entire powers in the support of his new 
 party, taking up the Examiner, the new Tory organ, 
 and converting it at a stroke from the feeble instrument 
 it had been into a powerful agency, of value incalcu- 
 lable in that age of pamphlets, when every event called 
 forth a shower of brochures, each more certain than its 
 predecessor that the facts of the moment were the pivot 
 on which the world turned.
 
 The Dean 261 
 
 Nor was Swift left without his immediate reward. 
 His first great object, the remission of the payment 
 of the first-fruits, in respect to which the Whig 
 ministry had played with him like a cat with a mouse, 
 driving him frantic with their delays and indiffer- 
 ence, was taken up and granted within a month or 
 two, a conclusion very gratifying to Swift, humbling 
 the dull Irish bishops and pettifogging statesmen of 
 Dublin who had kept him from promotion, and who 
 tried even in the moment of triumph to represent him 
 as no commissioner of theirs. Swift was so dazzled by 
 this success, and by the courtship of the minister and 
 the great position to which he felt himself rising, a sort 
 of minister, as the French say, without a portfolio, or, 
 as probably he himself felt, an all-potent influence 
 behind the throne, that he seems for the moment to 
 have asked nothing for himself. The flood of fine com- 
 pany in the midst of which he found himself, his closetings 
 with the ministry, the confidences made to him of state 
 secrets, which it was the Examiner's duty to explain 
 and enforce, satisfied his soul ; not to say that Harley's 
 promises were many, and that it was understood he was 
 to be finally established in England, presented to the 
 notice of the Queen and placed in every way of prefer- 
 ment. He would seem to have pressed his personal 
 claims less now in his moment of triumph than at any 
 other time. He was full of work and of the excitement 
 of public life. His genius was running at high tide, 
 and every word that came from his lips was listened 
 to and applauded, his name and fame increasing every 
 day. It seems to indicate a certain generosity in his
 
 262 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 nature, more than he ever laid claim to, that he should not 
 at this period have insisted on something for himself. 
 
 But of all that came from his fertile and brilliant pen 
 at this, or, we may say, at any other period of his life, 
 there is nothing that can be compared with the unpre- 
 meditated and careless sheets written before he got up 
 of a morning (save when his bed was on the wrong side 
 so that he had to get up to write), or in the evening 
 when he came home from his entertainments, with the 
 chairmen still wrangling over their sixpences outside — 
 to be sent without the intermission of a day, detailed 
 narratives of his busy life, to the ladies in Dublin, 
 Madam Ppt and Madam Elderly,' the two women 
 who shared his every thought. These daily letters, 
 now known in literature as the Journal to Stella, are of 
 all Swift's works the only ones that touch the heart. 
 They were not work at all. Publication of any kind 
 never seems to have occurred to him while writing ; 
 they are as frank as Pepys and far more noble. They 
 are English history, and London life, and the eighteenth 
 century with its mannerisms and quaintness all in one ; 
 and beyond and above every other thing, they are 
 Swift, as he was in his deepest soul, not as he appeared 
 to men, a human being full of tenderness, full of fun 
 and innocent humour, full of genius and individual 
 nature, and above all full of true affection, the warmest 
 domestic love. Passion is not in those delightful pages ; 
 but the endearing playfulness, the absolute freedom of 
 self-revelation, the tender intimacy and confidence of 
 members of the same family whose interests and sub- 
 jects of thought and talk, and merry jests and allusions,
 
 The Dean 263 
 
 their very pains and pleasures, are one. They describe 
 every day, nay, hour of his life, every little expedition, 
 all the ups and downs of his occupations and progress, 
 in a style of boundless freedom and sportive extrava- 
 gance, and with the unimpassioned, unabashed adoration 
 of something nearer than a father, more indulgent, more 
 admiring than a brother. Only to a woman could such 
 letters have been addressed ; and few women reading 
 them will be disposed to pity Stella or think her life 
 one of blight or injury. Without these the life of the 
 great Dean would not have touched our human sym- 
 pathies at all, but now that time has let us thus fully 
 into his confidence, and opened to our eyes what was 
 never intended for any but hers, and those of her 
 shadow, her guardian, the humble third in this profound 
 and perfect union, it is with moistened eyes that we 
 read the ever-living record. There is nothing in the 
 coarse and stinging potency of his books which comes 
 within a hundred miles of the delightful life and ease 
 of these outpourings of Swift's innermost soul. The 
 Tale of a Tub, the Battle of the Books, retain a sort of 
 galvanic existence, but are, for the greater part, in- 
 supportable to the honest reader who has no traditions 
 of superior acumen and perception to maintain. But 
 when we turn to the fournal, the clean and wholesome 
 pages smile with a cordial life and reality. If there is 
 here and there a phrase too broad for modern ears, it is 
 nothing more than the language of the time, and has 
 not a ghost of evil meaning in it. The big arrogant 
 wit, not unused to bluster and brag, to act like a tyrant 
 and speak like a bully, meets us here defenceless with
 
 264 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the tenderest light upon his face, in his night-cap and 
 without his wig, smiling over little M. D.'s letter in the 
 wintry mornings, snatching a moment at bedtime when 
 he is already ' seepy ' and can do nothing but bid ' Nite, 
 dealest dea M. D., nite, deelest logues,' making his mouth, 
 he says, as if it were saying the broken childish words, 
 retiring into the sanctuary of the little language with an 
 infinite sense of consolation and repose. Outside, it may 
 be, he swaggered and defied all men, even his patrons ; 
 but here an exquisite softness comes over him, he is un- 
 meaning, silly to all the world, only always understood 
 by the women in that secret circle, where they make 
 their comments on everything that happens, and merrily 
 answer back again with their criticisms, their strictures, 
 no more afraid of that rude, impetuous, angry genius than 
 if he had been the meekest of rural priests. It is this 
 that has got Swift his hold upon many a reader, who, 
 beginning by hating him, the coarse and bitter wit, the 
 fierce misanthrope, the hater of men and crusher of 
 women's hearts, has suddenly found his own melt in his 
 breast to see the giant lay by his thunders and prattle 
 like an old gossip, like a tender mother, father, all in 
 one, in the baby talk that first had opened to him a 
 knowledge of all that is sweetest in life. 
 
 We scarcely understand the man, and not at all the 
 woman, who can read without forgiving his brutalities 
 to Swift ; as indeed most women who encountered him 
 seem to have done. He would treat the fine ladies 
 with the most imperious rudeness, giving forth his rule, 
 that it was they who should make advances to him, not 
 he to them, yet captivating in the end even those who
 
 The Dean 265 
 
 resisted. His little language puzzled beyond measure 
 his first editors and expositors, who with a horrified 
 prudery seem to have done their best to interpret and 
 restore it to decorum and dignity ; but it has now 
 become one of the points in his story which is most 
 tenderly recollected. A homeless boy with none of the 
 traditions of a family, finding his unlovely life not less 
 but more unpromising in his first experiences of 
 Temple's luxurious English house, what a sudden 
 fountain of sweetness must have welled up to him in 
 the prattle of the delightful child, which was a new 
 revelation to his heart ! a revelation of all that kindred 
 meant and delightful intimacy and familiar love. His 
 little star of life never waned to Swift. Stella grew 
 old, but never outgrew the little language ; and every 
 young woman had something in her of the sprightly 
 creature that loved to do his bidding, the Ppt who held 
 her own and put him upon his best behaviour so often, 
 yet never was other than the ' deelest little logue ' whom 
 he bantered and laughed at with soft tears of tenderness 
 in his eyes. ' Better, thanks to M. D.'s prayers,' he says 
 among the private scribbles of his daily expenditure, 
 which neither she nor any one was ever meant to see. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the very moment when his mornings 
 and evenings were spent in the composition of this 
 journal, which is the record of a tender intimacy so 
 remarkable, Swift was entering into a relation which 
 proved the worst and most difficult personal compli- 
 cation of his life. He began to meddle with the 
 education of another girl, incautiously, foolishly, a girl 
 who was not of the uninflammable nature of Stella, but
 
 266 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 a hot-headed, passionate creature, who did not at all 
 
 imagine that the mere 
 
 . , . ' delight he took 
 
 To see the virgin mind her book ' 
 
 was all Dr. Swift meant by his talk and attention. 
 Swift says nothing of this pupil in his Journal. He 
 mentions his dinner at Mrs Vanhomrigh's, and her 
 handsome daughter, but he does not tell Madam Ppt 
 that he had given one of his usual caressing names to 
 this girl, whose childish beauty and frank devotion had 
 pleased him. There is indeed no shadow of Vanessa 
 anywhere visible, though the brief mention of her name 
 shows that the second story which was to be so fatally 
 and painfully mingled with the first had already begun. 
 These three years of Swift's stay in England were 
 the climax of his life. They raised him higher than 
 ever a simple parson had been raised before, and made 
 of him (or so at least he believed) a power in the state. 
 It has been doubted whether he was really so highly 
 trusted, so much built upon as he thought. The great 
 lords who delighted in Swift's talk and called him 
 Jonathan did not perhaps follow his advice and accept 
 his guidance as he supposed. He says jestingly, yet 
 half perhaps with a meaning, that anything that was 
 said between himself and Harley as they travelled 
 weekly in my Lord Treasurer's coach to Windsor 
 might have been told at Charing Cross ; but this was a 
 rare admission, and generally he was very full of their 
 schemes and consultations and of his own important 
 share in them. He seems at the same time to have 
 constituted himself the patron of everybody he knew,
 
 The Dean 267 
 
 really providing for a considerable number and largely- 
 undertaking for others, though he got nothing for him- 
 self. The following gives an unpleasant view from 
 outside of bis demeanour and habits, which is probably 
 true enough, so far as the insight of a hostile eye goes. 
 It is from Bishop Kennet's Diary during the year 17 1 3, 
 the last of Swift's importance. 
 
 'Swift came into the coffee-room and had a bow from 
 everybody save me. When I came to the ante-chamber to 
 wait before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk 
 and business, and acted as minister of requests. He was 
 soliciting the Earl of Arran to speak to his brother the Duke 
 of Ormond to get a chaplain's place established in the garrison 
 of Hull for Mr. Fiddes, a clergyman in that neighbourhood, 
 who had lately been in jail and published sermons to pay fees. 
 He was promising Mr. Thorold to undertake with my Lord 
 Treasurer, that, according to his position, he should obtain 
 ;^20o per annum as minister of the English church at Rotter- 
 dam. He stopped E. Gwynne, Esq., going in with the red 
 bag to the queen, and told him aloud he had something to 
 say to him from my Lord Treasurer. He talked with the son 
 of Dr. Davenant to be sent abroad, and took out his pocket 
 book and wrote down several things as memoranda to do for 
 him. He turned to the fire and took out his gold watch, and 
 telUng him the time of the day, complained it was very late. 
 A gentleman said he was too fast. ' How can I help it,' said 
 the doctor, ' if the courtiers give me a watch that won*t go 
 right ? ' Then he instructed a young nobleman that the best 
 poet in England was Mr. Pope (a Papist) who had begun a 
 translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must 
 have them all subscribe ; for, says he, ' the author shall not 
 begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.' Lord 
 Treasurer, after leaving the queen, came through the room, 
 beckoning Dr. Swift to follow him; both went off just before 
 prayers.'
 
 268 The Reipt of Qtieen Anne 
 
 But the account of all this patronage and of the brag 
 and general swagger of his demeanour, though it is by- 
 no means invisible in the Journal, bears a different 
 aspect there, where he tells all about his favours and 
 powers, to please his correspondents, with a good excuse 
 in this tender reason for magnifying all that happens 
 to him. It was indeed a position to turn even the 
 soundest head, and Swift had thirsted all his life for 
 power, for notability, for that buoyant sense of being on 
 the top of the wave which was so contrary to all his 
 experiences. His own account of himself as desiring 
 literary eminence only to make up for the mistake of 
 not being born a lord, is a contemptuous way of stating 
 this thirst he had to be foremost, to be doing, to be 
 capable of moving the world. And he may very well 
 be excused for thinking now that he had done so. Amid 
 the many disappointments of his life he had that three 
 years of triumph which are much for a man to have. If 
 there was a certain vulgarity in his enjoyment of them, 
 there was at the same time a great deal of active kind- 
 ness ; and though he might brag of the services he did, 
 he yet did service, and remembered his friends, and 
 helped as he could those hangers-on and waiters on 
 Providence who in those days were always about a 
 minister's antechamber. And whether he was or was 
 not fully trusted by Harley and St. John, he was at 
 least their most powerful ally, presenting their policy 
 under its best aspect to the world, and giving the 
 gigantic force of his broad shoulders and energetic heave 
 upwards to place them in the highest place. 
 
 It is unnecessary to attempt to go over again the
 
 HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE 
 
 Aftiy the picture by Sir Godfrey Kiieller, at Petwortlt.
 
 The Dean 269 
 
 story of the politics of the time in which he was so 
 powerful an agent. To see Swift moving about in his 
 gown and wig, with his eyes, ' azure as the heavens,' 
 glowing keen from underneath his deep brows, some- 
 times full of sport and laughter and tender kindness, 
 sometimes with ' something awful ' in their look, some- 
 times dazzling with humorous tyranny and command, 
 is more interesting than to fathom over again for the 
 hundredth time the intrigues of the backstairs, and how 
 Harley won by Abigail while the imperious duchess 
 carried with her a score of statesmen in her fall from 
 favour — or even to trace out by what means the great 
 war that ravaged Europe was brought to an end. When 
 this was accomplished, and the Peace of Utrecht signed 
 (which was but a poor triumph of diplomacy) the 
 Government for which Swift had worked so strenuously 
 began in its turn to totter, as is in all times, and specially 
 was at that time, the fate of governments. The bond 
 between Harley and St. John, men strangely unlike each 
 other, began to slacken when the struggle for power was 
 over, until at last the brilliant Bolingbroke, not so much 
 Swift's friend as his colleague, got the upper hand of the 
 duller Oxford. Thus at the very moment when Swift 
 was justified in expecting a personal recompense, fresh 
 difficulties came in. He had foolishly injured his own 
 prospects by employing his dangerous weapon of satire 
 against the officials of the court in a certain * Windsor 
 Prophecy,' full of that personal abuse which a coterie is 
 apt to think so clever, though the world in general has 
 the good taste always to be disgusted by it ; and this, 
 and the prejudice (most naturally) existing in the
 
 270 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 queen's mind that the author of the Tale of a Tub was 
 not the man to make a bishop of, once more interposed 
 a barrier in the way of his promotion. Perhaps Harley, 
 who liked him, may have feared to put promotion which 
 would have directed his power into another channel in his 
 way. At all events, it was with a struggle, all other 
 hopes having failed, that at lasc, just before the fall of 
 his patron, the Deanery of St. Patrick's was secured for 
 Swift. There was a question between that and Windsor, 
 he himself says. Had he gone to Windsor, what a 
 curious change must have come to all his after life ! 
 Would Stella have found a red-roofed house under the 
 cloister walls ? and the Dean lived perhaps to get the 
 confidence of Queen Caroline, a queen worth pleasing ? 
 and looked upon the world with azure eyes softened by 
 prosperity from the storied slopes, and worn his ribbon 
 of the Garter with a proud inflation of the bosom which 
 had always sighed for greatness? How many differ- 
 ences, what softening, expanding, almost elevation, 
 might not the kind hand of fortune work in such great 
 but troubled natures were it allowed to smooth and 
 caress the roughness away ! 
 
 When Bolingbroke got the upper hand and prepared, 
 if but the queen's shattered life might drag on long 
 enough, to carry out a policy in which Swift agreed, and 
 which would have satisfied both his tastes and aversions, 
 the brag and bluster of intoxicating success gave way in 
 his mind to nobler sentiments. He had run away, if we 
 may use the expression, with a dislike to being present 
 at a catastrophe which was very characteristic, that he 
 might not see Harley's fall ; but he did not desert
 
 The Dean 271 
 
 Harley. While Bolingbroke was bidding eagerly for 
 his services, the new made Dean was offering to share 
 the exile of his patron, to go with him to the country 
 and console him in his downfall. Considering the 
 fascination which power exercises, and on no one more 
 than Swift, this was almost more than could have been 
 expected of him ; and whether his sudden disinterested- 
 ness would have lasted, had he been put to a prolonged 
 trial, it would be hard to say. But it is at the same time 
 a question needless to ask ; for a day or two after, Queen 
 Anne died and all was over, and another regime had 
 begun, ' The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday, 
 the queen died on Sunday. What a world is this, and 
 how does fortune banter us ! ' writes Bolingbroke. It 
 was such a stroke of the irony of fate as Swift himself 
 might have invented, and St. John applauded with the 
 laughter of the philosopher. There was an end of poli- 
 tical power for both, and the triumph and greatness of 
 Swift's reflected glory was over without hope of recall. 
 
 He had now nothing to do but to return to Ireland 
 so long neglected, the country of his disappointments, 
 which did not love him, and which he did not love ; 
 where his big genius (he thought) had not room enough 
 to turn round in, where society was small and pro- 
 vincial, and life flat and bare, and only a few familiar 
 friends appreciated him or knew what he was. That he 
 was to make himself the idol of that country, a kind of 
 king in it, and gain power of a nobler kind than he had 
 ever wielded, was as yet a secret hidden in the mists of 
 the future to Swift and everybody around. His account 
 of himself when he got home to his dull Deanery, ' a
 
 272 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 vast unfurnished house ' with a few servants in it, ' all 
 on board wages,' is melancholy enough. ' I live a 
 country life in town, see nobody, and go every day once 
 to prayers, and hope in a few months to grow as stupid 
 as the present situation of affairs will require,' he says ; 
 but he consoles himself: 'after all, parsons are not 
 such bad company, especially when they are under 
 subjection; and I let none but such come near me.' 
 A curious statement, in which the great satirist as 
 often before gives a stroke of his idle sword at him- 
 self 
 
 But Swift was not long left in this stagnation. Extreme 
 quiet is in many cases but a cov^er for brewing mischief; 
 and the Dean had not long returned to Ireland when 
 the handsome daughter of Mrs. Vanhomrigh found her- 
 self, on her mother's death, drawn to Ireland and the 
 neighbourhood of her former tutor and correspondent. 
 It is curious to find so many links to Ireland in this 
 little company : Stella had a farm in Meath left her by 
 Sir William Temple ; Vanessa, ' a small property at 
 Celbridge,' to which it suited her to retire. And thus 
 there were collected together within a short distance, the 
 Dean himself in his dull house, the assured and quiet 
 possessor of his tenderest affections in Dublin near him, 
 and the impassioned girl who had declared for him 
 love of a very different kind at Marley Abbey, within 
 the reach of a ride. That Swift had a heart large 
 enough to admit on his own terms many women is 
 very evident, and that he had a fondness for this new 
 claimant among the rest. In the poem called ' Cadenus 
 and Vanessa ' the story of their connection is told from
 
 The Dean 273 
 
 his side, and shows how his pleasure in his pupil 
 
 'Was but the master's secret joy 
 In school to hear the finest boy,' 
 
 and how when he discovered the different thoughts in 
 her mind he was filled with ' shame, disappointment, 
 guilt, remorse,' but no return of passion. The poem 
 ends with some equivocal lines in which the end of the 
 episode is left doubtful, and which have been interpreted 
 as was inevitable in different ways, but which are pro- 
 bably due to the simple fact that the episode was by no 
 means ended at the time they were written, that the 
 lines were intended for Vanessa alone, and that Swift 
 had evidently no desire to break off the relationship 
 violently. Their correspondence went on for nearly ten 
 years. It is a painful correspondence, as the outpouring 
 of a woman's passion for a man who does not respond 
 to it must always be ; but Swift never seems to have 
 done anything but discourage and subdue a love so 
 embarrassing and troublesome. 
 
 Now, however, comes in the mystery which every- 
 body has discussed without coming to any certain con- 
 clusion. All at once, without warning or any preliminary, 
 an event, totally uncongenial to his character, and 
 against all his principles, is said to have occurred in his 
 life. No reason except of the most shadowy kind can 
 be alleged for it, and no result of any description fol- 
 lowed. Two years after his return to Ireland in 17 16, 
 he is said to have married Stella, thus putting himself 
 at once out of all possibility of marrying Miss Van- 
 homrigh (which might have been a motive) but with the 
 intention of satisfying Stella as the story goes. This 
 
 s
 
 2 74 '^^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 wonderful tale is so totally unlike truth that it seems to 
 us extraordinary it could ever have been credited Yet 
 Scott receives the statement as proved, so does Mr. 
 Craik, Swift's last and a most careful biographer. The 
 evidence for it is that Lord Orrery and Dr. Delany, the 
 earliest writers on the subject, both mention it (' if my 
 informations are right,' as the former says,) as a sup- 
 position current and universally believed in society : and 
 that the fact was told by the Bishop of Clogher who 
 performed the ceremony to Bishop Berkeley : who told 
 it to his wife, who told it after her husband's death, and 
 long after the event, to George March Berkeley, who 
 finally published the story. But Bishop Berkeley was 
 in Italy at the time, and could not have been told, 
 though he might have had it at second hand from his 
 pupil, the Bishop of Clogher's son. This is all the 
 evidence there is for a fact of so much importance in the 
 life of two well-known people, neither of whom ever 
 acknowledged it, or acted upon it, or in any way, in any 
 letter or document, betrayed the secret. If a disputed 
 inheritance or the legitimacy of a child depended upon 
 such evidence, we wonder what weight it would be 
 allowed to have? But the prevailing conviction of society 
 that such a thing ought to have taken place is a fantastic 
 but not unprecedented reason why it may have sprung 
 into being. Just so, Mr. Bull was told by his father, who 
 was told by Newton, that Cowper meant to marry Mrs. 
 Unwin ; and so at the present time wherever a close 
 friendship between man and woman exists (and the very 
 fact of such rumours makes them extremely rare), a 
 belief in some respect or other analogous exists along
 
 The Dean 
 
 275 
 
 with it. Nobody supposes that if the marriage took 
 place at all it was anything more than a mere form. It 
 is said to have been performed in the garden without 
 banns, licence, or any preliminary, and was neither 
 registered nor confided to any legal or other authority. 
 This might form a legal bond, according to Irish law, 
 for anything we know, unlikely as it seems. But we 
 wonder whether the Church would have had nothing 
 to say, had two high dignitaries united in an act so 
 disorderly and contrary to ecclesiastical decorum if 
 to nothing else? It is totally unlike Swift, whose 
 feeling for the Church was strong, to have used her 
 ordinances so disrespectfully, and most unlike all we 
 know of Stella that she should have wished for so 
 utterly false a relationship. However, the question is 
 one which the reader must decide according to his own 
 judgment, and upon which no one can speak with 
 authority. Mr. Forster, we are glad to believe, of all 
 Swift's biographers the most elaborate and anxious, 
 though he did not get so far in his work, yet intimates 
 his disbelief of the story : but he is the only one who 
 does so. It is accepted and believed by all the 
 rest. 
 
 We do not need, however, to have recourse to the ex- 
 pedient of this secret marriage in order to explain how 
 Vanessa's existence might have been a pain to Stella. 
 It is one great drawback in such friendships that they 
 are inevitably broken by the marriage of either party. 
 No man would tolerate the existence of another man 
 standing in such a close relationship to his wife, nor 
 could any woman endure it. Marriage is a dangerous
 
 276 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 passage even for friendships of the ordinary sort between 
 persons of the same sex, but in the other case is neces- 
 sarily fatal. And the mere fact that there was another 
 woman in the world who might have married Swift must 
 have inevitably disturbed Stella's peace. Whether 
 Vanessa had heard the rumour of the private marriage, 
 or whether she had been transported into expressions of 
 her suspicion and misery in the hasty letter to Stella, 
 which she wrote at the crisis of her career, either in appeal 
 or in reproach, is equally immaterial. She did write : and 
 Stella offended showed her letter to Swift. Nothing can 
 be more tragic than the events that follow. Swift, in 
 one of those wild bursts of passion characteristic of him, 
 and which were beyond the control of reason, rode out 
 at once to the unfortunate young woman's house. He 
 burst in without a word, threw her own letter on the 
 table before her, and rode off again like a whirlwind. 
 Vanessa came of a short-lived race, and was at thirty- 
 four the last of her family. She never recovered the 
 blow, but died soon after, directing her letters and the 
 poem which contained the story of her love and his 
 cruelty to be published. This was not done for nearly 
 a century ; and now more than half of another century 
 has gone : but the story is as full of passion and misery, 
 as unexplained as ever. 
 
 This was one of the occupations of Swift's stagnant 
 time. He fled as he had done at the moment of 
 Harley's fall, that at last he might not see what was 
 going to happen. But however guilty he may have 
 been he was bitterly punished. Five years later Stella 
 too died after long suffering. There is a second
 
 The Dean 277 
 
 apocryphal story told in many ways about her wish to 
 have the apocryphal marriage recognised before she 
 died ; but whether it was he or she who thought it ' too 
 late,' or whether there was anything of reality in it at 
 all it is very difficult to say. The fact only remains that 
 Stella did die, following Swift's passionate victim to the 
 grave ; and that he spent the rest of his life in a twilight 
 ever more and more clouded till it fell into midnight 
 darkness. He had feared that she might die at the 
 deanery in his absence, with his usual prudish fear of her 
 reputation and his own, or perhaps rather from his usual 
 terror of painful catastrophes, and desire that his house 
 might not be made terrible to him by the shadow of that 
 event. He had reached home, however, before it 
 occurred. After all was over on the evening of the day 
 of Stella's death, the man, distracted, tried to deaden his 
 pain by writing a * character,' as it was the fashion of that 
 time to call it, of ' the truest, most virtuous and valuable 
 friend I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed 
 with.' He returned to the subject on the following 
 night, unable, it is evident, to think of anything else, 
 and continued the sad but sober record till ' my head 
 aches and I can write no more.' On the next evening, 
 still more gloomy, he resumed : 
 
 ' This is the night of the funeral which my sickness 
 will not suffer me to attend. It is now nine at night, 
 and I am removed into another apartment that I may 
 not see the light in the church, which is just over 
 against the window of my bedchamber.' And then the 
 faltering pen goes on with that panegyric, the story 
 of all she was and did, from which it may be seen that
 
 278 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 there was no fault in her. * There is none like her, none ' : 
 this is the burden of the old man's subdued and self- 
 restrained tragedy, as it is of the young lover's paean of 
 triumph : ' the truest, most valuable friend ' that man 
 ever had : and now she was gone away to be seen no 
 more. He had a lock of her hair somewhere, either 
 given him then or at a brighter moment, which was 
 found after his death, as all the world knows, with these 
 words written upon the paper that contained it : * Only 
 a woman's hair.' Only all the softness, the brightness, 
 the love and blessing of a life — only all that the heart 
 had to rest upon of human solace — only that — no more. 
 He who had thanked God and M.D.'s prayers for his 
 better health had now no one to pray for him, to receive 
 his confidences. It was over, all that best of life as if 
 it had never been. 
 
 But it is unnecessary to dwell upon this oft-ex- 
 pounded text, upon which every writer who has ever 
 named the name of Swift has already found so much 
 to say. It was in the quiet years before this great 
 calamity that he accomplished the greatest literary 
 work of his life, that by which every child knows Swift's 
 name, the travels of the famous Gulliver. The children 
 have made their selection with an unerring judgment 
 which is above criticism, and have taken Lilliput and 
 Brobdingnag into their hearts, rejecting all the rest. 
 That Swift had a meaning bitter and sharp even in the 
 more innocent parts of these immortal fables, and meant 
 to ridicule England and its politicians and generals, and 
 the human race with its wars and glories and endless 
 vanities and foolishness, is evident enough: and that
 
 The Dean 279 
 
 their first extraordinary success is partly to be attributed 
 to this cause. But the vast majority of its readers have 
 not so much as known that he meant anything except 
 the most amusing and dehghtful fancy, the keenest 
 comic deHneation of impossible circumstances made real 
 by the intense truth and sobriety of the picture. That 
 delightful Irish bishop, if ever he was, who declared that, 
 * this book was full of improbable lies, and for his part 
 he hardly believed a word of it,' is the only critic we 
 want. ' Giilliver's Travels is almost the most delightful 
 children's book ever written,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen, 
 no small authority. It had no doubt been talked over 
 and read to the ladies, who it would incidentally appear 
 had not liked the Tale of a Tub. But Swift was at 
 home and near them when he wrote, and had no need 
 of a journal in which to communicate his proceedings. 
 Between 17 14 and 1726, a dozen years, he was in Ire- 
 land without intermission. At the latter date he went 
 to England, probably needing after the shock of Miss 
 Vanhomrigh's death, and the grievous sense which he 
 must have had that it was he who had killed her, a 
 change of scene ; and it was then that Gulliver was 
 published. The later portions of it, which the children 
 have rejected, we are glad to have no space to dwell 
 upon. The bitterness, passion, and misery of them are 
 beyond parallel. One would like to have any ground 
 for believing that the Houyhnhnms and the rest came 
 into being after Stella's death : but this was not so. 
 She was only a woman, and was not after all of such 
 vital importance in the man's life. Withdrawal from 
 the life he loved, confinement in a narrow sphere, the
 
 28o The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 disappointment of a soul which felt itself born for great- 
 ness, and had tasted the high excitements of power, 
 but now had nothing to do but fight with his archbishop, 
 and give occasion for a hundred anecdotes in the Dublin 
 coteries — had matured the angry passion that was always 
 in him, and soured the sweetness of nature which Stella's 
 companionship alone seems to have brought out. Few 
 people now, however, when they take up their Gulliver 
 go beyond Brobdingnag. The rest is like a succession 
 of bad dreams, the confused miseries of a fever. To 
 think that in a deanery, that calm refuge of ecclesiastical 
 luxury, within reach of the Cathedral bells and chants, 
 a brain so dark and distracted, and dreams so terrible, 
 should have found shelter, is very wonderful. They are 
 all the more bitter and appalling from their contrast with 
 the surroundings among which they had their disastrous 
 birth. 
 
 The latter part of Swift's life, however, had occasional 
 occupation of a different and nobler kind. The Ireland 
 he knew was so different from the Ireland with which 
 we are acquainted, that to contemplate the two as one 
 is apt to give a sort of moral vertigo, a giddiness of the 
 intellect to the observer. Swift's Ireland was the 
 country of the English-Irish, ultra Protestant — like the 
 real Ireland only in the keenness of its politics and the 
 sharpness of its opposition to imperial measures. It was 
 Ireland with a parliament of her own, and many of the 
 privileges which are now the objects of her highest 
 aspirations ; but it was unlike in every feature, except 
 in that of being discontented, to anything which is now 
 known by her name. When Swift spoke of the people,
 
 The Dean 
 
 2«I 
 
 what is now considered the true and only Irish nation, the 
 Catholic masses, who at that moment bore their misery 
 with a patience inconceivable, he described them as of 
 no more importance than a mob of women and children, 
 a race so entirely trodden down and subdued that the 
 politician had no occasion to take them into account at 
 all. The position of the predominant race was almost 
 like that of white men among the natives of a savage 
 country, or at least like that of the English in India, the 
 confident and assured rulers of subject masses. Never- 
 theless these men were full of a sort of national feeling, 
 and ready to rise up in hot and not ineffectual opposi- 
 tion when need was, and reckoned themselves Irish ; 
 whereas no Sahib has ever reckoned himself Indian. 
 The real people of Ireland were held under the severest 
 yoke ; but the gentlemen who represented the nation 
 can scarcely be held to have been oppressed. Their 
 complaint was that Englishmen were put into vacant 
 posts, that their wishes were disregarded and their affairs 
 neglected, complaints which even prosperous Scotland 
 has been known to make. They were affected, how- 
 ever, as well as the race which they kept under their 
 feet by the intolerable law which suppressed woollen 
 manufactures in Ireland, and it was on this subject that 
 Swift first broke silence, and expressed the indignation 
 that burned within him. The object of his pamphlet 
 was to recommend such reprisals as the small can em- 
 ploy against the great, by a proposal that the Irish 
 should use Irish manufactures only by way of retalia- 
 tion. He compared the two countries to Pallas and 
 Arachne in the classic fable, with this aggravation of the
 
 282 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 doom pronounced by the goddess against her competi- 
 tor, ' that the greatest part of our bowels and vitals is 
 extracted without allowing us the liberty of weaving and 
 spinning them.' 
 
 The commotion produced by this real and terrible 
 oppression was nothing, however, to that called forth by 
 an innocent attempt to give a copper coinage, the most 
 convenient of circulating mediums, to Ireland. Nothing 
 could have been more harmless, more useful and neces- 
 sary in fact ; and that it should have excited so bitter 
 an opposition exemplifies one of those curious twists of 
 popular misapprehension with which it is impossible to 
 reason — the sole germ of real grievance being that the 
 patent had been granted to one of King George's 
 German favourites, and by her sold to Wood, an English- 
 man, who was supposed to be about to make an enormous 
 profit out of the country by ' half-pence' not worth the 
 value they claimed. Such an idea stirred the prejudices 
 and fears of the very lowest, and would even now force 
 the ignorant into rage and passion. Whether Swift 
 shared that natural and national, if unreasonable, out- 
 burst of indignation and alarm to the full extent he 
 appeared to do, or if he threw himself into it with the 
 instinct of an agitator perceiving the capabilities of the 
 moment, it is difficult to tell. But his Drapier's Letters 
 made out of the public outcry so powerful a force of 
 resistance, and excited the entire country into such 
 unanimity and opposition, that the English Government 
 was forced to withdraw from the attempt, and the posi- 
 tion of the Irish nation as an oppressed yet not un- 
 powerful entity, still able to face its tyrants and protest
 
 The Dean 283 
 
 against their careless sway, became distinctly apparent. 
 He who hated Ireland and considered himself an exile 
 in her, claimed for her an independence, a freedom she 
 had never yet possessed, and inspired at once the subject 
 and the ruling race with the sense that they had found 
 a champion capable of all things, and through whom for 
 the first time their voice might be heard in the world. 
 
 The immediate result was a popularity beyond 
 bounds. The people he despised were seized with an 
 adoration for him which was shared by the class to 
 which he himself belonged — perhaps the first subject 
 on which they had agreed. ' When he returned from 
 England in 1726 bells were rung, bonfires lighted, and 
 a guard of honour escorted him to the deanery. Towns 
 voted him their freedom and received him as a prince. 
 When Walpole spoke of arresting him, a prudent friend 
 told the minister that the messenger would require a 
 guard of 10,000 soldiers.' When a crowd collected to 
 see an eclipse disturbed him with their noise. Swift sent 
 out to tell them that the event was put off by order of 
 the Dean, and the simple-minded populace dispersed 
 obediently ! Had he been so minded, and had he fully 
 understood and loved the race over which his great and 
 troubled spirit had gained such power, what might not 
 have been hoped for Ireland, and what for his own soul, 
 consuming itself in angry inactivity, yet with such a 
 work before him had he but known ! But it would 
 have taken a miracle indeed to turn this Englishman 
 born in Ireland, this political Churchman, and hater of 
 Papists and Dissenters, into the saviour of the subject 
 race.
 
 284 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 That he was, however, deeply struck by the impres- 
 sion of their misery, and that his soul, always so ready 
 to break forth upon the cruelty, the falsehood, the bar- 
 barous misconception of men by men, found in their 
 wrongs a subject upon which he could scarcely exag- 
 gerate, is apparent enough. His Modest Proposal for 
 Preventing the Children of the Poor in Ireland from being 
 a Burden to their Parents or Country is one of those 
 pieces of terrible satire which lacerate the heart. Tears 
 as of blood are in it, a passion of indignant pity and fury 
 and despair. Eat them then, since there is nothing else 
 to be done with them, he says, detailing with elaborate 
 composure the way to do it, and the desirableness of 
 such a supply of delicate food. The reader, unwarned 
 and simple-minded, might almost with a gasp of horror 
 take the proposal for genuine. But Swift's meaning was 
 more terrible even than cannibalism. It was the convic- 
 tion that these children, the noblest fruit of nature, were 
 in truth its worst embarrassment, the fatal glut of a miser- 
 able race without bread for them or hope, that forced its 
 dreadful irony upon him. And what picture could be 
 more terrible than that of the childless old man with his 
 bleeding heart, himself deserted of all that made life 
 sweet, thus facing the world with scorn so infinite that 
 it transcends all symbols of passion, bidding it consume 
 what it had brought forth ! 
 
 But Swift, unfortunately for himself and her, loved 
 Ireland as little when he thus made himself her champion 
 as he had done throughout his life. At all times his 
 longing eyes were turned towards the country in which 
 life was and power and friends and fame. Though he
 
 The Dean 285 
 
 was aware that he was growing old and ought to be 
 * done with this world,' he yet cries aloud his desire to 
 ' get into a better before I was called into the best, and 
 not die here in a rage like a poisoned rat in a hole ' — a 
 terrific image, and one of those phrases that burn and 
 glow with a pale light of despair. But he never got into 
 that better world he longed for. The slow years crept 
 over him and he lived on, making existence tolerable by 
 such expedients as he could — a wonderful proof how 
 the body will resist all the frettings of the soul, growing 
 more angry, more desperate, more subject to the bitter 
 passions which had broken forth even in his best days, 
 as he grew older and had fewer reasons for restraining 
 himself. At last the great Dean — the greatest genius of 
 his age, the man of war and battle, of quip and jest, he 
 who had thirsted to be doing through all his life — fell 
 into imbecility and stupor, with occasional wild awaken- 
 ings into consciousness which were still more terrible. 
 He died, denuded of all things, in 1745, having lived till 
 seventy-eight, in spite of himself. 
 
 ' Ubi Sccva indignatio 
 Cor ulterius lacerare nequit ' 
 
 is written on his tomb. No more can fiery wrath and 
 indignation rend him where he lies by Stella's side in 
 the aisle over against his chamber window. The touch 
 of her quiet dust must have soothed, one would think, 
 the last fever that lingered still in his, even after death 
 had done its worst.
 
 THE JOURNALIST 
 
 The age of Queen Anne was one which abounded 
 in paradoxes and loved them. It was an age when 
 England was full of patriotic policy, yet every states- 
 man was a traitor ; when tradition was dear, yet revolu- 
 tion practicable ; when speech was gross and manners 
 unrefined, yet the laws of literary composition rigid, 
 and correctness the test of poetry ; it was full of high 
 ecclesiasticism and high puritanism, sometimes united 
 in one person. In it ignorance was most profound, 
 yet learning most considered and prominent. An age 
 when Parson Trulliber was not an unfit representative 
 of the rural clergy, yet the public could be interested 
 in such a recondite pleasantry as the Battle of t/ie Books 
 seems the strangest self-contradiction ; yet so it was. 
 In this paradoxical age no man lived who was a more 
 complete paradox than Defoe. His fame is world-wide, 
 yet all that is generally known of him is one or two of 
 his shortest productions, and his busy life is ignored in 
 the permanent place in literary history which he has 
 secured. His characteristics as apart from his conduct 
 are all those of an honest man ; but when that most 
 important part of him is taken into the question it 
 is difficult to pronounce him anything but a knave. 
 His distinguishing literary quality is a minute truth- 
 
 2S6
 
 The Journalist 2 %*] 
 
 fulness to fact which makes it almost impossible not to 
 take what he says for gospel ; but his constant inspiration 
 is fiction, not to say in some circumstances falsehood. 
 He spent his life in the highest endeavour that a man 
 can engage in — in the work of persuading and influ- 
 encing his country, chiefly for her good — and he is 
 remembered by a boys' book, which is indeed the first 
 of boys' books, yet not much more. Through these 
 contradictions we must push our way before we can 
 reach to any clear idea of Defoe, the London trades- 
 man who by times composed almost all the newspapers 
 in London, wrote all the pamphlets, had his finger in 
 every pie, and a share in all that was done, yet got 
 nothing out of it but a damaged reputation and an 
 unhonoured end. 
 
 It is curious that something of a similar fate should 
 have happened to the other and greater figure, his 
 contemporary, his enemy, in some respects his fellow- 
 labourer, another and still more brilliant slave of the 
 government which in itself had so little that was 
 brilliant — the great Dean whose name has already 
 appeared so often in these sketches. Swift too, of all 
 his books, is remembered by the book of The Travels 
 of Gulliver^ which, though full of a satirical purpose 
 unknown to Defoe, has come to rank along with 
 Robinson Crusoe. We may say, indeed, that these 
 two books form a class by themselves, of perennial 
 enchantment for the young, and full of a curious and 
 enthralling illusion which even in age we rarely shake 
 off". Swift rises into bitter and terrible tragedy, while 
 Defoe sinks into matter-of-fact and commonplace ; but
 
 The Reign of Quee^i Anne 
 
 the shipwrecked sailor on his desolate island and the 
 exile at the courts of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, both 
 in the beginning of their career hold our imaginations 
 captive, and are as fresh and as powerful to-day as 
 when, the one in keen satire, the other in the legitimate 
 way of business, they first made their appearance in 
 the world. It is a singular link between the men who 
 both did Harley's dirty work for him and were subject 
 to a leader so much smaller than themselves, 
 
 Daniel Defoe was born in London in 1 66 1, of what 
 would seem to have been a respectable burgher family, 
 only one generation out of the country, which probably 
 was why his father, with yeomen and grazier relations 
 in Northamptonshire, was a butcher in town. The 
 butcher's name, however, was Foe : and whether the 
 Defoe of his son was a mere pleasantry upon his signa- 
 ture of D. Foe, or whether it embodied an intention of 
 setting up for something better than the tradesman's 
 monosyllable, is a quite futile question upon which 
 nobody can throw any light. The boy was well 
 educated according to the capabilities of his kindred 
 in a school at Newington, probably intended for the 
 sons of comfortable dissenting tradesmen who were to 
 be devoted to the ministry, with the assistance in some 
 cases of a fund raised for that purpose. The master 
 was good, and if Defoe attained there even the rudi- 
 ments of the information he afterwards showed and 
 laid claim to, the education must have been excellent 
 indeed. He claims to have known Latin, Spanish, 
 Italian, French, 'and could read the Greek,' which 
 latter is as much as could have been expected had he
 
 After a print by Van der Gucht
 
 The Journalist 289 
 
 been the most advanced of scholars : besides havins: 
 an acquaintance with science, geography, and history 
 not to be surpassed apparently by any man of his time. 
 ' If I am a blockhead,' he says, ' it was nobody's fault 
 but my own,' his father having ' spared nothing ' on his 
 education ; much of this information, however, was no 
 doubt picked up in the travels and much knocking 
 about of his early years, of which there is little record. 
 He would seem to have changed his mind about be- 
 coming a dissenting minister at an early age, and was 
 probably a youth of somewhat wandering tendencies, 
 as he claims to have been * out ' with Monmouth, and 
 does not appear in any recognised occupation till after 
 that unfortunate attempt. He must have been twenty- 
 four when he first becomes visible as a hosier in 
 Cornhill, which seems a very natural, and indeed rather 
 superior beginning in life for the son of the butcher 
 in Cripplegate. He laid claim afterwards to have 
 been a trader not a shopkeeper, a claim supported more 
 or less from a source not favourable to Defoe, by 
 Oldmixon, who says that his only connection with 
 the trade was that of ' peddling to Portugal,' whatever 
 that may mean. The volume of advice to shopkeepers, 
 which is entitled the Complete English Tradesman, 
 written and published in the latter part of his life, 
 though it does not seem to be taken by his biographers 
 in general as any certain indication that he himself 
 made his beginning in a shop, is, nevertheless, full of 
 curious details of the life of the London shopkeeper of 
 his time, to which class he assuredly belonged. We 
 learn from this curious production that vanity was even 
 
 T
 
 290 The Reign of Qtieen A fine 
 
 more foolish in the eighteenth century than it is now. 
 We are acquainted with sporting shopkeepers who ride to 
 hounds, and with foolish young men who fondly hope 
 to be mistaken for * swells ' ; but a shopkeeper with a 
 lackey at his heels passes the power of imagination. 
 It is a droll example of the fallacy of all our fond 
 retrospections and preference of the good old times 
 to find that in Defoe's day this was by no means an 
 extraordinary circumstance. ' The playhouses and 
 balls,' he says, ' are more filled with citizens and young 
 tradesmen than with gentlemen and families of dis- 
 tinction ; the shopkeepers wear different garbs than 
 what they were wont to do, are decked out with long 
 wigs and swords, and all the frugal badges of trade 
 are quite disdained and cast aside.' We may take 
 from this book as an illustration of the habits of the 
 age the following description of a young firm which 
 is clearly on the way to ruin. 
 
 ' They say there are two partners of them, but there had 
 as good be none, for they are never at home or in the shop. 
 One wears a long peruke and a sword I hear, and you see 
 him often at the ball and at court, but very seldom in his 
 shop, or waiting on his customers. And the other, they say, 
 lies abed till eleven o'clock every day, just comes into the 
 shop and shows himself, then stalks about to the tavern to 
 take a whet, then to the coffee-house to hear the news, comes 
 home to dinner at one, takes a long sleep in his chair after it, 
 and about four o'clock comes into the shop for half an hour 
 or thereabouts, then to the tavern where he stays till two in 
 the morning, gets drunk, and is led home by the watch, and 
 so lies till eleven again; and thus he walks round like the 
 hand of a dial, and what will it all come to ? They '11 certainly 
 break, they can't hold long.'
 
 The Journalist 291 
 
 The account of the shop kept by these two idle 
 masters is equally characteristic, 
 
 ' There is a good stock of goods in it, but there is nobody 
 to serve but a 'prentice boy or two, and an idle journeyman. 
 One finds them all at play together rather than looking out 
 for customers, and when you come to buy they look as if they 
 did not care whether they showed you anything or no. Then 
 it is a shop always exposed, it is perfectly haunted with thieves 
 and shoplifters, there are nobody but raw boys in it that mind 
 nothing, so that there are more outcries of stop thief ! at their 
 door, and more constables fetched to that shop than to all 
 the shops in the street.' 
 
 The households of the soberer and more sensible 
 members of the craft Defoe finds also open to grave 
 animadversion ; the ladies are too fine, they treat their 
 friends with wine or punch or fine ale, and have their 
 parlours set off with the tea-table and the chocolate- 
 pot and the silver coffee-pot, and oftentimes an osten- 
 tation of plate into the bargain. And they keep three 
 or four maid-servants, ' nay, sometimes five,' and some a 
 footman besides, ' for 'tis an ordinary thing to see the 
 tradesmen and shopkeepers of London keep footmen 
 as well as the gentlemen. Witness the infinite number 
 of blue liveries, which are so common now, that they are 
 called tradesmen's liveries, and few gentlemen care to 
 give blue to their servants for that very reason.' Of the 
 maids themselves who ask ' six, seven, nay, eight pounds 
 per annum ' for their services, a terrible account is 
 given in a pamphlet published about 1725, where there 
 is a humorous description in the first person of a young 
 woman who comes to apply for the place of housemaid,
 
 292 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 evidently maid-of-all-work, to the speaker, who Hves 
 with his sister, with a man and a maid for their house- 
 hold. She is so fine that Defoe himself shows her into 
 the parlour, and keeps her company till his sister is 
 ready, thinking her a gentlewoman come to pay a visit. 
 
 All these details bring before us the London of his 
 time ; the mercers had their shops in Paternoster Row 
 * where the spacious shops, back warehouses, skylights 
 and other conveniences, made on purpose for their 
 trade, are still to be seen,' where ' they all grew rich and 
 very seldom any failed or miscarried ' ; and also in 
 Cornhill where Defoe's own establishment was, though 
 there apparently business was carried on wholesale. 
 It appears to him that trade is going downhill fast 
 when this order is changed, when Paul's churchyard is 
 filled with cane-chairmakers and Cornhill with the 
 meanest of trades. Even Chcapside itself, how is it 
 now filled up with shoemakers, toy-shops, and pastry- 
 cooks ! Everything is going to destruction, the old 
 trader thinks, shaking his head as he goes through the 
 well-known streets where once the fine ladies sat in 
 their fine coaches standing in two rows. He cannot 
 think but that trade itself is coming to an end when 
 such changes can come to pass. Trade, he says, like 
 vice, has come to a height, and as things decline when 
 they are at their extremes, so trade not only must de- 
 cline, but has already sensibly declined. It ought to be a 
 comfort to the many timid persons who have lived and 
 prophesied evil since then to hear that Defoe a hundred 
 and fifty years ago had come to this sad conclusion. 
 
 He was born into the world he thus describes, in
 
 The Journalist 293 
 
 the atmosphere of shops and counting-houses, where 
 the good tradesman lived in the parlour above or 
 behind his shop, and was called with a bell when need 
 was, and was constant at business * from seven in the 
 morning till twelve, and from two to nine at night,' the 
 interval being occupied with dinner ; where the 
 appearance of the long-flowing periwig and the sword 
 and the man in blue livery were the danger signals, and 
 showed that he must break, he could not hold ; where 
 the cry of stop thief! might suddenly be set up in the 
 midst of the traffic and the constable be called to some 
 fainting fine lady, who had got a piece of taffetas or a 
 lace head in her muff, or under her hoop ; and where — 
 perhaps the greatest risk of all — a young man of genius 
 who was but a hosier might betray himself in a coffee- 
 house and be visited afterwards by great personages, 
 veiling their lace and embroidery under their cloaks, 
 who wanted a seasonable pamphlet or a newspaper put 
 into the right way. A strange old London, more diffi- 
 cult to put on record in its manners and features than 
 it is to record in pasteboard its outward aspect — where 
 town could be convulsed by a chance broadsheet, and 
 the government propped or wounded to death by an 
 anonymous essayist : where men of letters were secre- 
 taries of state, and other men of letters starved in Grub 
 Street, and the masses thanked God they could not 
 read ; where a revolution was made for liberty of con- 
 science, yet every office and privilege was barred by a 
 test, and intolerance was the habit of the time. 
 
 The author of Robinson Crusoe must have got all his 
 ideas in the narrow bustling streets, full of rumours of
 
 294 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 wars and commotions, and talk about the scandals of the 
 court, and sight of the finery and licence which revolted, 
 yet exercised some strange fascination upon, the sober 
 dissenting tradesmen who had found the sway of Oliver 
 a hard one. He was born the year after the Restora- 
 tion, and was no doubt carried out of London post-haste 
 with the rest of his family in the early summer when 
 the roads were crowded with waggons and carts full of 
 women, children, and servants all flying from the 
 Plague. The butcher's little son was but four, but 
 very likely retained a recollection of the crowded 
 ways and strange spectacles of the time ; and no doubt 
 he saw in strong excitement and terror, with eyes 
 starting out of their little sockets, the glare of the 
 Great Fire, which burned down all the haunts of the 
 pestilence and cured London by destroying it. At 
 school at Newington, and in the parlour behind the shop, 
 he must have listened to many a grave talk over what 
 was to come of all the wickedness in high places ; and, 
 when the papist king came to the throne, many discus- 
 sions as to how much his new-born liberality was good 
 for, and whether there was any safety in trusting to his 
 indulgences and declarations of liberty of conscience. 
 
 Defoe by this time was old enough to speak his own 
 mind. He had left school at nineteen, and till he was 
 twenty-four there is no appearance that he was doing 
 anything, save perhaps picking up notions on trade in 
 general, and, as much as a young dissenter might 
 among his own class, or in the coffee-houses where it 
 was safe, delivering his sentiments upon questions so 
 vital to the welfare of the country. According to his
 
 The Jotirnalist 295 
 
 own statement he had written a pamphlet in 1683 to 
 prove that a Christian power, though popish, was better 
 than the Turk He was now so bold as to tell the 
 dissenters 'he had rather the Church of England 
 should pull our clothes off by fines and forfeitures, than 
 the papists should both fall upon the Church and the 
 dissenters and pull our skins off by fire and faggot' 
 No doubt he was then about in London, noticing every- 
 thing, discoursing largely, with a wonderful long- 
 winded, sober enthusiasm, making every statement that 
 occurred to him look like the most certain truth ; talk- 
 ing everywhere, in the coffee-house, at the street 
 corners, down in Cripplegate in the paternal parlour, 
 never silent, a swarthy youth with quick, grey eyes and 
 keen, eager features, and large, loquacious mouth. 
 Better be fined and silenced than let in popery to burn 
 you into the bargain ; better stand fast in all those 
 deprivations and hold your faith in corners, if need 
 must, than accept suspicious favours, and help to bring 
 in again the Jesuit and the Pope. While Penn with 
 his plausible speech and amiable temper drew his 
 Quaker brethren aside into a dangerous compliance 
 and presented addresses to James, and accepted his 
 grace, this young tradesman would be pressing his very 
 different argument upon the suspicious sombre groups 
 far from St. James's, where there was no finery, but a 
 great deal of determination. And when in the dis- 
 turbed and confused wretchedness of the time, no man 
 knowing what was about to happen, but sure that some 
 change must come, young Monmouth set up his hapless 
 standard, could it be Defoe's own impulse or the catch
 
 296 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 of some eddy of feeling into which he had been swept, 
 which carried him off into the ranks of the adventurer ? 
 It is said that three of his fellow-students at Newington 
 figure among the victims of the Bloody Assize. Defoe 
 would always be more disposed to talk than fight. He 
 must, we cannot help thinking, have thought it a feeble 
 proceeding to put yourself in the way of getting your 
 head cut off, when you could use it so much more effec- 
 tually in convincing your fellow-creatures. His mind, 
 ever so ready to slip through any loop-hole, carried his 
 body off safely out of the clutches of Jeffreys. Pro- 
 bably when he turned up at home, against all hope, 
 after this unlucky escapade, his friends were too thank- 
 ful to thrust him into the hosier's warehouse, where no 
 doubt he would give himself the air of having sold hose 
 and bought them all his life. 
 
 There is, however, nothing to build any account of his 
 life upon in these earlier years. The Revolution filled 
 him with enthusiasm, and King William gained his full 
 and honest support, a support both bold and service- 
 able, and with nothing in it which was not to his 
 credit. But apparently a man cannot be so good a 
 talker, so active a politician, and follow the rules which 
 he himself laid down for a successful tradesman at the 
 same time. Most likely his mind was never in his hose, 
 and the world was full of so many more exciting 
 matters. Seven years after he had been set up in 
 business, he ' broke ' and had to fly, though no further 
 than Bristol apparently, where he made an arrangement 
 with his creditors. He would seem to have failed for 
 the large sum at that time of seventeen thousand
 
 The Journalist 297 
 
 pounds, which he honestly exerted himself to pay, and 
 so far succeeded in doing so that he reduced in a few 
 years his debts to five thousand pounds in all. And 
 what was still more, finding certain of the creditors with 
 whom he had compounded to be poor, after he had 
 paid his composition fully, he made up to them the 
 entire amount of his debt, an unlooked-for and excep- 
 tional example of honourable sentiment. Some years 
 later when Defoe had got into notoriety and was the 
 object of a great deal of violent criticism, a contem- 
 porary gives this fact on the authority indeed of an 
 anonymous gentleman in a coffee-house only, but it 
 seems to have been generally received as true. The 
 writer was in a company ' where I and everybody else 
 were railing at him ' when ' the gentleman took us up 
 with this short speech.' 
 
 ' Gentlemen,' said he, ' I know this Defoe as well as any of 
 you, for I was one of his creditors, compounded with him and 
 discharged him fully. Several years afterwards he sent for me, 
 and though he was clearly discharged he paid me all the 
 remainder of his debt, voluntary and of his own accord, and 
 he told me that, as far as God should enable him, he intended 
 to do so with everybody. When he had done he desired me to 
 set my hand to a paper to acknowledge it, which I readily did, 
 and found a great many names to the paper before me, and I 
 think myself bound to own it.' 
 
 This story bears a suspicious resemblance to Defoe's 
 own style, but it never seems to have met with any 
 contradiction. 
 
 Neither his business nor his failure, however, kept him 
 from the active exercise of his literary powers, which he
 
 298 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 used in the service of King William with what seems 
 to have been a most genuine and hearty sympathy. 
 Pamphlet after pamphlet came from his pen with an 
 influence upon public opinion which it is difficult to 
 estimate nowadays, but which was certainly much 
 greater than any fugitive political publications could 
 exercise now. He wrote in defence of a standing army, 
 the curious insular prejudice against which was natur- 
 ally astonishing as well as annoying to the continental 
 prince who had become king of Great Britain. He 
 wrote in support of the war, which to William was a 
 vital necessity but which England was somewhat slow 
 to see in the same light ; and most effectively of all he 
 answered the always ready national grumble against 
 foreigners, which was especially angry and thunderous 
 against the Dutchman, by the triumphant doggerel of 
 ' The True-Born Englishman,' the first of Defoe's works 
 which brought his own personality into question. In 
 this strange production he held up to public admiration 
 the pedigree of the race which complained so warmly of 
 every new invasion, and held so high an opinion of 
 itself. ' A true-born Englishman 's a contradiction,' he 
 cries, and sets forth step by step the admixtures of new 
 blood which have gone to the formation of the English 
 people, Roman, Saxon, Dane, Norman. 
 
 From this amphibious, ill-born mob began 
 That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman. 
 
 It is not a very delicate hand which traces these, and 
 many another wave of strange ancestors, describing how 
 ' still the ladies loved the conquerors ' ; but Defoe's rude
 
 The Journalist i(^c) 
 
 lines went straight to the mark. The public had no 
 objection to a coarse touch when it was effective, and 
 Englishmen are rarely offended by ridicule, never, we 
 may say, when it is home-born. The stroke was so 
 true that the native sense of humour was moved by it. 
 Perhaps England did not, on account of Defoe's verses, 
 like the Dutchmen any better, but she acknowledged 
 Tutchin's seditious assault upon the foreigners to be 
 fully answered, and the universal laugh cleared the air. 
 
 Eighty thousand copies of this publication were sold, 
 it is said, on the streets, where everybody bought the 
 lampoon which aimed an amusing blow at the race, 
 but gave no individual sting. It also procured for 
 Defoe a personal introduction to the king : whether it 
 was to this or to his former services that he owed a 
 small appointment he held for some years, it is difficult 
 to say ; but he was not a man to give his services for 
 nothing at this or any other part of his career. 
 
 In the meantime, Defoe resumed his business occu- 
 pations, and set up a manufactory of pantiles at Tilbury, 
 where he employed a hundred poor labourers, and throve, 
 or seems to have thriven, in his new industry, living in 
 something like luxury, and paying off, as described, his 
 previous debts. His head was full of projects of all kinds, 
 and he recommended many sweeping schemes, and 
 made many bold suggestions on various subjects, from 
 the institution of an income-tax to that of an academy 
 like the French. It was a period when the air was 
 swarming with plans and schemes, and Defoe was not 
 necessarily original in his suggestions ; but his brain 
 was teeming with life and energy. He was a man to
 
 300 The Reign of Queen An^ie 
 
 whom ideas came as he walked, as he wrote, which 
 he flung off into the air to fly or fall as they might. 
 One thought, one fancy suggested another — and some- 
 times the contrary of the others — with a conscious 
 contradiction which was delightful to him. For 
 instance, after arguing long and well in favour of the 
 war with France, which was the object of King 
 William's life, and the only thing that could save — 
 according to the ideas of his party on the continent, 
 and eventually of most sound Protestants in England 
 — the Protestant faith, Defoe, with a sudden whimsical 
 perception of certain possibilities on the other side, 
 came out with a pamphlet entitled Reasons Agai?ist a 
 War with Frafice, which was founded on the suggestion 
 that a war with Spain instead would be very profitable, 
 and that the Spanish Indies were a booty well worth 
 having ! There is no reason to suppose that this meant 
 anything but a sudden dash into new fields, a delight- 
 ful way of pulling up short, with a certain gasp of 
 breathless inability to follow the new line of reasoning, 
 the reader whom he had just been, with all his might 
 pursuading, that in fighting France lay the only way 
 of salvation. 
 
 William died, however, and the times changed. The 
 High Church came back with Anne into a potency 
 which had been impossible in the unsympathetic reign of 
 the Dutchman, and new fields and fortunes now opened 
 before the pamphleteer. Defoe had been writing much 
 against the practice of Occasional Conformity — that 
 is, the device by which dissenters managed to hold 
 public offices in despite of existing tests, by kneeling
 
 The Journalist 301 
 
 now and then at the altars of the Established Church, 
 and receiving the communion there. Defoe took the 
 highest view of principle in this respect, and denounced 
 the Nonconformists who thus secured office to them- 
 selves by the sacrifice of their consciences, ' bowing in 
 the house of Rimmon.' Any religious duty specially 
 performed for the sake of a secular benefit is always 
 suspect and odious, and the obvious argument that 
 a man who could reconcile it with his conscience to 
 join the worship of the Church occasionally for such 
 a motive, might, by a stronger inducement, cease 
 to be a dissenter at all, was unquestionably sound 
 and unassailable in point of logic. He offended the 
 dissenters, to whom he himself belonged, deeply by 
 his protests on this point ; but such a course of conduct 
 did not prevent him from rushing into print in defence 
 of the expedient of Occasional Conformity as soon as 
 it was threatened from the other side. There is little 
 difficulty in following the action of his mind in such a 
 question. It was wrong and a deflection from the 
 highest point of duty to sacrifice one's conscience, even 
 occasionally, for the sake of office. But, on the other 
 hand, it was equally wrong to abolish an expedient 
 which broke the severity of the test, and made life 
 possible to the nonconforming classes. The views 
 were contradictory, yet both were true ; and it was his 
 nature to see both sides with most impartial good sense, 
 while he felt it to be, if a breach of external consistency, 
 no wrong to defend or assail one side or the other as 
 might seem most necessary. Thus his protests to his 
 dissenting brethren on what he considered a weakness
 
 302 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 in them did not in any way prevent him from defending 
 their right to use the expedient permitted if they had 
 a mind ; but this is too fine a distinction for the general 
 intelh'gence. 
 
 The discussions on this subject were the occasion of 
 one of the most remarkable performances of his life. 
 When the bill against Occasional Conformity was in- 
 troduced, to the delight of the High Church party from 
 the Queen downwards, and when the air began to buzz 
 around him with the bluster, hitherto subdued by 
 circumstances, of the reviving party who were so 
 violent against the dissenters, a grimly humorous 
 perception of the capabilities of the occasion seized 
 Defoe. Notwithstanding that he had angered all the 
 sects by his plain speaking, he was a dissenter born, 
 and there is no such way of reconverting a stray 
 Israelite as to hear the Philistines blaspheme. He 
 seized upon the extremest views of the highflyers with 
 characteristic insight, and with a keen consciousness 
 of the power of his weapon used it remorselessly. The 
 Shortest Way to Deal with Dissenters is a grave and 
 elaborate collection of the wild threats and violent 
 talk in which, in the intoxication of newly acquired 
 power, the partisans of the Church indulged, with 
 noise and exaggeration proportioned to the self-sup- 
 pression which had been forced upon them by the 
 panic of a papal restoration under James, and by 
 the domination of the more moderate party during 
 William's reign. They were now at the top of the 
 wave, and could brandish their swords in the eyes 
 of their adversaries; and their talk in some of their
 
 The Journalist 303 
 
 public utterances was as blood-thirsty as if they 
 intended a St. Bartholomew. Defoe took up this 
 frenzied babble, and put it into the form of a grave 
 and practical proposal, as serious as was Swift when 
 he proposed to utilise the superabundant babies of the 
 poor by eating them. In the same way Defoe pro- 
 pounded the easy way to get rid of the dissenters, 
 and the necessity of settling this question for ever. 
 ' Shall any law be given to such wild creatures } Some 
 beasts are for sport, and the huntsman gives them 
 advantages of ground, but some are knocked on the 
 head by all possible ways of violence and surprise.' 
 He says : 
 
 ' ' Tis vain to trifle in this matter, the light, foolish hand- 
 ling of them by mulcts, fines, etc. ' Tis their glory and their 
 advantage ; if the gallows instead of the counter, and the 
 galleys instead of the fine, were the reward of going to a con- 
 venticle to preach or to hear, there would not be so many 
 sufferers. The spirit of martyrdom is over. They that will 
 go to church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors, would go to 
 forty churches rather than be hanged. If one severe law were 
 made and punctually executed, that whoever was found at a 
 conventicle should be banished the nation, and the preacher 
 be hanged, we should soon see an end of the tale. They 
 would all come to church, and one age would make us all 
 one again. 
 
 'To talk of 5s. a month for not coming to the sacrament, 
 and IS. per week for not coming to church, this is such a way 
 of converting people as never was known. This is selling 
 them a liberty to transgress for so much money. If it be not 
 a crime, why don't we give them full licence ? and if it be, no 
 price ought to compound for committing it, for that is selling 
 a liberty to people to sin against God and the government. 
 
 ' If it be a crime of the highest consequence both against
 
 »04 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the peace and welfare of the nation, the glory of God, the 
 good of the Church, and the happiness of the soul, let us 
 rank it among capital offences, and let it receive a punishment 
 in proportion to it. 
 
 ' We hang men for trifles and banish them for things not 
 worth naming ; but an offence against God and the Church, 
 against the welfare of the world and the dignity of religion, 
 shall be bought off for 5s. Thi<; is such a shame to a Chris- 
 tian government that ' tis with regret I transmit it to posterity. 
 
 ' If men sin against God, affront His ordinances, rebel 
 against His Church and disobey the precepts of their superiors, 
 let them suffer as such capital crimes deserve, so will religion 
 flourish, and the divided nation be once again united. ... I 
 am not supposing that all the dissenters in England should 
 be hanged or banished; but, as in cases of rebellions and 
 insurrections, if a few of the ringleaders suffer, the multitude 
 are dismissed, so a few obstinate people being made examples, 
 there 's no doubt but that the severity of the law would find a 
 stop in the compliance of the multitude.' 
 
 The reader will perceive by what a serious argument 
 the hot-headed fanatic was betrayed and the wiser 
 public put upon their guard. The mirror thus held up 
 to nature with a grotesque twist in it, which made the 
 likeness bewildering, gave London such a sensation as 
 she had not felt for many a day. The wildest excite- 
 ment arose. At first all parties in the shock of surprise 
 took it for genuine, ' the wisest Churchmen in the 
 nation were deceived by it,' and while some vi^ere even 
 so foolish as to receive it with unthinking applause, 
 which was the case according to Oldmixon ' in our two 
 famous universities,' the more sensible reader of the 
 Church party was first indignant with the highflyers for 
 expressing such opinions, and then furious with the
 
 The Journalist 305 
 
 satirist who had insulted the Church by putting them 
 into her mouth. Nobody indeed saw the joke. The 
 Fellow of Cambridge who thanked his bookseller for 
 packing up 'so excellent a treatise' along with the 
 books he had ordered, and considered it ' next to the 
 sacred Bible and holy comments the best book he ever 
 saw ' ; the soberer Churchman who ' openly exclaimed 
 against the proposal, condemned the warmth that ap- 
 peared in the clergy, and openly professed that such a 
 man as Sacheverell and his brethren would blow up the 
 foundations of the Church ' ; and the dissenters who 
 were at once insulted and alarmed by the extraordinary 
 threats thus set forth against them, all alike treated it 
 seriously, and turned upon the perpetrator of the hoax, 
 when he was discovered, with furious indignation. 
 Some * blushed when they reflected how far they had 
 applauded,' some laboured to prove that it was ' a 
 horrible slander against the Church.' The govern- 
 ment, sharing the general commotion, placed Defoe in 
 the position of a revolutionary leader, who 'by the 
 villainous insinuations of that pamphlet would have 
 frightened the dissenters into another rebellion.' 
 Defoe himself seems to have had a moment of panic 
 and fled. He was proclaimed in the Gazette, and a 
 reward offered for his discovery. His biographers in 
 general assert that he gave himself up with some 
 generosity, to save the printer and publisher who had 
 been arrested ; but there are public documents which 
 seem to prove a different procedure, showing how my 
 Lord Nottingham hunted ' him out,' and how ' the per- 
 son who discovered Daniel Foe ' claimed and was paid 
 
 U
 
 3o6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 the reward of fifty pounds, offered for the offender, who 
 is described as a * middle-aged, spare man, about forty 
 years old, of a brown complexion and dark brown 
 coloured hair (but wears a wig), a hooked nose, a sharp 
 chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.' 
 However that might be, he was arrested and committed 
 to Newgate in the spring of 1703 ; and the obnoxious 
 publication, ' this little book, a contemptible pamphlet 
 of but three sheets of paper,' as he describes it, was 
 burned by the common hangman. 
 
 It was not, however, till the summer, three or four 
 months after his arrest, that he was tried ; and that 
 period he seems to have spent in Newgate in perfect 
 freedom, at least for literary production, since he filled 
 the air with a mist of pamphlets explaining that he 
 meant nothing but a harmless satire at one moment, at 
 another exhorting the dissenters to be content with 
 spiritual freedom, and again bursting forth into the 
 rude but potent strains of the ' Hymn to the Pillory.' 
 He was sentenced to fine and imprisonment, as well as 
 to that grotesque but sometimes terrible instrument of 
 torture ; but the pillory had no terrors to Defoe. On 
 the last three days of July, once before the Royal 
 Exchange in Cornhill, where his shop had been, and 
 where no doubt everybody knew him, once in Cheap- 
 side, and again at Temple Bar, he stood aloft, with the 
 crowd surging round, and performed his penance. The 
 crowd in those days was not a soft or civil one ; when 
 it endorsed the sentence propounded by law, its howls 
 and cries, its missiles and its curses, made the punish- 
 ment horrible. But the crowd had by this time found
 
 The Journalist 307 
 
 time to take in the joke. Banter when it is broad 
 enough to be intelhgible always pleases the general 
 public, and there must have been some bofihoinie about 
 the sufferer, some good repute as a merry fellow, and 
 one who loved a jest, which conciliated the populace. 
 Instead of dead cats they flung him nosegays, they 
 gathered about his platform — under the low, deep arch 
 which once made a mock gate to the city, and behind 
 the bustling 'Change, and between the shops of Cheap- 
 side — holding a series of impromptu festivals, drinking 
 his health, shouting out his new verses, which were sold 
 by thousands in the streets : 
 
 ' Hail, hieroglyphic state machine, 
 Contrived to punish fancy in. 
 Men that are men, in thee can feel no pain, 
 And all thy insignificants disdain. 
 
 Exalted on thy stool of state. 
 What prospect do I see of sovereign fate.' 
 
 The bold satirist looking through those ' lofty loops ' 
 recalls all the good men that have stood there, remind- 
 ing himself that even the learned Selden had the pillory 
 in prospect. Contempt, ' that false new word for 
 shame,' has no power where there is no crime, he 
 declares. The lines are rough, but the sentiments are 
 manly and full of honest scorn, which here and there 
 reaches a high tone. From his platform, where he 
 stood in all the emancipation of feeling that the worst 
 had happened, he threw a bold glance upon the dis- 
 orders of the time, political and social, and summoned 
 to this post of scorn the firebrands, the cowards, the 
 failures of the age. One can imagine those keen, grey
 
 3o8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 eyes inspecting through the loops the hoarse and roam- 
 ing groups, not sure, perhaps, what his reception was to 
 be, gathering courage as the shouts became intelligible, 
 and turned into hurrahs for Defoe. No doubt he 
 marked the fluctuating crowd as keenly as if he had 
 been a careless spectator at a window ; and saw Colonel 
 Jack and his brother pickpockets threading devious 
 ways among the multitude, with here and there a 
 gallant from St. James's, in his long-curled periwig 
 fluttering on the edge, and the tradesmen, half-curious, 
 half-unwilling to join in the riot, looking on from their 
 doors. A pillory is a coign of vantage like another 
 when the man upon it has eyes like Defoe's. ' Tell 
 ' em,' he says, apostrophising his platform contemptu- 
 ously — 
 
 ' Tell ' em the men that placed him here 
 
 Are friends unto the times. 
 
 But at a loss to find his guilt, 
 
 They can't commit his crimes.' 
 
 Mr. Burton, in his Reign of Queen Anne, quotes from 
 manuscript authority a statement that Penn had been 
 commissioned by Defoe to offer ' an account of all his 
 accomplices in whatsoever he had been concerned ' on 
 condition that he should be freed from the pillory — 
 which is a very confusing statement, since it seems 
 impossible to imagine what accomplices he could have 
 had. This, according to the same authority, was con- 
 sidered important enough to call for a special meet- 
 ing of the Cabinet Council; but 'the queen seems to 
 think that his confession amounts to nothing.' Another 
 account is that Nottingham visited him in prison, and 
 offered him his liberty, if he would say who set him on
 
 The Journalist 3 09 
 
 to do it. Thus this jeu d' esprit, the first exercise of 
 Defoe's special and most characteristic gift, that of 
 endowing a fictitious production with every appearance 
 of reality, set the whole world aflame. It is almost a 
 more astonishing feat than the narratives which look so 
 like literal transcripts of experience ; for the subtle 
 power which, by a cunning fitting together of actual 
 utterances, could thus indicate the alarming tendency 
 and danger of a great party, is more wonderful than to 
 create an imaginary man, and trace his every action as 
 if he were a real one. The art may be less noble, but 
 it is more difficult — indeed the Shortest Way is about 
 the only example of such an extraordinary achievement. 
 Swift's tremendous satire was more bitter, more scath- 
 ing, and treated not so much the exaggerated opinions 
 of a class as the cruel and callous indifference of human 
 nature to the sufferings of its slaves and victims. 
 
 This curious episode once more ruined Defoe. It is 
 to be supposed that when he went into hiding his busi- 
 ness had to be abandoned, and all his affairs got into 
 confusion. The official document already quoted 
 describes him as ' living at Newington Green with his 
 father-in-law, who is a lay elder of a conventicle there.' 
 This description, however, is evidently drawn up by an 
 enemy, since his previous bankruptcy is spoken of as 
 fraudulent, an assertion made nowhere else. His bio- 
 grapher, Wilson, informs us that though he had ' kept 
 his coach ' before this period, the pantile works had now 
 to be broken up, and his business was ruined. He had, 
 though there is no information about her, a wife and 
 six children — perhaps supported by the elder at New-
 
 3IO The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 ington, who very likely thought, like his brethren, but 
 badly of Defoe. 
 
 He lay in Newgate for nearly a year, without how- 
 ever, to all appearance, losing any opportunity for a 
 pamphlet during the whole time, and laying in grist for 
 his mill amid the strange and terrible surroundings of 
 an eighteenth century prison. Mr. Minto, in the admir- 
 able sketch of Defoe which he has contributed to the 
 English Men of Letters^ seems to think that his hero 
 must have enjoyed himself in this teeming world of new 
 experiences, and that ' he spent many pleasant hours ' 
 listening to the tales of his fellow-prisoners. No doubt 
 there must have been some compensation to such a man 
 in making acquaintance with a new aspect of life, but it is 
 perhaps going too far to attribute a possibility of enjoy- 
 ment to any man in the pandemonium described in so 
 many contemporary narratives. Defoe did, however, 
 what, so far as we are aware, no man before or after him 
 has ever done (if not, perhaps, Leigh Hunt, in whose 
 case we have a vague recollection of similar activity) : 
 he originated, wrote, and published a newspaper in his 
 prison, ' The Review,' so-called, ' of the Affairs of France ' 
 — that is, of the affairs of Europe and the world, that is, 
 of any political subject that might be uppermost — which 
 was published twice a week, and appeared during the 
 whole time of his imprisonment, a brilliant, familiar, 
 graphic commentary upon all that was happening — a 
 dialogue between the imprisoned spectator of life and 
 the busy world outside in which he was both questioner 
 and answerer, pouring out upon the country, with the 
 keenest understanding of other people's views, and the
 
 The Journalist 3 1 1 
 
 most complete mastery of his own, his remarks and 
 criticisms, his judgment and advice. A newspaper in 
 those days was not, of course, the huge broadsheet which 
 it has now grown to. The Review was a sheet of eight, 
 but afterwards of only four, small quarto pages. It was 
 no assemblage of paragraphs, trivial or important, the 
 work of many anonymous persons whose profession it 
 is to manufacture a newspaper, but one man's eager 
 and lively conversation with his countrymen, full of the 
 vigour of personal opinion and the unity of an individual 
 view. A keener intelligence was never brought to the 
 treatment of public affairs, nor a mind more thoughtful, 
 reasonable, and practical. His prejudices were few, too 
 few perhaps. Granted that the aim was good, Defoe 
 was disdainful of punctilio in the way of carrying it out. 
 He was not above doing evil that good might come ; 
 but he had a higher refinement of meaning than is 
 usually embraced by such a statement, in his subtle 
 faculty of discovering, and all but proving that what 
 might have seemed evil to a common intelligence was 
 in reality good, if not the best way of carrying an excel- 
 lent purpose out. 
 
 Up to the moment of his leaving Newgate, how- 
 ever, there was nothing equivocal in the use Defoe 
 made of his extraordinary qualities. He was a free 
 man discussing boldly on his own responsibility, and 
 without any arriere pensee, the affairs of England. If 
 he had first keenly assailed the dissenters, who were 
 his own people, in respect to the compliances by which 
 they made themselves capable of bearing office, and 
 then exposed to grimmest ridicule the adversaries who
 
 212 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 aimed at rendering them altogether incapable, there 
 was in this no real inconsistency. His championship 
 of King William had been honest and thorough ; and 
 if he loved to have a finger in every pie, and let loose 
 his opinion at every crisis, there was no contemporary 
 opinion which was better worth having. But now this 
 unwearying critic, this keen observer, this restless, bril- 
 liant casuist, this practical man of business, had come 
 to the turning-point of his life. 
 
 His liberation from Newgate followed closely upon 
 the advent of Harley to power. When this event hap- 
 pened it is said that one of the first things the new 
 minister did was to send a message to Defoe in prison : 
 'Pray ask that gentleman what I can do for him?' 
 Whether it was in direct sequence to this question or 
 whether the queen had formed an independent intention 
 of freeing the prisoner we need not inquire. But he was 
 set free, Queen Anne furnishing the means of paying his 
 fine. She is said also to have taken an interest in his 
 family, and contributed to their support during his con- 
 finement. He declared himself to be liberated on the 
 condition of writing nothing (further modified as nothing 
 ' which some people might not like ') for some years : a 
 condition which he immediately fulfilled by publishing 
 an Elegy on the Author of the True-born Ejiglishmau to 
 tell the world so, and taking no further notice of the 
 prohibition. The real meaning of this curious state- 
 ment would seem by all evidence to have been, that 
 Defoe there and then accepted the position of a secret 
 servant of the government, a writer pledged to support 
 their measures and carry out their views. At the
 
 The Jo^trnalist 313 
 
 moment, and perhaps in reality during the greater part 
 of his career, their measures were those which he 
 approved, and certainly at this period of his history he 
 had never been accused of writing against his conscience. 
 Even when, after eager championship of peace, he was 
 obliged by political changes to veer into what looked like 
 support of war, he was never without the strong defence 
 to fall back upon, that he had demanded peace only after 
 securing certain indispensable conditions, and that war 
 might be and was the only means of gaining these condi- 
 tions, an argument most simple and evident to his mind. 
 Harley has never appeared in history as a great man ; 
 but when we consider that he was able thus to subju- 
 gate and secure to his own service two of the greatest 
 intelligences of his time, it is impossible not to respect 
 his influence and judgment. The great and sombre 
 genius of Swift, the daring, brilliant, and ever-ready 
 intellect of Defoe, became instruments in the hand of 
 this ordinary and scheming statesman. Once more, 
 with a curious parallelism, these two men stand before 
 us, no friends to each other : * an illiterate fellow whose 
 name I forget,' says Swift, with the almost brutal scorn 
 which was part of his character, while Defoe replies to 
 the taunt with angry virulence, setting forth his own 
 acquirements, * though he wrote no bill at his door, nor 
 set Latin on the front of his productions/ a piece of 
 pretension habitual to the time, of which the other was 
 guilty. But Harley, who was not worthy, as far as 
 intellect went, to clean the shoes of either, had them 
 both at his command, serving his purposes, doing his 
 bidding. Which of them suffered most by the connec-
 
 3 14 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 tion it is not easy to say. It turned Swift's head, and 
 brought into humiliating demonstration the braggart 
 and the bully in his nature. Defoe had not the 
 demoralising chance of being the Lord Treasurer's boon 
 companion. But Harley made a dishonest partisan, a 
 paid and slippery special pleader and secret agent, out 
 of the free lance of politics. From this moment the 
 defenders and champions of Defoe have to turn into 
 casuists as he himself did. They have to give specious 
 explanations, to suppress and to account for his shifts 
 and changes, though at first these were sufficiently 
 innocent. The evil grew, however, so that towards the 
 end of his career even the apologist is forced to keep 
 silence ; but this is the nature of all evil. 
 
 If excuses are to be sought for Defoe's conduct in 
 the first beginning of his slavery, it will not be difficult 
 to find them. The age for one thing was corrupt 
 through and through ; there was not a statesman but 
 had two strings to his bow, nor a politician of any 
 description who did not attempt to serve two masters. 
 To hold the balance between Hanover and St. Germains, 
 ready to perform a demivolt in air at any moment, as 
 the scale should turn, was the science of the day. On 
 the other hand, he was a ruined man, with a family to sup- 
 port, and now nothing but his busy and inexhaustible 
 pen to do it with. The material inducement of a cer- 
 tain income to fall back upon, whatever might be the 
 chances of journalism, must have been very strong. 
 And what was stronger still was the delight of his own 
 vivacious, restless, ready mind, with its sense of bound- 
 less power and infinite resource, to which difficulty was 
 
 J
 
 The Jotirnalist 315 
 
 a delight, and the exercise of walking over hot coals or 
 dancing on a sword-point the most exhilarating possi- 
 bility, to make its triumphant way over obstacles which 
 would have baffled almost all his contemporaries. ' The 
 danger's self was lure alone' to this skilled and cunning 
 fencer, this master of all the arts. In a very different 
 sense from that of Tennyson's noble hero, * faith unfaith- 
 ful' was inspiration and strength to him, and to be 
 falsely true the most delightful situation. He loved to 
 support his principles by a hundred dodges, and plead 
 them from the other side, and make of himself the 
 devil's advocate in the interest of Heaven. All this was 
 easy and delightful to his mind. He must have had a 
 positive pleasure in proving to himself that to support 
 the Tory measures, from a Whig point of view, was the 
 most ingenious, the most exciting and amusing thing 
 that ever a clever writer had to do, with just that spice 
 of mischief and mystification in it which gave the work 
 a double zest. Allegiance to the queen required a 
 change of policy on his part, whenever circumstances 
 compelled her to change her ministry. It was all devo- 
 tion, not time-serving as the vulgar thought. Defoe 
 took infinite pleasure in proving that it was so, in mak- 
 ing everything clear. The commonplace and humdrum 
 expedient of following your party would have been dull 
 to him, a proceeding without interest as without danger. 
 He wanted excitement, obstacles to get over, a position 
 which would make sudden claims upon his ingenuity to 
 account for and fortify it. Such a mind is rare, and still 
 more rarely is it accompanied by genius. But it is a very 
 curious spectacle when such a combination does occur.
 
 3i6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 In the meantime, however, all that Defoe had to do 
 was simple enough. He had to support peace and the 
 Union, two things which in his free estate he had 
 already advocated with all his powers. He did it with 
 the utmost skill, fervour, and success, and to all appear- 
 ance contributed much to the great public act which 
 was the subject of so many struggles, and resistances on 
 the part of the smaller nation. This great expedient, of 
 which from the first he had seen the advantage, Defoe 
 worked for with unwearying zeal. He praised and 
 caressed Caledonia — upon which subject he wrote one 
 of those vigorous essays in verse which he called poetry 
 — and the tolerance of the Presbyterian church, and the 
 good sense of the nation generally, which was not always 
 perceptible to English politicians : and even risked a 
 visit to Edinburgh in performance of the orders of the 
 government, though at the risk of rude handling to him- 
 self. In all this there cannot be the slightest doubt 
 that he was entirely honest and patriotic, and acted from 
 an enlightened personal view of the necessities of the 
 case. In these circumstances he probably felt himself 
 entitled to assert and insist upon his independence. ' I 
 contemn,' he says, 'as not worth mentioning the sugges- 
 tions of some people of my being employed to carry on 
 the interests of a party. I have never loved any party, 
 but with my utmost zeal have sincerely espoused the 
 great and original interest of this nation, and of all 
 nations, I mean truth and liberty' ; which was true 
 enough, yet not all the truth. Again, with still more 
 violent protestations, he refers to his private circum- 
 stances, of which nothing is known, to prove how little
 
 The Journalist 317 
 
 he was protected by power. It would seem from this 
 statement that he was still being pursued for the 
 remnant of old debts, or those new ones which the 
 failure of his tile factory and his long imprisonment had 
 saddled him with. 
 
 * If paid, gentlemen, for writing,' he cries, ' if hired, if 
 employed, why still harassed with merciless and malicious 
 men, why pursued to all extremities of law for old accounts 
 which you clear other men of every day ? Why oppressed, 
 distressed, and driven from his family, and from all his pro- 
 spects of delivering them and himself? Is this the fate of 
 men employed and hired ? Is this the figure the agents of 
 courts and princes make ?' 
 
 The argument is a feeble one for such a practised 
 reasoner as Defoe, without considering the trifling 
 detail that it was untrue. For debts are by no means 
 unknown to favourites of the crown, nor could he have 
 been saved by Harley's pay, which probably was never 
 very great, from the consequences of previous misfor- 
 tunes. The reader will think that a judicious silence 
 would have been more appropriate. But that was not 
 Defoe's way ; the only wonder is that he did not adduce 
 such detailed evidence of his own freedom as would 
 have deceived any man, and shown to demonstration 
 that it was he who subsidised the ministry and not 
 they him. And a greater wonder still is that he was 
 actually free through all, maintaining his own favourite 
 opinions, working as an independent power. Servile 
 journalists have existed in plenty, but seldom one who 
 took the pay of his masters and served their interests, 
 yet fought under his own flag with honesty and a good 
 conscience all the while.
 
 3i8 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 This happy state, however, did not last. Harley fell ; 
 but with his last breath (as a minister) adjured his 
 champion not to sacrifice himself, but to come to an 
 understanding with his successor Godolphin. This 
 necessitated a certain revolution of sentiment in respect 
 to peace, which Defoe managed cleverly by means of 
 the excellent device above mentioned. And in this 
 matter there was still higher ground which he felt him- 
 self entitled to take. The public safety was involved in 
 the stability of the new ministry such as it was, and he 
 faced the dilemma with boundless pluck and assurance. 
 ' Though I don't like the crew I won't seize the ship. 
 I '11 pump and heave and haul, and do everything I can, 
 though he that pulls with me were my enemy. The 
 reason is plain. We are all in the ship and must sink 
 or swim together.' These admirable reasonings brought 
 him at last to the calm rectitude of the following con- 
 clusion : — 
 
 ' It occurred to me instantly as a principle for my conduct, 
 that it was not material to me what ministers her Majesty was 
 pleased to employ ; my duty was to go along with every 
 minister, so far as they did not break in upon the Constitution 
 and the laws and liberties of my country, my part being only 
 the duty of a subject, viz. : to submit to all lawful commands, 
 and to enter into no service that was not justifiable by the 
 laws, to all of which I have exactly obliged myself.' 
 
 When Harley returned to power, another modifi- 
 cation became necessary, but Defoe piously felt it was 
 providential that he should thus be thrown back upon 
 his original protector. And had the matter ended here, 
 as was long supposed, it is difficult to see what indict-
 
 HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD 
 
 After the original paintins by Sir Godfrey Kiteller
 
 I
 
 The Journalist 319 
 
 ment could be brought against him. It is not expedient, 
 certainly, that a director of public opinion should have 
 state pay, and does not look well when the secret is 
 betrayed ; but so long as the scope of all his productions 
 is good, honest, and patriotic, with only as much sub- 
 mission in trifles as is inevitable, the bargain is a per- 
 sonal meanness rather than a public crime. And this 
 was long supposed to have been the case. It was 
 believed that after the death of Queen Anne and 
 Harley's final fall, Defoe's eloquent mouth was closed, 
 and that he disappeared into the calm of private life to 
 earn a better hire and a more lasting influence through 
 the two immortal works of fiction, by which alone, but 
 for the painful labours of biographers, his name would 
 have been known. Had the matter been left so, how 
 much happier it would have been for the hero of this 
 romance of literary life, how much more edifying for 
 posterity ! We could have imagined the tired warrior 
 retiring from that hot and painful field, in which even 
 the laurels were not worth the plucking, where defeat 
 was miserable and success mean, and scarcely any com- 
 batant could keep his honour intact — to the quietness of 
 some suburban house, in which his three pretty daughters 
 could love and care for him, and where his wonderful 
 imagination, no longer a slave to the exigencies of 
 political warfare, could weave its dreams into the 
 soberest certainty of life. We should then have said 
 of the author of Robinson Crusoe and the Journal of the 
 Plague, that, in his poverty and anxiety and overhaste, 
 he had been beguiled into a bargain, which might have 
 been a shameful one, had not his marvellous power of
 
 320 The Reign of Quee7i Anne 
 
 seeing every side of a subject, and that insight of genius 
 which divines the real unity of honest souls through all 
 the external diversities which fill the limited vision of 
 common men, carried him triumphantly through. And 
 upon what real fault there was we should have thrown 
 a veil. The age would have borne the blame, an age 
 which was corrupt to the core, and in which men 
 changed their principles every day. In the garden at 
 Newington, where the young ladies entertained their 
 lovers, we could have pictured him benevolent and 
 friendly in the flowing peruke, under which his keen 
 eyes sparkled, looking on at the love-making ; with 
 prudent tradesmanlike thoughts of Sophia's portion, 
 and how much the young people would have to set up 
 housekeeping upon, coming in not inappropriately be- 
 tween the pages of Crusoe ; perhaps taking a suggestion 
 about Robinson's larder from some passing talk concern- 
 ing the store-room, or modifying for the use of Friday 
 some rustical remark of the young serving-man from the 
 country ; or in the renewing of old recollections pro- 
 duced by some old friend's visit finding an anecdote, a 
 detail to incorporate into the Journal of the Plague. 
 And we should have asked ourselves by what strange 
 play of genius the unenchanted island, where all the 
 sober elaborations of fact clothed so completely the 
 vivid dream of imagination, should have risen out of 
 the mists amid those trim, old-fashioned alleys, and 
 green plots, and stiff parterres of flowers, 
 
 Alas ! that demon of research, which in its poking 
 and prying sometimes puts old bones together, and 
 sometimes scatters to the winds the ashes of the dead,
 
 The J oil rnalist 321 
 
 has spoiled this pleasant picture. Impelled by its 
 influence, an unwary or else too painstaking student 
 some twenty years ago was seized with the idea of 
 roaming the earth in search of relics of Defoe. And 
 the diabolical powers which put this fatal pursuit into 
 his mind directed him to a bundle of yellow papers in 
 the State Paper office, which have, alas ! for ever and 
 ever made an end of our man of genius. These 
 treacherous papers give us to wit under his own hand 
 that he was in reality in full action in the most traitor- 
 ous of employments during the period of his sup- 
 posed retirement. The following, which is the first of 
 these fatally self-elucidatory letters, will reveal at once 
 the inconceivable occupation to which Defoe, in his 
 downfall, lent himself. He had perhaps compromised 
 himself too much, and been too completely identified 
 with Harley at the end, to be considered capable of 
 more honourable employment. The letter is addressed 
 to the secretary of the minister who had given him his 
 disgraceful office : 
 
 ' It was proposed by my Lord Townshend that I should 
 appear as if I were as before, under the displeasure of the 
 government, and separated from the Whigs ; and that I 
 might be more serviceable in a kind of disguise than if I 
 
 appeared openly In the interval of this, Dyer, the 
 
 news-letter writer, having been dead, and Dormer, his suc- 
 cessor, being unable by his troubles to carry on that work, I 
 had an offer of a share in the property, as well as in the 
 management of that work. 
 
 ' I immediately acquainted my Lord Townshend of it, 
 who, by Mr. Buckley, let me know it would be a very accept- 
 able piece of service, for that letter was really very prejudicial 
 to the public, and the most difficult to come at in a judicial 
 
 X
 
 32 2 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 way in case of offence given. My lord was pleased to add, 
 by Mr. Buckley, that he would combine my service in that 
 case, as he afterwards did. 
 
 ' Upon this I engaged in it, and that so far, that though 
 the property was not wholly my own, yet the conduct 
 and crovernment of the style of news was so entirely in me, 
 that I ventured to assure his lordship the sting of that mis- 
 chievous paper should be entirely taken out, though it was 
 granted that the style should continue Tory as it was, that the 
 party might be amused, and not set up another, which would 
 have destroyed the design ; and this part I, therefore, take 
 entirely on myself still. 
 
 ' This went on for a year before my Lord Townshend went 
 out of office, and his Lordship, in consideration of the service, 
 made me the appointment which Mr. Buckley knows of, with 
 promise of a further allowance as service presented. 
 
 'My Lord Sunderland, to whose goodness I had many 
 years ago been obliged when I was in a secret commission 
 sent to Scotland, was pleased to approve and continue this 
 service and the appointment annexed, and with his Lordship's 
 approbation I introduced myself, in the disguise of a trans- 
 lator of the foreign news, to be so far concerned in this weekly 
 paper of Mist's as to be able to keep it within the circle of a 
 secret management, also prevent the mischievous part of it, 
 and yet neither Mist or any of those concerned with him have 
 the least guess of suspicion by whose direction I do it.' 
 
 There is nothing, it seems to us, for any apologist to 
 say in explanation of this extraordinary statement. 
 The emissary of a Whig and Hanoverian Government, 
 acting as editor of a Tory and Jacobite newspaper, nay, 
 of three newspapers, in order to take the harm out of 
 them, to amuse the Tory party with a pretence of style 
 and subjects suitable to their views, while balking all 
 their purposes, is at once the most ingenious and the
 
 The Journalist 323 
 
 most shameless of devices. It continued for a long 
 period, and was very successful. But when the deceit 
 was discovered at last, Mist, the deluded publisher, 
 made a murderous assault upon the deceiver, and the 
 journalists of the period seem to have risen unanimously 
 against him. That Defoe must have fallen sadly before 
 he came to this, is very evident ; but how he fell, except 
 by the natural action of a deteriorating principle which 
 makes a man who has long paltered with the truth un- 
 able at last to distinguish the gradations which separate 
 the doubtful from the criminal, no one can say. He 
 must, however, have fallen indeed in position and im- 
 portance before he could be put to such miserable work ; 
 and he must have fallen more fatally still, like that other 
 Son of the Morning, deep down into Hades where he 
 became the father of lies and betrayer of mankind, 
 before he could have been capable of such an infamous 
 mission. 
 
 We turn with relief to the work which of all these 
 manifold labours is the only portion which has really 
 survived the effects of time, Defoe's political writings, 
 with all their lucidity, their brilliant good sense and 
 daring satire and astonishing readiness and variety, 
 are for the student, and retain a place only among the 
 materials of history, studied no longer for their own 
 sake but for the elucidations they may chance to give. 
 But Robmson Crusoe lives by his own right, and will, 
 we may confidently affirm, after the long trial he has 
 had, never die. We need not discuss Defoe's other 
 works of fiction, which are all as characteristic, as 
 distinct narratives of the apparent fact, as carefully
 
 324 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 elaborated in every detail. They are almost all excellent 
 in their beginning, but, a fault which is shared by Crusoe 
 himself, run into such a prodigality of detail towards 
 their close that the absence of dramatic construction 
 and of any real inspiration of art, becomes painfully — or 
 rather tediously, which is worse — apparent. We do not, 
 however, share the opinion of those critics who dis- 
 parage Defoe's marvellous power of narrative. ' The 
 little art he is truly master of, of forging a story and 
 imposing it on the world for truth ' is an art which is 
 possessed by very few, and which Defoe had in a very 
 complete and unusual kind. It is not one of the higher 
 developments of fiction. We are not moved by it to 
 pity or tenderness, or to the admiration of heroic 
 qualities, or to the exercise of those sympathies which 
 the sight of human passion, emotion, or suffering calls 
 forth : the inner circle of our feelings is seldom if ever 
 entered. But on the other hand, there is nothing in 
 that island where the shipwrecked mariner finds a 
 shelter, and which he makes into a home, which we do 
 not know and see as well as if we had dwelt in it like 
 Robinson. It is an island which is added to the geo- 
 graphy of the world. Not only would no child ever 
 doubt of its existence, but to the most experienced 
 reader it is far more true and real than half of those of 
 which we have authentic histories, which our relatives 
 and countrymen have visited and colonised. The 
 South Sea Islands, about which we have so many 
 flowery volumes, are not half so certain. And every 
 detail of the life of its solitary inhabitant comes up 
 before us like our own personal proceedings, more than
 
 The Journalist 325 
 
 visible, incontestable experiences. Not one of us but 
 could draw the picture of the solitary in his furs with 
 all his odd implements about him ; and more wonderful 
 still, not a child, from four upwards, but would recog- 
 nise and name the picture. The tale does not move us 
 as do imaginative histories on a more poetic level, but 
 in its humbler range it is as living as the best. And 
 there is something in this very absence of emotion 
 which gives a still more wonderful force to the narrative. 
 Men in such desperate circumstances, driven to the use 
 of all their faculties for the mere preservation of their 
 lives, have presumably but little time for feeling. The 
 absorption of every faculty in this one primitive need 
 brings a certain serenity, a calm which is like the hush 
 of the solitude, the silence of the seas. The atmosphere 
 is full of this stillness ; it is the repose of nature, not 
 filled with reflections of human sentiment, but imposing 
 her patience, her calm repetition of endless endeavour 
 upon the solitary flung into her bosom : and there is 
 a sobriety in the story which adds immensely to its 
 power. Other unknown islands have existed in fiction, 
 but none where the progress of events was so gradual, 
 where there were so few miraculous accessories. One 
 of the most able of English romancers, the late Charles 
 Reade, is almost the last who has carried us to a desolate 
 island. His story is full of charm, of humour and senti- 
 ment far beyond the reach of Defoe. Nothing could 
 be more tender, more delightful than the idyll of the 
 two lovers cut off from all mankind, lost in the silence of 
 the seas ; but in every way his isle is an enchanted isle. 
 Not only is it peopled with love and all the graces, but
 
 326 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 it is running over with every convenience, everything 
 that is useful and beautiful. The inexhaustible ingenu- 
 ity of the lover is not more remarkable than the wealth 
 of necessary articles of every kind that turn up at every 
 step. He builds his lady a bower lined with mother- 
 of-pearl, he clothes her in a cloak of seal skin, he finds 
 jewels for her. She has but to wish and to have, as if 
 Regent Street had been within reach. Very different 
 is the sober sanity of the elder narrative. Defoe knows 
 nothing about lovers ; all his heroes marry with prodi- 
 gality, but he has no love, any more than he has pearls 
 or gutta-percha, on his island. Conveniences come very 
 slowly to Robinson Crusoe ; he has to grope his way, 
 and find his living hardly, patiently. Day after day 
 and year after year, the story-teller goes on working 
 out the order of events. It is as leisurely as nature, as 
 little helped by accident, as sober, even as matter-of- 
 fact ; and yet what a potent, clear, all-realising fancy, 
 a faculty which in its limited sphere saw and felt and 
 acted in completcst appropriation of the circumstances — 
 this sober imagination was ! 
 
 He was fifty-eight at the time this book was written, 
 a man worn with endless work and strife, but ever 
 ready for more ; a man who had fallen and failed, and, 
 notwithstanding the work and labour of a giant, made 
 but little of his life. It is said that he was at his 
 highest point of external prosperity when he published 
 Robinson Crusoe ; but when we remember that he was 
 at that time engaged in the inconceivable muddle of 
 Mist's journal, it seems almost impossible to believe 
 this, or to understand how anything but poverty could
 
 The Journalist 327 
 
 have driven him into such a disgraceful employment. 
 No doubt to a man who at heart had once been an 
 honest man and was so no more, it must have been a 
 relief and blessed deliverance to escape away into the 
 distant seas, to refresh his ever active soul with the 
 ingenious devices of th(^ shipwrecked sailor and bury 
 himself in that life so different from his own, the savage 
 necessities, the primitive cares. The goats and the 
 parrot and poor I'^iday, what an ease and comfort to 
 escape into their society after baniboo/ling Mist, and 
 reporting to my lord at St, James's! Was it a 
 desperate exiJcdient of nature to save him from utter 
 self-contempt? Such a man, even if his conscience had 
 grown callous, must have retiuired some outlet from the 
 dreadful slavery to which he had bound himself. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe is the work by which IJefoe is best 
 known ; which is after all the most effectual profjf that 
 it is his best work ; but it is not, to our thinking, worthy 
 of being placed in competition with the Journal of the 
 J^lagne, a history so real, so solemn and impressive, so 
 full of the atmosphere and sentiment of the time, that it 
 reaches a far higher point of literary art than anything 
 else Defoe has written ; for this is not invention alone, 
 nor that art of making fictitm look like truth, which is 
 supposed to be his greatest excellence. It is one of the 
 most impressive pictures of a historical incident which 
 has struck the poetic imagination everywhere, and (;f 
 which we have perhaps more authentic pictures than of 
 any other kind of historical episode. Neither Boccaccio 
 nor Manzoni has equalled Defoe in the story of the 
 plague. To the old Italian it was a horror from which
 
 328 The Reign of Queen Ahj;-: 
 
 the life-loving fled with loathing as well as fear, and 
 which they tried to forget and put out of their sight. 
 Defoe's minute description of the argument carried on 
 within his own mind by the narrator is curiously charac- 
 teristic of the tendency to elaborate and explain which 
 enters so largely into all his works. The mental condition 
 of the respectable citizen, divided between concern for 
 his life and concern for his propert)', seeing with reason- 
 able eyes that death was not certain, but that in case of 
 flight ruin was ; moved by the divination which he uses 
 in all good faith, yet perhaps not with sufficient devout- 
 ness to have allowed himself to be guided by it had it 
 been contrary to his prev'ious dispositions, and at 
 bottom by a certain ri's incrticz and disinclination to 
 move, which is clearlv indicated from the besfinning — is 
 a picture in his best manner, and so real, that it is im- 
 possible to resist its air of absolute truthfulness. But 
 the state of the shut-up streets, the dreadful sounds and 
 sights, the brooding rest and stillness of the long and 
 awful days, the cloud of fate that is about the doomed cit>' 
 are beyond description impressive. This curious spec- 
 tator of all things, this impartial yet eager looker-on, 
 determined to see all that could be seen, prudent, yet 
 fearless, adopting every precaution, yet neglecting no 
 meansof investigation, inquiring ever>-^vhere, always with 
 his eyes and his ears open, at once a philosophical inquirer 
 and an eager gossip, is without doubt Defoe himself: but 
 he is also a marked figure of the time He is like 
 Pepys ; he is almost, but for the unmistakable difference 
 between the bourgeois and the fine gentleman, like 
 Evelyn. He is one of the special kind of man born to
 
 The Journalist 329 
 
 illustrate that period. Pepys would have found means 
 for some piece of junketting even in tlie midst of his 
 alarm, whereas Defoe thinks of his propert}" only, when 
 he has time to think of anything but the plague. But 
 they are at bottom the same. \Miile. however, 
 this central figure remains the characteristic but not 
 elevated personage with whom we are already ac- 
 quainted, the history which he records is done with 
 a tragic force and completeness which it is impossible 
 to surpass. In this there is nothing commonplace, no 
 wearj'ing monotony. The verj- statistics have a tragic 
 solemnity in them, the awful unseen presence dominates 
 everything. We scarceh" breathe while we move about 
 the streets emptied of all passers-by, or with a suspicious 
 line of pedestrians in the middle of the way, keeping as 
 far apart as possible from the houses. This is not mere 
 prose, it is poetry in its most rare form ; it is an ideal 
 representation, in all its sober details, of one of the most 
 tragical moments of human suffering and fate. 
 
 Nothing else that Defoe has done is on the same 
 level : it was pitched on too high a ke\- perhaps for the 
 multitude. His innocent thief, Colonel Jack, begins 
 witli a picture, both amusing and touching, of the 
 curious moral denseness and confusion of a street boy ; 
 his Carcalicr is a charming young man, but both of 
 these, and all the rest of Defoe's heroes and heroines, 
 grow heav}- and tedious at the end. T\\^ Jcurnal of the 
 Plague is not like this. The conclusion, tlie sudden sur- 
 prise and half-delirious sense of relief, the joj* which 
 makes the passers-by stop and shake hands with each 
 other in the streets, and the women call out from their
 
 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 windows with tears and outcries of gladness, is sudden 
 and overwhelming as the reality. We are caught in 
 the growing despair, and suddenly in a moment deliver- 
 ance comes. Here alone Defoe is not too long : the 
 unexpected is brought in with a skill and force not less 
 remarkable than that which, in the previous pages, has 
 portrayed the slow growth and inevitable development 
 of the misery. Up to this anti-climax of unlooked-for 
 joy, the calamity has grown, every new touch intensify- 
 ing the awful reality. But the recovery is sudden, and 
 told without an unnecessary word. It is the only 
 instance in which Defoe has followed the instinct of 
 a great artist and shown that he knew how to avail him- 
 self of the unwritten code and infallible methods of art. 
 We forget his shortcomings when we discuss this, 
 which is to our minds much his greatest work, and it is 
 well that we should leave him in this disposition. He 
 died mysteriously alone, after a period of wandering 
 and hiding which nobody can explain. Whether he 
 was in trouble with creditors or with political enemies, 
 or with the exasperated party which he had managed to 
 outwit ; whether he kept out of the way that his family 
 might make better terms for themselves, or that he 
 might keep the remains of his money out of the hands 
 of an undutiful son, or a grasping son-in-law ; nobody 
 can tell. He died in remote lodgings all alone, and his 
 affairs were administered by a stranger, perhaps his 
 landlady ; no one knows. His domestic circumstances 
 have been referred to during his life only in the vaguest 
 way. He had a wife and a numerous family when he 
 was put in the pillory. He had a wife, a son who was
 
 The Journalist 
 
 unkind, and three daughters at the end, but that is all 
 we know. He died at seventy-two ' of a lethargy,' no 
 doubt fallen into the feebleness and hopelessness of 
 lonely old age. His life overflowed with activity and 
 business ; to be doing seems to have been a necessity 
 of his being ; but he never enjoyed the importance due 
 to his powers, and in an age when men of letters filled 
 the highest posts never would appear to have risen 
 above his citizen circle, his shopkeeping ways. Some- 
 thing in the man must have accounted for this, but it is 
 difficult to say what it was ; for the age did not require 
 a high standard of truthfulness, and the worst of his 
 misdoings were kept secret from the public. Perhaps 
 his manners were not such as society, though very easy 
 in those days, could tolerate ; but this is simple guess- 
 work. All we know of Defoe is that, as a writer, he 
 was of the greatest influence and note, but as a man, 
 nothing. He died, poor and alone ; he had little re- 
 ward for unexampled labour. When Addison was 
 Secretary of State, and Prior an ambassador, he was no- 
 body — a sword in the hand of an unscrupulous states- 
 man — a shopkeeper, manufacturing his genius and sell- 
 ing it by the yard. A sadder conclusion never was 
 told.
 
 THE HUMOURIST 
 
 There is not a name in the entire range of English 
 literature to which so full and universal appreciation 
 has been given by posterity as that of Addison. He 
 had his critics in his day. He had, indeed, more than 
 critics ; and from one quarter at least has received in 
 his breast the finest and sharpest sting with which a 
 friend estranged could point poetic vengeance. But 
 the burden even of contemporary voices was always 
 overwhelmingly in his favour ; and nowadays there is 
 no one in the world, we believe, that has other than 
 gentle words for the gentle writer, the finest critic, the 
 finest gentleman, the most tender humourist of his age. 
 It is not only admiration but a sort of personal affec- 
 tion with which we look back, detecting in all the 
 bustling companies of that witty and depraved period 
 his genial figure, with a delightful simplicity in the 
 midst of the formalism, and whole-heartedness among 
 the conceits and pretensions of the fops and wits, the 
 intriguing statesmen and busy conspirators of an age in 
 which public faith can scarcely be said to have existed 
 at all. He had his little defects, which were the defects 
 of the time. And perhaps his England would not have 
 loved him as it did had he been entirely without a 
 
 332
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
 From an engr.x'oing by Houbraten after the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller
 
 The Humourist 333 
 
 share in its weaknesses. As it was, no one could call 
 him a milksop then, as no one would venture to record 
 any offensive name against him now. The smile of 
 benevolent good nature, of indulgent humour, of 
 observation always as sweet and merciful as it is 
 acute and refined, is never absent from his countenance. 
 He treats no man hardly ; the ideal beings whom he 
 creates are the friends of all ; we could indeed more 
 easily spare dozens of living acqaintances than we 
 could part with Sir Roger de Coverley. Addison is 
 the very embodiment of that delightful gift of humour 
 on which we pride ourselves so much as a speci- 
 ally English quality ; his soft laugh touches all the 
 chords of sympathy and loving comprehension with 
 a tender ridicule in which the covert praise is con- 
 veyed with double effect. That his style is the perfec- 
 tion in its way of English style is less dear and 
 delightful to us than that what it expresses is the per- 
 fection of feeling. His art is the antipodes of that 
 satirical art which views human excellence only as a 
 delusion to be assailed on all hands, at the best in- 
 sinuating motives which diminish or destroy it. 
 Addison, on the other hand, allows imperfections 
 which his interpretation turns into something more 
 sweet than virtue, and throws a delightful gleam of 
 love and laughter upon the eccentricities and charac- 
 teristic follies of individual nature. That he sees 
 everything is one of the conditions of his genial for- 
 giveness of everything that is not mean or base or 
 cruel. With these he makes no terms. They are not 
 within the rang-e of his treatment. Non 7-azw7tam di lor.
 
 00' 
 
 The Reign of Queen A^ine 
 
 He passes by to the genial rural circle where all is 
 honest, simple, and true ; or to town, where in the 
 coffee-houses themselves a kind soul will fi'^.d humours 
 enough to keep him merry without harm to any of his 
 fellow-creatures — even the post-writers, whom he jocu- 
 larly recommends to a supplementary Chelsea as 
 having killed more men in the wars than any general 
 ever did, or the ' needy persons ' hungry for news, 
 whom he playfully undertakes to supply. 
 
 The difference between him and the other writers of 
 his period is one in kind not in degree ; his weapon is 
 of another metal. Swift draws a heavier shaft, which 
 lacerates and kills ; and Pope sends his needle-pointed 
 arrows, all touched with poisonous venom, to the most 
 vulnerable points ; but Addison has no heart to slay. 
 He transfixes the veil of folly with light, shining, 
 irresistible darts, and pins it aloft in triumph ; but he 
 lets the fool go free ; perhaps lets you see even by 
 some reflection from his swift-flying, polished spear a 
 gleam of human meaning in the poor wretch's face 
 which touches your heart. Even when he diverts him- 
 self with Tom Folio or Ned Softly, instead of plunging 
 these bores into a bottomless gulf of contempt, he plays 
 with them as one might with a child, a twinkle of soft 
 fun in his eye, drawing out their simple absurdities. 
 That habit of his, which Swift describes to Stella, as 
 one which she herself shared, of seeming to consent to 
 follies which it is not worth while contradicting, and 
 which Pope venomously characterises — ' assents with 
 civil leer' — lures him, and us along with him, into 
 byways of human nature, the gates of which the im-
 
 The Humourist 
 
 patient critic closes with a kick, and in which there is 
 much amusement and little harm. Moliere's Trissotin 
 is a social conspirator meaning to build advancement 
 upon his bad verses ; but Addison's poetaster is only 
 an exposition of harmless vanity, humoured by the 
 gently malicious but kind and patient listener, who 
 amid his laughter is not without a wish to please the 
 victim too. These sketches are of a very different 
 calibre from that creation which still charms the reader 
 — the delightful figure of Sir Roger and all the simple 
 folk full of follies and virtues who surround him — but 
 they are scarcely less remarkable. The lesser pictures, 
 taken at a sitting, in which the author has had no time 
 to elaborate those features of human character which 
 always draw forth his tenderness, are yet full of this 
 instinctive sweetness, as well as of insight, keen, though 
 always tempered, as the touch of Ithuriel's spear. The 
 angel, indeed, was far more severe, disclosing the 
 demon under his innocent disguise ; but Addison has 
 nothing to do with demons, he has no deep-laid plan 
 of mischief to unveil. The worst he does is to smile 
 and banter the little absurdities out of us — those curious 
 little delusions which deceive ourselves as well as the 
 world. 
 
 This most loved of English writers was the son of 
 one of those English parsons who confuse our belief in 
 the extremely unfavourable account given by both the 
 graver and the lighter historians of the time of the 
 condition of country clergymen. Neither Parson 
 Adams in his virtue, nor Parson Trulliber in his 
 grossness, nor Macaulay's keen and clever pictures, nor
 
 ;^^6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Thackeray's fine disrespectful studies of the chaplain 
 who marries the waiting-maid, seem to afford us any guid- 
 ance as to the nature of the household which the Rev. 
 Launcelot Addison, after many wanderings and experi- 
 ences, set up in the little parish of Milston in Wiltshire, 
 somewhere about the year 1670. Steele's description 
 of it has, no doubt, the artificial form affected by the 
 age, for he sets it forth as one of those models of per- 
 fection and examples to the world which nowadays we 
 are more disposed to distrust and laugh at than to 
 follow. ' I remember among all my acquaintances,' he 
 says, ' but one man whom I have thought to live with 
 his children with equanimity and a good grace ' ; and he 
 goes on to describe the ' three sons and one daughter 
 whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal 
 and ingenious way — their thoughts turned into an 
 emulation for the superiority in kind and generous 
 affection towards each other,' the boys behaving them- 
 selves with a manly friendship, their sister treated by 
 them with as much complaisance as any other young 
 lady of their acquaintance. ' It was an unspeakable 
 pleasure to visit or sit at a meal in this family,' he 
 adds. ' I have often seen the old man's heart flow at 
 his eyes with joy, upon occasions which would appear 
 indifferent to such as were strangers to the turn of his 
 mind ; but a very slight accident wherein he saw his 
 children's goodwill to one another created in him the 
 Godlike pleasure of loving them because they loved 
 one another.' The family tenderness thus inculcated 
 no doubt came from a mind full of the milk of human 
 kindness, and happily transmitting that possession to
 
 The Himtourist 337 
 
 the gentle soul of the eldest son, who probably was the 
 one whom the father ' had the weakness to love much 
 better than the others ' — a weakness which * he took as 
 much pains to correct as any other criminal passion 
 that could arise in his mind.' Such a paternity and 
 training does something to account for the prevailing 
 gentleness of Addison's temper and judgments. 
 
 Dr. Addison had seen the world not in a very 
 brilliant or luxurious way. He had been chaplain at 
 Dunkirk, and afterwards at Tangier among the Moors 
 upon which latter strange experience he wrote a 
 book ; and he rose afterwards to be Dean of Lichfield, 
 a dignified clergyman. One of the brothers went to 
 India, and attained to some eminence : the other was 
 eventually, like Joseph, a Fellow of Magdalen. They 
 dispersed themselves in the world as the children 01 
 a clergyman might very well do at the present day, 
 and it is evident belonged distinctly to the caste 
 of gentlemen. The son, with whom we have speci- 
 ally to do, after sundry local schoolings went to 
 Charterhouse, which he left at fifteen for Oxford, 
 perhaps because of his unusual advancement, more 
 probably because the custom of the time sent boys 
 early to the university, as is still the practice in Scot- 
 land. Addison was much distinguished in that elegant 
 branch of learning, the writing of Latin verse, a kind of 
 distinction which remains dear to the finest minds, in 
 spite of all the remarks concerning its inutility and the 
 time wasted in acquiring the art, which the rest of the 
 world has so largely indulged in. A copy of verses 
 upon the accession of King William, written while he 
 
 Y
 
 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 was still a very youthful scholar at Queen's College, no 
 more than seventeen, got him his first promotion. The 
 boy's verses came, perhaps from some proud tutor at 
 Queen's boasting what could be done under the cupola 
 in the High Street, finer than anything attempted in 
 more distinguished seats of learning, into the hands of 
 the Provost of Magdalen, to the amazement and envy 
 of that more learned corporation. There had been no 
 election of scholars in the previous year, during the 
 melancholy time when the college was embroiled with 
 King James, and the courtly Quaker Penn had all the 
 disturbed and troubled Fellows under his heel ; but 
 now that freedom had returned with the Revolution and 
 the heaven-sent William, there was room for a double 
 number of distinguished poor Dcmys. Dr. Lancaster 
 of Magdalen decided at once that to leave such Latinity 
 as that of the young author of these verses to a college 
 never very great in such gifts would be a sin against 
 his own ; and young Addison was accordingly elected 
 to all the privileges of a Magdalen demyship. It is 
 with this beautiful college that his name is connected 
 in Oxford. There could be no more fit association. 
 The noble trees and velvet lawns of Magdalen speckled 
 with deer, shy yet friendly creatures that embellish the 
 retired and silent glades, the long winding walk by 
 the Cherwell round the meadows where the fritillaries 
 grow, the time-worn dignity of the place with its grace- 
 ful old-world architecture and associations, are all in 
 the finest keeping with the shy and silent student, who 
 talked so little and thought so much, living among his 
 books in his college rooms, keeping his lamp alight
 
 The Humourist 33< 
 
 half through the night, or musing under the elms, 
 where the little stream joins the greater. It is dreadful 
 to think that in all probability Addison thought the 
 imposing classicism of Queen's, at which the cultivated 
 scholar of to-day shudders, much finer than Magdalen : 
 for he had no opinion of Gothic, and lamented the 
 weakness, if not wickedness, of those mistaken ages 
 which wasted ornament upon such antiquated forms ; 
 but at least he loved his retired promenade under the 
 trees, with all its sweetness of primrose and thrush in 
 spring, and the wonderful yellow sunsets over the floods 
 in winter, and the pleasant illusions of the winding 
 way. There the stranger may realise still in the quiet 
 of the cloistered shades how the shy young student 
 wandered in the walk which bears his name, and 
 pondered his verses and formed the delicate wealth of 
 speech which was to distinguish him from all his 
 fellows. 
 
 He spent about ten years in his college, first as a 
 student and then as a Fellow, in the position which, per- 
 haps, is more ideal for a scholar than any other in 
 Christendom. But the young man was not much more 
 enlightened than the other young men of his age, not- 
 withstanding his genius at Latin verses, and that still 
 finer genius which had not as yet come to utterance. 
 He wrote an ' Account of the Greatest English Poets,' 
 not much wiser than the schoolboy essays of our own 
 day which set Lord Tennyson and Mr. Browning down 
 in their right places. Addison went farther. He leaves 
 out all mention of Shakespeare, and speaks of Cowley 
 as a ' mighty genius.' He describes ' the spacious times
 
 340 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 of great Elizabeth' as *a barbarous age/ amused by 
 'Old Spenser' with 'long-spun allegories' and 'dull 
 morals,' which had lost all power to charm an age of 
 understanding. The youth, indeed, ran a-muck among 
 all the greatest names, leaving the reader amused, yet 
 shivering at his temerity. But he knew better after- 
 wards ; and if he still condescended a little to his elders 
 and betters, learned to love and comprehend them too. 
 It would seem that he wavered for a time whether he 
 should not take orders, a step necessary to retain his 
 fellowship — and dedicate himself to the Church, as was 
 the wish of his father. It would not have been entirely 
 unsuitable to him, one cannot but think : to his medita- 
 tive mood and shy temper and high moral tone. He 
 would have missed the humours of town, the coffee- 
 houses and the wits, and the vagaries of the beaux and 
 belles ; but with still a tenderer and more genial humour 
 might have made his villagers live before us, and found 
 out all the amusing follies of the knights and squires, 
 which even in London town did not escape his smiling 
 observation. The manner in which the question was 
 decided is curiously characteristic of the age. That he 
 was not himself inclined that way seems probable, since 
 he bids his muse farewell after the fashion of the time, 
 when this conclusion seemed imminent, with something 
 like regret ; and it is said that he distrusted his own fit- 
 ness for the sacred office. At all events the matter 
 came to the ears of Charles Montague, afterwards Lord 
 Halifax, himself an elegant scholar, and at that time in 
 office. Young Addison had addressed to him, on the 
 occasion of the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, one of those
 
 The Humottrist 341 
 
 pieces of Latin verse for which the young man was 
 known among the scholars of his time. He accompanied 
 the gift with a letter couched in the hyperbole of the 
 age, deprecating his patron's possible disapproval of 
 'the noble subject debased by my numbers,' and justi- 
 fying himself by the poverty of the verses already pub- 
 lished on the same theme. ' For my part,' he says, * I 
 never could prevail on myself to offer you a poem 
 written in our native tongue, since you yourself deter all 
 others by your own compositions from such an attempt 
 as much as you excite them by your favour and 
 humanity.' Montague returned this compliment by 
 interfering in the young poet's concerns as soon as he 
 heard of the danger that so promising a youth might 
 fall into the gulf of the Church, and be lost to the other 
 kinds of work more useful to statesmen. He wrote to 
 the authorities of Magdalen begging that Addison might 
 not be urged into holy orders, and in the meantime 
 took more active measures to secure him for the state. 
 Lord Somers had also received the dedication of some 
 of Addison's verses, and was equally interested in the 
 young man's career. Between them the two statesmen 
 secured for him a pension of three hundred a year, on 
 no pretence of work to be done or duty fulfilled, but 
 merely that he might be able to prepare himself the 
 better for the public service, and be thus at hand and 
 ready when his work was wanted. Public opinion has 
 risen up now-a-days against any such arrangement, and 
 much slighter efforts at patronage would be denounced 
 over all England as a job. And yet one wonders 
 whether it was so profitless a proceeding as we think it.
 
 342 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Addison was worth more than the money to England. 
 To be sure without the money he would still have been 
 Addison ; yet something, perhaps, of the mellow sweet- 
 ness of humanity in him was due to the fostering of his 
 youth. 
 
 He went abroad in 1699, and addressed himself, in 
 the first place, to the learning of French, which he 
 acquired slowly at Blois, without apparently gaining 
 much enlightenment as to the state of France or the 
 other countries which he visited in his prolonged tour. 
 No doubt, with his pension and the income of his fellow- 
 ship Addison travelled like a young man of fortune 
 and fashion in those times of leisure, with excellent 
 introductions everywhere, seeing the best society, and 
 the greatest men, both in rank and letters. Boileau 
 admired his Latinity as much as the English statesmen 
 had done, and the young man went upon his way more 
 and more convinced that Latin verses were the high 
 road to fame. From France he went to Italy, making 
 a classical pilgrimage. 'Throughout,' says Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen quaintly, ' if we are to judge by his narrative, 
 he seems to have considered the scenery as designed to 
 illustrate his beloved poets.' The much-debated uses 
 of travel receive a new question from the records of 
 such a journey, pursued with the fullest leisure and 
 under the best auspices ; and one wonders whether the 
 man who hurries across a continent in a few weeks 
 catching flying impressions, and forming crude judg- 
 ments, is, after all, much less advantaged than he who, 
 oblivious of all the human interests round him, discusses 
 Rome, for instance, as if it had no interest later than
 
 The Httmoitrist 343 
 
 Martial or Silius Italicus — as if neither Church nor Pope, 
 nor all the convulsions of the Middle Ages, nor crusader, 
 nor Jesuit, had ever been. This extraordinary im- 
 poverishment of the imagination was the fashion of the 
 time, just as it has been the fashion in other days to 
 fix upon the vile records of the Renaissance as 
 the one thing interesting in the history of a noble 
 country. 
 
 According to that fashion, however, Addison did 
 everything that a young man of the highest culture 
 could be expected to do. He traced the footsteps of 
 iEneas, and remembered every spot on which a classical 
 battle had been fought, or an ode sung. He wrote an 
 eloquent essay upon medals, and lingered among the 
 sculptures of the museums ; and he picked up a subject 
 for a heroic tragedy from the suggestion of a play which 
 he saw at a Venetian theatre. With his head full of 
 such themes he had gone out from Oxford, and with a 
 deepened sense of their importance he came back again. 
 Though in after days he touches lightly with his satiric 
 dart the young man who can talk of nothing better on 
 his return than how ' he had like to have been drowned 
 at such a place ; how he fell out of a chaise at another ' ; 
 yet in the hymn of praise with which he celebrates his 
 own return from all the dangers of foreign travel, some- 
 thing like the same record is made, though in a more 
 imposing manner. 
 
 * In foreign realms and lands remote, 
 Supported by Thy care, 
 Thro' burning climes I passed unhurt, 
 And breath'd in tainted air.
 
 344 ^^^^ Reign of Qtteen Anne 
 
 Thy mercy sweetened every soil, 
 
 Made every region please, 
 The hoary Alpine hills it warmed, 
 
 And smooth'd the Tyrrhene seas.' 
 
 It is only the vulgarity of our modern imagination 
 that makes us think of hot water-pipes when the idea 
 of warming the Alps is presented to our profane minds. 
 The burrowing of the railway that climbs the St. 
 Gothard may be taken as a large contribution to the 
 carrying out of this suggestion. 
 
 When Addison returned home after these four years 
 of classical wanderings, it was to prospects sadly over- 
 cast. King William had died a year before, which had 
 stopped his pension ; Halifax was out of office, and all 
 the hopes of public life for which he had been training 
 himself seemed to drop as he came back. It is said 
 that during the last year he had charge of a pupil ; but 
 there is no proof of the statement, nor has any pupil 
 ever been identified by name. An offer was made to 
 him to accompany upon his travels a son of the Duke 
 of Somerset, his services in which office were to be paid 
 by the present of a hundred guineas at the year's end ; 
 but this did not attract Addison, though it is the only 
 authentic mention of any possible ' bear-leading,' such 
 as Thackeray refers to in Esmond : and fine as is the 
 sketch made by that kindred humourist, he seems to 
 exaggerate at once the poverty and the neglect into 
 which for the moment Addison fell. He returned to 
 England in 1703, being then thirty-one, full of every 
 accomplishment, but with only his fellowship to depend 
 upon, and the uncertain chances of Jacob Tonson's
 
 The Humourist 345 
 
 favour instead of the king's. He is said to have sunk, 
 or rather risen, to a poor lodging in London, in the 
 Haymarket, up three pair of stairs, which was indeed 
 a sad change from the importance of his position as a 
 rich young EngHshman making the grand tour. But if 
 he carried a disappointed or despondent heart to those 
 elevated quarters, he never made any moan on the sub- 
 ject, and it is very likely enjoyed his freedom and the 
 happy sense of being at home, like other young men ; 
 and he seems to have been at once advanced to the 
 membership of the Kitcat Club, which would supply 
 him with the finest of company, and a centre for the life 
 which otherwise must have appeared as if it had come 
 to a broken end. It was not long, however, that this 
 period of neglect was suffered to last, and once more 
 the transaction which elevated Addison to the sphere 
 in which he passed the rest of his life is admirably 
 characteristic of the period, and, alas ! profoundly 
 unlike anything that could happen to a young man of 
 genius now. 
 
 We will not return again to any bewildering discus- 
 sion of the Whigs and Tories of Queen Anne, but only 
 say that Godolphin and Marlborough, those great Twin 
 Brethren of the state, had come into possession of 
 England at this great crisis, and that every means by 
 which they could secure the suffrages of both parties 
 were doubly necessary, considering the disappointment 
 on one side that the policy of the country should remain 
 unchanged, and on the other that it had to be carried 
 out by Whig, not Tory, hands. Nothing could be better 
 adapted than the great victory of Blenheim to arouse an
 
 346 The Reig7i of Queen Anne 
 
 outburst of national feeling, and sweep for a time at 
 least the punctilios of party away. The Lord Trea- 
 surer, who had everything in his hands at home, while 
 his great partner fought and conquered abroad, was 
 almost comically at a loss how to sound the trumpet of 
 warlike success so as to excite the country, and, if pos- 
 sible, turn the heads even of the discontented. In one of 
 Leopardi's fables there is an account of the tremendous 
 catastrophe with which the world was threatened when 
 his Illustrious Excellency the Sun suddenly declined 
 one morning to rise and tread his old-world course 
 around the earth for the comfort of mankind. ' Let her, 
 in her turn, go round me if she wants my warmth and 
 light,' says the potentate, with great reason it must be 
 allowed, since Copernicus was already born, and every- 
 thing in the celestial spheres was about to be set right. 
 But how to persuade the Earth that she must now under- 
 take this circuit } Let a poet be found to do, it is the 
 first suggestion. La via pik spcdita e la pin sicura e di 
 trovare un pocta ovvero un jilosofo che persiiadcra alia 
 Terra di vmoversi. Godolphin found himself in the 
 same position as that in which the luckless agencies of 
 the universe were left when the Sun struck work. A 
 poet ! but where to find a poet he knew not, being him- 
 self addicted to other modes of exercise and entertain- 
 ment. He went to Halifax to ask where he should find 
 what was wanted. But that statesman was coy, and 
 held back. He could indeed an if he would, produce the 
 very man ; but why should he interfere to bring forward 
 neglected merit, and induce a man of genius to labour 
 for those who would afterwards leave him to perish in
 
 The Humourist 347 
 
 obscurity ? Godolphin, however, was ready to promise 
 anything in the great necessity of the case; and Halifax 
 permitted himself to be persuaded to mention the name 
 which, no doubt, was bursting from his lips. He would 
 not, however, undertake to negotiate the matter, but 
 insisted that the real possessors of power should ask in 
 their own persons, and with immediate and substantial 
 proofs of their readiness to recompense the service 
 they demanded. That day, all blazing in gold lace 
 and splendour, the coach of the Lord Treasurer 
 stopped before the little shop in the Haymarket, over 
 which the young scholar had his airy abode ; and that 
 great personage clambered up the long flights of stairs, 
 carrying with him, very possibly, the patent of the 
 appointment, which was an earnest of what the powers 
 that were could do for Addison. This was how the great 
 poem of ' The Campaign,' that illustrious composition, 
 was brought into being. Poems made to order seldom 
 fulfil expectations, but in this case there was no disap- 
 pointment. Godolphin and England were alike delighted, 
 and Addison's life and success were at once secured. 
 
 No one now, save as an illustration of history, would 
 think of reading 'The Campaign,' though most readers 
 are aware of the famous simile, which dazzled a whole 
 generation : 
 
 ' 'Twas there great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved. 
 That in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 
 Amidst confusion, horror, and despair. 
 Examined all the dreadful scenes of war. 
 In powerful thought the field of death surveyed, 
 To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 
 Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 
 And taught the doubtful battle where to ra?e.
 
 34^ The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 So when an angel by Divine command, 
 With rising tempest shakes a guilty land, 
 Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past : 
 Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
 And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform. 
 Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.' 
 
 Macaulay points out with much feHcity how the fact 
 of the Great Storm — so called in English History — 
 which had passed over England in the previous year, 
 and was yet full in the memory of all, gave strength and 
 meaning to this famous simile, which finally and at once 
 opened to Addison the gates of fortune and of fame. 
 Two years after he was promoted to be one of the Under- 
 Secretaries of State, and from that time languished no 
 more in the cold shade of obscurity, where Halifax had 
 upbraided the Government for leaving him. He was not 
 a man born to linger there. Shy though he was, and 
 little apt to put himself forward, this favourite of the 
 Muses — to use the phraseology of his time — was also the 
 favourite of fortune. Everything that he touched throve 
 with him. The gifts he possessed were all especially 
 adapted to the requirements of his time. At no other 
 period perhaps in history have the rulers of the country 
 sought out a poet as the auxiliary most necessary to 
 them ; and his age was the only one that relished poetry 
 of Addison's kind. 
 
 This event brought more than mere prosperity to 
 the fortunate young man. If he had been already of 
 note enough to belong to the Kitcat Club, with what a 
 blaze of modest glory would he now appear, not swelling 
 in self-conceit, like so many of the wits, not intoxicated 
 with the sense of success, like that strange big Irish
 
 The Htiinourist 349 
 
 clergyman, who pushed into the chattering company in 
 the coffee-house, and astounded them with his masterful 
 and arrogant ways ; but always modest — never heard at 
 all in a large company, opening out a little when the 
 group dispersed, and an audience fit but few gathered 
 around him — but with one companion half divine. The 
 one companion, by-and-by, became often that very 
 same Irishman, whose silent prowl about the room, in 
 which at first he knew nobody, had amused all the 
 luckier members. Swift found himself in a kind of coffee- 
 house paradise when he got Addison alone, and the two 
 took their wine together, spending their half-crowns 
 according to the stranger's thrifty record, and wishing 
 for no third. They were as unlike as could be con- 
 ceived in every particular, and yet what company they 
 must have been, as they sat together, the wine going a 
 little too freely, though Swift was always temperate, 
 and Addison, notwithstanding that common peccadillo, 
 the most irreproachable of men. It was then that the 
 Travels in Italy were published, while still the fame of 
 ' The Campaign ' was warm ; and Addison gave his new 
 friend a copy incribed to 'Jonathan Swift, the most 
 agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest 
 genius of his age.' What quick understanding, what 
 recognition as of two who had been born to know each 
 other ! They were both in their prime — Swift thirty- 
 eight, Addison five years younger, still young enough to 
 hope for everything that can befall a man ; the one 
 fully entered upon the path of fortune, the other surely 
 so much nearer it for being thus received and wel- 
 comed. Addison gave ' his little senate laws ' for many
 
 350 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 years in these convivial meetings, and all who sur- 
 rounded him adored him. But Swift was never again 
 so close a member of the little company. Politics, and 
 the curious part which the Irish parson took in them, 
 separated him from the consistent and moderate poli- 
 tician, who acted faithfully with his party, and who was 
 always true, whoever might be false. But Swift held 
 fast to Addison, so far at least as feeling was concerned. 
 Their meetings ceased, and all those outflowings of wit 
 and wisdom, and the talks long into the night, which 
 were the most delightful things in life ; but for years 
 after Swift still continued to say that there was nothing 
 his friend might not be if he would ; that his election 
 would be carried without a word of opposition when 
 every other member had to fight for his life, and that he 
 might be king in Ireland, or anywhere else, had he the 
 mind. They were used to terms of large applause in 
 those days, but to no one else did it take this particular 
 form. 
 
 In 1708 Addison lost his post as Under-Secretary 
 by a change of the ministry, or rather of the minister, 
 it being the habit in those days to form a government 
 piecemeal, a Whig here, a Tory there, as favour or cir- 
 cumstances required, so that it was by no means needful 
 that all should go out or come in together. In fact, no 
 sooner was the Under-Secretary deprived of one place 
 than he obtained another, that of Secretary to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, the same office, we presume, as 
 that which is now called Chief Secretary for Ireland, 
 though its seriousness and power is now so much 
 greater. In those days there were no Irish people to
 
 The Hicmotcrist 351 
 
 deal with, but only a very lively, contentious, pushing, 
 and place-hunting community — the Protestant English- 
 Irish, which, so far as literature and public knowledge 
 goes, has by mistake been accepted as the type of the 
 much darker and less simple character of the Celt. The 
 wild, mystic, morose, and often cruel nature of the 
 native race, with its gleams of poetry and visions of 
 fortune, has turned out a very different thing to reckon 
 with. No such problem was presented to the statesmen 
 of that time. The admixture of Irish blood would seem 
 always to go to the head of the Saxon, and endow him 
 with a gaiety and sparkle, which does not exist either 
 in one race or the other unmixed ; and it was with the 
 society formed on this basis, the ascendant minority, 
 contemptuous of every possible claim of the people so- 
 called, yet far less unsympathetic with them than the 
 anxious politicians of to-day, that Addison had to 
 deal. His post was very 'lucrative,' we are told — in 
 fees and pieces of patronage, no doubt, for the income 
 was but two thousand a year — and he soon acquired an 
 even greater popularity on the one side of the Channel 
 than the other. Something amiable and conciliatory 
 must have rayed out of the man ; otherwise it is curious 
 to understand the popularity in brilliant and talkative 
 Dublin of a stranger whose chief efforts in conversation 
 were only to be accomplished tete-a-tete. But he had 
 the foil of a detestable and detested chief, Wharton, 
 whose corrupt and brutal character gave double ac- 
 ceptance to the Secretary's charm and goodness. The 
 Tories contended with the Whigs, says Swift, which 
 should speak best of this favourite of fortune. * How
 
 352 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 can you think so meanly of a kingdom,' he exclaims, 
 'as not to be pleased that every creature in it who hath 
 one grain of worth has a veneration for you ? ' It is not 
 often that even in hyperbole such a thing can be 
 said. 
 
 It was while Addison was in Ireland thus gathering 
 golden opinions that an event occurred which was of the 
 utmost importance to his reputation, so far especially as 
 posterity was concerned. Among the little band of 
 friends over whom he held a genial sway, and who 
 acknowledged his superiority with boundless devotion, 
 was one who was more nearly his equal than any other 
 of the band ; a friend of youth, one of those erratic but 
 generous natures whose love of excellence is almost 
 rapturous, though they are unable themselves to keep 
 up to the high level they approve. Steele can never be 
 forgotten where Addison is honoured. He had been at 
 Charterhouse and at Oxford along with his friend, and 
 no doubt it must have been a wonder among the reading 
 men in their earlier days how it was that the correct, the 
 polished, the irreproachable scholar of Magdalen, with 
 his quiet ways, could put up with that gay scapegrace 
 who was perpetually in trouble. Such alliances, how- 
 ever, have not been rare. The cheerful, careless Dick, 
 full of expedients, full of animal spirits, always amu- 
 sing, friendly, generous in his impulses, if unintentionally 
 selfish in the constant breaches of his better meaning, 
 must have had a charm for the steadier and purer 
 nature which was formed with pulses more orderly. 
 No doubt Steele's perpetual self- revelation, his unfolding 
 of a hundred quips and cranks of human nature, and
 
 The Humottrist 35' 
 
 unsuspicious rendering up of all his natural anomalies 
 and contradictions to the instinctive spectatorship of 
 his amused companion, helped to endear him to the 
 humourist, who must have laughed till he cried on many 
 an occasion over poor Dick's amazing wisdoms and 
 follies, without any breach of that indulgent affection 
 which between two men who have grown up together 
 can rarely be said to be mingled with anything so keen 
 as contempt. Steele, it is evident, must have known 
 Addison ' at home,' as schoolboys say, or he could not 
 have made that little sketch of the household where 
 brothers and sisters were taught to be so loving to each 
 other. While the young hero, who had, as in the 
 favourite allegories of the time, chosen the right path, 
 and taken the steady hand of Minerva instead of that 
 more lovely one of fatal Venus to guide him, was 
 reaching the heights of applause and good fortune, the 
 unlucky youth, who chose pleasure for his pursuit, had 
 gone disastrously the other way, and fallen into all sorts 
 of adventures, extremely amusing to his friend to hear of, 
 though he disapproved, and no doubt also very amusing 
 to the actual actor in them, though he suffered. But 
 Addison was not a mere spectator so far as the friend 
 of his youth was concerned. When he began to rise, 
 there seems little reason to doubt that he pulled Steele 
 up with him, introducing him to the notice of the fine 
 people, who in those days might make the fortune of a 
 gentlemanly and clever adventurer ; and that, either by 
 his own interest or that of one of his powerful friends, 
 he procured him a place and started him in pubHc life. 
 Steele had already floated into literature ; and whether 
 
 z
 
 354 '^^^ Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 it is true or not that Addison helped him in the concoc- 
 tion of one play at least, it is clear that he kept his 
 purse and his heart well open to his friend, now a man 
 about town ruffling at the coffee-houses with the best, 
 and full of that energy and readiness which so often 
 strikes out new ways of working, though it may require 
 steadier heads to carry them out. 
 
 It was, however, while Addison was in Ireland that 
 Steele was moved by the most important of these 
 original impulses, an idea full, as it proved, of merit and 
 practical use. Journalism was then in its infancy. A 
 little ' News Letter,' or ' Flying Post,' a shabby broad- 
 sheet containing the bulletin of a battle, a formal 
 and brief notice of parliamentary proceedings, an 
 account of some monstrous birth, a child with two 
 heads, or that perennial gooseberry which has sur- 
 vived into our own time, and an elaborate list 
 of births, deaths, and marriages, was almost all 
 that existed in the way of public record. The post 
 to which Steele had been appointed was that of 
 Gazetteer, which naturally led him to the consideration 
 of such matters ; and among the crowd of projects 
 which worked together in his ' barmy noddle,' there 
 suddenly surged uppermost the idea of a paper which 
 should come out on the post days, the Tuesdays, Thurs- 
 days, and Saturdays, which were up to that time the 
 only days of communication with the country : a paper 
 written after the fancy of the time, in reality a letter 
 from the wits and the knowing persons in town, reveal- 
 ing not only the existing state of public affairs, but all 
 those exquisite particulars of society which have always 
 been the delight of country circles, and which were
 
 The Httmoitrist 355 
 
 doubly sure to please at a time when society was 
 governed by talk, when all public criticism was verbal, 
 and the echoes of the wits in the coffee-houses were 
 blown about on every breeze. 
 
 Happy was Sir Harry from the country, sitting mum 
 over his wine in a corner, who could hear these gentle- 
 men discussing what Sunderland or Somers had said, 
 what my Lord Treasurer intended ; or, more delightful 
 still, the newest incident in the tragedy-comedy of the 
 great duchess — how the queen looked glumly at her 
 over the card-table, or let her stand unnoticed at a 
 drawing-room. And, still more deeply blessed was the 
 parson who had Mr. Addison pointed out to him, and 
 heard the young Templars and scholars pressing him 
 with questions as to when his ' Cato ' was coming out, 
 or asking his opinion on a set of verses. Such worthies 
 would go back to the country full of these reflections 
 from the world, and tell how the gallants laughed at the 
 mantua which was going out of fashion, and made fun 
 of the red heels which, perhaps, were just then appearing 
 at the Manor or the Moated Grange. Steele saw at 
 once what a thing it would be to convey these impres- 
 sions at first hand in a privileged Tatler direct to the 
 houses of the gentry all over the country. Perhaps he 
 did not perceive at first what a still finer thing to have 
 them served up with the foaming chocolate or fragrant 
 tea at every breakfast in Mayfair. 
 
 It is an idea that has occurred to a great many heads 
 since with less success. In these latter days there have 
 been many literary adventurers, to whom the starting of 
 a new paper has seemed an opening into El Dorado. 
 But the opening in the majority of cases does not prove
 
 356 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 a practicable one. For, in fact, there is no longer any 
 need of such news; and the concise little essays and 
 elegant banterings of the critics of that time have fallen 
 out of date. News means in our days an elaborate 
 system, and instantaneous reports from all the world ; 
 and one London newspaper — far more one of the 
 gigantic journals proper to America — contains as much 
 matter as half a hundred ' Tatlers.' One wonders if 
 Addison's genius, and the light hand of Steele, and 
 Swift's tremendous and scathing humour could be con- 
 jured up again, whether such a production with its 
 mingled thread of the finest sentiments and the pettiest 
 subjects, metaphysics and morals, and the Encid and 
 Paradise Lost and periwigs and petticoats would find 
 sufficient acceptance with ' the fair ' and the wise to keep 
 it afloat, and would still go up to sages and fine ladies 
 with their breakfast trays ? 
 
 It was on the immediate foundation of one of Swift's 
 savage jetix d'esprit that the new undertaking was 
 begun, a mystification which greatly amused the wits 
 then, but which does not perhaps appear particularly de- 
 lightful now. Swift had been seized by a freak of mis- 
 chief in respect to a certain Partridge, an astrologer, 
 who made an income out of the public by pretended 
 revelations of the future — as is still done, we believe, 
 among those masses, beneath the ascertained audience 
 of literature, who spend their sixpences at Christmas 
 upon almanacks and year-books containing predictions 
 of what is to happen. It occurred to Swift in some 
 merry moment to emulate and to doom the Merlin of 
 the day ; and with the prodigious gravity which 
 characterises his greatest jests he wrote, 'Predictions
 
 The Humourist 357 
 
 for the year 1708,' in which, among many other things, 
 he announced that he had consulted the stars on be- 
 half of Partridge, and had ascertained that the wizard 
 would certainly die on March 29, at eleven at night, of a 
 raging fever. The reader will perhaps remember that 
 the jest was kept up, and that, notwithstanding Par- 
 tridge's protest that he was not dead at all, Isaac 
 Bickerstaff insisted on asserting that his prophecy had 
 been fulfilled, to the grave confusion of various serious 
 affairs, and the inextinguishable laughter of the wits. 
 It was not a pretty jest, but it brought into being a 
 visionary critic of public matters, a new personage in 
 the literary world, in whom other wits saw capabilities. 
 Steele in particular perceived that Isaac Bickerstaff was 
 just the personality he wanted, and therewith pro- 
 ceeded to make of that shadowy being the Mentor of 
 the time. The design was excellent, and the immediate 
 execution cleverly adapted to seize the interest of the 
 public, which had been already amused and mystified 
 under that name. Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff presented his 
 readers with the first number of his journal without 
 charge. * I earnestly desire,' he says, * all persons with- 
 out distinction to take it in for the present gratis, and 
 hereafter at the price of one penny, forbidding all 
 hawkers to take more for it at their peril.' The idea took 
 the town. No doubt there would be many an allusion 
 to this and that which the wits would guess at, and 
 which would to them have a double meaning ; but to do 
 the ' Tatler ' justice, the kind of gossip which fills the 
 so-called society newspaper in our day was unknown 
 to the witty gentleman who sometimes satirised a ruffle
 
 358 The Reign of Queeti Anjie 
 
 or a shoe tie, but never personally a woman. The types 
 of fine ladies who fluttered through his pages could never 
 raise a pang in any individual bosom, and when he 
 addressed himself to the reform of the theatre, to the 
 difficult duty of checking play and discouraging duels, 
 he had all the well-thinking on his side. 
 
 Steele had gone on for some numbers before his new 
 venture attracted the attention of Addison. He recog- 
 nised whose the hand was from a classical criticism in 
 the sixth number which he had himself made to Steele ; 
 and he must have been pleased with the idea, since he 
 soon after appears as a coadjutor, sending his contribu- 
 tions from the secretary's office in Dublin. There has 
 been a great and prolonged controversy upon the respec- 
 tive merits of these two friends : some, and first among 
 them Macaulay, will have it that Addison had all the 
 merit of the publication. ' Almost everything good in 
 the Tatler was his,' says the historian. But there 
 are many who, despite of Macaulay's great authority, 
 find a certain difficulty in distinguishing Addison from 
 Steele and Steele from Addison, and are inclined to 
 find the latter writer as entertaining and as gifted as 
 the former. No question could be more difficult to 
 settle. As we glance over the little grey volumes which 
 bring back to us dimly the effect which the little broad- 
 sheet must have had when it appeared day by day, 
 there is no doubt that the eye is oftenest caught by 
 something which, when we look again, proves to be from 
 Addison's hand. We open, it is by chance, and yet 
 not altogether by chance, upon Tom Folio and his 
 humours ; upon the poor poet and his verses ; upon
 
 The Humourist 359 
 
 some group of shabby heroes, or stumbling procession 
 of country gentlemen which there is no mistaking. 
 But on the other hand, it is Steele who gives us that 
 family picture, which reads like the Vicar of Wakefield^ 
 yet with a more tender touch (for Mrs. Primrose was 
 never her husband's equal), showing us the good woman 
 among her family, the husband half-distracted with the 
 fear of losing her, the wife for his sake smiling her pale- 
 ness^ away. Indeed we think, in these early essays at 
 least, it would be a mistake for the critic to risk his 
 reputation on the superiority of Addison. He set up 
 no higher standard than that which his friend had 
 raised, but fell into the same humour, adding his contri- 
 bution of social pictures generally with less force of 
 moral and more delicacy of workmanship, but no 
 remarkable pre-eminence. 
 
 The character of the publication, however, changed 
 gradually as the great new pen came into it ; but 
 whether by Addison's influence or by the mere action 
 of time, and a sense of what suited the audience 
 he had obtained — which a soul so sympathetic as 
 Steele's would naturally divine with readiness — no 
 one can tell. Gradually the news which at first had 
 regularly filled a column dropped away. It had been, 
 no doubt, well authenticated news, the freshest and best, 
 as it came from the authorised hand of the Gazetteer ; 
 but either Steele got tired of supplying it, or a sense of 
 the inexpediency of publishing anything which might 
 displease his patrons and the government convinced him 
 that it was unnecessary. It is scarcely possible either 
 ^ Tatkr, No. 95.
 
 360 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 to tell why the Tatler came to an end. Mr. Austin 
 Dobson, in his recent Life of Steele, gives sundry reasons, 
 which do not seem, however, of any particular weight. 
 Steele's own account is that he had become known, and 
 his warnings and lessons were thus made of no avail : 
 
 'I considered,' he says, ' that severity of manners was abso- 
 lutely necessary to him who would censure others, and for that 
 reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not 
 carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but 
 at the same time confess my life is at best but pardonable. 
 And with no greater character than this a man could make an 
 indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable 
 vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit 
 that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been 
 pretended to by Mr. Steele.' 
 
 This reason is, however — though pretty, and just 
 enough, had its writer renounced the trade — a somewhat 
 fantastic one when we reflect that though the Tatler 
 ended in January 171 1, the Spectator began in March 
 of the same year. The one died only to be replaced by 
 the other. It is said that Addison did not know of his 
 friend's intention to cut the Tatler short, and it was 
 he who was the chief agent in beginning the Spectator. 
 Therefore it may have been that the breach was but an 
 impatience of Steele's, which his slower and less impul- 
 sive and more constant comrade could not permanently 
 consent to. No doubt Addison had by this time learned 
 the advantage of such a mode of utterance, and felt how 
 entirely it suited his own manner of work and constitu- 
 tion of mind. The fictitious person of Isaac Bickerstaff 
 was relinquished in the new series : its contents were 
 less varied, consisting generally of a single essay ; and
 
 The Humourist 361 
 
 notwithstanding the impression which the casual reader 
 often has, and which some writers have largely dwelt 
 upon, that the comments of the critic are upon the 
 merest vanities of the time, the hoops, the gold-lace, the 
 snuff-boxes, and patches of the period, it is astonishing 
 how little space is actually taken up with these lighter 
 details, and how many graver questions, how many fine 
 sentiments and delicate situations, afford the moralist 
 occasion for those remarks which he makes in the most 
 beautiful and picturesque English to the edification of 
 all the generations. There is, perhaps, no book which 
 is so characteristic of an epoch in history, and none 
 which gives so clear a conception of the English world 
 of the time. We sit and look on, always amused, often 
 instructed, while the delicate panorama unfolds before 
 us — and see everything pass, the fine coaches, the 
 gentlemen on foot, the parsons in their gowns, the young 
 Templars jesting in the doorways — but always with the 
 little monologue going on, which accompanies the 
 movement, and runs off into a hundred by-ways of 
 thought, sometimes serious, sometimes gay, often having 
 no particular connection with the many-coloured streams 
 of passers-by, yet never obscuring our sight of them as 
 they come and go. 
 
 There is, perhaps, a noisy group at the door while Mr. 
 Spectator talks, with their wigs in the last fashion, and 
 their clouded canes hung to a button, while they dis- 
 course. In one corner there are some two or three 
 grave gentlemen putting their heads together over the 
 latest news ; and in another, the young fellows over 
 their wine eager in discussion of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs.
 
 362 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Bracegirdle at the theatre, or of Chloe and Clarissa, the 
 reigning beauties of society ; or perhaps it is a poet, 
 poor Ned Softly, as the case may be, who is reading his 
 last sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow, amid the laughing 
 commentaries or the ridicule of his companions. What 
 is Mr. Spectator talking of all the while ? His discourse 
 does not prevent us hearing the impertinences of the 
 others. Perhaps he is talking of honest love, a favourite 
 theme of his, at which the wits do not dare to laugh in 
 his presence ; or he is telling one of his fables, to which 
 everybody in the midst of his levity or his business gives 
 half an hour at least ; or by a caprice he has turned 
 aside to metaphysics, and is discussing the processes of 
 the mind, and how ' no thought can be beautiful that is 
 not just ' ; how * 'tis a property of the heart of man to be 
 diffusive, its kind wishes spread abroad over the face of 
 the creation,' and such like ; not to speak of graver 
 subjects still to which he will often direct our minds on 
 Saturdays, perhaps to prepare us for Sunday, when he 
 is silent. Or he will read aloud a letter from some 
 whimsical correspondent, which the wits will pause to 
 hear, for gossip is ever sweet ; but which before they 
 know lands them in a case of hardship or trouble which 
 touches their consciences and rouses their pity. Some- 
 times the hum of life will stop altogether, and even 
 Softly put his verses in his pocket to listen : and on the 
 brink of tears the fine gentlemen, and we too along with 
 them, incontinently burst out a-laughing at some touch 
 that no one expected. 
 
 But whether we laugh or cry, or are shamed in our 
 levity, or diverted in our seriousness, outside the win-
 
 The Htmiourist 36; 
 
 dows the crowd is always streaming on. There is no 
 separating the * Spectator ' from the Hvely, crowded, 
 troublous, and perplexing scenes upon which all his 
 reflections are made. The young lady looking out of 
 her coach, at sight of whom all the young fellows doff 
 their hats and make their comments, how much her for- 
 tune is, who is in pursuit of her, or if any mud has yet 
 been flung upon her, shows to the philosopher a face 
 disturbed with all the puzzles of an existence which 
 nobody will allow her to take seriously. The poor wit 
 who endeavours so wistfully to amuse my lord in his 
 dulness betrays to that critic not so much the soul of a 
 toady as that of the anxious father with children that 
 starve at home. His young fellows, though they look 
 so careless, have their troubles too. Wherever that 
 keen eye turns another group shows through the crowd, 
 or a lonely whimsical figure as distinct as if there was 
 no one but he. Save, perhaps, on those Saturdays when 
 he plays his soft accompaniment to Milton's grand 
 sonorous organ, he is never abstracted or retired from 
 men ; on all other occasions, though he is thinking of a 
 great deal else, and has his mind absorbed in other 
 themes, this busy world of which he forms a part is 
 always with him. Sometimes he permits us to see him 
 over their heads only, seated on his familiar bench at his 
 table, from whence he delivers his homilies, with all 
 these figures moving and changing on the busy pave- 
 ment in the foreground ; sometimes we are admitted 
 inside, and watch them through open door and window 
 by his side ; but he is never to be parted from the society 
 in which he finds his models, his subjects, his audience.
 
 364 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 Like other men, he takes it for granted that the fashion 
 of his contemporaries is to go on for ever. For posterity 
 that smiling keen observer takes no thought. 
 
 But of all things else that Addison has done there 
 remains one pre-eminent figure which is his chief 
 claim to immortality. * The Campaign ' has disap- 
 peared out of literature ; ' Cato ' is known only by a few 
 well-known lines ; the ' Spectator' itself, though a work 
 which no gentleman's library can be without, dwells 
 generally in a dignified retirement there, and is seldom 
 seen on any table but the student's, though we are 
 all supposed to be familiar with it ; but Sir Roger 
 de Coverley is the dear friend of most people who 
 have read anything at all, and the acquaintance by 
 sight, if we may so speak, of everybody. There is no 
 form better known in all literature. His simple rustic 
 state, his modest sense of his own importance, his kind 
 and genial patronage of the younger world, which 
 would laugh at him if it were not overawed by his 
 modesty and goodness, and which still sniggers in its 
 sleeve at all those kind ridiculous ways of his as he 
 walks about in London, taken in on all sides, with his 
 hand always in his purse, and his heart in its right 
 place, are always familiar and delightful. We learn 
 with a kind of shock that it was Steele who first intro- 
 duced this perfect gentleman to the world, and can only 
 hope that he was originally Addison's idea, and that 
 he did not merely snatch out of his friend's hands 
 and appropriate a conception so entirely according to 
 his own heart. To Steele, too, we are indebted for 
 some pretty scenes in the brief history ; for Will the
 
 The Humourist 365 
 
 huntsman's wooing, which is the most delicate little 
 enamel, and for the knight's own love-making, 
 which, however, is pushed a little too near absurdity. 
 But it is Addison who leads him forth among his 
 country neighbours, and to the assizes, and meets the 
 gypsies with him, and brings him up to town, carrying 
 him to Westminster and to Spring Gardens, in the 
 wherry with the one-legged waterman, and to the play. 
 The delightful gentleman is never finer than in this 
 latter scene. He has to be conveyed in his coach, 
 attended by all his servants, armed with ' good oaken 
 plants,' and Captain Sentry in the sword he had worn 
 at Steinkirk, for fear of the Mohocks, those brutal 
 disturbers of the public peace whom Addison justly 
 feels it would be unbecoming to bring within sight of 
 his noble old knight. 
 
 ' As soon as the house was full and the candles Jighted, my 
 old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure 
 which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself 
 at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with 
 one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. 
 I could not but fancy to myself as the old man stood up in 
 the middle of the pit that he made a very proper centre to a 
 tragick audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight 
 told me that he did not believe the King of France had a 
 better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's 
 remarks because I looked upon them as a piece of natural 
 criticism, and was well pleased to hear him at the conclusion of 
 almost every scene telling me that he could not imagine how 
 the play would end ; one while he appeared much concerned 
 for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Her- 
 mione ; and was extremely puzzled to know what would be- 
 come of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache's ob-
 
 366 The Reign of Qzieen Anne 
 
 stinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in 
 the ear, that he was sure she would never have him ; to which 
 he added with more than ordinary vehemence, " You can 't 
 imagine, sir, what 'tis to have to do with a widow." Upon Pyr- 
 rhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook 
 his head and murmured, "Ay ! do it if you can," This part 
 dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination that at the close 
 of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he 
 whispered in my ear, " These widows, sir, are the most per- 
 verse creatures in the world. But pray," says he, " you that 
 are a critick, is this play according to your dramatick rules, as 
 you call them ? Should your people in tragedy always talk to 
 be understood ? Why, there is not a single sentence in this 
 play that I do not know the meaning of! " 
 
 'The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to 
 give the old gentleman an answer. "Well," says the knight, 
 sitting down with great satisfaction, "I suppose we are now 
 to see Hector's ghost ? " He then renewed his attention, and 
 from time to time fell a-praising the widow. He made, 
 indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom, at his 
 first entering, he took for Astyanax ; but we quickly set him 
 right in that particular, though at the same time he owned he 
 should have been very glad to see the little boy who, says he, 
 must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given to 
 him." 
 
 Could anything be more delightful than this genial 
 easy picture ? We have all met in later years a certain 
 Colonel Newcome who is very like Sir Roger, one of 
 his descendants, though he died a bachelor. But the 
 Worcestershire knight was the first of his lineage, and 
 few are the gifted hands who have succeeded in framing 
 men after his model. Those little follies which are so 
 dear to us, the good faith which makes the young men 
 laugh, yet feel ashamed of themselves for laughing, and 
 all the circumstances of that stately simple life which
 
 The Humourist 367 
 
 are so different from anything we know, yet so life-like 
 and genuine, have grown into the imagination of the 
 after-generations. We seem to know Sir Roger from 
 our cradle, though we may never even have read the 
 few chapters of his history. This is the one infallible 
 distinction of genius above all commoner endowments. 
 Of all the actors in that stirring time Sir Roger remains 
 the most living and real. The queen and her court 
 are no more than shadows moving across the historic 
 stage. Halifax, and Somers, and Harley, and even the 
 great Bolingbroke, what are they to us ? figures 
 confused and uncertain that appear and disappear in 
 one combination or another, so that our head aches in 
 the effort to follow, to identify, to make sure what the 
 intrigues and the complications mean. But we have no 
 difficulty in recollecting all about Sir Roger. We would 
 not have the old man mocked at any more than Mr. 
 Addison would, but kiss his kind old hand as we smile 
 at those little foibles which are all-ingratiating and 
 delightful. In that generation, with all its wars and 
 successes, there was, perhaps, no such gain as Sir Roger. 
 Marlborough's victories made England feared and 
 respected, but cost the country countless treasure, and 
 gave her little advantage ; the good knight cost nobody 
 anything and made all the world the richer. He is one 
 of those inhabitants who never grow old or pass away, 
 and he gives us proof undeniable that when we speak 
 of a corrupt and depraved age, as we have reason to do, 
 we have still nobler reason for believing — as the de- 
 spairing prophet was taught by God Himself in far 
 older times, that however dark might be the prospect
 
 368 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 there were still seven thousand men in Israel who had 
 never bowed the knee to Baal — a truth which we learn 
 over again, thank Heaven ! from shining example every- 
 where, that there are always surviving the seed of the 
 just, the salt of the earth, by whose silent agency, and 
 pure love, and honest truth, life is made practicable and 
 the world rolls on. 
 
 Sir Roger is the great point of the Spectator^ as the 
 Spectator is the truest history of the time. It contains, 
 however, beside, much that is admirable and entertain- 
 ing, as well as a good deal that was temporary and is 
 now beyond the fashion of our understanding, or, at least, 
 of our appreciation. Addison's criticism, or rather expo- 
 sition, of Milton, for instance, which no doubt taught his 
 age a far more general regard for that great poet, is no 
 longer necessary to us, nor worth the effort of keeping 
 it in sight. When these criticisms began it is evident 
 that Addison, as well as his friend Steele, had made a 
 great advance from the time when the young Oxford 
 scholar left Shakespeare out of his reckoning altogether, 
 and considered 'Old Spenser' only fit to amuse a 
 barbarous age. Though the balance of things had not 
 been redressed throughout the English world, yet these 
 scholars had come to perceive that the greatness of their 
 predecessors had been perhaps a little mixed up, that 
 Cowley was not so mighty a genius as their boyhood 
 believed, and that there were figures as of gods behind 
 which it was shame to have misconceived. Through- 
 out all, the meaning was wholesome and tended to- 
 wards the elevation of the time. Steele had it specially 
 at heart to discourage gambling and put down the hate-
 
 The Humourist 369 
 
 ful tyranny of the duel. And both writers used all their 
 powers to improve and raise the character of theatrical 
 representations : keeping a watch not only over the 
 plays that were performed but also over the manners of 
 the audience who crowded the stage so that the players 
 could scarcely be seen, and played cards in their boxes, 
 and used the public entertainment for their own private 
 quarrels, and assignations. It is curious, too, to note how 
 these authorities regarded the opera, the new form of 
 amusement which had pushed its way, against all the 
 prejudices of the English, into fashion. Addison him- 
 self, indeed, wrote an opera which was not successful ; 
 but he did not love that new-fangled entertainment. 
 He devotes two or three numbers to the description of 
 it, for, says he,' there is no question our grandchildren will 
 be very anxious to know the reason why their forefathers 
 used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their 
 own country, and hear whole plays acted before them in 
 a tongue which they did not understand.' It is evident 
 by this that his age had not reached to the further sub- 
 limity of believing that when the utterance is musical 
 there is no need of understanding at all. 'One 
 scarce knows how to be serious,' he adds, ' in the con- 
 futation of an absurdity that shows itself at the first 
 sight. It does not want any great measure of sense to 
 see the ridicule of this most monstrous practice. If, 
 the Italians have a genius for music above the English 
 the English have a genius for other performances of 
 a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind 
 a much nobler entertainment' We wonder if our 
 'Spectator' would be less affronted now by the constant 
 
 2A
 
 370 The Reign of Queen Amie 
 
 adaptation of equivocal French plays to the English 
 stage, than by the anomaly of a representation given in 
 a language which nobody understood ? He would per- 
 haps feel it to be an advantage often not to understand ; 
 and doubt whether the English after all ' have a genius 
 for other performances of a much higher nature.' 
 
 We are not informed that the Tatler and Spectator, 
 the real foundations of his fame, gave Addison any help 
 in his career. That was assured by ' The Campaign.' 
 He received his first post, that of 'a Commissioner- 
 ship with two hundred pounds a year,' in the end 
 of 1704, his pension having ceased at King William's 
 death in 1702 ; the interval is not a very long one, and 
 during this time he had retained his college Fellowship. 
 In 1706 he became Under-Secretary. In 1708 his 
 chief. Lord Sunderland, was dismissed and Addison 
 along with him ; but he stepped immediately into the 
 Irish Secretaryship, which was worth two thousand a 
 year. Two years afterwards occurred the political con- 
 vulsions brought about by the trial of Sacheverell and 
 the intrigues of the back stairs, which brought Harley 
 into power, and Addison with his leaders was once 
 more out of office ; but in 1714 they came triumphantly 
 back, and he rose to the height of political elevation as 
 Secretary of State with a seat in the Cabinet. Though 
 he did not retain this position long on account of his 
 failing health, he retired on a pension of ;^I500 a year. 
 In 171 1, at a period when he was supposed to be at a 
 low ebb of fortune, in the cold shade of political 
 opposition, he was able to buy the estate of Bilton, 
 near Rugby, for which he paid ;^ 10,000 — which is not 

 
 The Humou7'ist 371 
 
 bad for a moment of misfortune. Altogether Addison 
 was provided for as the deserving and honourable hero 
 — the wise youth of one of his own allegories, the good 
 apprentice — should be by poetic justice, but is not 
 always in the experience of the world. 
 
 The success of the Spectator^ however, which was more 
 his than Steele's (as the Tatler had been much more 
 Steele's than Addison's) was apparently very consider- 
 able ; Addison himself says, in an early number, that it 
 had reached a circulation of three thousand copies a 
 day. On a special occasion fourteen thousand copies 
 are spoken of; and the passing of the Stamp Act, 
 which destroyed many of the weaker publications of 
 the time, did comparatively little harm to the Spectator^ 
 which doubled its price without much diminishing its 
 popularity. It had also, what no other daily and very 
 few periodicals of any kind ever reach, the advantage 
 of a permanent issue afterwards, in a succession of 
 volumes, of which the first edition seems to have 
 reached an issue of ten thousand copies. Fortunate 
 writers ! pleasant public ! The Times and the rest of 
 our great newspapers boast a circulation beyond that 
 which the eighteenth century could have dreamed of; 
 and thirty years ago it was the fashion among public 
 orators more indebted to genius than education — the 
 late Mr. Cobden for one, and, we think, Mr. John Bright 
 — to say that the leading articles of that day were 
 more than equal to Thucydides and all the other 
 writers of whom classical scholars made their boast. 
 But we wonder how the Times leaders would read 
 collected into a volume against those little dingy
 
 ;72 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 books (tobacco paper, as a contemporary says) with all 
 their wisdom and their wit. ' I will not meddle with 
 the Spectator] says Swift to Stella, ' let him fair-sex it 
 to the world's end.' And so he has, at least as far as 
 the world has yet advanced towards that not undesirable 
 conclusion. 
 
 The Spectator, however, ended with the year 171 2, 
 having existed less than two years. Whether the 
 authors had found their audience beginning to fail, or 
 their inspiration — or had considered it wise (as is most 
 likely) to forestall the possibility of either catastrophe, 
 we arc not informed. Almost immediately after the con- 
 clusion of this greatest undertaking of his life, Addison 
 plunged into what probably appeared to the weakness 
 of contemporary vision a much greater undertaking, 
 the production of his tragedy ' Cato,' which made such 
 a commotion in town as few plays did even at that 
 period. It was partly with a political intention, to stir 
 up the patriotism and love of liberty, which were sup- 
 posed to be failing under the dominion of the Tories, 
 suspected of all manner of evil designs, that his Whig 
 friends urged Addison to bring out the great play which 
 had been simmering in his brain since his travels, and 
 which had no doubt been read in detached acts and pieces 
 of declamation to all his literary friends. These friends 
 had received several additions in the meantime, espe- 
 cially in the person of Pope, who was still young 
 enough to be proud of Addison's notice, yet remark- 
 able enough to be entrusted with the composition of a 
 prologue to the great man's work. Swift, notwithstand- 
 ing the coldness which had ensued between them on
 
 The Htimourist 2,7Z 
 
 his change of politics, was still sufficiently in Addison's 
 friendship to be present at a rehearsal, and the whole 
 town on both sides was moved with excitement and 
 expectation. * On the first night, our house,' says Gibber 
 ' was in a manner invested and entrance demanded by 
 twelve o'clock at noon ; and before one it was not wide 
 enough for many who came too late for their places.' 
 The following account of its reception is given in a 
 letter by Pope : 
 
 ' The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the 
 one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on 
 the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with 
 concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand 
 than the head. This was the case, too, with the prologue- 
 writer, who was clapped into a sound Whig at the end of 
 every two lines. I believe you have heard that after all the 
 applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent 
 for Booth, who played ' Cato,' into the box between one of the 
 acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledg- 
 ment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so 
 well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling 
 to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the 
 same ' Cato ' very speedily.' 
 
 Bolingbroke's speech about a perpetual dictator was a 
 gibe which everybody understood, directed against the 
 devotion of the Whigs to Marlborough, and was quite 
 honest warfare ; but what, we wonder, would Mr. Irving 
 think if Mr. Gladstone sent for him to his box 'and 
 presented him with fifty guineas'? The actor who 
 considers himself one of the most distinguished mem- 
 bers of good society had not been thought of in those 
 days. One wonders, too, in passing where a fine
 
 374 '^^^ Reign of Queen An7ie 
 
 gentleman kept his money, and whether the purse of 
 the stage, which is always ready to be flung to a de- 
 serving object, was a reality in the days of Queen 
 Anne ? Fifty guineas is a somewhat heavy charge for 
 the pocket ; however, perhaps Lord Bolingbroke had 
 come specially provided, or he had a secretary handy 
 who did not mind the bulging of his coat. 
 
 Of this great tragedy, which turned the head of Lon- 
 don, and which the two great political parties vied with 
 each other in applauding, there are but a 'i^^ lines 
 virtually existing nowadays. To be sure, it is in print 
 with the rest of Addison's works, to be read by whoso- 
 ever will. But very few avail themselves of that 
 privilege. 
 
 "Tis not in mortals to command success, 
 But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it' 
 
 is the chief relic, and that of a very prosaic common- 
 sense and familiar kind, which the great tragedy has 
 left us. * Plato, thou reasonest well ! ' is another quota- 
 tion which is, perhaps, more frequently used in a jocular 
 than serious sense. But for these scraps ' Cato ' is as 
 dead as most of his contemporaries ; and we do not 
 even remember the great tragedy when we hear the 
 name of its author. We think, indeed, only of the Spec- 
 tator if we have read a little in the literature of the 
 period ; but if we have no special tastes and studies 
 that way, of Sir Roger de Coverley alone ; for Sir Roger 
 is Addison's gift to his country and the world — the 
 creation by which his name will always be known. 
 
 The end of a man's life is seldom so interesting as its 
 beginning. After he has achieved all of which he is
 
 The Humourist 375 
 
 capable, our interest is more usually a sad than a 
 cheerful one. Addison made in 17 16 what seems to 
 have been an ambitious marriage, though he was not 
 the man, one would think, to care for the rank which 
 gave his wife always a distinct personality and another 
 name than his. The Countess of Warwick, however, 
 was, it would appear, a beautiful woman. She had the 
 charge of a troublesome boy, for whom, no doubt, she 
 would be eager to have the advice of such a man as 
 Mr. Addison, whom all the world respected and ad- 
 mired. The little house at Chelsea — the house was 
 called Sandford Manor House, and was lately portrayed 
 against its present doleful background of gasometers, in 
 the Century — which that statesman had acquired, and 
 where he delighted to withdraw from the noise and 
 contention of town, was within reach through the fields 
 of Holland House, the residence of Lady Warwick. 
 They had known each other for years, and Addison 
 had written exquisite little letters to the boy-earl — no 
 doubt with intentions upon the heart of the mother, to 
 which, as is well known, that method is a very success- 
 ful way — long before. It was. Dr. Johnson says, a long 
 and anxious courtship ; and perhaps — who knows ? — 
 when Steele performed that picture of the beloved 
 knight sitting silent before the two fine ladies and 
 unable to articulate the desires of his honest heart, it 
 was some similar performance of the shy man of genius 
 who found utterance with such difficulty which was in 
 Dick's mind. But perhaps Addison grew bolder when 
 he was Secretary of State. The great Mr. Addison, 
 the delightful ' Spectator,' the author of ' Cato,' the man
 
 \']6 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 whose praises were in everybody's mouth, and whom 
 Whig and Tory deHghted to honour, was no insig- 
 nificant fine gentleman for a lady of rank to stoop to ; 
 and finally, those evening walks over the fields, and 
 pleasant rural encounters — for Chelsea was the country 
 in those days, and Holland House quite retired among 
 all the songsters of the grove, and out of town — came 
 to a legitimate conclusion. Addison was forty, and her 
 ladyship had been a widow for fifteen years ; but there 
 is no reason therefore for concluding that there was no 
 romance in the wedding, which, however, is always a 
 nervous sort of business under such circumstances. 
 There was the boy, too, to be taken into account, who 
 evidently was not a nice boy, but a tale-bearer, who did 
 not love his mother's faithful lover, and made mischief 
 when he could. There seems no evidence, however, that 
 the marriage was unhappy, beyond a malicious note 
 of Pope's, which all the commentators have enlarged. 
 The poor women who have the misfortune to be 
 married to men of genius fare badly at the hands of 
 the critics. There seems no warrant whatever for 
 Thackeray's picture of the vulgar vixen whom he called 
 Mrs. Steele. Steele's letters exist, but not those of 
 poor Prue, who so sadly tried her husband ; and so that 
 suffering woman has to suffer over again in her reputa- 
 tion after her life's trouble is over. It is very unfair to 
 the poor women who have left no champions behind. 
 
 The end of our ' Spectator's ' life was, however, 
 clouded with more than one unfortunate quarrel, the 
 greatest of which has left its sting behind to quiver in 
 Addison's name as long as Pope and he are known. It
 
 The Humourist 377 
 
 is neither necessary nor edifying to enter at length 
 into the bitterness of the past. Pope fancied himself 
 aggrieved in various ways by the man who had warmly 
 acknowledged his youthful merits, and received him 
 (though so much his senior in years and fame) on a 
 footing of equality, and who all through never spoke 
 an ill-natured word of the waspish little poet. He 
 believed, or persuaded himself to believe in his 
 malignant little soul, that Addison was jealous of his 
 greatness, and had set up Tickell to rival him in the 
 translation of Homer ; and he believed, or pretended to 
 believe, on the supposed authority of young Warwick, 
 that Addison had hired a vulgar critic to attack him. 
 There seems not the slightest reason to believe that 
 either of these grievances was real. Tickell had written 
 simultaneously a translation of Homer, which Addison 
 had read and corrected, on account of which he cour- 
 teously declined to read Pope's translation of the same, 
 telling him the reason, but accepting the office of critic 
 to the second part of Pope's work. He had himself, 
 according to the poet's brag, accepted Pope's corrections 
 of 'Cato,' leaving 'not a word unchanged that I objected 
 to' : and he was not moved to any retaliation by Pope's 
 attack upon him, but continued serenely to praise his 
 envious little assailant, with a magnanimity which is 
 wonderful, if he had seen the brilliant and pitiless pic- 
 ture so cunningly drawn within the lines of nature, 
 with every feature travestied so near the real, that 
 even Addison's most faithful partisan has to pause with 
 alarm lest the wicked thing so near the truth might 
 perhaps be true. We hesitate to add to the serene and
 
 378 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 gentle story of our man of letters this embittered utter- 
 ance of spite and malice and genius. The lines are 
 sufficiently well known. 
 
 Addison did not end his periodical work with the 
 Spectator. He took up that familiar character once 
 again for a short time, long enough to produce an addi- 
 tional volume — the eighth — in which he had no longer 
 the help of his old vivacious companion. The scries is 
 full of fine things, but we are not sure, though Macaulay 
 thinks otherwise, that we do not a little miss the light 
 and shade which Steele helped to supply. And other 
 publications followed. Steele himself set up the 
 Guardian, in which Addison had little share ; and 
 various others after that, in which he had no share at 
 all. And Addison himself had a Freeholder, in which 
 he said some notable things ; but these are all dead and 
 gone, like so much of the contemporary furnishings of 
 the age. Students find and read them in the old, col- 
 lected editions ; but life and recollection have gone out 
 of them. Perhaps his own time even had by then got 
 as much as it could enjoy and digest out of Addison. 
 We, at least, have done so after these hundred and 
 fifty years, and are capable of no more. 
 
 He died in 17 19, at the early age of forty-seven. The 
 story goes that he sent for young Warwick when he 
 was on his death-bed, that he might see how a Christian 
 could die : which, we should say, was unlike Addison ; 
 unless it was that he had been drawing morals all his 
 life, and might at that supreme moment be beyond 
 seeing the ridicule of the last exhibition. Perhaps it 
 was in reality a message of charity and forgiveness to
 
 The Humourist 379 
 
 the wayward boy, who, there seems reason to beh'eve, 
 was never fond of his stepfather. And thus the great 
 writer glided gently out of a life, in which he had more 
 honour than falls to the lot of most men, and, let us 
 hope, a great deal of mild satisfaction and pleasure. 
 Thackeray has a little scoff at him as a man without 
 passion. ' I doubt, until after his marriage, whether he 
 ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about 
 any woman in his life.' Neither, perhaps, did Sir Roger, 
 whose forty years' love-making and unrequited affection 
 was a sentimental luxury of the most delicate kind, as 
 his maker intended it to be. But Addison's fine and 
 meditative genius had no need of passion. He is the 
 ' Spectator ' of humankind. He had little temptation 
 in his own calm nature to descend into the arena ; the 
 honours of the fight came to him somehow without any 
 soil of the actual engagement. No smoke of gunpowder 
 is about his laurels, no spot of blood upon his sword. 
 He looks on at the others fighting, always with a nod of 
 encouragement for the man of honour and virtue, of 
 keen scorn for the selfish and evil-minded, of pity for 
 the fallen. But it is not his part to fight. He makes 
 no pretence of any inclination that way. He is the 
 looker-on ; and, as such, more valuable to us than a 
 hundred men-at-arms. 
 
 He died at Holland House, that fine historical man- 
 sion, sacred to the wits of a later age, but which, in 
 Addison's time, contained no tyrannical tribunal of 
 literary patronage, whatever else there might be there 
 which was contrary to peace. His life and death give 
 it an association more touching, and at the same time of
 
 o 
 
 80 The Reign of Queen Anne 
 
 sweeter meaning, than the after-struggles of the Whig 
 
 men of letters for Lady Holland's arbitrary favour. The 
 
 great humourist died in the middle of the summer, in 
 
 June 17 19, and was carried from that leafy retirement 
 
 to the Jerusalem Chamber, where he lay in state : why, 
 
 it seems difficult to understand — but his position had in 
 
 it a kind of gentle royalty unlike that of other men. He 
 
 was buried at Westminster by night, the wonderful 
 
 solemn arches over the funeral party, half seen by the 
 
 wavering lights, vanishing into vistas of mysterious 
 
 gloom, echoing with the hymns of the choir, who sang 
 
 him to his rest. Did they sing, one wonders, one of those 
 
 verses which had been the most intimate utterance of 
 
 his life, that great hymn of creation, scarcely inferior to 
 
 the angelic murmurings of mediaeval Francis in his cell 
 
 at Assisi ? 
 
 ' Soon as the evening shades prevail, 
 The moon takes up the wondrous tale, 
 And nightly to the listening earth 
 Repeats the story of her birth ; 
 Whilst all the stars that round her burn, 
 And all the planets in their turn. 
 Confirm the tidings as they roll, 
 And spread the truth from pole to pole.' 
 
 Or was it one of those humbler and more fervent human 
 utterances of faith and humility and thanksgiving ? 
 
 ' Through every period of my life, 
 
 Thy goodness I '11 pursue. 
 And after death in distant worlds, 
 
 The glorious theme renew. 
 
 When nature fails, and day and night 
 
 Divide Thy works no more. 
 My ever-grateful heart, O Lord ! 
 
 Thy mercy shall adore.
 
 The Humourist 381 
 
 Through all Eternity to Thee 
 
 A joyful song I '11 raise, 
 But, oh ! Eternity 's too short 
 
 To utter all Thy praise.' 
 
 With such soft, yet rapturous strain, the lofty arches 
 and half-seen aisles — perhaps with a summer moon 
 looking in, taking up the wondrous tale — might have 
 echoed over Addison, the gentlest soul of all those 
 noble comrades who lie together awaiting the restitution 
 of all things — when our great humourist, our mildest, 
 kind ' Spectator,' all his comments over, was laid in the 
 best resting-place England can give to those whom she 
 loves. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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