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SARAH,

DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

CHAPTER I.

Swift's character of the Duchess. Her birth in 1660, and private marriage at the age of eighteen, to Colonel Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough.-Her appointment as Lady of the Bed-chamber to the Princess Anne.-Extract from the Duchess's memoirs.-Familiar conversation and correspondence between Anne and the Duchess.-Extract from Colley Cibber's "Apology."-Horace Walpole's opinion of the Duchess's beauty. She is appointed by Queen Anne Groom of the Stole, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse. Her unbounded influence at Court.-Causes of her subsequent fall. Her insolent bearing to the Queen.-Singular instance of it related by Lord Dartmouth. She is ordered to resign all her offices in the royal household.— Extract from Harley's letter to the Elector of Hanover.Instance of the Duke of Marlborough's want of self-respect. -Coxe's allusion to it in his memoirs of the Duke.-Anecdote related by Lord Dartmouth.-The Duchess's rage and mortification at her loss of power. She is with difficulty prevented from publishing the Queen's private correspondence with her.-Swift's letter to Mrs. Dingley.-Memorandum by Lord Dartmouth. — Singular anecdote related by Mrs. White.-Speaker Onslow's portrait of the Duchess.Anecdotes of her sarcastic humour.- Her grandson sues her for his birthright in a court of law. She defends her own cause in person.

ACCORDING to Swift, and his presumption is sufficiently supported by facts, the great Duke of Marlborough was indebted to this extraordinary

"For

woman alike for his greatness and his fall. above twenty years," he says, "she possessed, without a rival, the favours of the most indulgent mistress in the world, nor ever missed one single opportunity that fell in her way, of improving it to her own advantage, She had preserved a tolerable court reputation with respect to love and gallantry; but three furies reigned in her breast-the most mortal enemies of all softer passions-which were, sordid avarice, disdainful pride, and ungovernable rage. By the last of these, often breaking out in sallies of the most unpardonable sort, she had long alienated her sovereign's mind, before it appeared to the world. This lady is not without some degree of wit, and hath in her time affected the character of it, by the usual method of arguing against religion, and proving the doctrines of Christianity to be impossible and absurd. Imagine what such a spirit, irritated by the loss of power, favour, and employment, is capable of acting or attempting, and then I have said enough.”* Such is the portrait drawn by Swift of the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough; a portrait which may possibly have derived its last ungracious touch from the political acrimony of the writer, but of which the general truth appears to be as unquestionable as is its severity.

Sarah, daughter and heir of Richard Jennings, Esq. of Sandridge, in Hertfordshire, was born in 1660, and, about the age of eighteen, became pri

*Last years of Queen Anne, Swift's Works, vol. xviii. p. 22.

vately, it appears, the wife of John, Duke of Marlborough, then merely a Colonel of Dragoons. Her beauty, which surrounded her with numerous admirers, seems to have been at least equal to that of her eldest sister, Frances Jennings, one of the heroines of De Grammont, and afterwards the wife of Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel.

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The Duchess of Marlborough had early been selected as a play-fellow of the Princess Anne, and on the marriage of the latter with Prince George of Denmark, was appointed, at the particular desire of the Princess a lady of her bedchamber, with a salary of two hundred a year. The Duchess remarks in her memoirs ;-" The beginning of the Princess's, kindness for me had a much elder date than my entrance into her service. We had used to play together when she was a child, and she even then expressed a particular fondness for me. This inclination increased with our years. I was often at Court, and the Princess always honoured me with her conversation and confidence. In all her parties for amusement, I was sure to be one; and so desirous she became of having me always near her, that, upon her marriage with the Prince of Denmark in 1683, I was made one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber."

When the Parliament, some years afterwards, settled a revenue on the Princess of £50,000 a year, one of her first steps was to confer a pen

sion of a thousand a year on her early fa

vourite.*

It was a weakness on the part of Queen Anne,-probably a natural one in a guileless and inexperienced female, to sigh for that Utopian kind of friendship which a person in her exalted station unfortunately can never know, and which is rarely to be found but in the pages of romance. If it was a weakness to expect this pure and tender intercourse within the precincts of a court, it was a still greater weakness to select as the object of it such a person as the Duchess of Marlborough. However, it was the interest of the one to feign what the other really felt, and consequently for some years the Princess appears to have been fully satisfied with the selection she had made. Thus these two women, who in any other station of life would have shunned each other from mere contrariety of tastes and opposition of character, adopted, in their conversation and epistolary correspondence, a tone of sickly and maudlin sentimentalism. For some years they corresponded under the fanciful names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. The Duchess was Mrs. Freeman. An intercourse so irrational was conducted unquestionably with feelings of sincere though mistaken tenderness on the one side, while it seems to have excited only ridicule and contempt on the other.

* Authentic Memoirs of the Duchess of Marlborough, pp. 90, 91.

VOL. I.

2 G

It would appear by a memorandum among the papers of Carte the historian, that it was solely owing to the advice and influence of Lady Churchill that Anne deserted her father's fortunes in 1688.* Whatever truth there may be in this assertion, certain it is that the Duchess was the confidante of the Princess on the occasion, and also the companion of her flight. They eloped at night, as is well known, from the Cock-pit at Whitehall, and after remaining till the next morning at the house of the Bishop of London in the city, proceeded to the seat of the Earl of Dorset at Copt-hall, and thence to Nottingham.

While reverting to these circumstances, we are tempted to transcribe the following passage in Colley Cibber's" Apology for his Life;”—a passage equally entertaining from its connection with an interesting period in our history, as from the rapturous encomiums which the writer heaps on Lady Churchill's beauty, and the enthusiasm with which in his old age he recurs to the impression it had made on him in his youth. Cibber, who by chance was at Nottingham at the period when the Princess and her suite arrived in that town, thus describes one of the provincial entertainments at which, though in a very humble capacity, he was present. "The noble guests at table happening to be more in number than attendants out of livery could be found for, I, being well known in the Lord Devonshire's

*

Macpherson's Original Papers, vol. i. p. 282.