Their Conyngs mark them, for I have been told Is backwards and forwards always the same,2 And keep close to thee always that name Which backward and forwards is almost the same,3 Bury these Carrots under a Hill.' 4 Probably the only result of the Prophecy was that Swift managed to concentrate the bitter hatred of the duchess on himself. She had her revenge in later days when Swift was wanting preferment.5 For one brief day, he imagined that his Prophecy had accomplished something. On the 29th of December he wrote to Stella: The queen has made no less than twelve lords to have a majority, nine new ones, the other three peers' sons, and has turned out the Duke of Somerset. She is awaked at last, and so is the Lord Treasurer, I want nothing now, but to see the duchess out. But we shall do without her. We are extremely happy.' The next day he wrote disappointedly, 'I writ the Dean and you a lie yesterday for the Duke of Somerset is not yet turned out.' The next day he determined to be very civil to the Whigs' at court, but found few there. Lady Burlington and he gave one another joy of the change,' but sighed when they reflected on the Somerset family not being out.' Early in January, Swift was still bewailing the fact. 1 Here Swift accuses the duchess of complicity in Count Königsmark's murder of her second husband, Thomas Thynne, in Pall Mall. 2 Anna. 3 (Mrs.) Masham. 4 Mrs. Masham's maiden name was Hill. Swift made his famous retort in The Author upon Himself, 1713: 'Now angry Somerset her vengeance vows On Swift's reproaches for her ******* [murder'd spouse [Thomas Thynne] From her red locks her mouth with venom fills And thence into the royal ear instits.' 'I sat this evening,' he writes, at Lord Masham's with Lord Treasurer; I don't like his countenance; nor I don't like the posture of things well :— "We cannot be stout till Somerset's out," as the old saying is.' A few days later, on the 11th of January, he wrote in high spirits: 'It is told me to-day as a great secret, that the Duke of Somerset will be out soon; that the thing is fixed: but what shall we do with the duchess? They say the duke will make her leave the queen out of spite if he be out. It has struck upon that fear a good while already.' Seven days later Swift could still give no definite news. We want to have this Duke of Somerset out and he apprehends it will not be, but I hope better.' His hopes were fulfilled the next day. The Duke of Somerset is out, and was with his yellow liveries at Parliament to-day. You know he had the same with the queen when he was Master of the Horse: we hope the duchess will follow, or that he will take her away in spite. The Lord Treasurer I hope has now saved his head.' A few days later Swift wrote, that he had seen the Duchess of Somerset at court, she looked a little down, but was extremely courteous.' Rumour went that the duke was being persuaded by his friends to let the duchess stay with the queen. 'I am sorry for it,' wrote Swift. 6 However, nothing could induce the queen to part with the duchess, and the Tories had to be content with the displacement of the duke only. Even so he still influenced the queen, sharing with his wife in her confidences, and it was he whom she charged in event of her death, to burn the sealed packet which she always carried about with her. To Harley he remained severely, if not sarcastically, polite. Thus he wrote to him in April 1712, concerning the payment of some of the salaries appertaining to his late office, 'as everything is so absolutely in your power, and you do just as you will in much greater things, you may do the same in this. It is very indifferent to your lordship's most humble servant.' During the next years the Duke of Somerset was busy at Marlborough, bribing right and left, with the design of influencing the elections both of mayors and members of Parliament. In January 1711-12, the day before the duke was removed from office, Beecher wrote to Lord Bruce that he (Somerset) had offered Solomon Clarke'a pension of £20 per annum for his life and his wife's, and to make him porter of Sion House besides,' if he would vote for the duke's candidate for the mayoralty. Clarke rejected the offer, and vowed he would not serve him if he would give him the castle and Barton farm.' In July 1712 Beecher wrote to Lord Bruce: 'I came hither (to Henham Park) on Monday, and went to Marlborough yesterday, where I found that the D[uke] himself had been driving very high bargains with the burgesses, for the next mayor and Parliament men, and advised them to submit all differences to him, or the fittest person to set them right, intimating as if all the affairs of this corporation properly belonged to him to determine, and told them if they did not come to oblige him this time, he would never come among them more, and bid them mind that.' There follows a list of the bribes offered by the duke, so remarkable that they can only be appreciated when one or two are quoted in their fulness. 'He offered Mr. Meggs to become his servant in the nature of a surveyor, and to settle £40 per annum on him and his wife for their lives, and to make his place worth £40 a year more to him. To John Clarke he promised to put him into a place in the Bluecoat Hospital, worth £50 or £60 per annum, to pay his debts, and employ him in all business at his farms. This not prevailing, he offered Clarke £200 ready money.' To William Garlick he offered what ready money he would ask, and to pay all his debts, and, in the hope to make him comply (or to rid him out of the way, as some say), Mr. Pigott (the duke's agent) drank the poor old man to such a pitch that he was very near death.' Thomas Hunt was 'too full of banter,' so they made no offers to him. All these flatly refused the duke, and rejected his offers. Thomas Smith, tobacconist, took £20, but swore afterwards he would not serve the duke, saying he owed him this much and more for former services.' In the next month report went that the duke had declared publicly he would give £50 a man for as many as would desert Lord Bruce and come to him. He had actually given a certain John Smith £100 down, and engaged to be at the charge of educating a son of Smith's of seven years old at school and at the university, and to present him with a good living when he was capable of it. The mayoral election ended, in spite of the duke's efforts, in favour of Lord Bruce's candidate. 'I never saw more rejoicing in all my life,' wrote Beecher,' than all the Church party showed at carrying this point when they were so violently attacked. It is hardly possible to express the Duke's passion or credit his extravagant expressions, if report does not bespatter him.' He remained with his duchess at Marlborough, and asserted, according to Beecher, that the election should be judged invalid because Kimber, the appointed mayor, was not one of the three nominated for election- But,' asks Beecher, why did his Grace then take so much pains now to purchase votes at any rate.' The same struggle ensued at the parliamentary elections of 1713. At the beginning of the election, Beecher wrote to Lord Bruce, in November, the two Birds and old Dorritt put Harry Wilmott upon riding about the country to get Parliament men, and sent him to the Duke of Somerset, and swore, God dthem, 6 M if they could get him to recommend a man it would be harder for my Lord Bruce and better for them, for then they should get more money from him, for they did not care who was chosen so they could get the money, for when my Lord Bruce was not chosen the better he paid them.' In December, John Fowler wrote to Beecher, 'The Duke of Somerset came to this town last night, and this morning Loe, the Duke's gardener, is very busy going up and down among the burgesses desiring them to give one vote as the Duke shall direct.' If the burgesses obeyed him the duke promised to serve them on all occasions, and invited them to meet him at the castle. If they refused he threatened to set up a popular election' in the town and ruin them. Such were the typical proceedings at the Marlborough elections. The correspondence concerning them, and the continued fight between the duke and Lord Bruce, lasted until 1720. However, from 1716 onwards, after the passing of the Septennial Act,1 elections were less frequent, and less bribery was therefore possible. Moreover, the struggle at Marlborough was probably less bitter since Somerset, resigning office as Master of the Horse in 1716,2 retired from court, and contented himself with wielding despotic rule as lord of his estates and his family. 6 His first duchess died on the 23rd of November 1722. 'She was,' wrote Burnet, 'the best bred, as well as the best born lady in England. . . . The Duke of Somerset' (for whom Burnet could feel no respect)' treated her with little gratitude or affection though he owed all he had, except an empty title, to her. She was by much the greatest favourite when the queen died, and it would have continued, for she 1 It was on the occasion of the passing of this Act that the Tories talked 'like old Whigs,' and against monarchy, the Whigs vilified the mob and exalted the court. A new strange jumble,' commented an onlooker. The Duke of Somerset as a Whig, voted against the Bill. (MSS. of the king at Windsor.) 2 George I. had reinstated him at his accession in 1714. |