CAMEO XV. Just at the very time of the King's brief visit, there was a tremendous fire at Whitehall. It seems to have been caused by carelessness in the laundry, but the Whigs accused the Jacobites and the Jacobites accused the King, who was in fact coming up the river at the time. Mary had to be wakened with great difficulty and hurried away in her night-dress into St. James's Park, where two vehement Jacobites, Sir John Fenwick and Colonel Oglethorpe, personally reviled her, telling her that her sins against her father were coming home to her. It was an unmanly action, but both were almost fanatics. General Cutts exerted himself so much in the fire that he became known as the Salamander; but Whitehall was so much injured as never again to serve for a royal habitation. Preston's plot was scarcely overthrown before another was traced out. Admiral Russell, who, though Admiral of the Fleet and Treasurer of the Navy, with large estates and pension, thought himself insufficiently rewarded, was one of those who hesitated. Marlborough had made up his mind that he should gain by a counter-revolution, and actually sent messages by Jacobite agents to James II., professing the deepest repentance for his treachery at Salisbury. He persuaded Godolphin, who was always under his influence, and they tried to persuade James of their entire sincerity. But James could not have entire confidence in the man who betrayed him. He called upon Marlborough, who was in command in Flanders, to come over with his whole division to the French camp. Such a thing as this Marlborough neither could nor probably would do, and the arrival of William put an end to the scheme. If only Englishman was in the face of Frenchman, he was pretty safe to do his utmost; but at home, jealous of Dutchmen, and irritated by well-deserved distrust, it was a different matter. Marlborough thought of moving the House of Lords to petition the King to remove all Dutch troops from England, thinking that he would then be able to carry the English army over as he had done before. The Jacobites, however, suspecting that whatever he did would be in favour, not of their master, but of Princess Anne, would not be made his tools, and gave warning to William. In January, 1692, Marlborough was suddenly informed that he was dismissed from all his offices, and that the King and Queen desired that he would not appear before them. He must have known the reason well enough, but the public did not, and the first full explanation is in the papers of James II. Princess Anne was frantic with indignation, though she had had a warning from her sister, not only of the real reason of what was coming, but that the terms of abuse with which she and Lady Marlborough were wont to load the King, were all reported by Lady Fitzharding. She chose so take Lady Marlborough about with her, into the royal presence as if nothing had happened, upon which the Queen was obliged to write a sensible and moderate letter, insisting on that lady's dismissal. CAMEO XV. Anne. 1692. Anne wrote, refusing compliance, and tried to send the letter by her uncle, Lord Rochester, but he refused to have anything to do with it, Dispute with and the only consequence was, an order from Mary, through her Lord Chamberlain that the Countess of Marlborough should no longer abide at Whitehall or the Cockpit. Whereupon Anne wrote to the Duchess of Somerset to request the loan of Sion House and thither she moved off, with her beloved "Mrs. Freeman," who, of course, was the real manager of the affair. There, in April, one of Anne's shortlived infants was born and died in a few hours. It seems to have been etiquette that the Queen should visit all ladies of rank after such an event, and Mary made her appearance when her sister was lying, weak, exhausted, and grieving for her babe, but she actually could not refrain from renewing her reproaches for the retention of the Marlboroughs, so that Anne became as white as her sheets, and her sister herself was shocked, at the effect of her first, but most ill-timed attack. The two sisters never met again. Things soon were worse, for on the 5th of May, 1692, Marlborough was arrested on a charge of high treason, and sent to the Tower; but, strange to say, this was not for his real treason, but on a false charge got up by a man named Robert Young, of the Titus Oates species, who had once committed a forgery on Archbishop Sancroft, had tried in vain to hatch a supposed Dissenters' plot in the last reign, and now invented a Jacobite plot, the story of which he carried to Archbishop Tillotson, who felt bound to reveal it to the King. "It is a villainy," said William; "I will have nobody disturbed on that account.' "" But when William was gone to Holland, Young, who was one of the most skilful of imitators of handwriting, forged a set of papers implicating all the most likely persons in a scheme for serving the Prince of Orange; and this by means of an accomplice named Blackhead, he contrived to get hidden in a flower-pot in the palace of Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, one of the few who had read the Declaration of Indulgence. Then Young begged to be carried before the Council, made his deposition, and requested that search should be made at the palace, especially in the flower-pots. Marlborough and the Bishop were both sent to the Tower, but the paper could not be found, being in one of the servants' rooms, where the officers never thought of looking. However, Blackhead managed to dig it up again, and Young's wife produced it, accounting for her possession of it by a lame falsehood. Blackhead was forced to confess, and was confronted with Young, who showed the most brazen, impudence. Sprat was perfectly innocent, and Marlborough was admitted to bail at once, and most curiously, through this false accusation, escaped prosecution for his real machination. Young stood in the pillory unabashed, and in eight years more was hanged for coining false money! Mary was pefectly aware that the beloved friends of her sister were traitors, and her anger that Anne chose to identify herself with them Death of Mary. 1695. secution. CAMEO XV. made her descend to unworthy forms of annoyance amounting to perLadies who visited the princess were not received at Court, and the Mayor of Bath was inhibited from giving the poor lady a state reception when she went to drink the waters there, but the little Duke of Gloucester was often taken to visit his royal aunt, and was much petted by her. Mary was in many respects a model woman. She presided over the council with great ability and discretion, keeping discordant elements in check, and by her dignified composure preventing panics when bad news arrived. She held her court with great stateliness and dignity, looking every inch a queen, and was greatly admired by those who came in contact with her. Though ill-educated, she had read enough to be really well informed, and she loved needlework, and executed it beautifully. Hardened as her heart seems to have been towards her father, and even towards her sister, she was capable of strong affection, and her great ability, coupled with entire submission, had, in the five years of their reign, won an esteem and confidence from her cold, dry husband, such as he does not seem to have had while she was yet untried. One admirable deed is connected with her name, the presentation of the half finished old palace of Greenwich for the asylum of aged seamen, but she does not seem to have been able to endow it, or she did not live long enough to do so. On the 24th of November, 1694, the Queen had a terrible blow. Archbishop Tillotson was struck with paralysis in the midst of the service in which he was officiating in her presence in Whitehall Chapel, and never spoke again, but died in three days' time. She shed many tears, and never quite recovered the shock. She wished his successor to have been Stillingfleet, but William objected to so good a churchman, and Tenison was chosen. He had been a physician, and after his Ordination, had been a healer of bodies as well as souls in the plague at Cambridge, but he was of almost as lax opinions as to churchmanship as Tillotson. Less than a month after the Archbishop's death, Queen Mary fell ill of small-pox, always peculiarly fatal in the Stewart family. With some foreboding, she spent a whole night in destroying papers. Large in person, and, like all her mother's family, prone to a rich diet, she was a bad subject for the disease, and soon was in great danger. William, who had with much difficulty struggled through the malady before his marriage, never left her. Anne sent messages, to the last of which Mary answered, "Thanks." Tenison administered the Holy Communion to her, and she showed great devotion; afterwards her mind wandered, and she fancied a Popish nurse was watching her, but otherwise she was resigned and peaceful, until her death on the 26th of December, 1694, when only thirty-two years old. The King fainted three times on that day, called himself the most unhappy of men, and showed, indeed, how he had valued that devotion which seems to have in her overpowered every other thought, and he was very ill for some days afterwards. It was not only the loss of a most devoted and affectionate wife, and of an able and trustworthy substitute, but it was a shock to his throne. Tories, who might endure the King's daughter, in preference to a doubtful prince, and a very noble queen personally, and an earnest churchwoman, were not so likely to endure the very unpopular man who only stood third as to hereditary right, who forced expensive wars on the nation, and was no churchman at heart. His friends were much depressed, and Mary was heartily lamented on all sides. King James shut himself up in his room and would see no one, but he would not put on mourning for his disobedient daughter, and requested Louis XIV. to abstain from doing so, which that monarch followed up by prohibitions to the French families connected with the Stewarts to assume any black garments. Sancroft had died just before, but the true-hearted Ken wrote a letter rebuking Tenison for not having attempted to elicit from the dying queen any token of repentance for her conduct as a daughter, or message to ask her father's forgiveness. In fact, Tenison seems to have reckoned the subduing her natural affection as a merit. On the day of her burial in Westminster Abbey, the bells were tolled in every parish church throughout the realm, and sermons preached, though one Jacobite clergyman took for his text, "Go, see now this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king's daughter." Her character is best, however, summed up in the line that declares her to have been, "Too bad a daughter and too good a wife." CAMEO XV. Mourning for Mary. 1675. CAMEO XVI. THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT. 1695-1701. CAMEO William alone. QUEEN MARY's death was not counted as "the demise of the crown," and did not break up Parliament; but for a month the King could not attend to public business, and sat in deep melancholy over the fire in his closet at Kensington Palace. There however he saw Archbishop Tenison, who delivered to him a letter left by his wife, in deference to which he broke off his open intercourse with Elizabeth Villiers, who had been the bane of Mary's life. He likewise allowed the Archbishop to bring about a reconciliation with the Prince and Princess of Denmark. Anne herself was anxious for it, being greatly softened and affected by the loss of her sister; and it was most important to William not to be on bad terms with her, since in the eyes of those who still held the warming-pan theory, and who rejected James and his son, she was the true queen, and had she or her husband been ambitious, factious, or spirited, they could have easily caused a civil war. However, in view of the extreme frailness of William's health, they were content to wait for his death, especially as he was really very fond of their son, the little Duke of Gloucester, a delicate child, and as ill-managed as possible, but full of spirit. The Marlboroughs were forgiven, and from that time only kept up a complimentary correspondence with the Court of St. Germains, and were not concerned in any fresh plot against William. He had to prepare to take the field again on the Continent, and with so heavy a heart, that he declared that he felt utterly unfit for military command, but that he must do his duty. He had no faithful queen to reign as his other self; but the Government was to be carried on by Lord Justices, seven in number, namely, Archbishop Tenison, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lords Somers, Pembroke, |