admit this "Mrs. Vain" in her service, who was very well bred and agreeable. The queen looked very uneasy at the proposal, which the duchess afterwards believed was owing to the fact that Abigail did not love "Mistress Vain." All the duke of Marlborough and lord Godolphin could say to the queen could not prevail on her to admit "the Vain" into her service. Her majesty answered, "she did not want a bed-chamber woman; and when she did, she would not have any married person for the future." The first vacancy that occurred, the queen took Miss Danvers, the "inhuman looking" daughter of her old servant, on purpose to keep mistress "Vain" out, a circumstance that enraged the whole family-junta, male and female. How sedulously the queen was watched, and how low the prime minister and the commander-in-chief descended, to waste time in intrigues concerning the appointment of a bedchamber woman, this tirade of the duchess can prove.' Her jealousy had not even then settled with fierceness on her cousin Abigail. 1 Coxe Papers, Brit. Museum, vol. xliv., inedited. ANNE, QUEEN-REGNANT OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. CHAPTER VII. Queen Anne's beneficial measures-Anecdotes of her generosity and charity -She is kept in penury by the duchess of Marlborough-Queen ratifies the treaty of Union with Scotland [see Vignette]-Her words when signing it—Angry watchfulness of the duchess of Marlborough—Discovers that the queen had been at Abigail Hill's marriage-Tumults in Scotland against the queen-The Cameronians depose Anne as queen of Scotland-Historical ballads concerning her—Gives her godson the name of Anne-Queen's controversy with Peter the Great-She settles the arrangement regarding ambassadors-The queen accepts a book from Edmund Calamy-Her hunting at Windsor-Receives insolent letters from the duchess of Marlborough-Humility of the queen's answerInterview between the queen and the duchess-Queen gives the duchess the site of Marlborough House at St. James's Queen harassed by contentions Insulted at council Forced to dismiss secretary Harley Mediation of her consort in state affairs-Her charity to the criminal Gregg-Cabals to remove Mrs. Masham from the queen-The queen importuned by the duchess of Marlborough to render court places hereditary -Queen's excuses-Queen's alarm at the Scottish rebellion-Gives her brother the name of the pretender-Weeps when he is proscribed-Queen respites the execution of lord Griffin-Queen harassed with political disputes-Failing health of her consort-Her conjugal tenderness—Queen retires to nurse the prince at Kensington Palace-Her quiet invaded several times by the duchess of Marlborough-Violent disputes-Queen's summer residence in Windsor Park-Queen's letter on the victory of Oudenarde. - To her people, queen Anne looked, as the only means of atonement, pardon, and peace, for the wrongs she had committed in her youth. To her they replaced the children, of which inexorable justice (if her expressed con viction may be quoted) had deprived her. Few readers of history have given this queen-regnant credit for the great good she actually did when on the throne; still fewer have given her credit for the extreme difficulty she had in performing it, struggling with the inertness of cruel disease, with her own want of historical and statistic education, and, worse than all, with the rapacity of favourites and factions, the nurturers of wars and revolutions for lucre of private gain. In truth, queen Anne is an instance of how much real good may be done by the earnest intentions of one individual, of moderate abilities, and no pretence, actually bent on actions beneficial to humanity. Those who bow the knee in idol-worship before the splendour of human talent, would find it difficult to produce two measures, of equal benefit to this island, performed by any queen-regnant, of acknowledged power of mind and brightness of genius, with those brought to bear by queen Anne, and which were her own personal acts. The one is the Bounty she bestowed on the impoverished clergy of the church of England; the other is the Union of England and Scotland. It is indisputable that the most influential persons around her, the duchess of Marlborough and the lord Somers, were opposed to the latter important measure, the necessity for which was felt not only by the queen, but by rational people of both countries. Lasting and ruinous civil wars, such as had occasionally desolated the island for some centuries, were the only prospect Great Britain could look forward to, since the Scottish parliamentary convention had refused to ratify the settlement in favour of the next protestant heiress to the island thrones, the princess Sophia. A considerable party among the Scottish populace had re-echoed this determination outside of the hall of convention, at Holyrood, in their usual style, by their historical ballads, in one of which they thus expressed their distaste of the Lutheran dissent: "The Lutheran dame may be gone, Our foes shall address us no more, The old woman is turned to the door." Unless the Union had been completed in the lifetime of queen Anne, Scotland must have been separated from 1 Treaty for the Union of England and Scotland. England, as the convention' of that realm had, since the queen's accession, passed a statute repudiating from the Scottish crown any sovereign whom the English parliament placed on their throne. Such determination made the Union inevitable, as the only means of altering the intractable legislature of Scotland. . The queen had found some support and consolation from the domestic tyranny established by the duchess of Marlborough in the friendship of her kinsmen, the duke of Hamilton and the earl of Marr, and to them she undoubtedly confided the injuries she suffered from her ungrateful favourite; since the pen of Lockhart of Carnwath, the member for Edinburgh, and one of the commissioners of the union, has recorded the utter penury to which she subjected her generous mistress, refusing to supply her, without a furious contest, with the least sum from the privy-purse, of which she was the keeper, and, by all account, the appropriator. Perhaps the state of deplorable poverty to which the queen was subjected, while surrounded by the mockery of dazzling splendour, was not the least punishment she had to endure for having once made an idol of the evil woman who now sorely tormented her. Anne's disposition being undeniably bountiful, she felt this contradiction to her natural instincts the more severely. From the memorable hour when lady Marlborough concealed herself in the closet with lady Fitzharding, and listened to James II.'s remonstrance, when he freed his daughter a third time from her overwhelming debts, Anne was, for some unknown reason, forced to submit to every imposition, and to suffer her imperious servant's will to be a law to her in all the actions of her life. In the course of Anne's career as princess, few charities or generous actions 1 To produce perspicuity it is needful to explain, that by the word convention, as applied to the English and Scottish parliaments at this era, two different meanings are implied. The conventional English parliament which voted William and Mary sovereigns of England, and superseded the prior right of Anne to her brother-in-law, was the last parliament elected in the reign of Charles II. convened or collected for senatorial debate. The Scottish convention signifies the whole Scottish senate, nobles and knights of the shire, and burghers, who sat together convened in one hall in Holyrood. 2 Memoirs of Lockhart of Carnwath. In the year 1703, the question of the Hanoverian succession, submitted to the senate of Scotland, was negatived by fifty-seven votes. appear; it may be reasonably considered, that she was deprived of all means of performing them, since, even in her regnal life, at the period when she had commenced some struggles to free herself from the domination that oppressed her, the duchess of Marlborough would neither permit her to be generous nor charitable. Lockhart, of Carnwath, the intimate friend of the duke of Hamilton, the only real confidant of queen Anne, has left the following anecdotes of the state of her majesty's privy-purse about the year 1706: "When the queen happened to have occasion to call for a small sum of money, the duchess of Marlborough, who kept her privypurse, would tell her, it was not fit to squander away money whilst so heavy a war lasted;" though, at the same time, a vast sum of the public money was annually bestowed in building the duke of Marlborough's magnificent house at Woodstock. I remember that, just then, one Mrs. Dalrymple brought up from Scotland a very fine japanned cabinet, which, being her own work, she presented to the queen; but it was more than six months before her majesty could be mistress of fifty guineas, which she designed to give as a return for the complimentthat sum, indeed, being scarcely the value of it." Thus, there is as little new in ladies' works as in any other of the vast routine of human inventions. Many persons in middle life will remember that in their childhood all their grown-up female relations were intent on the act of japanning screens and other ornaments-perhaps, they did not proceed to cabinets-but here is a Scottish lady capable of japanning cabinets, worthy of the remuneration of fifty guineas from the queen-regnant, Anne. 2 To return to matters of more importance in the character and conduct of queen Anne; whilst her greedy favourite strove to prevent her royal mistress from giving the reward she thought fit for the ingenuity and taste of one of her 1 It has been proved that the Marlboroughs drew from the public purse at that very moment the enormous revenue of 64,000l. per annum; before the death of the duke, their income amounted to 94,000l. Yet before the second. year of queen Anne's reign, they were so much limited in their means as to have no conveyance of their own. 2 Lockhart of Carnwath, Papers, vol. 1. p. 267 to 269. |