failed to give the queen's women three or four mantuas' and petticoats every year; some little thing to her sempstress, with a mante or two to the women that looked after her clothes. There would not be more than two or three for my own service. The dressers railed at me everywhere, and said I took from them all their clothes for myself,' though, in this case, everybody that had common sense must know they all belonged to me, and none of them to the bed-chamber women, after she came to be queen; when she was princess, by all the old rules of courts they were but to have half the old clothes between them. I began this paper to show the power of my Abigail,' in obliging Mrs. Danvers, whom she once hated, and her daughter too, who I thought did not look like a human creature, and was always the queen's aversion until the times changed.""

The first hint which directed the angry jealousy of the duchess against her quiet kinswoman, appears to have arisen from this Mrs. Danvers, who being on bad terms with Abigail Hill, and believing herself to be dying, sent for the duchess, and implored her "to protect her daughter, and let her be in her place." The duchess told her," she could not, for she was then on bad terms with the queen;" which observation led to a long discussion by the sick woman against Abigail Hill, of her wickedness and ill principles and secret enmity to the duchess, with a story of her behaviour when the queen took her to Bath. At this time, Abigail was still Mrs. Hill, (or in modern parlance Miss Hill,) and from the narrative may be gathered that the queen and the duchess of Marlborough were at serious variance before the marriage of Abigail with Masham, which did not occur until 1707. Some kind of lame pacification took place, which tottered on until the grand and irreconcilable rupture in 1708.

One cause of complaint was, that the duchess wanted to thrust into the queen's service a Mrs. Vain, as bedchamber woman; her brother had fallen in one of the Marlborough battles, and lord Godolphin pressed the queen mightily to

1 Mantuas, seem robes worn over rich jupes or kirtles―mantes, simple mantles or cloaks.

2 Coxe Papers, Brit. Mus. vol. xliv., inedited.
3 Ibid. So spelled; perhaps the name is Vane.

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.1 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 HarleyMediation 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,
If the Treaty' should never go on,

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 dif ferent 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.