mons. Lowther was a man of ancient descent, ample es tate, and great parliamentary interest. Though not an old man, he was an old senator: for he had, before he was of age, succeeded his father as knight of the shire for Westmoreland. In truth the representation of Westmoreland was almost as much one of the hereditaments of the Lowther family as Lowther Hall. Sir John's abilities were respectable; his manners, though sarcastically noticed in contemporary lampoons as too formal, were eminently courteous: his personal courage he was but too ready to prove: his morals were irreproachable: his time was divided between respectable labors and respectable pleasures: his chief business was to attend the House of Commons and to preside on the Bench of Justice: his favorite amusements were reading and gardening. In opinions he was a very moderate Tory. He was attached to hereditary monarchy and to the Established Church; but he had concurred in the Revolution: he had no misgivings touching the title of William and Mary: he had sworn allegiance to them without any mental reservation; and he appears to have strictly kept his oath. Between him and Caermarthen there was a close connection. They had acted together cordially in the Northern insurrection; and they agreed in their political views, as nearly as a very cunning statesman and a very honest country gentleman could be expected to agree.* By Caermarthen's influence, Lowther was now raised to one of the most important places in the kingdom. Unfortunately it was a place requiring qualities very different from those which suffice to make a valuable county member and chairman of quarter sessions. The tongue of the new First Lord of the Treasury was not sufficiently ready, nor was his temper sufficiently callous for his post. He had neither adroitness to parry, nor fortitude to endure, the gibes and reproaches to which, in his new character of courtier and placeman, he was exposed. There was also something to be done which he was too scrupulous to do; something which had never been done by Wolsey or Burleigh; something which has never been done by any English statesman of *By My notion of Lowther's character has been chiefly formed from two papers written by himself, one of which has been printed, though I believe not published. A copy of the other is among the Mackintosh MSS. Something I have taken from contemporary satires. That Lowther was too ready to expose his life in private encounters is sufficiently proved by the fact that, when he was First Lord of the Treasury, he accepted a challenge from a custom house officer whom he had dismissed. There was a duel; and Lowther was severely wounded. This event is mentioned in Luttrell's Diary, April, 1690. our generation; but which, from the time of Charles the Second to the time of George the Third, was one of the most important parts of the business of a minister. The history of the rise, progress, and decline of parliamentary corruption in England still remains to be written. SIR JOHN TREVOR. Ir was necessary for the Lord President to have in the House of Commons an agent for the purchase of members; and Lowther was both too awkward and too scrupulous to be such an agent. But a man in whom craft and profligacy were united in a high degree was without difficulty found. This was the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Trevor, who had been Speaker in the single Parliament held by James. High as Trevor had risen in the world, there were people who could still remember him a strange looking lawyer's clerk in the Inner Temple. Indeed, nobody who had ever seen him was likely to forget him. For his grotesque features and his hideous squint were far beyond the reach of caricature. His parts, which were quick and vigorous, had enabled him early to master the science of chicane. Gambling and betting were his amusements; and out of these amusements he contrived to extract much business in the way of his profession. For his opinion on a question arising out of a wager or a game at chance had as much authority as a judgment of any court in Westminster Hall. He soon rose to be one of the boon companions whom Jeffreys hugged in fits of maudlin friendship over the bottle at night, and cursed and reviled in court on the morrow. Under such a teacher, Trevor rapidly became a proficient in that peculiar kind of rhetoric which had enlivened the trials of Baxter and of Alice Lisle. Report indeed spoke of some scolding matches between the Chancellor and his friend, in which the disciple had been not less voluble and scurrilous than the master. These contests, however, did not take place till the younger adventurer had attained riches and dignities such that he no longer stood in need of the patronage which had raised him. Among High Churchmen, • Roger North's Life of Guildford. Trevor, in spite of his notorious want of principle, had at this time a certain popularity, which he seems to have owed chiefly to their conviction that, however insincere he might be in general, his hatred of the dissenters was genuine and hearty. There was little doubt that, in a House of Commons in which the Tories had a majority, he might easily, with the support of the Court, be chosen Speaker. He was impatient to be again in his old post, which he well knew how to make one of the most lucrative in the kingdom; and he willingly undertook that secret and shameful office for which Lowther was altogether unqualified. THE PRINCESS OF DENMARK (QUEEN ANNE) AND HER FAVORITES. THE Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty thousand pounds to the Princess of Denmark, in addition to an annuity of thirty thousand pounds which had been settled on her at the time of her marriage. This arrangement was the result of a compromise which had been effected with much difficulty and after many irritating disputes. The King and Queen had never, since the commencement of their reign, been on very good terms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by a woman who had just sense enough to perceive that his temper was sour and his manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of appreciating his higher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasure from the society of Anne, who, when in good humor, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad humor, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whose kindness had endeared her to her humblest attendants, would hardly have made an enemy of one whom it was her duty and her interest to make a friend, had not an influence strangely potent and strangely malignant been incessantly at work to divide the Royal House against itself. The fondness of the Princess for Lady Marlborough was such as, in a superstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talisman or potion. Not only had the friends, in their confidential intercourse with each other, dropped all ceremony and all titles, and become plain Mrs. Morley and plain Mrs. Freeman; but even Prince George, who cared as much for the dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for any thing but claret and calvered salmon, submitted to be Mr. Morley. The Countess boasted that she had selected the name of Freeman because it was peculiarly suited to the frankness and boldness of her character; and, to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that she established and long maintained her despotic empire over the feeblest of minds. She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of her sex: she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble: but, by a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship all the loyalty, the patience, the self-devotion, was on the side of the mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were on the side of the waiting woman. Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stood to Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlborough. In foreign countries people knew in general that Anne was governed by the Churchills. They knew also that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favor was not only a great soldier and politician, but also one of the finest gentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome, his temper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging and noble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces and accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continent, therefore, many persons imagined that he was Anne's favored lover; and he was so described in contemporary French libels which have long been forgotten. In England this calumny never found credit even with the vulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel that was sung about our streets. In truth, the Princess seems never to have been guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her, Marlborough, with all his genius and his valor, his beauty and his grace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct power over Her Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by the instrumentality of his wife; and his wife was no passive instrument. Though it is impossible to discover, in any thing that she ever did, said or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fierce passions and strong will enabled her often to rule a husband who was born to rule grave senates and mighty armies. His courage, that courage which the most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and more steady, failed him when he had to encounter his Sarah's ready tears and voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of her head. History exhibits. to us few spectacles more remarkable than that of a great and wise man who, when he had combined vast and profound schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing one foolish woman, who was often unmanageable, to manage another woman who was more foolish still. In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly agreed. They were equally bent on getting money; though, when it was got, he loved to hoard it, and she was not unwilling to spend it.* The favor of the Princess they both regarded as a valuable estate. In her father's reign they had begun to grow rich by means of her bounty. She was naturally inclined to parsimony; and, even when she was on the throne, her equipages and tables were by no means sumptuous. It might have been thought, therefore, that," while she was a subject, thirty thousand a year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more than sufficient for all her wants. There were probably not in the kingdom two noblemen possessed of such an income. But no income would satisfy the greediness of those who governed her. She repeatedly contracted debts which James repeatedly discharged, not without expressing much surprise and displeasure. The Revolution opened to the Churchills a new and boundless prospect of gain. The whole conduct of their mistress at the great crisis had proved that she had no will, no judgment, no conscience, but theirs. To them she had sacrificed affections, prejudices, habits, interests. In obedience to them she had joined in the conspiracy against her father she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice and mire, to a hackney coach: she had taken refuge in the rebel camp: she had consented to yield her place in the order of succession to the Prince of Orange. In a contemporary lampoon are these lines: "Oh, happy couple! In their life There does appear no sign of strife, To sacrifice their souls for gain." ↑ Swift mentions the deficiency of hospitality and magnificence in her household. Journal to Stella, August 8, 1711. VOL. III.-33 |