Anne Bentinck died in 1688, but her sister Barbara was married to the Colonel Berkeley who had deserted with Marlborough in 1688, and who inherited the barony of Fitzharding two years later. The Fitzhardings moved away from Anne’s sphere of influence into the Villiers camp, and had become a conduit of confidential leaks from the Cockpit by early 1692. Sir Edward Villiers, brother of Barbara and Anne, was created Earl of Jersey and given a series of jobs which his ‘very ordinary talents’ did not warrant.32 Marlborough, in turn, got on badly with Portland: whether he simply fell into a line of battle already drawn up by Anne or had more personal causes for dislike it is hard to say.
William resented the fact that he was essentially an elected king, and that Anne’s claim to the throne was better than his own. Moreover, though the conspiracies of the 1680s had drawn Anne and Mary together, they were actually very dissimilar, as Sarah Marlborough tells us:
It was indeed impossible that they should be very agreeable companions to each other because Queen Mary grew weary of anybody who would not talk a great deal; and the Princess was so silent that she rarely spoke more than was necessary to answer a question.33
Anne was happily married, while Mary’s relationship with William (who had not only had mistresses but was so close to male favourites that there were suggestions of homosexuality) was less idyllic. Small wonder, as Sarah said, that there was ‘visible coldness’ between the sisters by mid-1689.
First there was a dispute over accommodation at court. The Cockpit had been settled on Anne and her heirs by Charles II, and in early 1688 she had also been given the Duchess of Portsmouth’s elegant apartment nearby. She hoped to extend into lodgings close at hand which had, however, been promised to the Earl of Devonshire, who refused to give them up. Anne also hoped that she would be allowed Richmond Place, where she had spent much of her childhood, but this had been allocated to another Villiers sister, Catherine, marquise de Puissiers, who would not budge. In September 1689 the young Duke of Gloucester came close to death with what may have been an asthma attack, and Anne, fearing for her son’s health if he remained in grimy Whitehall, rented Lord Craven’s house in Kensington, near Kensington Palace, which was being remodelled as the London residence of William and Mary: William’s creaky lungs could not abide Whitehall. In 1690 Anne and George also took on Campden House in Kensington, and the burden of these properties told heavily on their limited income.
Anne had hoped for some of the private estate owned by her father, but William managed this himself and kept the income, though he thoughtfully gave almost 88,000 acres in Ireland to Elizabeth Villiers. Prince George was no less disgruntled. In July 1689, at William’s behest, he had relinquished some of his Danish properties to help bring about peace between Denmark and Sweden, and was promised that England and Holland, between them, would pay him. However, he had to wait ten years for his money. Anne, meanwhile, argued that as heir to the throne she should be given a parliamentary grant, and a motion for this had been introduced in the Commons in March.
Anne’s friends argued that she deserved £70,000 a year, her more moderate supporters thought that £50,000 would do, while William’s adherents maintained that it was a thoroughly dangerous precedent, and that Anne should rely on William’s generosity. In mid-December William did his best to scotch the debate, and sent Shrewsbury and Wharton, two of his ministers, to persuade Anne to withdraw. Marlborough had returned to England at the end of the campaigning season, and Shrewsbury called on him first. Marlborough ‘begged he would not own [i.e. admit] he found him, his wife would by no means hear of it, but was like a mad woman and said the Princess would retire if her friends would not assist her’.34 On 18 December Anne was duly voted £50,000 a year. Sarah visited Lord Rochester to ask him whether he thought Anne should press for more, but Rochester replied that she should be satisfied with her £50,000 and, moreover, should take it any way William and Mary wished to pay her. In a memorandum of 3 March 1690 Queen Mary suggested that their government was opposed not only by a republican party and a Jacobite party, but ‘I have reason to fear that my sister is forming a third.’35
Things got steadily worse. When William set off for Ireland in June 1690 to deal with James, Prince George went on campaign with him as a private gentleman at his own expense. Although George was an experienced soldier, William took no notice of him, refused to let him ride in his coach and, as Sarah put it, treated him as if he were a page of the back stairs. When William and George returned to London that autumn, not long before Anne gave birth to another short-lived child, George decided that since he could not endure William’s snubs on another land campaign, he would join the fleet as a gentleman volunteer. William went off to the Continent in early 1691, leaving orders with Mary that George was not to serve. Mary first tried to get Sarah to use her influence with Anne to torpedo the project, but eventually she had to send formal instructions via Lord Nottingham that George should not be allowed to proceed. His baggage, already loaded aboard St Andrew, had to be disembarked.
All of this helped drive Anne closer to Sarah. Although Sarah suggests that they took to calling one another ‘Mrs Morley’ (the queen) and ‘Mrs Freeman’ (Sarah) before 1685, one of Sarah’s biographers points out that it was not until 1691 that there is evidence of these names being used in letters.36 In June that year Anne pressed Sarah to accept from her a pension of £1,000 a year, and Sarah, having first consulted Godolphin, accepted. Godolphin (‘Mr Montgomery’ in Anne/Sarah cant), who had been Marlborough’s tennis partner when both were rising young courtiers, was now in favour with William, who made him first a commissioner of the Treasury and then its first lord. William wrote to him in the franglais which was his lingua franca: ‘Je vous asseure que je shrink aussi bien que vous quandt je considere l’etat ou est le Treusuri et les fachesues affairs que nous aurons aparement cette hyver …’37 However, while Godolphin worked tirelessly at the Treasury on William’s behalf, he was also close to the Cockpit circle. To make assurance doubly sure, he was in contact with the Jacobites too: and so was Marlborough.
In January 1691 Marlborough and Godolphin were walking together in St James’s Park when they were approached by Henry Bulkeley, an Irish peer’s son who had been master of the household to both Charles II and James II, and whose daughter Anne was to marry Marlborough’s nephew the Duke of Berwick in 1700. They would have known Bulkeley well, and can have had little doubt of his sympathies. He invited them to dinner at his lodgings, where he found Godolphin uncommunicative. Marlborough, in contrast, was loquacious, and Bulkeley
was hugely surprised to find him in appearance the greatest penitent imaginable; he begged him to go to the king and acquaint him with his sincere repentance, and to intercede for mercy, that he was ready to redeem his apostasy with the hazard of his utter ruin, his crimes appearing so horrid to him that he could neither sleep nor eat but in continual anguish … 38
Godolphin’s biographer is right to observe that this is based on the Jacobite Life of James II, and that any original papers that might have supported it would have been lost, with the rest of James’s documents, at the time of the French Revolution. However, for him to argue that the incident is improbable because ‘nothing could be less in keeping’ with all that we know of the characters of Godolphin and Marlborough is no real defence, because we have evidence from other sources that both did indeed have dealings with the Jacobites. We may challenge the detail of words reported, for which there is indeed no corroboration, but neither the incident itself nor the general tone of Marlborough’s speech is inherently improbable.
His actions in 1688 make it unlikely that Marlborough was a convinced Jacobite, and his long history of relations with Jacobite agents may, at one level, be seen simply as evidence of the desire (which he shared with a large proportion of the political nation) not to finish up on the wrong side if there was another change of regime. The prospect of such a change seemed far greater at the time than we might think now, aware as we are of the personal unpopul
arity of James II, the limited appeal of Jacobitism in Britain and the wholesale penetration of James’s apparatus by William’s agents. There were suggestions (which came to nought because James and his wife would never countenance them) that if their son the Prince of Wales was brought up as a Protestant he might eventually succeed, for in logic his claim to the throne would trump Anne’s.
A deep level of subtlety certainly applied to Marlborough’s dealings with the Jacobites in the 1690s. Not only did he go some way towards insuring himself against a possible Stuart restoration, but he helped give James and his advisers the impression that it would be better to deal with Anne than with William. In July 1692 the Jacobite agent David Lloyd delivered a letter from Anne to her father. It was dated December 1691, and embodied ‘a sincere and humble offer of my duty and submission to you’, and concluded not simply by asking pardon, but by speaking generously of Mary of Modena, so recently the wicked stepmother.39 James was not disposed to believe Anne in any event, and the apparent change of heart towards his wife can scarcely have been likely to allay his suspicions. Moreover, some English Jacobites took the view that Marlborough’s own opposition to some of William’s policies, most notably his use of foreign generals, sprang from self-interest and the desire to support Anne, not from any deeply-held Jacobitism.
Irish Interlude
All this took place against a backcloth of war. James had landed at Kinsale on the southern coast of Ireland on 12 March 1689 with some British supporters and a contingent of French troops, and marched straight to Dublin, where he summoned a Parliament. Most of the country had already been secured by Tyrconnell, but James was unable to take the two northern strongholds of Londonderry and Enniskillen, and his supporter Lord Mountcashel (once, as Colonel Justin McCarthy, Marlborough’s comrade in arms in France) was beaten and captured at Newtownbutler. In August Schomberg arrived with a Williamite army, and landed at Carrickfergus, where, so Isaac Bostaquet tells us, the first officer killed, by a cannon-shot, was a Roman Catholic lieutenant in the Dutch Guards. Schomberg took Carrickfergus Castle and then moved southwards as far as Dundalk, facing James’s main army, which had pushed up to Drogheda. A filthy autumn and sickness in camp may have killed as many as a quarter of Schomberg’s men, and in October both sides fell back to winter quarters.
William was not pleased with the progress of events. His wider responsibilities meant that he was reluctant to go to Ireland himself, but he concluded that ‘nothing worthwhile would be done’ unless he was there to do it. He left the government in the hands of Mary and a council of nine, of whom Marlborough, appointed commander-in-chief in England on 3 June, was one. William arrived at Carrickfergus in June 1690, and on 1 July he forced the crossing of the Boyne just upstream of Drogheda.
William’s Dutch Guards marched to the river’s edge with their fifes and drums playing ‘Lillibulero’, and the Huguenots and Enniskilleners attacking alongside them had personal reasons for wanting to win that day. Although the Jacobites fought back hard, killing Schomberg in a mélêe on the far bank, once the Williamites were across in strength, both near Drogheda and further upstream at Rossnaree, the defence collapsed. One Jacobite officer described how his men ‘took to their heels, no officer ever being able to stop the men after they were broken … some throwing away their arms, others even their coats and shoes to run lighter’. James himself made commendably rapid progress to Dublin, where on 2 July he gave another display of those qualities that made him such a hard man to love. He blamed his defeat on the Irish. ‘When it came to a trial,’ he lamented, ‘they basely fled the field and left the spoil to the enemy … henceforth I never determine to head an Irish army, and do now resolve to shift for myself and so, gentlemen, must you.’40 He left Ireland, never to return, and we may forgive the Irishmen who continued to fight with him with more courage than he deserved for calling him Seamus an Chaca, James the Shithead.
Although the battle of the Boyne has now attained iconic status, it was not then decisive. Indeed, although it had advanced William’s cause in Ireland, a naval battle off Beachy Head, fought the day before, had seen Admiral Herbert (now Viscount Torrington) and his Dutch comrades beaten by the French. The balance of power at sea was not reversed until the Anglo-Dutch naval victory off La Hougue in May 1692 rendered any French-backed Jacobite invasion of England unlikely for the moment. In June William, writing in his usual execrable French, told Marlborough that he did not fear a landing because his intelligence had told him that there were no troops embarked on the French fleet, but expected that French frigates would snap up his transports. The fact that the French had burned the pretty little town of Teignmouth but dared not attempt a major landing seemed to confirm this.
In August 1690, with William bogged down in the siege of Limerick, Marlborough suggested a project which, he believed, would win the war in Ireland. He asked the Council to be allowed to take most of the regular troops out of the country and attack the main Jacobite ports of Cork and Kinsale, thus cutting off Tyrconnell from further French reinforcements. Marlborough had already fallen out with Danby, the Council’s leading member, who opposed his attempt to get his sailor brother George promoted to rear admiral. ‘If Churchill have a flag,’ he said, ‘it will be called flag by favour, as his brother is called the general of favour.’41 The Council turned down his plan, but the queen forwarded it to William, who on 14 August approved the scheme, authorising Marlborough to take 4,900 infantry. He would have to take his own supply of ammunition and use the ships’ guns, for none could be spared from Limerick, although sufficient cavalry would be sent down. The weather, William emphasised, was the thing to watch.
Mary was deeply concerned, telling her husband that although she hoped the expedition would succeed, ‘I find, if it do not, those who have advised it will have an ill time, all except Lord Nottingham being very much against it.’42 Marlborough left on 17 September, reached Cork on the twenty-first and, after his ship’s guns had silenced a battery, landed safely at West Passage, seven miles east of the city. He quickly pushed on to encircle it.
He now found that the operation’s complexion had darkened. William had abandoned the siege of Limerick after the enterprising Patrick Sarsfield raided his artillery park, and returned to England. Marlborough had asked particularly to be reinforced by English troops under Kirke, and there were plenty available. However the Dutch general Godert de Ginkel, left in command, sent 5,000 Danish, Dutch and Huguenot troops, and with the Danes came their commander, Prince Ferdinand William of Württemberg, junior to Marlborough as a lieutenant general but claiming, by virtue of his birth, to take command. Marlborough (or perhaps a Huguenot brigadier) suggested a compromise whereby the two generals would command on alternate days, and on his first day in command courteously gave ‘Württemberg’ as the password.
Winston S. Churchill maintains that the arrival of foreign troops was simply a ploy to prevent the English from carrying off the glory. The historian Matthew Glozier, however, with better access to the documents, goes further. The presence of the foreign troops, he argues, ‘was as much political as strategic. William’s cabinet had resolved to ruin Churchill if the Irish campaign failed, and it was partly the result of this antipathy which demanded the presence of foreign troops.’43 Either way, Marlborough was engaged upon his first independent command with an Irish winter on its way, the French fleet at sea, and grudging political support.
With Württemberg duly mollified the siege of Cork went on apace. A breaching battery was speedily established, and it soon knocked a hole in the eastern wall. Early on the afternoon of 27 September, when the tide had receded, enabling his forlorn hope to cross the south branch of the River Lee with its fast-flowing water up to their armpits, Marlborough ordered an attack. The attackers reached a ditch close under the city walls, and were at once reinforced by the bulk of the English foot. The Danes, attacking across the north branch of the Lee, also made good progress. Cannon pecked away at the walls, mortars on bomb-vessels lobbed their shells
into the town, and the defenders knew that an assault could not be far away. The city’s governor, Roger Macelligott, mindful of the fate of Drogheda a generation before, surrendered on terms which left his 4,000-man garrison prisoners of war but guaranteed the safety of the Roman Catholic clergy in Cork and ensured that most of the Williamite army would not enter the city. There was an echo of the past. The forlorn hope had been commanded by the Duke of Grafton, and his officers included Lord Colchester, Charles Churchill, Colonel John Greville and Captain Stafford Fairburne, all army conspirators in 1688. Grafton was mortally wounded, and died eleven days later.
Kinsale was a different matter. Marlborough arrived there on 29 September, and by 15 October his breaching batteries had done good work. But the place was very much stronger than he had expected, winter was closing in, and there were rumours that Sarsfield was on his way with a relieving force. By mid-October Marlborough had successfully stormed a ‘weak old fort’ across the River Bandon from the main defences, and breached the walls of Fort Charles; he was, though, happy enough to let the garrison of 11,000 men march out with the honours of war, and to proceed unmolested to Limerick, before he attempted a storm. The governor, Sir Edward Scott, who had been governor of Portsmouth in 1688, was driven through the breach in his carriage to make the point that the gap was indeed practicable and his surrender was not in the least premature.
Although Marlborough’s capture of Cork and Kinsale did serious damage to Jacobite ambitions in Ireland, it did not end the war. Tyrconnell returned in May 1691 with a new French commander, the marquis de St Ruth. It was ‘like pouring brandy down the throat of a dying man’, and the Jacobite cause flared back into life. On 12 July St Ruth, with the whole Jacobite army of 20,000 men, took up a well-chosen position at Aughrim, where he faced Ginkel with about 17,400 men.