No amount of public rejoicing could blunt the Tories’ assault on the pension proposals, and on 15 December the measure was withdrawn. Anne generously offered the Marlboroughs £2,000 a year from her privy purse, but Sarah, arguing that they had had enough already, turned it down. The episode did much to confirm Sarah in her hatred of the Tories. Her correspondence with Anne already revealed that they were in different political camps. Although Anne ‘would never have you & your poor unfortunate faithful Morley differ in opinion in the least thing’, she went on to tell Sarah, unusually forcefully, that she quite misunderstood the character of the Whigs and would do better to ‘show more countenance’ to ‘the Church party’. Godolphin regretted that the defeat had been brought about by men he had trusted, Rochester amongst them, and lamented to Harley that he had been beaten in the Commons by ‘those of whom I thought we had deserved better’.
There was more choppy water ahead. Parliament quickly granted the queen’s request that Prince George should receive £100,000 a year, cheerfully demonstrating that its grudge against Marlborough was political rather than financial. The Whigs in the Lords then attacked a measure which excepted the Prince of Denmark from a clause in the Act of Settlement which would bar naturalised subjects sitting in Parliament or on the Privy Council after a Hanoverian succession. They were led by the Marlboroughs’ son-in-law the Earl of Sunderland, and Anne was incandescent. Eventually the clause squeaked by in the Lords by only four votes, and Anne thanked the Marlboroughs for all that they had done to help.
Anne gave a practical sign of her gratitude when the Marlboroughs’ daughter Lady Elizabeth Churchill was married to the immensely wealthy Scrope Egerton, 4th Earl of Bridgewater. The queen gave a dowry of £10,000, and Bridgewater was made a gentleman of the horse to Prince George. The Marlboroughs aimed at the senior post of master of the horse, but they failed to secure it for Bridgwater till 1705, when it became all too evident that the incumbent, the Earl of Sandwich, was mentally deranged. The queen also did something for the Duumvirs, as Marlborough and Godolphin were now becoming known, by ordering Rochester to go to Ireland to take up his duties as lord lieutenant, not to reappear at cabinet. When he refused she dismissed him and appointed the Duke of Ormonde in his stead. Rochester at once threw in his lot with the opposition, and inserted a ‘tendentious introduction’ to the second volume of his father Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion, which appeared in 1703, warning Anne that only adherence to Tory principles could prevent her from sharing the fate of Charles I.
At the beginning of 1703, despite the failure of the attempt to gain a pension from Parliament and some crumbling of Godolphin’s political power-base, all seemed set fair for the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. In February, however, they were struck by a blow from which they never fully recovered. Their eldest son John, so recently made Marquess of Blandford by courtesy title that his proud father still called him ‘Lord Churchill’, was a sixteen-year-old undergraduate at King’s College Cambridge. Even the Marlboroughs’ subsequent unpopularity could never induce their many opponents to rake up any mud about young Blandford. ‘Notwithstanding his high birth, splendid prospects and courtly education,’ says Archdeacon Coxe, ‘he set an example of affability, regularity, and steadiness, above his years.’83 His best friend was Horace Walpole, also of King’s, and the two young men spoke about serving together in the cavalry. Blandford wrote to Marlborough asking for a commission in the summer of 1702, and Marlborough sent the letter on to Godolphin, characteristically asking him not to show it to Sarah if he thought it would ‘vex’ her, but saying that he would ‘write what answer she shall think best’. Sarah, like many a worried mother before and since, could not let her son go while he was still so young.
In the winter of 1702–03 Blandford often rode across from Cambridge to stay with Godolphin at Newmarket. Early in 1703 there was smallpox in Newmarket, but Godolphin was sure that the Marlboroughs’ son, ‘going into no house but mine, will I hope be more defended from it by air and riding, without any violent exercise, than he could be anywhere else’. But shortly after returning to Cambridge from Newmarket in February John was struck down by the disease. Sarah rushed to Cambridge as soon as she heard the news, and the queen, no stranger to this fell illness, sent her own doctors at once. Marlborough wrote to Sarah immediately, dating his letter only ‘Thursday, nine in the morning’.
I have this minute received Mr Godolphin’s letter, and have sent to Mr Morta’s shop [Daniel Malthus, apothecary to the queen] for what is desired, which is what this messenger will bring. I hope Doctor Hans [Edward Hans, physician to the queen] and Dr Collidon [Sir Theodore Colladon] got to you early this morning. I am so troubled at the sad condition this poor child seems to be in, that I know not what I do. I pray God to give you some comfort in this great affliction. If you think anything under heaven can be done, pray let me know it, or if you think my coming can be of the least use let me know it. I beg I may hear as often as is possible, for I have no thought but what is at Cambridge.84
He wrote again that night, telling her:
I hope the doctors were with you early this morning. If we must be so unhappy as to lose this poor child, I pray God enable us to behave with that resignation which we ought to do. If this uneasiness which I now lie under should last long, I do not think I could live. For God’s sake, if there be any hope of recovery let me know it.85
The Marquess of Blandford died on the morning of Saturday, 20 February 1703: Marlborough had arrived just in time to join Sarah at his bedside. The death of any child is a tragedy, and the Marlboroughs, like too many of the parents of their age, were already painfully familiar with loss. It hit Marlborough hard. His hopes of founding a dynasty had perished. He quickly made a new will, and begged the queen to allow his dukedom to descend collaterally, hoping at first that it might eventually go to Godolphin’s son and his descendants, provided they assumed the name and arms of Churchill. Affairs of state were so pressing that he had little enough time to mourn, for although Cardonnel at once told Heinsius what had happened, he emphasised that ‘despite this great misfortune His Excellency will embark in the middle of next week’.86 When Ailesbury saw him at The Hague soon afterwards Marlborough confessed: ‘I’ve lost what is so dear to me, it is fit for me to retire and not toil and labour for I know not who. My daughters are all married.’87 In April he wrote wistfully:
I have seen this day a very great procession, and the thoughts how pleased poor Lord Churchill would have been with such a sight added much to my uneasiness. Since it has pleased God to take him, I do wish from my soul I could think less of him.88
If Marlborough, with the mind-filling solace of hard work, was able to rise above his grief, it was much, much harder for Sarah. On 26 February, Godolphin said that he was pleased to hear that ‘the drops’ seemed to be doing her some good. Marlborough was an even more sedulous correspondent than usual: when he reached Brill after his sea crossing the following month he wrote to say: ‘My letter a Tuesday may come as soon as this, but I would not omit this occasion, nor will I ever any that I think may give you the least satisfaction, for the greatest pleasure of my life will be the endeavouring to make you happy.’89 However, for a time her grief was such that she lost her self-possession: a Westminster schoolboy saw her wandering through the cloisters of the Abbey like a madwoman.
Anne, herself no stranger to this sort of misfortune, did her very best to help. When Sarah left London for Cambridge to attend Blandford, Anne begged her ‘for Christ Jesus sake to have a care of your dear precious self’, and when she heard that the case was hopeless, prayed ‘Christ Jesus comfort & support you under this terrible affliction, & it is his mercy alone that can do it.’90 The tragedy should have drawn the two women closer together in the sisterhood of shared adversity, but it did not. One contemporary observed: ‘We hear the Duchess of Marlborough bears not her affliction like her mistress, if report be true that it hath near touched her head.’ Edward Gregg, Anne’s masterly biograph
er, does indeed suggest that the tragedy tipped Sarah’s personality over the edge: ‘Her wit, which had been sharp, became piercing; her humour, which had been biting, became mordant; her convictions, which had been firm, became absolute; her manner, which had been bold and assured, became precipitous and arrogant.’91
There was another element to the tragedy. In her correspondence with Sarah, Anne had always been very forthright about her own periods, sometimes saying that ‘Lady Charlotte’s’ failure to turn up as anticipated suggested that she was pregnant again. We have no evidence that Sarah ever used the same cant with her mistress. Perhaps the letters which did so have simply not survived, but more probably this is yet another example of Anne needing to confide in Sarah far more than Sarah ever needed to confide in her. We cannot describe Sarah’s fertility with absolute certainty, but it is clear that in 1702 she certainly hoped to have more children, and likely that she thought herself pregnant in the spring of 1703: she was by then forty-two years old, so it was not an unreasonable hope. It was certainly a hope shared by her husband. ‘It was a great pleasure to me when I thought we should be blessed with more children; but as all my happiness centres in living quietly with you, I do conjure you by all the kindness I have for you … that you will take the best advice you can for your health,’ he assured her.92 On 17 May he wrote to tell her how delighted he was that ‘the troublesome visit’ she had experienced the day he left had not recurred, though he was unaware of the real significance of its absence.93
As the year went on it became evident that missed and irregular periods denoted, not the chance of giving birth to another son, but the menopause. Jealous (and unfounded) suspicion that the queen was herself pregnant may have contributed to Sarah’s refusal to return to London to visit Anne early in 1703, although in fairness she was so deeply distressed at the time that she would not even see her daughters. Early in 1704 her relationship with Marlborough was to break down almost completely. She accused him of infidelity, and he repeatedly wrote to ask what cause she had to treat him as badly as she did. This is creaky ice for a male historian to wander out on, but some comfort may be taken from the fact that Iris Butler suggests, in Rule of Three, that sexual jealousy and suspicion of a much-loved partner are common symptoms of women in menopausal age.94
All this did not simply affect Sarah’s dealings with her husband, but with Queen Anne too. Sarah spent much of 1703 at Holywell or at Windsor Lodge in the Great Park, and did not even appear at court during Prince George’s illness that autumn. She deluged the queen with what Gregg calls ‘long epistles packed with her own political views’, and in May that year ostentatiously called the queen ‘your Majesty’ in a letter provoking Anne to ask her if anything was wrong. However, Anne still gave her right of refusal when the employment of a maid of honour was being considered. Later that month, when Marlborough, stuck fast in a campaign that was mired by political squabbles, and still conscious of the collapse of his dynastic hopes, first talked of resigning, Anne responded with a warm declaration of support.
The thoughts that both my dear Mrs Freeman & Mr Freeman seem to have of retiring give me no small uneasiness & therefore I must say something on the subject, it is no wonder at all people in your posts should be weary of the world … but give me leave to say, that you should at least consider your faithful friends and poor country, which must be ruined if you should ever put your melancholy thoughts in execution, as for your poor unfortunate Morley she could not bear it, for if you should forsake me, I would have nothing more to do with the world, but make another abdication, for what is a crown, when the support of it is gone. I will never forsake your dear self, Mr Freeman nor Mr Montgomery [Godolphin], but always be your constant faithful servant till death mows us down with his impartial hand.95
Anne prorogued her first Parliament at the end of February 1703, and then promoted the Marquess of Normanby (who made his first appearance in these pages as Earl Mulgrave, James II’s lord chamberlain) to be Duke of Buckingham, and created four new Tory peers to give their party a working majority in the Lords. She also yielded to Sarah’s request to make the Whig John Hervey a baron, the only time, so Sarah claimed, that a peer was created simply to please her. Sarah’s letters returned to their familiar theme: that the Tories were simply closet Jacobites. Anne replied, on 11 June, with a measured defence of the Tory role in the Glorious Revolution and the Act of Settlement, and although she admitted that some High Tories were undoubtedly Jacobites, the same could not be said for most of them. Sarah intensified her attack on the Tories in general and Buckingham in particular, and tried to enlist the support of both Godolphin and her husband.
Sarah tried to get Anne to take action over the allegedly incorrect boundaries of the new house Buckingham was building, which was to become the nucleus of Buckingham Palace. She joined a royal visit to Bath rather late in proceedings, and was roundly rebuked by the queen when she complained about a new treaty of alliance with Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, who had once deserted William III. Parliament met again in early November, and there was more tension when the Tories made a second attempt to pass an Occasional Conformity Bill, which would have made life more difficult for those Dissenters who avoided legal discrimination by their ‘occasional conformity’ to the Church of England. Anne generally favoured the Bill, as she thought that it would strengthen the Church, though she supported her Lutheran husband’s right to oppose it. It was probably Prince George’s example that encouraged some wavering peers to stay away when the vote was taken. The Tories were furious with Anne, and could not understand how Prince George had absented himself without his wife’s support. Marlborough and Godolphin both voted for the Bill, for they could not afford to affront the moderate Tories, upon whose support they relied to secure subsidies with which to continue the war. Yet both were delighted to see it fail.
At home, then, the year 1703 had seen a shift in Sarah’s relationship with the queen, subtle, perhaps, but a portent of what was to come. It had also seen Sarah become increasingly extreme in her denunciation of the Tories despite specific warnings from Anne, a confirmed supporter of what she, devout as ever, saw as the Church party. Godolphin was still able to manage Parliament to his advantage, but the Tories had become noticeably stronger. These were gentle judders, not seismic shifts, and they might have been counteracted by a major success on the battlefield. Yet that is precisely what eluded Marlborough in the 1703 campaign.
The 1703 Campaign
The year began just as badly for the Grand Alliance as it did for the Churchill family. Maximilian Emmanuel, Elector of Bavaria and so ruler of the largest and best-armed state in southern Germany, had been a member of the Grand Alliance, and governor of the Spanish Netherlands on behalf of his father-in-law the emperor, in the previous war. However, he had now developed the idea of his own Wittelsbach family competing with the Hapsburgs for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, and decided to side with Louis XIV. His defection, accompanied by his seizure of Ulm, opened up a new front deep in Germany, and encouraged Louis to make his main effort in the south that year. Marshal Villars was to besiege and capture Kehl, just across the Rhine from Strasbourg, with his manoeuvres covered from the Imperialists by another army under Marshal Tallard in the Lines of Stollhofen, field fortifications covering the gap between the middle Rhine and the Black Forest.
In the Low Countries, Villeroi now had about 60,000 men behind the River Mehaigne, threatening Maastricht, and more in a long line of field fortifications known as the Lines of Brabant, running all the way from Namur to Antwerp, making good use of the river systems, notably the Dyle as it curved between Leau and Tongres. Brigadier the comte de Mérode-Westerloo, who had been born in the Netherlands as a vassal of the Spanish crown and whose Walloon regiment now fought for the French, described the Lines as being
of prodigious extent, stretching all the way from the Meuse to the Scheldt and thence to the sea, [and] were to my way of thinking more profitable to the purses of the engineers who built them
than for the country they were supposed to protect; they really represented a scarecrow for little birds, providing a pretext for those who wished to halt and do nothing. How could anyone guard such an extended system of defences?96
Marlborough, on his way back home the previous year, had told Godolphin that the Dutch and British needed to raise another 20,000 men between them, and this was indeed the total agreed in a treaty signed at The Hague the following March. Parliament consented to bear its share of the augmentation only if the Dutch agreed to give up trade with France. Marlborough told Heinsius that he wished ‘the troops had been given without any condition’, but begged him to persuade the Estates- General to comply, as ‘I tremble to think of the consequences that may happen, if this should occasion any coldness between England and Holland.’97 In practice the troops, four-fifths of them hired from German states, had been obtained before the Dutch actually agreed to suspend trade for a year. In April Marlborough lamented that the French success in southern Germany meant that ‘You can have no troops from any prince in Germany but by paying dearly for them, and that they at the same time expect to be protected by your army.’98