“Yes,” cries she, with one of her laughs—I fancy I hear it now. Thirty years afterwards I hear that delightful music. “Yes, he shall be Archbishop of Esmond and Marquis of Canterbury.”
“And what will your ladyship be?” says the Prince; “you have but to choose your place.”
“I,” says Beatrix, “will be mother of the maids to the Queen of his Majesty King James the Third—Vive le Roy!” and she made him a great curtsy, and drank a part of a glass of wine in his honor.
“The Prince seized hold of the glass and drank the last drop of it,” Castlewood said, “and my mother, looking very anxious, rose up and asked leave to retire. But that Trix is my mother’s daughter, Harry,” Frank continued, “I don’t know what a horrid fear I should have of her. I wish—I wish this business were over. You are older than I am, and wiser, and better, and I owe you everything, and would die for you—before George I would; but I wish the end of this were come.”
Neither of us very likely passed a tranquil night; horrible doubts and torments racked Esmond’s soul: ’twas a scheme of personal ambition, a daring stroke for a selfish end—he knew it. What cared he, in his heart, who was King? Were not his very sympathies and secret convictions on the other side—on the side of People, Parliament, Freedom? And here was he, engaged for a Prince that had scarce heard the word liberty; that priests and women, tyrants by nature, both made a tool of. The misanthrope was in no better humor after hearing that story, and his grim face more black and yellow than ever.
X
We Entertain a Very Distinguished Guest at Kensington
Should any clue be found to the dark intrigues at the latter end of Queen Anne’s time, or any historian be inclined to follow it, ’twill be discovered, I have little doubt, that not one of the great personages about the Queen had a defined scheme of policy, independent of that private and selfish interest which each was bent on pursuing: St. John was for St. John, and Harley for Oxford, and Marlborough for John Churchill, always; and according as they could get help from St. Germains or Hanover, they sent over proffers of allegiance to the Princes there, or betrayed one to the other: one cause, or one sovereign, was as good as another to them, so that they could hold the best place under him; and like Lockit and Peachem, the Newgate chiefs in the Rogues’ Opera, Mr. Gay wrote afterwards, had each in his hand documents and proofs of treason which would hang the other, only he did not dare to use the weapon, for fear of that one which his neighbor also carried in his pocket. Think of the great Marlborough, the greatest subject in all the world, a conqueror of princes, that had marched victorious over Germany, Flanders, and France, that had given the law to sovereigns abroad, and been worshipped as a divinity at home, forced to sneak out of England—his credit, honors, places, all taken from him; his friends in the army broke and ruined; and flying before Harley, as abject and powerless as a poor debtor before a bailiff with a writ. A paper, of which Harley got possession, and showing beyond doubt that the Duke was engaged with the Stuart family, was the weapon with which the Treasurer drove Marlborough out of the kingdom. He fled to Antwerp, and began intriguing instantly on the other side, and came back to England, as all know, a Whig and a Hanoverian.
Though the Treasurer turned out of the army and office every man, military or civil, known to be the Duke’s friend, and gave the vacant posts among the Tory party; he, too, was playing the double game between Hanover and St. Germains, awaiting the expected catastrophe of the Queen’s death to be Master of the State, and offer it to either family that should bribe him best, or that the nation should declare for. Whichever the King was, Harley’s object was to reign over him; and to this end he supplanted the former famous favorite, decried the actions of the war which had made Marlborough’s name illustrious, and disdained no more than the great fallen competitor of his, the meanest arts, flatteries, intimidations, that would secure his power. If the greatest satirist the world ever hath seen had writ against Harley, and not for him, what a history had he left behind of the last years of Queen Anne’s reign! But Swift, that scorned all mankind, and himself not the least of all, had this merit of a faithful partisan, that he loved those chiefs who treated him well, and stuck by Harley bravely in his fall, as he gallantly had supported him in his better fortune.
Incomparably more brilliant, more splendid, eloquent, accomplished than his rival, the great St. John could be as selfish as Oxford was,
