Adolphus William Ward

“ William III's chief title to fame consists in his lucid perception, from first to last, of the political task of his life, and in the single-minded consistency with which he devoted himself to its accomplishment. This task was, in a word, to save the united provinces from being overwhelmed by France. The military leadership in the crisis of the French invasion he assumed as belonging to him by inheritance. But, the extremity of peril past, he recognised that the peril itself remained. To avert it he made himself indispensable as the leader of the European coalition against Louis XIV ”

“ In the early days of Charles II's reign his firmness was favourably contrasted with the fickleness of the king; but Clarendon concluded that it was due to obstinacy of will rather than to intellectual conviction (Clarendon, Life, iii. 64) . ‘The king,’ said Buckingham, ‘could see things if he would; the duke would see things if he could’ (Burnet, i. 304) . His fidelity to old servants might be amply illustrated. His confidence once gained was estranged with even too much difficulty. ”

“ Apparently a man without commanding genius, and belonging to an order which was already thought to have degenerated from its greatness and usefulness, the Benedictine bishop became the father of the collegiate system of Cambridge, and at the same time the founder of a college which has honourably taken part in the activity and achievements of the university. A few words are necessary to show how Bishop Hugh de Balsham came to accomplish the act that has made his name memorable, and what precedents or examples were followed in the foundation of Peterhouse. ”

“ The language of this letter encouraged the duchess still further to urge upon the queen the cardinal fact that the whigs were her friends and not the tories; but Anne had too much in common with the latter to give them up even at her favourite's bidding, and the duke was as cautious about throwing himself into the arms of the whigs as they were about an alliance with him and Godolphin. Furthermore, Harley, who contrived to command the confidence of many moderate men of both parties, had already suggested to Marlborough another and a more attractive combination. ”

“ Neither Kneller's brush nor Bird's less fortunate chisel, nor the flattery, often equally robust, of her poets and prose writers, has succeeded in persuading posterity that good Queen Anne was either an attractive woman or—though she appropriated to herself Queen Elizabeth's motto (semper eadem) —a great queen. On the other hand, spared though she was by neither foe nor friend, yet even in her own libellous age it was chiefly left to foreign pens to libel a genuinely national queen. ”

“ Gaskell, gratefully acknowledging her ‘sweet encouraging words,’ has been printed in the ‘British Weekly.’ George Sand, only a few months before Mrs. Gaskell's death, observed to Lord Houghton: ‘Mrs. Gaskell has done what neither I nor other female writers in France can accomplish; she has written novels which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and yet which every girl will be the better for reading.’ None of our novelists has shown a more extraordinary power of self-development. ”

“ If the absurd story be authentic, according to which the Princess Anne was carried about in the arms of her attendants without being allowed to walk alone till after she was nine years old, the etiquette of the Danish court must have been as rigorous as the pride of the Danish royal family was high; fortunately, however, as Miss Strickland points out, no ill came of it, since its victim ‘was afterwards very famous for her agile dancing.’ There appear to be no traditions as to the more advanced stages of the training of the Princess Anna (it was thus that she always spelled her name) . ”

“ A debate on the state of the nation had just ended in the lords, which had been characterised by extraordinary violence. After losing by a small majority a proposal to declare the protestant succession in danger, the whigs had carried an address to the queen to renew her endeavours for the expulsion of the Pretender from Lorraine; and to this a clause had been added, on the motion of Wharton, asking the queen to proclaim a reward for the apprehension of the Pretender, dead or alive. ”

“ She assured his holiness of the desire of all good catholics in England that the marriage should be brought about, and finally, in a letter all in her own hand, declared herself the pope's most obedient daughter, and prayed him to believe what Lotti should have said in her name. But though the principal English catholics all added their instances to those of the queen, the pope was not to be moved; and the grand duke hereupon hit upon the plan of sending his sister to Lorraine, where Prince Henry was to marry her out of hand. ”

“ Not unnaturally perhaps, Queen Anne appears to have been moved by the increase of grandeur in her position, as well as by the fact of her husband's absence, to give the rein to her self-will, seeking to take the appointments to her household into her own hands, and, above all, resolving to make one more attempt to obtain possession of the person of her eldest son. The Earl of Mar having accompanied the king to London, the prince and his sister had been placed under the care of the old countess, who refused to deliver the prince up to the queen. ”

“ The two so-called treaties of Westminster show a lively desire on the part of ministers in the earlier half of 1716 to keep up the traditions of the Grand Alliance; but they were not privy to the whole of the designs of George I and Bernstorff, and there was reason enough to dread the shifting to Hanover of the centre of gravity of British foreign policy. The king, on the other hand, although warned of the unpopularity of the step, desired the repeal of the clause in the Act of Settlement debarring him from quitting the country without the consent of parliament. ”

“ Gaskell disputed her companion's sad view of human life: ‘I thought that human lots were more equal than she imagined; that to some happiness and sorrow came in strong patches of light and shadow (so to speak) , while in the lives of others they were pretty equally blended throughout.’ To perceive this was to understand a lesson of the book of life which few modern imaginative writers have so powerfully and yet so unaffectedly impressed upon their readers. ”

“ A few days after Queen Anne's death, Arbuthnot, who had been her physician since 1705, wrote to Swift that her days had been numbered in his imagination, ‘and could not exceed certain limits, but those were narrowed by the scene of contention among her servants. I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her’ (Swift's Letters, ii. 92) . ”

“ King James VI was at this time only in his twentieth year, but he had other and more cogent reasons for hesitating about marriage. Queen Elizabeth, who still kept the mother in durance, assumed to herself the right of controlling to some extent the conduct of the son. Whether or not James was to be her successor, he must be her subservient ally; and she would not hear of the Danish connection. Towards the end of 1585 King James had gone so far as to send his almoner, Peter Young, to Denmark, to make polite speeches and discreet inquiries, and to promise a more honourable embassy. ”

“ The second Duke of Ormonde, though in a sense born to greatness, certainly did not contrive to achieve it. The exceptional popularity which he enjoyed in England in the earlier half of his life is easily accounted for. Swift, describing the French ambassador to Stella, says that ‘he is a fine gentleman, something like the Duke of Ormonde, and just such an expensive man.’ He was not less munificent than he was wealthy, gracious in manner, and high-church in opinions. ”

“ Marlborough, though aware of the ill feeling which existed between Harley and the whigs, had been slow to suspect him of any endeavour to insinuate himself into the queen's personal confidence by the arts of flattery and intrigue. The duke's own relations with the whig chiefs were by no means easy, and he had offended Halifax, who had been sent as envoy to Hanover, by thwarting his desire to be appointed a plenipotentiary for the peace negotiations which had been in prospect after the campaign of 1706. ”

“ They were, however, becoming clear enough to the husband of her chosen friend, if not to that friend herself, who had soon after the accession of James II, on the departure of Lord and Lady Clarendon for Ireland, become first lady of the bedchamber to the princess. Even Lady Churchill, simple creature as she describes herself to have been in those days, had become convinced that as things were everybody must sooner or later be ruined who would not become a Roman catholic. ”

“ At home the strife of factions had continued round the queen. In the first instance the whigs, encouraged by the dismissal of Harley and his followers, pressed upon her the appointment of Somers to the presidency of the council, and, when she demurred to this, his admission into the cabinet without any office. The queen had at this time a personal objection against Somers, whom she regarded as the chief mover in the attacks upon the admiralty administration of her husband, and it was supposed that the prince, instigated by Admiral Churchill, was urging her to hold out. ”

“ Corresponding gifts were made to the younger daughters of the duchess, who married after Anne came to the throne. In 1698 an arrangement under the king's orders had closely connected the Earl of Marlborough himself with the domestic affairs of the prince and princess. The frail life of the little Duke of Gloucester, who to his mother before he died must have represented a hope seventeen times cherished and but once permitted to survive more or less speedy disappointment, alone safeguarded the succession as by law established. ”

“ According to the favourite of the Princess Anne, the two sisters were not fitted for living together in comfort, inasmuch as ‘Queen Mary grew weary of everybody 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’ (ib. 25) . Yet as girls they had been good friends, and Queen Mary afterwards protested that she had treated the princess and her infant with the tenderness of a mother (Burnet, iv. 162) . Money began the quarrel. At the beginning of the new reign Anne enjoyed an annuity of 30,000l. ”

“ The Cavalier Ottaviano Lotti, who represented the grand duke in London, was very popular at court there; and him ‘the queen had admitted to the secret of her catholicism, and he served her in procuring her from Rome indulgences and devozioni;’ and the Prince of Wales desired him for his companion. Pope Paul V, however, could not be prevailed upon to approve of the scheme, and forbade its being carried on further. Lotti was therefore charged to accumulate all possible arguments for persuading the pope of the usefulness of the match for converting the island ”

“ Tieck, who translated one of the most pleasing, and not least characteristic, of his dramas, well describes him as ‘a man of facile and felicitous endowment, who wrote many plays, and among them several that are excellent.’ Few contemporary tributes to him remain; he is praised by Shakerley Marmion (ante) ; his friend Samuel King congratulates the author of ‘The Wise Woman of Hogsdon’ on a fame needing no ‘apology,’ and the ‘Apology for Actors’ itself evokes the sympathy of John Webster, of some of Heywood's fellow-actors, and of John Taylor the Water-poet. ”

“ Among the numerous family portraits by Honthorst, the Princess Louisa Hollandina, and others bequeathed by the queen of Bohemia to Lord Craven and still preserved at Combe Abbey, those of herself, in many varieties of size and costume, but all displaying the same marked features, are the most striking and interesting. The picture, however, which is said to represent her and her husband as Venus and Adonis, shows no likeness to their portraits, and is probably misnamed. ”