Earl of Sunderland

“ Sunderland was stained with treacheries, disloyalties, corrupt practices, and shameless false-dealing, the very least of which were more than the one lapse that was wearing Shrewsbury to misery with remorse.
The Earl took another tone.
"Think of the King. You call yourself friend to him; he is as harrassed now as he ever was before the war. He hath not too many men to help him—the Tories grow in strength every day. ”

“ In his constant letters to his ‘dearest harte,’ he gives a melancholy picture of the perplexed and unsatisfactory state of affairs in the royal army. He says: ‘The discontent that I and other honest men receive dayly is beyond expression,’ and he declares ‘that were it not for the punctilio of honour’ he would not ‘remaine an howre.’
Lord Spencer was with the King at Edgehill, and with Prince Rupert at Bristol, etc. etc., and in 1643 he was raised to the dignity of Earl of Sunderland. ”

“ Among those who were involved in these dangerous negotiations, Charles Earl of Sunderland, the son-in-law of Marlborough, and at that time Prime Minister of George the First, was one with whom Lord Mar treated. Among the Sunderland Papers is to be found a singular letter from the Earl of Mar to the Earl of Sunderland, urging that nobleman to assist in inducing his royal master to accede to a proposal from which he might himself derive a suitable advantage. "We find," says Dr. ”

“ The Earl of Sunderland’s fine library was for several years housed in the mansion which formerly stood on the site of the Albany in Piccadilly. It was removed to Blenheim in 1749, where it remained till the great sale of 1881-83. Oldys reports that the King of Denmark offered Lord Sunderland’s heirs £30,000 for the library,6 and that the great Duchess Sarah of Marlborough was in favour of the offer being accepted, but it was not. ”

“ Indenture of 24th June, 1674, between Sir Chas. Harboard and John Hanson, by direction of the Earl of Devonshire, and the Earl of Sunderland, recited in Indenture of 12th March, 1717–8, between Thos. Stonor, etc. and Sir Godfrey Kneller (Close Roll, 5 Geo. I. (5117) ) . Sunderland’s purchase of the Earl of Bristol’s interest in the freehold was not effected until February, 1683–4 (Deed in possession of the London County Council) just before his sale of the premises. ”

“ The eldest son, Robert Earl of Sunderland, the object of his mother’s peculiar solicitude on her deathbed, perhaps from being more able to comprehend the characters of both of these distinguished parents before he lost them, displayed symptoms of the same aspiring mind that his father possessed. The aversion which George the Second had imbibed towards his father, prevented the spirited youth 402from obtaining any employment. At last, in despair, and wishing to bring himself before the notice of men in power, the Earl entreated Sir Robert Walpole to give him an ensigncy in the guards. ”

“ The party to which he had attached himself might perhaps have reasonably considered him as a hostage sufficient to ensure the good faith of his father; for the Earl was approaching that time of life at which even the most ambitious and rapacious men generally toil rather for their children than for themselves. But the distrust which Sunderland inspired was such as no guarantee could quiet. Many fancied that he was,—with what object they never took the trouble to inquire,—employing the same arts which had ruined James for the purpose of ruining William. Each prince had had his weak side. ”

“ In the same year he married Arabella, daughter of Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle; she died in 1698 and in 1700 he married Anne Churchill, daughter of the famous duke of Marlborough. This was an important alliance for Sunderland and for his descendants; through it he was introduced to political life and later the dukedom of Marlborough came to the Spencers. Having succeeded to the peerage in 1702, the earl was one of the commissioners for the union between England and Scotland, and in 1705 he was sent to Vienna as envoy extraordinary. ”

“ A fortnight after the news of her loss had been broken to her, Lady Sunderland gave birth to a son, Henry, but this ‘sweet little boy’ died at the age of five. At her wish the Earl of Leicester was associated with her in the guardianship of her infant son, and for seven years she lived in seclusion at Penshurst with her father. After the execution of Charles I his children were placed for a time in Lord Leicester's care, and were treated with great kindness by the family. On her deathbed the Princess Elizabeth bequeathed sundry articles to Lady Sunderland. ”

“ They had last seen each other on the occasion of the Prince's last visit to England, and though he knew her at once he found her considerably changed.
"The Earl hath fallen?" he added swiftly.
Lady Sunderland was mistress of herself immediately on his appearance. By force of her long training she fell into the same manner she would have used to him at Whitehall or Windsor; she gave him a great courtly curtsy.
"The Earl is a refugee at Amsterdam, Your Highness," she said, "and I am here beseeching charity."
"Ah." William drew a quick breath. ”

“ People of all opinions applied to Rachel to secure her good offices with the new Sovereigns, and Lady Sunderland, whose husband had been most instrumental in Lord Russell’s downfall, did not scruple to ask her intercession. Passing years brought fresh trials in their train for one who seemed indeed born for sorrow. ”

“ After her husband's death Lady Sunderland continued to live at Althorp, where she died on 16 April 1716. She was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Anne, as to Queen Mary of Modena. Her letters to such varied correspondents as Evelyn, the Earl of Romney, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Lady Russell are a proof that in cleverness and versatility she was scarcely, if at all, inferior to her husband, whose intrigues she had during his lifetime seconded with rare ability. ”

“ Lord Sunderland was a most liberal patron of literature, and the splendid library which he commenced in his early youth, and sedulously augmented till the time of his death, bore witness for several generations to his love of books. This noble collection was kept in his town house, which stood between Sackville Street and Burlington House, where it occupied five large rooms, and at the time of the Earl's death in 1722 consisted of about twenty thousand printed volumes, together with some choice manuscripts, and was valued at upwards of thirty thousand pounds ”

“ The earl's second wife having died in April 1716, after a career of considerable influence on the political life of her time, in 1717 he married an Irish lady of fortune, Judith Tichborne (d. 1749) . By Lady Anne Churchill he had three sons and two daughters. ”

“ The King became daily colder and colder. Sunderland attempted to support himself by the Queen's help, obtained an audience of Her Majesty, and was actually in her apartment when Middleton entered, and, by the King's orders, demanded the seals. That evening the fallen minister was for the last time closeted with the Prince whom he had flattered and betrayed. The interview was a strange one. Sunderland acted calumniated virtue to perfection. He regretted not, he said, the Secretaryship of State or the Presidency of the Council, if only he retained his sovereign's esteem. ”

“ The King had gone in state to Parliament; my lord did not care to yet take his seat in the House on great occasions; he preferred to wait in Whitehall and reflect quietly on his policies.
He believed that the summit of his ambitions was about to be reached; he had staked on William of Orange twenty years ago, and had never lost faith in him. The King was not a man to be ungrateful. Sunderland saw close within his grasp the moment he had worked for steadily, unscrupulously, so long—the moment when William of Orange and he should rule England together. ”

“ For the profession of an obnoxious faith by the king, as an insulated person, would, instead of strengthening his authority, prove the greatest obstacle to it; as, in the next reign, turned out to be the case. Charles, however, and the Duke of York deceived themselves into a confidence that the transition could be effected with no extraordinary difficulty. 353 The king knew the prevailing laxity of religious principles in many about his court, and thought he had reason to rely on others as secretly catholic. Sunderland is mentioned as a young man of talent, inclined to adopt that religion. ”

“ He paused; then added, with intense feeling, "I have been too great to become the pensioner of a handful of commoners, the butt of your Harleys and Jack Howes.... I will not take this humiliation."
"Your Majesty must think of the United Provinces," said Sunderland. "If you were to resign the crown, what of the English alliance?" ”

“ Sunderland's day to our own. But though William showed his own political genius in understanding and adopting Sunderland's plan, it was only slowly and tentatively that he ventured to carry it out in practice. In spite of the temporary reaction Sunderland believed that the balance of political power was really on the side of the Whigs. ”

“ By means of these qualities he had governed James, and now aspired to govern William.
To govern William, indeed, was not easy. But Sunderland succeeded in obtaining such a measure of favour and influence as excited much surprise and some indignation. In truth, scarcely any mind was strong enough to resist the witchery of his talk and of his manners. Every man is prone to believe in the gratitude and attachment even of the most worthless persons on whom he has conferred great benefits. ”

“ How utterly incompatible such a dream was with the Parliamentary constitution of the country as it had received its final form from Sunderland it is easy to see; and the effort of the young king to realize it plunged England at once into a chaos of political and social disorder which makes the first years of his reign the most painful and humiliating period in our history. It is with an angry disgust that we pass from the triumphs of the Seven Years' War to the miserable strife of Whig factions with one another or of the whole Whig party with the king. ”

“ Sunderland watched all these things with some misgiving. Under all his honours and greatness was a lurking uneasiness. He began to lose his courage at being so hated; hints of impeachment had risen in the House more than once; he could scarcely show his face abroad without a burst of popular fury. In the opinion of the people he should not have been intrusted with one of the highest offices under the Crown, but have been starving in exile, or dead, long since in the Tower, as his colleague under James—Lord Jefferies. The ministers, too, could ill disguise their dislike of him. ”

“ Sunderland had been uneasy from the first moment at which his name had been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. ”

“ The king must make up his mind to show a marked preference to one or the other. The reasons, both general and personal, for preferring the whigs were then insisted upon. William's own predilection was for the opposite plan of balancing the two parties in an administration with the idea of exercising a controlling influence over both, and it was with great hesitation that he allowed himself to listen to Sunderland's arguments. ”

“ Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had been, during some time, minister in France. ”

“ Devonshire, Danby, and Lumley remained in England, where they undertook to rise in arms as soon as the Prince should set foot on the island.
There is reason to believe that, at this conjuncture, William first received assurances of support from a very different quarter. The history of Sunderland's intrigues is covered with an obscurity which it is not probable that any inquirer will ever succeed in penetrating: but, though it is impossible to discover the whole truth, it is easy to detect some palpable fictions. ”

“ His expressions are, that he had resolved a great while against coming to town; of late he had met with many things to confirm those thoughts and nothing to change them; that a man out of employment, without a party, of no credit, pretending to nothing, and of his age, most be mad, if he would begin the world anew. He hopes the King and government will be safe by leaving all things to the Parliament. If my Lord Sunderland comes up, it is certain that whatever is done or left undone will be attributed to him. What is disliked, he shall hear of over and over ”

“ My sister Sunderland spoke to me for a China cup. Lady Sunderland told me how the Duke of Monmouth had a mind to the Guard, to dissatisfy the Parliament. Lord Sunderland told the King of it; and told him further, that if he was of that mind he would have no more to say to him. The Duke was ill received at York. The King sent to chide them. ”

“ In short, I am to tell him that she is one Lord Sunderland does make use of, and that he must do so too if he intends to do any good with the King. She hath more power over him than can be imagined. Nobody can excuse what she hath done, but I hope well from her for the future. He thinks it necessary for him to see the Duke before he comes over ”