Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

"Nor is thy flaxen wig with safety worn:High on the shoulder, in a basket borne,Lurks the sly boy, whose hand, to rapine bred,Plucks off the curling honours of thy head."

Will's coffeehouse was in Bow Street, and "being the grand resort of wits and critics, it is not surprising," says Mr Smith, "that it should become also the headquarters of envy, slander, and detraction." There was then a lack of printed vehicles for the venting of the evil passions of rival literati; lampoons were circulated in manuscript, and read at Will's. As the acknowledgment of the authorship might sometimes have had disagreeable consequences for the author, a fellow of the name of Julian, who styled himself "Secretary to the Muses," became the mouthpiece of libeller and satirist. He read aloud in the coffee-room the pasquinades that were brought to him, and distributed written copies to all who desired them. Concerning this base fellow, Sir Walter Scott gives some curious particulars in his edition of Dryden's works. There is no record of cudgelings bestowed upon Julian, though it is presumed that he did not escape them. "He is described," says Malone, "as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel." Dryden was a great sufferer from these violent and slanderous attacks – a sufferer, indeed, in more senses than one; for, besides being himself made the subject of venomous lampoons, he was suspected unjustly of having written one, and was waylaid and beaten on his way from Will's to his house in Gerrard Street. A reward of fifty pounds was offered for the apprehension of his assailants, but they remained undiscovered. Lord Rochester was their employer: Lord Mulgrave the real author of the libel.

In James Street, Covent-Garden, where Garrick lodged, there resided, from 1714 to 1720, a mysterious lady, who excited great interest and curiosity. Malcolm, in his Anecdotes of London during the Eighteenth Century, gives some account of her. She was middle-sized, dark-haired, beautiful and accomplished, and apparently between thirty and forty years old. She was wealthy, and possessed very valuable jewels. Her death was sudden, and occurred after a masquerade, where she said she had conversed with the King. It was remembered that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne; but after that Queen's death, she lived in obscurity. "She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct; adding, that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recommendation. It seems likely enough that she was connected in some way with the Stuart family, and with their pretensions to the throne."

Dr Arne was born in King Street. His father, an honest upholsterer, at the sign of the "Two Crowns and Cushions," is said to have been the original of Murphy's farce of The Upholsterer. He did not countenance his son's musical propensities; and young Arne had to get up in the night, and practise by stealth on a muffled spinet. The first intimation received by the worthy mattress-maker of his son's proficiency in music, was one evening at a concert, where he quite unexpectedly saw him officiating as leader of the orchestra.

Voltaire, when in England, after his release from the Bastille, whither he had been sent for libel, lodged in Maiden Lane, at the White Peruke, a wigmaker's shop. When walking out, he was often annoyed by the mob, who beheld, in his spare person, polite manners, and satirical countenance, the personification of their notion of a Frenchman. "One day he was beset by so great a crowd that he was forced to shelter himself against a doorway, where, mounting the steps, he made a flaming speech in English in praise of the magnanimity of the English nation, and their love of freedom. With this the people were so delighted, that their jeers were turned into applauses, and he was carried in triumph to Maiden Lane on the shoulders of the mob." From which temporary elevation the arch-scoffer doubtless looked down upon his dupes with glee, suppressed, but immeasurable.

Quitting the abodes of wit and the drama for those of legal learning, we pass from Covent-Garden to Lincoln's Inn Fields, through Great Queen Street, in the Stuarts' day one of the most fashionable in London. Here dwelt Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and here he wrote the greater part of his treatise De Veritate, concerning the publication of which he believed himself, according to his own marvellous account, to have had a special revelation from heaven. A strange weakness, or rather madness, on the part of a man who disbelieved, or at least doubted, of general revelation. For himself, he thought an exception possible. Insanity alone could explain and excuse such illogical vanity. Near to this singular enthusiast lived Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose next-door neighbour and friend was Radcliffe the physician. "Kneller," says Horace Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, "was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his gardens; but Radcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up the door. Radcliffe replied peevishly, "Tell him he may do any thing with it but paint it." "And I," answered Godfrey, "can take any thing from him but his physic." Pope and Gay were frequent visitors at the painter's studio. At the wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, Ben Jonson is by some asserted to have laboured as a bricklayer. "He helped," says Fuller, "in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowel in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." Aubrey tells the same story, which is discredited by Mr Gifford, who denies that the poet ever was a bricklayer. Lord William Russell was executed in Lincoln's Inn Fields, it being, Pennant tells us, the nearest open space from Newgate, where he was confined.

Passing through Duke Street, where Benjamin Franklin lodged, when working as a journeyman printer in the adjacent Great Wyld Street, into Clare Market, the scene of Orator Henley's holdings-forth, we thence, by Drury-Lane, the residence of Nell Gwynne and Nan Clarges before they became respectively the King's mistress and a Duke's wife, get back to the Strand and move Citywards. But to refer, although merely nominally, to one half the subjects of interest met with on the way, and suggested by Mr Smith, would be to write an index, not a review. Here, therefore, we pause, believing that enough has been said to convince the reader of the vast amount of information and amusement derivable from the bricks and stones of London, and able to recommend to him, should he himself set out on a street pilgrimage, an excellent guide and companion in the Antiquarian Ramble.

MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES

1711-1712

After the reduction of Bouchain, Marlborough was anxious to commence without delay the siege of Quesnoy, the capture of which would, in that quarter, have entirely broken through the French barrier. He vigorously stimulated his own government accordingly, as well as that at the Hague, to prepare the necessary supplies and magazines, and expressed a sanguine hope that the capture of this last stronghold would be the means of bringing about the grand object of his ambition, and a general peace.5 The ministry, to appearance, went with alacrity into his projects, and every thing bore the aspect of another great success closing the campaign with honour, and probably leading to a glorious and lasting peace. Mr Secretary St John, in particular, wrote in the warmest style of cordiality, approving the project in his own name as well as in that of the Queen, and reiterating the assurances that the strongest representations had been made to the Dutch, with a view to their hearty concurrence. But all this was a mere cover to conceal what the Tories had really been doing to overturn Marlborough, and abandon the main objects of the war. Unknown to him, the secret negotiation with the French Cabinet, through Torcy and the British ministers, through the agency of Mesnager, had been making rapid progress. No representations were made to the Dutch, who were fully in the secret of the pending negotiation, about providing supplies; and on the 27th September, preliminaries of peace, on the basis of the seven articles proposed by Louis, were signed by Mesnager on the part of France, and by the two English secretaries of state, in virtue of a special warrant from the Queen.6

The conditions of these preliminaries, which were afterwards embodied in the Treaty of Utrecht, were the acknowledgement of the Queen's title to the throne, and the Protestant succession, by Louis; an engagement to take all just and reasonable measures that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united on the same head, – the providing a sufficient barrier to the Dutch, the empire, and the house of Austria; and the demolition of Dunkirk, or a proper equivalent. But the crown of Spain was left to the Duke of Anjou, and no provision whatever made to exclude a Bourbon prince from succeeding to it. Thus the main object of the contest – the excluding the Bourbon family from the throne of Spain, was abandoned: and at the close of the most important, successful, and glorious war ever waged by England, terms were agreed to, which left to France advantages which could scarcely have been hoped by the Cabinet of Versailles as the fruit of a long series of victories.

Marlborough felt deeply this clandestine negotiation, which not only deprived him of the main object for which, during his great career, he had been contending, but evinced a duplicity and want of confidence on the part of his own government at its close, which was a melancholy return for such inappreciable public services.7 But it was of no avail; the secession of England proved, as he had foreseen from the outset, a deathblow to the confederacy. Finding that nothing more was to be done, either at the head of the army, or in direction of the negotiations, he returned home by the Brille, after putting his army into winter-quarters, and landed at Greenwich on the 17th November. Though well aware of the private envy, as well as political hostility of which he was the object, he did nothing that could lower or compromise his high character and lofty position; but in an interview with the Queen, fully expressed his opinion on the impolicy of the course which ministers were now adopting.8 He adopted the same manly course in the noble speech which he made in his place in Parliament, in the debate on the address. Ministers had put into the royal speech the unworthy expression – "I am glad to tell you, that notwithstanding the arts of those who delight in war, both place and time are appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace." Lord Anglesea followed this up, by declaring, in the course of the debate, that the country might have enjoyed the blessing of peace soon after the battle of Ramilies, if it had not been deferred by some person whose interest it was to prolong the war.

Rising upon this, with inexpressible dignity, and turning to where the Queen sat, Marlborough said, "I appeal to the Queen, whether I did not constantly, while I was plenipotentiary, give her Majesty and her Council an account of all the propositions which were made; and whether I did not desire instruction for my conduct on this subject. I can declare with a good conscience, in the presence of her Majesty, of this illustrious assembly, and of God himself, who is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear to render account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe, honourable, and lasting peace, and was very far from wishing to prolong the war for my own private advantage, as several libels and discourses have most falsely insinuated. My great age, and my numerous fatigues in war, make me ardently wish for the power to enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity. As to other matters, I have not the least inducement, on any account, to desire the continuance of the war for my own interest, since my services have been so generously rewarded by her Majesty and her parliament; but I think myself obliged to make such an acknowledgment to her Majesty and my country, that I am always ready to serve them, whenever my duty may require, to obtain an honourable and lasting peace. Yet I can by no means acquiesce in the measures that have been taken to enter into a negotiation of peace with France, upon the foot of some pretended preliminaries, which are now circulated; since my opinion is the same as that of most of the Allies, that to leave Spain and the West Indies to the House of Bourbon, will be the entire ruin of Europe, which I have with all fidelity and humility declared to her Majesty, when I had the honour to wait upon her after my arrival from Holland."9

This manly declaration, delivered in the most emphatic manner, produced a great impression; and a resolution against ministers was carried in the House of Peers by a majority of twelve. In the Commons, however, they had large majority, and an address containing expressions similar to those used by Lord Anglesea, reflecting on Marlborough, was introduced and carried there. The Whig majority, however, continued firm in the Upper House; and the leaders of that party began to entertain sanguine hopes of success. The Queen had let fall some peevish expressions in regard to her ministers. She had given her hand, in retiring from the House of Peers on the 15th December, to the Duke of Somerset, instead of her own Lord Treasurer; it was apprehended her old partiality for Marlborough was about to return; Mrs Masham was in the greatest alarm; and St John declared to Swift that the Queen was false.10 The ministers of the whole alliance seconded the efforts of the Whigs, and strongly represented the injurious effects which would ensue to the cause of European independence in general, and the interests of England in particular, if the preliminaries which had been agreed to should be made the basis of a general peace. The Dutch made strong and repeated representations on the subject; and the Elector of Hanover delivered a memorial strongly urging the danger which would ensue if Spain and the Indies were allowed to remain in the hands of a Bourbon prince.

Deeming themselves pushed to extremities, and having failed in all attempts to detach Marlborough from the Whigs, Bolingbroke and the ministers resolved on the desperate measure of bringing forward the accusation against him, of fraud and peculation in the management of the public monies entrusted to his management in the Flemish campaign. The charges were founded on the report of certain commissioners to whom the matter had been remitted; and which charged the Duke with having appropriated L.63,319 of the public monies destined for the use of the English troops, and L.282,366, as a per-centage of two per cent on the sum paid to foreign ambassadors during the ten years of the war. In reply to these abominable insinuations, the letter of the Duke to the commissioners was published on the 27th December, in which he entirely refuted the charges, and showed that he had never received any sums or perquisites, not sanctioned by previous and uniform usage, and far less than had been received by the general in the reign of William III. And in regard to the L.282,000 of per-centage on foreign subsidies, this was proved to have been a voluntary gift from those powers to the English general, authorised by their signatures and sanctioned by warrants from the Queen. This answer made a great impression; but ministers had gone too far to retreat, and they ventured on a step which, for the honour of the country, has never, even in the worst times, been since repeated. Trusting to their majority in the Commons, they dismissed the Duke from all his situations on the 31st December; and in order to stifle the voice of justice in the Upper House, on the following day patents were issued calling twelve new peers to the Upper House. On the following day they were introduced amidst the groans of the House: the Whig noblemen, says a contemporary annalist, "cast their eyes on the ground as if they had been invited to the funeral of the peerage."11

Unbounded was the joy diffused among the enemies of England by these unparalleled measures. On hearing of Marlborough's fall, Louis XIV. said with triumph, "The dismission of Marlborough will do all we can desire." The Court of St Germains was in exultation; and the general joy of the Jacobites, both at home and abroad, was sufficient to demonstrate how formidable an enemy to their cause they regarded the Duke; and how destitute of truth were the attempts to show that he had been engaged in a secret design to restore the exiled family. Marlborough disdained to make any defence of himself in Parliament; but an able answer on his part was prepared and circulated, which entirely refuted the whole charges against the illustrious general. So convinced were ministers of this, that, contenting themselves with resolutions against him in the House of Commons, where their influence was predominant, they declined to prefer any impeachment or accusation, even in the Upper House swamped by their recent creations. In the midst of this disgraceful scene of passion, envy, and ingratitude, Prince Eugene arrived in London to endeavour to stem the torrent and, if possible, prevent the secession of England from the confederacy. He was lodged with the Lord Treasurer; and the generous prince omitted no opportunity of testifying his undiminished respect for his illustrious rival in the day of his tribulation. The Treasurer having said to him at a great dinner, "I consider this day as the happiest of my life, since I have the honour to see in my house the greatest captain of the age." "If it be so," replied Eugene, "I owe it to your lordship;" alluding to his dismissal of Marlborough. On another occasion, some one having pointed out a passage in one of the libels against Marlborough, in which he was said to have been "perhaps once fortunate." "It is true," said Eugene; "he was once fortunate; and it is the greatest praise which can be bestowed on him; for, as he was always successful – that implies that all his other successes were owing to his own conduct."12

Alarmed at the weight which Marlborough might derive from the presence and support of so great a commander, and the natural sympathy of all generous minds with the cordial admiration which these two great men entertained for each other, the ministers had recourse to a pretended conspiracy, which it was alleged had been discovered on the part of Marlborough and Eugene to seize the government and dethrone the Queen, on the 17th November. St John and Oxford had too much sense to publish such a ridiculous statement; but it was made the subject of several secret examinations before the Privy Council, in order to augment the apprehensions and secure the concurrence of the Queen in their measures. Such as it was, the tale was treated as a mere malicious invention, even by the contemporary foreign annalists,13 though it has since been repeated as true by more than one party native historian.14 This ridiculous calumny, and the atrocious libels as to the embezzlement of the public money, however, produced the desired effect. They inflamed the mind of the Queen, and removed that vacillation in regard to the measures of government, from which so much danger was apprehended by the Tory administration. Having answered the desired end, they were allowed quietly to go to sleep. No proceedings in the House of Peers, or elsewhere, followed the resolutions of the Commons condemnatory of Marlborough's financial administration in the Low Countries. His defence, published in the newspapers, though abundantly vigorous, was neither answered nor prosecuted as a libel on the Commissioners or House of Commons; and the alleged Stuart conspiracy was never more heard of, till it was long after drawn from its slumber by the malice of English party spirit.

Meanwhile the negotiations at Utrecht for a general peace continued, and St John and Oxford soon found themselves embarrassed by the extravagant pretensions which their own conduct had revived in the plenipotentiaries of Louis. So great was the general indignation excited by the publication of the preliminaries at Utrecht, that St John felt the necessity of discontinuing any general negotiation, and converting it into a private correspondence between the plenipotentiaries of the English and French crowns.15 Great difficulty was experienced in coming to an accommodation, in consequence of the rising demands of the French plenipotentiaries, who, deeming themselves secure of support from the English ministry, not only positively refused to abandon Spain and the Indies, but now demanded the Netherlands for the Elector of Bavaria, and the cession of Lille and Tournay in return for the seizure of Dunkirk. The sudden death, however, first of the Dauphiness of France, and then of the Dauphin, the former of whom was carried off by a malignant fever on the 12th, the latter on the 18th February 1712, followed by the death of their eldest son on the 23d, produced feelings of commiseration for the aged monarch, now in his seventy-third year and broken down by misfortunes, which rendered the progress of the separate negotiation more easy. England agreed to abandon its allies, and the main object of the war, on condition that a guarantee should be obtained against the crowns of France and Spain being united on the same head. On this frail security, the English ministry agreed to withdraw their contingent from the Allied army; and to induce the Dutch to follow their example, Ipres was offered to them on the same terms as Dunkirk had been to Great Britain.16

The disastrous effects of this secret and dishonourable secession, on the part of England, from the confederacy, were soon apparent. Great had been the preparations of the continental Allies for continuing the contest; and while the English contingent remained with them, their force was irresistible. Prince Eugene was at the head of the army in Flanders, and, including the British forces under the Duke of Ormond, it amounted to the immense force of 122,000 effective men, with 120 guns, sixteen howitzers, and an ample pontoon train. To oppose this, by far the largest army he had yet had to confront in the Low Countries, Villars had scarcely at his command 100,000 men, and they were ill equipped, imperfectly supplied with artillery, and grievously depressed in spirit by their long series of disasters. Eugene commanded the army of the confederates; for although the English ministry had been lavish in their promises of unqualified support, the Dutch had begun to entertain serious suspicions of their sincerity, and bestowed the command on that tried officer instead of the Duke of Ormond, who had succeeded Marlborough in the command of the English contingent. But Marlborough's soul still directed the movements of the army; and Eugene's plan of the campaign was precisely that which that great commander had chalked out at the close of the preceding one. This was to besiege Quesnoy and Landrecies, the last of the iron barrier of France which in this quarter protected the frontier, and immediately after to inundate the open country, and advance as rapidly as possible to Paris. It was calculated they might reach it in ten marches from Landrecies; and it was well known that there was neither a defensible position nor fortress of any sort to arrest the invaders' march. The Court of Versailles were in despair: the general opinion was, that the King should leave Paris, and retire to Blois; and although the proud spirit of Louis recoiled at such a proposal, yet, in taking leave of Marshal Villars, he declared – "Should a disaster occur, I will go to Peronne or St Quentin, collect all my troops, and with you risk a last effort, determined to perish, or save the State."17

But the French monarch was spared this last desperate alternative. The defection of the British Cabinet saved his throne, when all his means of defence were exhausted. Eugene, on opening the campaign on the 1st May, anxiously inquired of the Duke of Ormond whether he had authority to act vigorously in the campaign, and received an answer that he had the same authority as the Duke of Marlborough, and was prepared to join in attacking the enemy. Preparations were immediately made for forcing the enemy's lines, which covered Quesnoy, previous to an attack on that fortress. But, at the very time that this was going on, the work of perfidious defection was consummated. On May 10, Mr Secretary St John sent positive orders to Ormond to take no part in any general engagement, as the questions at issue between the contending parties were on the point of adjustment.18 Intimation of this secret order was sent to the Court of France, but it was directed to be kept a positive secret from the Allied generals. Ormond, upon the receipt of these orders, opened a private correspondence with Villars, informing him that their troops were no longer enemies, and that the future movements of the troops under his command were only to get forage and provisions. This correspondence was unknown to Eugene; but circumstances soon brought the defection of England to light. In the middle of it, the Allied forces had passed the Scheldt, and taken post between Noyeller and the Boiase, close to Villars's position. To bring the sincerity of the English to a test, Eugene proposed a general attack on the enemy's line, which was open and exposed, on the 28th May. But Ormond declined, requesting the operation might be delayed for a few days. The defection was now apparent, and the Dutch deputies loudly condemned such dishonorable conduct; but Eugene, anxious to make the most of the presence of the British troops, though their co-operation could no longer be relied on, proposed to besiege Quesnoy, which was laid open by Villars's retreat. Ormond, who felt acutely the painful and discreditable situation in which, without any fault of his own, he was placed, could not refuse, and the investment took place that very day. The operations were conducted by the Dutch and Imperial troops alone; and the town was taken, after a siege of six weeks, on the 10th July.19