Abigail's Cousin

by Ron Pearse

  Godolphin leaned back in his chair eyeing her for a few seconds, then said in admiration:

  “Tis such a pity you're so far removed from the court because I can tell you that was exactly the message from the Junto. Her majesty might have saved so much time simply by consulting you. But, dear lady, there is somebody who is giving advice. Like I said earlier, your presence is sorely missed."

  "Do you like it?" The hostess was anxious above all about her trifle, her blanc-mange and Godolphin's face lit up with pleasure. "Delicious dear lady. I adore this flavour especially. Another product of war?"

  "A sort of war, dear friend" replied Sarah, "A war with my architect, but it started off so well with Vanbrugh. He invited me for dinner but what we talked about were his plays in London. And of course his new trifle, his so-called blanc-mange. He gives me the recipe as if to say, there woman, return to your house and concern yourself with cooking."

  Godolphin smiled realising that Vanbrugh evidently did not understand the Duchess of Marlborough. He did not envy him his moment of realisation.

  He said: "Her majesty is taking advice from somebody. Perhaps you might shed some light on the matter dear lady."

  She thought a while before admitting: "It is a long time since I was at the court. I have lost touch. Is Sir Charles Hedges still there minding his quills?"

  Godolphin was amused at her remark realising how much her presence was missed but answered: "He may as well mind quills as the queen has little thought for the Colonies for which he is Secretary. I think we can dispose of Charles. He's much too concerned with his P's and Q's."

  "Sidney, such vehemence. What's come over you!" She laughed.

  Godolphin was serious: "You can laugh dear lady, but there's trouble brewing over there. We need someone to travel to Philadelphia and talk to the colonists man-to-man. After all, they are English, like us. Sunderland would be just such a man."

  "You think something is brewing over there?" asked the duchess to which Godolphin replied: "I do, and if it's allowed to fester, it could turn into another Ireland."

  "What about the prince?" she suggested, "Perhaps Mrs Morley is listening to her husband."

  "She always has because it was his strict rule never to interfere in politics. Why should he suddenly change. It's not in character." Godolphin thought a moment, adding: "No, we can rule George out."

  The duchess invited her guest to return to the garden suggesting she would order the cook to prepare some bowls of coffee. Then stopped in her tracks: "My lord has had some new chinaware delivered from our East Indian friends. Would you like to drink some tea, my lord?"

  Godolphin told her he was pleased to drink anything she cared to tell the cook to prepare and walked back into the garden. The duchess rejoined him and commented: "So we've disposed of Hedges and George. Who else could the queen's advisor be?"

  "The only other person it might be is Robert Harley. He's the Secretary of State for Europe. He's been our right-hand man since the war started."

  The duchess was walking with Godolphin round the garden until he stopped eyeing a telescope and she said proudly:

  "That's how I keep abreast of things going on at the palace."

  "What does Mr Vanbrugh think of that?" asked an amazed Godolphin.

  "He doesn't know, yet. He must wonder how I know about his workmen bunking off. Now, if you could observe St James Palace in the same way, you would soon get to know who is Mrs Morley's secret confidante." The duchess switched the glass and invited her guest to peer through."

  "It's just a pile of stones. Is that what you wanted to show me your ladyship?"

  "That's old Woodstock, Sidney. There was an Anglo-Saxon manor here long before the Norman conquest. Henry I built a hunting lodge here and his son dallied here with Rosamund Clifford. That would have been the time for my telescope."

  But Godolphin was hardly listening; her light chatter and lilting laughter mixed excellently well with the drone of wasps hastening about their business, the buzz of bees gathering pollen and the sounds lulled the satisfied gentleman in his comfortable wicker chair to sleep and the duchess heard his gentle snores with a smile thinking her friend's example was a good one to follow and so she herself sank into her own chair until she too was wooed by the insects of the garden and closed her eyes and was soon asleep.

  Chapter 10

  The Garden House, Windsor is no more. It was renamed the Queen's Lodge by one of Queen Anne's successors and finally it was demolished and there are differing accounts now as to where it actually stood. Guide books speculate whether it was part of the structure of the castle or a separate building entirely but adjacent to it perhaps counted as part of it, though, being called the Garden House lends credence to this view as Queen Anne loved gardens and felt particularly at home here, as did her consort, Prince George of Denmark. They both liked informality and cosiness and in her sentimental way she took pity on the building having the house refurbished and extended. It was located in the particular part of Windsor Castle not favoured by previous incumbents on account of its proximity to the tradesmen's entrance and more especially from where the regular rubbish collection was made.

  Whenever Queen Anne travelled down to Windsor on state business, it was her habit to abjure the luxurious apartments of the main building preferring the more modest appointment of the two-storied structure which was the Garden House where servants and royalty lived and worked cheek by jowl. Her majesty would not have noticed anything amiss in such an arrangement as she had been brought up with commoners as playmates, and it was a particular commoner, Sarah Jennings, whom the then princess regarded as her closest friend and their letters to each other, still extant, testify to this warm and deep friendship.

  Soon after they became friends but were apart, the princess begged Sarah to use one of two names of commoners and she would use the other in correspondence, Sarah chose Freeman and so Anne took the other, Morley. By now Sarah had married John Churchill so he became Mr Freeman, who was imprisoned in the Tower by King William III. Princess Anne wrote to her friend Sarah:

  '...But let them do what they please, nothing shall ever vex me, if I can have the satisfaction of seeing Mrs Freeman; and I swear I would live on bread and water; between four walls, with her, without repining; for as long as you continue kind, nothing can ever be a real mortification to your faithful Mrs Morley, who wishes she may never enjoy a moment's happiness, in this world or the next, if ever she proves false to you.'

  However by the year 1707 this close friendship of long standing was under some strain. A degree of separation had occurred as both women matured, married and underwent confinement leading in Sarah's case to four children though Anne suffered several miscarriages. Nonetheless the very distance of their respective dwellings of several days ride such as the distance between St Albans and Windsor accounted for long periods when neither woman spoke to the other. After 1704 it was Queen Anne's desire that a palace be erected to commemorate the victory of Blenheim at Woodstock, and Sarah, now Duchess of Marlborough spent many weeks overseeing the project moving into a cottage nearby for this purpose.

  There arose also political differences. There was a burgeoning overseas trade especially between the new colonies and England financed by merchants and a new breed of men called entrepreneurs who were being elected to Parliament. Moreover towns where factories sucked in people to manufacture the goods being exported sought representation from such men and inevitably the new MPs clashed with the conservatives whose money came from landholdings, from church property, from the old England.

  The newly created Bank of England was set up by such entrepreneurs and John Churchill was one of its founders. This new breed of men formed a political party which came to be vilified by their opponents as Whig, describing an Irish cattle rustler and in their turn the Whigs mocked their opponents as Tories, Scottish border raiders. In the course of a few years following Anne's succession to the throne, each found herself sympathetic to the opposite party. The queen,
conservative by nature, somewhat snobbish, devoted to the Church of England, a landlord owing to the Crown's extensive estates gravitated to the Tory party whereas Sarah became friends with the entrepreneurs invited by her husband while establishing the Bank of England. Many of its shareholders and supporters were wealthy merchants, overseas agents, manufacturers who looked to the Whig party for a resolution of many obstructions to trade.

  One of the obstacles to trade was the Franco-Spanish exclusion of English merchants in the Caribbean, South America and most recently, Canada from which territory the French were funding Indian tribes such as the Huron to make raids into New England. The Whigs supported the War of the Spanish Succession because they believed allied success would lead to an improvement in this situation for England. The Tories opposed the war because they saw the wealthy landowning class getting poorer through extra taxation to pay for the war, the loss of their labour through military service, and the importation of grain depressing corn prices at home.

  When the two women did come together owing to the Duchess having certain duties at court she was obliged to carry out, they inevitably ended up arguing as their viewpoints were diametrically in opposition. Apart from politics Sarah was a picture of good health and, as is so often the case with healthy people, she had little patience with her sick contemporary, and the queen was certainly very sick at times suffering from what historians have diagnosed as chronic gout.

  However during Sarah's continuous absence from her friend's side, there was someone in the queen's domestic circle who endeavoured to ameliorate her mistress' sufferings through the application of treatments which Sarah would have recognised, as her mother was a practitioner of the so-called arts of the apothecary, a leading exponent of which would have been known to her, Thomas Culpeper. Through the application of poultices to her limbs, the queen's bedchamber-woman provided much needed comfort. Before bedtime she prepared possets with herbal ingredients giving her mistress a good night's sleep prior to performing important state occasions. This person was Abigail Hill employed initially as a woman of the bedchamber, a so-called 'necessary' whose job it was to empty the royal chamber-pot, to array and remove the queen's shift (a sort of nightgown), and other menial tasks.

  Such menial tasks were often performed in the presence of the lady of the bedchamber, a far more exalted position filled by ladies of rank. Such a task might consist of the bedchamber-woman passing a fan to the bedchamber-lady who would pass it on to the queen. However there was a degree of ritual associated with such tasks with the objective of creating a distance between servant and monarch exemplified by the lady acting as a sort of go-between, but it was a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.

  Unlike in the days of Elizabeth when the whole of the household would accompany the monarch on a progress through her kingdom, each of the royal palaces had its own complement of servants. This again signified the growing wealth of England because the number of such palaces had doubled, for besides the queen's main residence of St James Palace, there were Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Hatfield House in the environs of London, besides the establishments where her majesty often stayed, as for instance her annual visit at Bath to take the waters.

  Nonetheless there was one servant whom the queen always took with her wherever she travelled and that was Mistress Abigail Hill. Another servant, Mrs Danvers a married lady, reported to Jonathon Swift, ...'that the Queen was very fond of her at the bath, and that upon Mistress Hill disliking the lodging that was marked for her ....when there was the most ridiculous scene....and the Queen going about the room begging her to go to bed, calling her Dear Hill twenty times over.'

  At this particular time she is to be found ensconced in Garden House when the queen made a visit there in early April of 1707. The Queen liked to enjoy a small sleep in the afternoon but Hill was always on call on the first floor in a room which the queen has had fitted out as a kitchen and Hill has temporarily retired here for the duration of the queen's nap. On this particular day she has had a visitor, her brother, on leave from the military.

  Fulfilling her former promise the queen has had enquiries made regarding some small service for her servant and as a result has bought Captain Stanhope's regiment for Jack Hill who has also taken over his rank though like the proverbial child seeing another with a better toy, he is not satisfied and judging that he could do better he is paying much more attention to his sister this past year than in the previous twenty.

  Captain Jack Hill however is not, at this moment, concerned with army ranks. As he sits on the wide window-sill overlooking the garden, his glance cannot help but stray towards the end of the kitchen table where a wench is busy with mortar and pestle grinding up the stamens of some flowers and herbs, a task set for her by her mistress, Abigail Hill. The captain's eyes are often diverted looking down upon her from his vantage point especially when the young woman applying pressure to the pestle, her elbows push against her stomacher, which in turn, has the effect of elevating her breasts.

  The stomacher is an item of feminine attire which is derived from a medieval garment used to hang things from and now adapted as a fashionable item to flatten the stomach. The earlier garment covered the midriff whereas the 17th century version extended from the waist to just below the bustline. Its description being, 'a long ornate panel forming front of an open low-necked bodice with the aim to heighten effect of decolletage' or, in modern parlance, the cleavage.

  As Jack Hill looked and leered he began to think of ways of making her closer acquaintance while his sister busied herself placing items of crockery on the table, namely bowls and spoons, at the same time casting an eye at the kettles and pots simmering on the stove. The aroma of coffee permeated the room as his sister proceeded to carry out the ritual which at the time was almost akin to kitchen magic especially because the ingredients were beyond all but the most affluent homes but in this regard it seems, the queen was footing the bill as she enjoyed coffee little realising that for gout it was definitely a no-no.

  As today there was milk on hand though more to cool the liquid than change it's colour to the more familiar paler appearance of nowadays and as she prepared these things she called out to her brother to settle himself in one of the easy chairs around the scrubbed kitchen table.

  "Set you down here, Jack. Will you smoke a pipe before you go on your way?"

  She enjoyed the smell of tobacco but it also kept her brother by her just a little longer. She glanced at her maid busy grinding and saw what Jack had seen and wondered how to send her away. Her consideration of that however was postponed as Jack remarked in a low voice:

  "So you're going to marry Masham, sis!"

  His sister bridled a little retorting: "Colonel Masham, captain!"

  Her brother grimaced: "Ex-colonel, surely, now he's out of the army."

  His sister looked at him sharply. Ever since their early days together when all three served in the same household, her brother had denigrated Samuel and the hostility had not lessened despite their war service and she did not comprehend the reason. She told him:

  "Her majesty has approved Samuel's appointment to Lord Wndsor's old regiment."

  "Strewth!" exploded Jack, "That'll make him a lord."

  Abigail shook her head at her brother's naivety, but said nothing except to explain: "It's in Ireland, at present."

  "He'll be leaving England soon then," he retorted.

  "After we're married," she replied.

  Jack felt discontented and was sure that his old rival was about to steal a march on him. He made an effort to take the tremor from his voice when he said irritably: "How the devil did he manage that? He seems to treat the army as his fiefdom, to come and go as he pleases."

  His sister could not fail to pick up the bitterness in her brother's voice which gave her some smidgeon of satisfaction. Outwardly however she responded as though reproached:

  "You aren't doing so badly, brother."

  Jack smiled as put down his bo
wl of coffee and with a feigned air of hurt, decided his sister needed a dose of reality herself. He said:

  "Your colonel, sis! You know why he wants to marry you."

  Abigail just looked across the rim of her own bowl of coffee. From her eyes Jack realised he was treading dangerous ground so started to play the innocent brother:

  "One time I could talk to my sister, heart to heart." What he meant was he could talk and his sister listened. He went on: "We even could go for a walk. The only visitors you had were me or, rarely, that cousin of yours, the high and mighty duchess, although she has stopped calling in. But, I'm told you get visits from ministers, no less. Especially someone called Harley."

  "I met the duke of Somerset on the back stairs. Remember, mistress Hill!" The comment came from the girl whom they both had forgotten about at the other end of the table and Abigail was quick to silence her with a touch of sarcasm which caught Jack by surprise"

  "We all seem to be moving up in the world. You'll be asking to grind the duke's flowers soon, Belle. Have you naught else to do?"

  Belle complained she had run out of flowers and Abigail in relief told her to fetch more from the drying room and so left the kitchen to Jack's chagrin and enviously asked his sister:

  "So what did the duke want, sis?"

  "What do they all want." replied his sister cynically, then added wickedly, "perhaps they like my coffee."

  There was a knock at the door and Abigail called for whosoever to enter and a page stands there, just a boy and Abigail smiled at him:

  "It's you, Peter! Come on in and warm yourself." He does and stands before the range turning to say: "It's your affianced, Mistress Hill. He's at the guard house. I was sent to ask if he should come up, " He was given an affirmative answer and promptly left whereupon Jack stretched himself, thinking he should go but his reluctance to meet Masham was balanced by his desire to make a better acquaintance of Belle so half-heartedly, he muttered: