by Ron Pearse
It was a pleasing if innocuous custom. The lords however took the decision to replace this harmless motion with that of Daniel Finch. It was carried by 62 votes to 54. It did cause the queen some embarrassment to the extent of her being unsure whose arm she would accept in the traditional ritual of being conducted from the chamber. On returning to St James Palace, she immediately sent for the earl of Oxford to vent her displeasure and yet he proved remarkably sanguine comforting her majesty by telling her that by revealing their hand, the lords had placed themselves, at her mercy. What was Robin the trickster up to?
In previous years the queen had suffered at the hands of the over-mighty Whig Junto in forcing upon her unacceptable ministers or ambassadors, or, through a resignation, her plans had been altered. She recalled with particular chagrin the occasion in 1708 when the Duke of Somerset had occasioned political and personal hurt. Being a staunch Anglican she had little regard for the Commons regarding it as the home of Dissenters and unbelievers, yet of late, she had even less regard for the House of Lords. She would show them. Her first act of revenge was to call to her presence her personal secretary, William Legge, the earl of Dartmouth, who had been one of the 62 in that vote.
His fellow peers praised him believing the queen had come to her senses and wanting him to recommend a suitable candidate for new peace negotiations. He was in for a shock. The queen calmly drew from her pocket a sheet of paper upon which were the names of twelve commoners and ordered him to draw up warrants of ennoblement for each. When he expressed his undoubted surprise, she kindly asked him whether he had any doubts of its legality going on to say she had made far fewer lords than her predecessors. He, Dartmouth and other like minded lords, had afforded her the opportunity to rectify the omission.
One of the twelve was a certain, Samuel Masham whose wife would become Lady Abigail Masham, of Langley Marsh, Buckinghamshire. On the 31st of December, 1711, the London Gazette announced the simultaneous creation of the twelve peers. Abigail, on hearing the news, cast her mind back on a day in 1697 when a gauche 27 year old woman had been accepted into Princess Anne's household as a bedchamber-woman. Later the queen was to beg her to stay on in her household as a dresser which she deemed more in keeping with her elevated position.
Such a rise was unprecedented and has never been emulated in the history of the royal household.
Afterword
England, in 1709, united with Scotland, by agreement with France, left the War of the Spanish Succession in 1712 leaving its former allies, the Netherlands, Prussia, Denmark, some German states and Austria to fight on alone. In the subsequent peace treaty England did well gaining more territories, including Gibraltar. Unnoticed, a significant event took place in 1712 when Thomas Newcome developed the first steam engine and thereby, in the words of Professor Lovelock, launched the modern age of technology, named by the Victorians, the Industrial Revolution.
Of the subsequent fortunes of the Mashams, little can be gleaned from the historical record. Abigail’s brother Brigadier Hill commanded a failed expedition against French Canada returning to dismantle Dunkirk according to the Treaty of Utrecht; then he too disappears from the historical record. The Duke of Marlborough was forced to leave the country in order to escape from prosecution for peculation i.e. diverting state funds for his own use. The charge was dropped by the Whigs who won the election of 1715, the year which saw the death of Queen Anne and the accession of King George I. On his return from abroad, the duke and Sarah moved into Blenheim Palace awarded him by Parliament and a grateful nation after Marlborough’s victory on the field of Blenheim against the combined armies of France and Bavaria in a war instigated by Louis XIV, the so-called War of the Spanish Succession.
