A Question of Loyalties

by Josephine Bell

  John took the hand she held out to him, kissed it formally and made her a full court bow before he returned his hat to his head, bowed again briefly to Mr. Whitcombe, still sitting grim and silent behind his desk and went quickly from the room and from the house.

  He returned to the inn where he had eaten on arrival and left his horse. The sun was still high in the western sky, with the tall masts of the ships along the wharfs standing up clean cut against the light, with their spars and rigging making intricate patterns there. He looked about him before he went in. There had been several pairs of eyes upon him at various times during the day, perhaps idly, perhaps with intent to report his movements. He could not tell. The Whitcombes and their man, Frank, would be discreet. There had been no one suspicious near the house.

  He took a quick meal at the inn before setting out for Bath.

  The sun was lower, the sky a deeper orange, but his face was turned eastward and his thoughts were full of the scene in the ship-master’s office. There had been strength there, strength of purpose, strength of will, bodily strength. He wished he had been able to see Hugh’s sons, even just ask if they were well and thriving. But he had not dared to upset the patient, faithful wife any further. These were the people who made England; these were the people it was surely his duty to serve. Not a Catholic King, not men like Sunderland, preserving his power as in a game, not Feversham, the Frenchman. His mind was at rest now that his promise to Hugh was fully discharged and without apparent danger to himself or to those others. No one challenged him on his way back to Bath.

  But his heart was not lightened, for he saw only a dark future; dark and infinitely perplexing. To Sarah’s question that night in the privacy of their bed, he only told her, ‘It went as I had hoped. Now it is done and we will never speak of it again.’

  And with that she had to be content.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In late April King James continued his self-destructive acts with a Declaration of Indulgence, giving complete freedom to Roman Catholics. He had already promised high office to several of them. The bishops were again ordered to display notices of the Declaration in all their parish churches. They again refused and as many as could conveniently be found were seized and put in the Tower.

  In May the Princess Anne with her retinue and her friends, the Churchills, returned to their London house, the Cockpit, near the palace of Whitehall.

  In June, to the mingled astonishment and consternation of the whole country, Queen Mary of Modena gave birth to her seventh child, a boy.

  Very few people had known that this event was expected. The Queen herself had been reticent throughout her pregnancy. It had come after a considerable interval and her sad history of infant loss tore up any hope or joy she may have felt on discovering the truth of her condition. Apart from the Queen herself a like feeling of uncertainty settled upon her female attendants and those few in the higher ranks of her establishment that she entrusted with the news.

  As Chamberlain to the Queen, Godolphin knew, but she had made him promise to keep the matter a secret in case the outcome should be only yet another tragedy.

  ‘At this particular time, my lord,’ her Majesty confided to Sidney, ‘the matter would not be such as to cause universal rejoicing. These cold, stiff English have never showed me any kindness. They frighten me less than those savage Scots, with their flaming hair and their ice-blue eyes.’ She shuddered. ‘But even my dear daughter, the Princess Anne, would find the news unwelcome.’

  Godolphin could only bow and promise obedience. He admired and liked the Queen for her gentle ways and her sincere piety, even in a hated religion. His feeling for her position made the King’s actions seem doubly noxious, but of necessity, endurable.

  Knowing Sarah well by this time, Sidney was not sorry to be forbidden to confide the astonishing news to John. All the same, by an unrecorded feminine route, Anne was made aware of the pregnancy. In view of her own continuing failure to breed normally, she chose to make little of it and said so to Sarah.

  ‘When I attend the birth and see with my own eyes the true link between mother and child, then will I grant the truth of it. Not otherwise.’

  And so it fell out. For some reason, or rather gross unreason, total stupidity, the King failed to summon to the birth all those great personages and important witnesses whose presence the Law and Custom of hundreds of years had made necessary at the birth of kings. But the Archbishop of Canterbury was in the Tower with the other bishops; the greatest of the hereditary earls were absent on their estates, preparing for the downfall, a second time, of an unendurable monarch. Even the step-daughter of the Queen, the Princess Anne, second in succession to the throne hitherto, was not commanded to appear at the birth but merely informed of it afterwards.

  ‘I do not believe it!’ Anne cried, passing on the news to her husband. ‘It simply cannot be true! They must have known there was no child. Otherwise I would have been told to appear. I will not believe it!’

  ‘There most certainly is a child,’ Prince George told her. ‘And it is a boy. See. The report is plain enough and the child is male. An heir, it would seem.’

  The Princess Anne shook her head vigorously. ‘Then if there is a child it is not the Queen’s, or they would have insisted upon my watching the actual delivery. No, if there is indeed a child, then it must have been brought into the Queen’s bed in a warming pan or by some such means as that.’

  Prince George laughed heartily at this. But it was no joke, never intended as such by the seriously-minded Princess. In fact others, many others, cast doubts upon the true identity of the little Prince and the warming pan theory occurred to so many disaffected minds throughout the country that it grew into a legend and as such joined King Alfred’s cakes and Richard Coeur de Lion’s minstrel and the crown in the thornbush at Bosworth field and all similar folk tales.

  Later that summer the bishops were tried and were all acquitted. The Anglican church resumed its duties in the cathedrals and churches. In Europe King Louis decided to attack the Empire and his troops began to march, but not towards Holland. The Prince of Orange, assailed by an increasing flow of invitations from England for help to overthrow a tyrant, began to assemble his forces, his arms and artillery, his stores, his ships, his allies.

  Still in formal attendance upon the King, John Churchill made up his mind at last. The behaviour of James at the birth of his son was the last straw. Before that event Churchill saw a reign continuing for the rest of a life already well on the way to normal completion. After that, there would have been a welcome reversion, with the accession of the Princess Mary of Orange. All that England demanded of its Ruler would be secured, the Protestant religion, the exclusion of Papists from power and positions of State, direct action against France. That prospect was now excluded by a different successor; a Catholic prince, ushered into the world almost secretly by a Catholic father with open contempt and neglect of English custom. To be brought up to inherit all his father’s mistakes and affronts, to encourage even union with France in the end.

  It was too much. In August of that year, 1688, writing in clear longhand, not as all others had done, in cipher, Lord Churchill offered his honour, his allegiance, his sword, to Prince William of Orange, should the Prince decide to come to England to rescue the realm from its present unhappy position. He signed it ‘Churchill’ and sent it secretly to Holland.

  It only needed this important assurance to drive William into full action. His preparations were already well advanced. Now he would have the open, whole-hearted backing of the best soldier in Europe. He could not lose, even in the unlikely event of an actual fight going against him, for was not Churchill totally committed? Was not his open letter worth more than anything he already possessed in the way of blackmail, whichever way his fortune served him? The risk was still great, but with Louis attacking elsewhere and Churchill ready to join him, the odds were fair enough.

  In October William set out, with a small but highly trained a
nd efficient multi-racial army of English, Scottish, Irish, Swedes, Danes and Dutch, in about five hundred ships, including most of the Dutch navy. Before they were half across the North Sea they met a westerly gale and were driven back to Holland, in some disorder, but with very little loss.

  The mishap did nothing much to harm William’s forces, but it did give James in England a rather longer period of warning. Not that he had not already grasped the meaning of William’s recent actions and preparations and had begun to prepare for invasion, which seemed likely to take place somewhere along the eastern seaboard, probably in Yorkshire.

  In consultation with his generals he made plans for the disposal of his forces. He too had a trained and organized army by this time, about equal to that of Cromwell at the height of the latter’s power. Some must hold London, with the Thames and the Cinque Ports, Kent and the Home Counties. Some must march forthwith, prepared to repel an invader wherever he was sighted making in towards the coast. In this connection Lord Danby was to be feared and the great northern lords, in Derbyshire, Cheshire, Northumberland, where the sometime Chancellor had been most active since his dismissal not long after his release from the Tower.

  As a rallying point James chose Salisbury as he had done before. He re-appointed as his Commander-in-Chief Lord Feversham together with Feversham’s brother, another Frenchman, General Roye. Churchill was raised to Lieutenant-General of Dragoons, but though he was present at the Army Council meetings, he was not invited to speak.

  In fact his position had grown critical. He still served the King with correctness, respect and apparent devotion. But he knew that James doubted his continuing allegiance, he knew the Frenchmen suspected him of planned treachery and would go to any lengths to prove it in time to remove him. Yet timing was all important. To defect too soon would be fatal. In any case it would mean flight aborad, leaving Sarah behind. Unthinkable.

  So the duel of wills, of strategy, of control, went on. James certainly doubted. He had very little positive evidence. While Churchill was in Bath, reports had it, he had seen no one already suspect. A visit to Bristol, object altogether unknown, had been mysterious, but had not been followed up in any way.

  James could not believe that Churchill’s long faithful service could be broken, that his former page’s care for his Master’s royal and sacred person no longer operated, that gratitude for so many years of patronage, favour, gifts, of ever-mounting position, could be set aside. He could not act upon suspicion only. But he could not cease to suspect.

  When William set out again England was well prepared. According to plan much of the army was assembled and continued to assemble at Salisbury. Churchill’s cousin and friend, George Legge, now Lord Dartmouth, was in command of war ships in the mouth of the Thames, ready to fall upon the Dutch invaders as they sailed up the east coast to those Yorkshire ports where they were expected.

  But now the weather took William’s side. After the gale the wind went into the north-east and so, under full sail, William drove past Dover and down the Channel, escaping Dartmouth’s opposition altogether, for the same wind boxed up the English fleet in the Thames and delayed the ships that had sheltered in the Channel ports from the recent gale. In fact this excellent wind blew so well that William nearly drove on into the Atlantic and only with difficulty made back to Torbay and anchored at last off Brixham, where he went ashore.

  He was not at first greeted with any kind of enthusiasm. The west had learned a bitter lesson at Sedgemoor. They waited cautiously, unwilling to move. But William soon showed that he was no Monmouth, seeking a quick conquest, however bloody. In fact he wanted no open warfare at all. He had come to defend the Englishman’s right to his own religion and his own law, passed by his own parliament. He had come to persuade his uncle, by a show of force, but no wish to fight, that the King’s rule must be modified. Practice his unpopular religion if he must, but in private. Discourage all other Papists. Let them go live in France. Had not Louis driven out the French Hugenots, some of whom were here in William’s army, having nowhere else to go?

  For Churchill the crisis, the moment to declare himself, came very soon after William had landed. For Lord Cornbury, son of Lord Clarendon, attempted to desert to the Prince of Orange, taking his command with him on a pretence of opposing the invader. His plan was upset by the young Duke of Berwick, who had already proved his military worth. Cornbury did escape to William, but most of his troops returned to Salisbury, bewildered and indignant.

  James understood at last that his own army could not be relied upon to support him. Not only those forces in the north and west who had not yet answered the call upon them, but even those now gathered about him in the southern camp. Particularly his Lieutenant-General Churchill, still there, still quietly attentive, obedient, correct, but utterly withdrawn.

  Feversham and his brother implored the King to act, to place Churchill under arrest, to lock up his dangerous wife with her evil influences upon his daughter, the Princess Anne. James hesitated and was lost.

  Two days after the Commander-in-Chief had failed to move the King, John sent to Sarah a message to carry out at once the plans he had prepared for her safety and that of the Princess Anne. He had made these plans well in advance; had even devised a secret exit from the Cockpit where Anne and Sarah were still in residence. Prince George of Denmark was at Salisbury with the King.

  The two women moved at once. They left the Cockpit secretly at night to take refuge with the Bishop of London in the City. From there they set out in daylight for Lord Dorset’s house, Copt Hall, in Epping Forest. On the next day after that they travelled to Nottingham where they were safe in the charge of the Duke of Devonshire. Prince George, who had already gone to Salisbury with his father-in-law, deserted to Prince William a little later.

  Having sent his message to Sarah, John, on the following night, collected together the Duke of Grafton and a few other officers, with about four hundred Dragoons. They rode off without any kind of interference to join William at Exeter, arriving on the next day in the afternoon.

  Churchill had dared greatly in staying so long with the King. When he made his submission to the Prince of Orange, William told him so.

  ‘My lord, I do not pretend to hide my great anxiety these last days that your plans could miscarry and I should lose your most valuable support at this critical time.’

  ‘It was no easy decision to make, your Highness.’ John told him. ‘As I have written to his Majesty, my care for his royal person hath not diminished. My Faith dictated my desertion, but I remain ever grateful to my lifelong patron.’

  William accepted this declaration as true and honest. Lord Churchill had indeed betrayed his King, with a final sudden and secret desertion for which no doubt he would be everlastingly condemned. But it was inevitable and totally in keeping with the man’s character and genuis. For that had ruled him in the end, had dictated the precise, correct, brilliantly successful handling of the whole delicate operation. With such a man in his service, the Prince of Orange saw his own careful, clever way to a bloodless usurpation of the English throne.

  When the revolution was achieved, when the King had followed his Queen and the baby Prince out of the country, Churchill was given leave to go to his wife. Prince George of Denmark had already arranged for the Princess Anne to return to the Cockpit and renew her acquaintance with her brother-in-law before her sister Mary arrived to take her place on the throne by right of succession.

  Sarah, with characteristic vigour made light of her adventure in escaping from the late King’s wrath.

  ‘Her Highness was quite terrified,’ she said laughing. ‘She appealed to the Queen, who had always borne a soft spot in her Italian heart for her poor step-daughter, whose misfortune in the matter of breeding so matched her own. So we gained a brief delay and it was enough.’

  ‘You came to no harm that night? Climbing the ladder from the Cockpit to my Lord Dorset’s lodgings?’

  ‘No indeed. For my lord was there to help
us and Bishop Compton, who had been in hiding, to hurry us through the mud in Pall Mall, where poor Mrs. Morley lost the heel of a shoe and Mrs. Freeman one shoe entire.’

  John embraced and kissed her. He was proud of her achievement and her manner of describing it.

  ‘Oh my love, my love!’ he cried. ‘Thou should’st have been a man, a soldier after my own heart!’

  ‘Truly, my lord? Then what of our love? I never knew your inclinations lay in that direction! Man, indeed!’

  ‘A pox on your filthy wit! My wish was in proper jest! Beware I do not punish you for a coarse harlot!’

  They had been apart for much of the time since their stay in Bath. Though John spoke lightly Sarah realised the nervous irritability behind the words. She knew she had it in her to give him strength, she must prove to him that she could also give him peace. She must show him that he had every reason to rejoice that she was all woman. She succeeded without any great effort of her strong will.

  For John was slow to recover from his final act of desertion, however right and far-seeing he knew it to be. Sarah gave him relief from tension, confidence for the future.

  ‘You are my life, my dearest,’ he told her after one of their many renewals of their love. ‘When I knew you must be in danger I feared and sweated for you far more than for myself, though at the end my life for days lay in one word, one turn of the King’s hand. I served him faithfully. I even loved him when he took me as his page to watch his soldiers drilling and marching.’

  ‘It was the soldiers you loved, and always did so.’

  He disregarded her interruption. ‘My father loved them both, Charles and James alike, seeing no real faults in either. Until that last time he sat in the Commons and spoke up for grants for old soldiers. And James refused in anger and contempt and dissolved that parliament. The old man never forgave that. But I am glad he died before the Prince left Holland.’