Blood Royal: The Story of the Spencers and the Royals

by John Pearson

  Blenheim was no ordinary English stately home. Designed by the restoration playwright and great baroque architect, Sir John Vanbrugh, it was to be a grandiose memorial to the greatest conqueror Europe would see until the arrival of Napoleon. And there was a foretaste of Napoleon in the way this warrior prince was picturing his everlasting fame within the dynasty created round his dukedom. Had the Dutch agreed to the Emperor’s suggestion that they make him Governor-General of the Netherlands, Marlborough and his descendants would have joined the ranks of minor European royalty. He was deeply disappointed when the Dutch refused, but in spite of this he still hoped to establish something like a regal dynasty to reflect his glory.

  In Germany and Central Europe he had been impressed by the great semi-independent principalities owned by grand-ducal families like the Esterharzys. Nor would he have failed to notice how the Princes of Orange had used the small county of Orange in the South of France as a springboard for their family’s advancement. With Queen Anne’s support he was hoping that one of the great court positions, like the Groomship of the Stole, together with its valuable emoluments, could be made hereditary within his family. Endowed with the riches and the massive fortune he was now accruing, and with further victories to come, Marlborough could make his family a European style grand-dukedom, largely independent of the crown, and with its privileges, court position and pensions passing from one descendant to the next.

  As if to prove Blenheim no accident, barely two years later Marlborough defeated yet another great French army under Marshal Villeroy at Ramillies, near the border city of Namur. This was an overwhelming conflict, with 25,000 cavalry locked in combat on a narrow front. (Winston Churchill called it ‘the largest cavalry battle of which there is a trustworthy account’.) By this second crushing victory, Marlborough destroyed for ever King Louis’s dreams of conquering the Netherlands and brought the victorious Allies ever closer to the frontiers of France.

  That winter, with Ramillies fresh on everbody’s mind, the Whig majority in Parliament, which in contrast with the Tories had tended to support Marlborough, felt the time had come for their reward. As a dedicated Whig, Sarah agreed, and convinced her husband that, since in her eyes the Tories were little more than pro-French Jacobites, the only guarantee of political support for continuing the war against the French was for a leading Whig to be included in the Queen’s government. Her favoured candidate was Sunderland.

  Having patched up their differences, she and Sunderland were currently enjoying a rare spell of amity, and Sarah now proposed him on the grounds that, as Marlborough’s son in law, Lord Sunderland ‘had especial claims upon the Queen’s favour’.

  Nothing in fact was further from the truth, for the Tory Queen detested Sunderland as much as ever, and had come to see him ‘as the incarnation of everything she hated in pure Whiggery’.

  Now in his early thirties, Sunderland the one-time idealist was calming down and would certainly not allow his principles to stop him sharing in the rising fortunes of the Marlboroughs. He might still be a republican at heart, but he also needed money. He had inherited more than a touch of his father’s extravagance along with his love of gambling, but his greatest expenditure of all was still on books. His library was his passion and its fame was growing. He used it as security for the loan of £10,000 he had recently borrowed from his father-in-law. To help him repay this, Marlborough had found him some profitable appointments - as special envoy to the Austrian emperor at Vienna, and then as one of the commissioners for the planned union of England and Scotland. Sunderland performed successfully, and it was more as a tribute to his rising prospects than to his learning that Oxford University awarded him a doctorate.

  None of this impressed the Queen in the least, and the winter after Ramillies was followed by another hard-fought conflict - this time between the Freemans and the Morleys, over admitting Sunderland to Queen Anne’s government.

  For the first time in their long and passionate relationship it appeared that Mrs Freeman might not get her way. As usual she was most insistent, but the years in power had made Queen Anne surer of herself and more confirmed in her beliefs as an innate Tory. Soon the two devoted friends were locked in bitter conflict.

  True to her nature, Sarah railed at the Queen as no other subject would have dared. As always she was counting on their friendship, but she also knew that, however much the Queen hated Sunderland, even she could not oppose the wishes of her greatest general, who had made her name resound across the battlefields of Europe - and who, if a shade cautiously, was endorsing the appointment of his son-in-law.

  Discussion raged for several weeks before the Queen sullenly gave way, as she knew she must with Marlborough against her. So, in the end, it was thanks entirely to the Marlboroughs that Queen Anne accepted the thirty-one-year-old Earl of Sunderland as one of her principal secretaries of state. This was an important moment in the development of English politics, setting a precedent for the Monarch’s strongest private wishes being overridden by Parliamentary considerations. It was also, naturally, a great advance for Sunderland, who, however much he still privately disapproved of kings (and queens) and titles, now found himself principal minister in what gradually became a Whig administration.

  But for the Marlboroughs, this decision to support their son-in-law against the Queen proved a terrible mistake. By humiliating Mrs Morley, Sarah had forced the royal worm to turn at last.

  What followed was essentially the long dragged-out, bitter ending of a dying love affair. There was, of course, another woman, Sarah’s now hated cousin, Abigail Masham, who had originally entered the court with Sarah’s backing. There were denials from the Queen, and bouts of jealous rage from Sarah, with accusations pouring back and forth as Sarah found herself supplanted. All that distinguished what was happening from the break-up of some humdrum relationship between two ageing matrons was the one thing Sarah chose to overlook - the fact that her faithless lover was no longer poor dependent Mrs Morley, but that she happened to be Queen of England. Since her husband’s appointment as head of the allied forces depended on Her Majesty, their quarrel was bound to have dramatic repercussions.

  Sarah being Sarah, repercussions were the last thing she considered. Single-minded woman that she was, all she could see was that her place in Anne’s affections had been usurped by the common, shameless, fellow-travelling Tory, Mrs Masham. Overcome with jealousy, she went so far as to accuse the Queen of England of ‘an unnatural passion for her chambermaid’, but even this was not entirely the end of the relationship.

  On the battlefield the Duke was still invincible, winning two more overwhelming victories against the French - Oudenarde in 1708 and the bloodbath of Malplaquet a year later - and with so much depending on the Queen’s support, anyone but Sarah would have seen the need for caution. But caution was foreign to her nature, and she was now so jealous that she seemed past caring. At the thanksgiving service for Oudenarde at St Paul’s Cathedral, Sarah was sitting near the Queen and, hearing her talking loudly, told her to keep quiet.

  In former days Sarah might just have got away with it, but she was no longer dealing with the woman who had once adored her. Dependent Mrs Morley was no more; Queen Anne had very firmly taken over, so that when she broke with Sarah she produced what A.L. Rowse described as ‘a noise that reverberated all over Europe and down the corridors of time’.

  When Sarah came to her senses and realised the full extent of her appalling rudeness, there were of course apologies and embarrassed meetings between Marlborough and the Queen, at one of which the Duke was on his knees before her, begging for his wife to be forgiven. The Queen was gracious, but she had taken her decision. All Sarah’s royal appointments ended and her connection with the court was effectively over. So was the bond between the Freemans and the Morleys, which had always been the true foundation of Marlborough’s fortunes.

  England, like Europe, was tiring of the war and there was little real support for Marlborough’s great ambition ‘to car
ry his sword to the very gates of Paris’. The Whigs in government were losing popularity, and the public outcry following their decision to impeach for sedition the popular High Church Tory preacher, Dr Sacheverell, showed that their days, like Marlborough’s victories, were numbered. The government would have to go, and no one was terribly surprised that the first minister the Queen dismissed was Sunderland.

  He had been an unpopular if effective minister, playing an important role in the Act of Union bringing England and Scotland together in 1707. Typically, he had spent the considerable (and legitimate) profits he had made from office not on restoring Althorp or the family’s distinctly shaky fortunes, but on building the new Sunderland House in Piccadilly on the site occupied today by the Albany. As he badly needed the pension of £3,000 a year which the Queen offered him in compensation for the loss of office, his words of refusal show him trying to remain a man of principle. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said self-righteously, ‘since I can no longer serve my country, I will not rob it.’

  Hard times had come upon the Marlboroughs and the house of Spencer. Thanks to Sarah, Marlborough was now without the friendship and support of the Queen in London. This proved crucial, for it left him vulnerable, and when accusations of corruption followed from the new Tory government, his dismissal as commander-in-chief of the army was inevitable.

  Blenheim Palace stood unfinished, amid bitter squabbles over money, so it was fortunate that the Marlboroughs still had the use of the splendid country house at Windsor which went with Sarah’s original appointment by the Queen to the Rangership of Windsor Park. Anne generously let them keep it, but from now on Sarah had really turned her heart against both court and monarchy for ever. Marlborough was threatened with prosecution and disgrace, and left the country.

  But despite his fall from favour and the defeat of his ultimate ambitions for his family, he and Sarah had created one of the great fortunes of the age. And since in money terms alone Marlborough was worth close on a million pounds - an enormous sum in present-day currency - within the family itself concern for the great inheritance began in earnest.

  The ever fertile Spencers had advanced their chances by increasing the reserves of Spencer males. Whereas Henrietta, Marlborough’s eldest daughter and heir to the dukedom, would only manage to produce two further daughters - and one of them by the playwright William Congreve - the stalwart ‘little Whig’, Anne Sunderland, had given birth to two more healthy males, Charles Spencer, born in 1706 and John, born two years later, these in addition to her daughter, Anne, born in 1702, and Diana in 1710. So the Sunderlands were by far the most thriving branch of the family, and the presence of three robust Spencer grandsons made it most unlikely that the ‘dear Duke’s’ precious English dynasty would ever fail for lack of heirs.

  With Marlborough now in exile and disgrace, it was clear to Sunderland too that, politically, there was nothing left for him in England while Queen Anne remained alive. But Anne’s health was doubtful, and in Germany, at the court of Hanover, lived Sunderland’s best and brightest hope for the future - another of the Queen’s personal enemies, who under the Act of Succession was heir to the throne of England, the Elector, George of Hanover.

  Embittered by exile and the shipwreck of his great ambitions, Marlborough, now very much in league with Sunderland, approached Elector George and the other European allied leaders with an extraordinary request - to provide him with a continental army with which he could invade England, and by dismissing Queen Anne’s Tory government, stop them making peace with France.

  Although the Elector was opposed to the policy of peace at any price with France, he could not possibly support this hare-brained scheme, and it seems to have convinced him that Sunderland, like Marlborough, could be dangerous. As a result, in 1714 when Queen Anne died and Elector George became King of England, Sunderland failed to receive the great political reward he had been counting on. Instead he was made Viceroy of Ireland which meant exile to Dublin, and little in the way of income. Deeply disappointed, and using his wife’s refusal to leave the new Sunderland House as an excuse, he continued to postpone crossing the Irish Channel until his fortunes suddenly revived, thanks to events in Scotland.

  Until defeat at the battle of Sheriffmuir, the 1715 Jacobite uprising seemed a serious threat to the new Hanoverian dynasty of King George, from the Old Pretender, James Edward Stuart. With panic in the air, Marlborough was restored to his post as Captain General, and was soon directing operations from London with remarkable incompetence, whilst secretly sending £5,000 to the Stuarts just in cast they won. Sunderland, with his knowledge of Scotland dating back to his negotiations for the Act of Union, made himself indispensable in Whitehall.

  Branded as crypto-Jacobites, the Tories were totally discredited, and the Whigs would be in power for almost a generation to come. At a time when senior Whig politicians were dying or retiring, Sunderland came to a conclusion: Republican or not, his best hope for the two things in life he needed - power and money - lay in close contact with the person of the King and as if to prove him right, the King rewarded him with the position of Lord Privy Seal.

  But as so often happened with Sunderland, no sooner did it seem as if his luck had changed, than he was hit by a fresh disaster. Thirty-six year-old Anne Sunderland fell ill with pleurisy. She had not inherited her mother’s robust constitution and, after a careless blood-letting, she contracted septicaemia and died. (In fact, it seems more than likely that she was actually suffering from the tuberculosis which would afflict the Spencers for the next two generations.)

  Since the day they married she and Sunderland had been devoted to each other, writing to each other every day when they were parted. Now that she was gone, this passionate, abrasive man was suddenly beside himself with grief, as were the children and Sarah and the Duke. In their sorrow the whole family was overwhelmed by one of those great outbursts of emotion that break through the stiffness and restraint of this outwardly formal age.

  ‘Pray get my mother the Duchess of Marlborough to take care of the girls … a man can’t take the care of little children that a woman can … For the love she has of me, I hope she will do it, and be ever kind to you who was dearer to me than my life.’

  This from the last pathetic letter Anne wrote to Sunderland shortly before she died. He sent it on to Sarah, and briefly the ill-assorted couple were united as they shared their loss - but only briefly.

  Sarah was more than willing to take her daughter’s place with the children, and particularly anxious to take charge of her favourite grandchild, the baby of the family, seven-year-old Diana Spencer, for whom she started to prepare a nursery at Holywell. Then came a fresh disaster. Marlborough, the great war-lord, had always been susceptible to sorrow; now he was so affected by his daughter’s death that he had a stroke a few weeks later, tumbled down the stairs at Holywell and lay for three days in a coma.

  He recovered - after a fashion. But from now on, the once-great Duke of Marlborough was a weakened, melancholy shadow. Sometimes recovering, but always liable to profound depression and attacks of weeping, he was no longer able - or permitted - to stand up against his Duchess. With the Queen dead, there was nobody to stop her giving her husband and her family her full and terrible attention.

  Many years before Sarah had persuaded her husband to agree that her fortune was her own. Now she effectively took charge of the trust controlling Marlborough’s money too, and the joint fortunes of the family. As the Duke’s grasp weakened, Sarah’s strengthened. As Marlborough’s dreams of founding his European dynasty dissolved, so the troubled saga of the Marlborough inheritance began in earnest.

  Sarah and Sunderland should have remembered Anne’s last letter and stayed united, if only in her memory, for her motherless children needed their joint affection and support. But this was clearly impossible, particularly for Sarah, who could not help quarrelling with any member of the family who remotely disagreed with her. It is not entirely surprising that this mother who methodically recorde
d the misdoings of her children for posterity in a small green notebook should by now have alienated all of her three surviving daughters. Nor is it surprising that before long she would turn upon this son-in-law who had once been ‘dearer to her daughter than her life’ with particular venom.

  Part of Sarah’s trouble was that from the age of fifteen, when she married Marlborough, she had grown used to what she called ‘that inestimable blessing, a kind husband’, who had always let her have her way. Sunderland would not and stood up to her.

  As it was, they just managed to agree over the one thing it might have been better had they not - the marriage of Sunderland’s elder daughter, Elizabeth.

  At fifteen, Elizabeth Spencer was no beauty, but Sarah had set her heart on marrying her to the son of the extremely wealthy Lord Bateman, a former Governor of the Bank of England. When conferring his title on Lord Bateman, George I had remarked, ‘I can make him a lord but not a gentleman’, and Sunderland seems to have felt the same, both about Lord Bateman and his son. He finally agreed to Elizabeth’s marriage, partly to ensure that this motherless daughter was taken care of, and partly to keep the peace with Sarah. Neither can have realised that rich Lord Bateman’s son was homosexual, and that in years to come an increasingly embittered Lady Batemen would go on blaming Sarah for her wretchedly unhappy marriage to the day she died.

  But while Sunderland was suffering domestically, he prospered politically. With Marlborough now incapacitated, Sunderland had taken over (although with periodic interference from Sarah) Marlborough’s old political faction, together with his claim to the Groomship of the Stole. After the Jacobite campaign of 1715 he and his fellow Whig grandees were better placed than ever to convince King George I and his successor George II that only good Whig governments could save them from conspiracies and invasion attempts by the exiled Stuarts. The result was effectively a one party state as government by Whig oligarchy started.