by John Pearson
She was probably right, but again she only had herself to blame. For ever since forcing Anne Spencer into her miserable marriage, Sarah had taken every opportunity to provoke her, either inquiring why poor Lady Bateman had no children, or comparing Lord Bateman’s lack of affection with the way her own dear duke had always treated her. Childless, ugly and embittered, Lady Bateman had come to loathe her grandmother.
Sarah might have learned by now that rows in families, like civil wars, are the bitterest of all, but nothing could quell her hatred for Lady Bateman. ‘The vilest woman I ever knew in my life; and deserves to be burnt’, was one of her milder descriptions of her own granddaughter - and so that no one would misunderstand her feelings she blacked out the face on Lady Bateman’s portrait in the dining room at Marlborough House, telling her startled guests that, ‘Now her outside is as black as her insides.’
Convinced that her whole family had turned against her, Sarah then informed them all that she would burn her will, and got as far as making an overlarge bequest for the creation of almshouses at St Albans to show that she meant business.
As for her grandson Charles, who was now happily married to Elizabeth Trevor, words could not express Sarah’s indignation at his base behaviour, so she did what she had long been threatening and disinherited him of his promised share of her fortune. His reply can hardly have improved her temper:
As for your cutting me out of yr. Will, it is some time since I neither expected nor desired to be in it. I have nothing more to add, except to assure your Grace that this is the last time I shall ever trouble you by Letter or by Conversation.
I am yr. Grace’s grandson,
Sunderland
Not a letter to be left unanswered, certainly not by Sarah, who had always insisted on having the last word in everything:
You end yr. letter that you are my grandson; Which is indeed a melancholy Truth; but very lucky for you. For all the world except yourself is sensible that had you not been my Grandson, you would be in as bad a condition as you deserve to be.
Game, set and match, it seemed, to Sarah, but of course it was not. For after the death of Willigo, Lord Blandford, not even Sarah Marlborough could prevent her grandson Charles from entering into at least part of his inheritance as third Duke of Marlborough on the death of her daughter Harriet - which happened sooner than expected two years later.
But even now that Charles Spencer had become the undoubted third Duke of Marlborough, Sarah could not resist keeping the hatred in the family alive by making his life as difficult as possible, first by banning him from Blenheim, which was hers for life, and then by refusing to help financially with the large expenses he incurred by moving out of Althorp.
The new Duke was a domesticated man at heart; he bought himself a charming red-brick house at Langley in Buckinghamshire, started a family, stayed unexpectedly faithful to his wife, and continued borrowing heavily against his expectations. Like everybody in the family, he was waiting for Sarah to die, and it seemed as if her grand dynastic plans were over. She was growing old and bitter, and eighteen months after Harriet’s death came news that she had dreaded.
For some time she had been concerned about Diana, whose husband, Lord John Russell, had become Duke of Bedford on his brother’s death in 1730. Diana was convinced that she was pregnant, but Sarah thought her far too thin. She was in fact in the final stages of tuberculosis and died a few months later. Sarah was overcome with grief which, true to form, she expressed at the funeral by accusing the inoffensive husband of having killed poor Dye ‘stone dead’ by his behaviour. Unused to such treatment, the roly-poly Duke of Bedford fainted.
Sarah genuinely mourned her ‘dearest Dye’. But, as she often said, ‘the heart is a long time a-breaking’, and she remained a long time a-dying. Now in her mid-seventies, her energies were undiminished and her will-power seemed as strong as ever. Nothing could deflect her, and despite her bitterness she continued with the three things she excelled at - making money, buying property, and making the lives of everyone around her as intolerable as possible.
But Diana’s death affected her more than anyone suspected, and just as it seemed as if her great dynastic plans had been forgotten, she turned for affection to the last remaining heir to Althorp, Diana’s brother and the youngest of the Spencer grandsons, the Honourable John ‘Jack’ Spencer.
Had Jack Spencer not been in line for one of the great inheritances of England, he would probably have led a long and relatively harmless life. People liked him, for he was a charming, lively character, and his portrait at Althorp shows a manly figure with strong legs, a commanding presence and something of the Churchill features. But the portrait is deceptive. Jack had always been notoriously idle, and what energies he possessed had been directed into three absorbing interests - gambling, drink and women. A younger Sarah would not have tolerated him for long, but since she was old and lonely and Jack her one remaining heir, she did her best to like him. ‘I am sure I love him more than anybody that is in the world,’ she said and soon informed him that provided he obeyed her wishes she would make him virtually sole heir to her entire estate.
For Jack this proved a most deceptive blessing, for as Sarah’s heir he rapidly became a walking demonstration of the various afflictions which the promise of great riches can inflict upon one amiable but weak willed human being. Sarah both spoiled him and tyrannised over him, and while at times he seemed to resent his grandmother’s incessant domination, he lacked the strength of will to do anything about it. So he went on flattering her, playing up to her and counting on his looks and cheerful manner to placate her when she felt neglected. But he seems to have revealed his real feeling for her at her seventieth birthday party when she remarked how good it was to see all the branches of the family flourishing around her, and John was heard to mutter that ‘branches flourish better when their roots are buried’.
Remembering the fuss following his brother’s marriage, Jack wisely took no chances with his own. The story goes that when Sarah showed him a list of marriageable young women in alphabetical order he picked the first, Lady Georgiana Carteret, the daughter of John Carteret, second Earl Granville, simply because her name began with C. Probably more to the point was the fact that Granville was one of Walpole’s most serious political opponents and Sarah wanted his support.
There was a slight delay while Jack was cured of gonorrhoea, but once recovered, he dutifully walked Georgiana up the aisle of fashionable St George’s, Hanover Square, where the Spencer family had briefly and uncomfortably assembled on Sarah’s orders. Afterwards Jack took his bride to St James’s Palace, but when he presented her to King George II, His Majesty turned his back on them and it was left to Queen Caroline to remark, ‘Mr Spencer, I believe I have not seen you since you was a child.’
‘No madam, I believe not,’ Jack replied, and the audience was over.
But Sarah soon made up for the king’s rudeness by treating her grandson as a prince, and offering him and his wife Marlborough House, together with the use of Roger Morris’s ‘curtseying’ villa at Wimbledon, once intended for his long-dead brother Robert. Her own verdict on Wimbledon by now was that it was ‘an ill sod, very damp, and I believe an unhealthy place, which I shall seldom live in’.
However, Jack’s marriage seems to have confirmed her interest in the future of her all-important dynasty. Procreation was one area in which Jack was willing to oblige, and Sarah was delighted when his wife produced in swift succession two extremely pretty children, John and Diana. But despite the children, Jack was not a family man, and he increasingly resorted to the house at Wimbledon, staying there for weeks on end with groups of friends, enjoying the drinking and wenching and, presumably when sober, the shooting.
If Sarah knew what was going on, she did not seem to care. What really concerned her was the next generation, and she doted on the two children, who often stayed with her at Windsor. Despite the arthritis which was plaguing her, she used to sing to them to make them laugh, and
played what she called ‘romping games’ with them before they went to bed. But, like everyone in the family, even the children were becoming wise about her money. When they played a game of draughts she asked them what they wanted as a prize – money or a kiss?
‘Money,’ the tots replied in unison.
And still Sarah would not die. Somehow she struggled on into her eighties, and despite the singing and the romping games, arthritis now confined her to her bed in winter and to a crab-like existence in the summer. But even as she clattered round her house on crutches nothing, it seemed, could stop her making money.
She was now unquestionably the richest woman in the land -and still trying to use her wealth to dominate the lives of others. She was still convinced that land was the best and safest form of investment, and from time to time took pleasure in embarrassing the government by disposing of a tranche of government stock when it would cause the greatest trouble to the Treasury, then using the money to invest in yet further purchases of real estate. Thus her kingdom went on growing, and would soon consist of estates in twelve counties, and reserves of something over £250,000 in capital.
She had made herself what Mrs Freeman had always longed to be - free, all-powerful, and famous. It was now that she suddenly conceived the idea of getting her chosen heir the title of Lord Churchill in his own right. ‘By this I thought I should make one of the dear Duke of Marlborough’s grandsons represent him in this world by His Name, supported by my own estate’ - which would presumably have meant that the Spencers would have borne the Churchill title to the present day. But without resorting to the court, or asking a favour of hated Robert Walpole - both of which she emphatically refused to do - this was not possible. So the Spencers remained Spencers and her grandson had to face the world without a title.
By now her hatred of George II and Queen Caroline and their apparently indestructible prime minister was so obsessive that it became the cause of one final and far-reaching encumbrance with which she would lumber the next two generations of the Spencer family.
It all began in 1738, when what has been described as ‘a bombshell’ burst within her family. By now Sarah had mellowed sufficiently to be back on speaking terms with her grandson Charles, who was increasingly enjoying his role as third Duke of Marlborough. Since she still insisted on retaining Blenheim, he had got himself yet further into debt by extensive alterations to the house and gardens at Langley, but in compensation for depriving him of Blenheim, Sarah had permitted him and his family to use the Little Lodge at Windsor, and was dropping promises about remembering him in her will in order to ensure his loyalty against the government in the House of Lords.
But she firmly refused to advance him money to pay off the most pressing of his debts, and finally he became so desperate that he did the one thing Sarah would not forgive - accepted a sinecure from Robert Walpole in the form of a well paid colonelcy in a West Indian regiment, in return for his promise to support the government. A still more valuable court appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber was to follow, and Sarah became particularly enraged on hearing Walpole’s smug reaction to the news in the House of Commons: ‘You see, I know the way to get every body I have a mind to.’
The outcome was inevitable - a final breaking off of all relations between Sarah and Marlborough and an instant cancelling of the various bequests which she had been going to leave him and which, as she icily informed him, ‘had been more than anybody could have expected’. On becoming Duke of Marlborough, Charles had already carried off not only the major part of the Sunderland library but also the two Spencer peerages, Earl of Sunderland and Baron Wormleighton. There was nothing Sarah could do about this, but she did demand the return of numerous possessions and mementoes of her husband, all of which were now to go to Althorp. As a final insult she insisted that the Duke return his grandfather’s jewelled sword, ‘lest he pick out the diamonds to pawn them’. He and his family were summarily ejected from the Little Lodge at Windsor.
It was an occasion Jack made the most of in Sarah’s presence, by ‘bursting into tears … and saying he was so much ashamed he could not stand it’. But, ancient though she was, Sarah was not stupid, and however convinced she may have been that Jack loved her while she was alive she had no illusions over how he would behave after she was dead.
So, summoning her lawyers, the old woman penned one further clause to that puissant document, her will. By it she debarred both John Spencer and his son from inheriting a penny of all she was leaving them, should they ever accept any post or pension from the government. ‘She was determined, even from beyond the grave, to ensure that no minister would ever be able to buy the allegiance of her heirs, although the cost would be to exclude them from any role in public life except a parliamentary one.’
She was pleased with herself for devising such a smart manoeuvre. Seeing it as a final scoring off against the monarch and the court, she even insisted that ‘It would have been of great use to the Nation, if People of great Estates had taken the same Method.’ For she believed that this would keep the Spencers free from the contagion and corruption of the court until the arrival on the scene of a later generation who might use her wealth as she intended. She hoped that one day a Spencer might become the sort of staunch champion of liberty which, had she but been a man, she might have been herself.
But she was very old, and she, had done the best she could. Now it was up to future generations to carry out her wishes, while those around her let her die in peace.
It was not until 1744, at the age of eighty-four, that she did so. The novelist Tobias Smollett’s epitaph was brief and to the point. ‘Her death in the 85th year of her life was very little regretted, either by her own family or the world in general.’
For twenty-two years her husband’s body had been lying in Westminster Abbey waiting for this moment. Now in accordance with his will it was taken to the grave she had prepared for them both in the chapel at Blenheim Palace, and she was placed beside him. Thus was she finally reunited with her ‘dear Duke’ in the palace she had helped create and which she hated.
After his death she had effectively flouted the great man’s wishes, corrupted and undermined his heirs, split the Spencer dynasty, created a vast inheritance and started two quite separate lines of Spencers for the future. For an uneducated woman in the predominantly male world of the eighteenth century it was no mean achievement.
Chapter 5
The Divide
The Hon. John Spencer (1708-1746)
For the Spencers, Sarah Marlborough’s death was like the moment when a river suddenly divides, continuing as two separate branches to the sea. There were deep reasons for the split among the Spencers, but the immediate cause lies almost entirely with Sarah. Through her gross favouritism of her youngest grandson Jack, at the expense of her other grandson Charles, Sarah made these two brothers bitter enemies, who had no further contact with each other after her funeral. From then on the two families, although all Spencers, were quite different, and they have stayed so to the present day.
Since one branch of the Spencers bore the great Duke’s title and inherited his palace, it is not entirely surprising that the Marlborough Spencers have been dominated by his memory. In 1817 they would even change their name to Spencer Churchill in his honour, and just as the family has remained firmly to the right in politics, so it has always been strongly influenced by John Duke’s warlike shadow. As a dynasty these nineteenth-century Spencer Churchills would produce two worthy successors to their great progenitor, the volatile precursor of modern conservatism, Lord Randolph Churchill, and his greater son Sir Winston, much of whose life both as soldier and statesman was inspired by his ancestor, John, Duke of Marlborough.
The Althorp Spencers were another matter. Sarah’s inheritance made them far richer than their Marlborough cousins, and at Althorp, freed from the overwhelming presence of the Duke, they stayed loyal to their Whig traditions, as Sarah wanted. Thanks to the terms of her will these Spencers would re
main immensely rich throughout the eighteenth century, aloof from both court and government for the next two generations, leaving them free to enjoy their great inheritance. In the process they became celebrated figures in society, patrons of the arts, great travellers and keen collectors.
At first one feels sorriest for irascible Charles Spencer who, as third Duke of Marlborough, was so badly treated by his grandmother. Not only did she disinherit him, and was deeply offensive to his inoffensive wife, tut at his expense she also outrageously favoured his brother John. Until his death in 1758, Charles and the dukedom would be plagued with debt, but he managed to survive and in his way he prospered. He was neither a great man like his grandfather, nor a particularly clever one like his father, and he made a rather unassuming duke, being essentially a family man, with a love of gardening and expensive tastes in building.
But however traumatic at the time, his break with Sarah, far from being an absolute disaster, seems to have brought him certain long-term advantages. Primarily it allowed him to enjoy a political career, enriched with the spoils of government. Once his foot was on the ladder of political preferment, the Duke climbed slowly upwards to an honourable position in the political establishment, eventually becoming Lord President of the Council in the Duke of Newcastle’s government and honoured with the Order of the Garter. Although officially a Whig like everyone in government, Charles was by inclination and ambition considerably to the right in politics - a position which the subsequent Dukes of Marlborough have adhered to to the present day.
On finding himself Duke of Marlborough the influence of his warlike grandfather seems to have affected him in other ways, and he was soon exchanging his lucrative colonelcy in his West Indian regiment for a colonelcy in the Dragoon Guards, before moving onto the even smarter second Regiment of Horse Guards. His military career began in earnest when war again broke out with France in 1740 and the Duke, by now a lieutenant general, took his regiment to Germany, with George II. He was with him at the inglorious Battle of Dettingen, the last occasion when a king of England fought in battle.
