with her was unbroken. She resented the attempt of the university of Oxford, at one of its solemnities, to imitate the House of Commons by coupling the achievements of Sir George Rooke with those of the hero of Blenheim. At Cambridge, to which she paid a visit after the dissolution of parliament in April, the Duke of Somerset, for whom she had a strong regard, entertained her as chancellor. The greatest scholar and the greatest man of science who adorned her reign—Bentley and Newton—took part in the Cambridge festivities; and the latter, at that time M.P. for the university, was together with the vice-chancellor knighted by the queen. She seems at this time to have been in the best of humours; at Newmarket, whence the visit to Cambridge had been undertaken, she ordered her house to be rebuilt, liberally contributed to the improvement of the town, and bought ‘a running horse of Mr. Holloway, which cost a 1,000 guineas, and gave it to the prince’ (Luttrell, v. 542–4).
Before the dissolution of parliament the lords had, besides throwing out the Occasional Conformity Bill, put a stop upon a tory place bill, which had passed the commons and which had for its object to exclude from their house all holders of offices created since 1684. The queen had been adverse to this bill, and had requested the Archbishop of York to induce his brethren to vote against it. Notwithstanding her ecclesiastical predilections and her rooted suspicion of the whigs, it was becoming more and more difficult for Anne to avoid making a choice between that party and the baffled high-church tories; and this very circumstance made her as desirous as ever to maintain Marlborough, Godolphin, and the moderate men. On the other hand, however, Marlborough and Godolphin were becoming more fully convinced than before that the war could not be effectively carried on without the support of the whigs, and this lent colour to the belief that the queen herself was being drawn in the same direction. All the foreign ministers were fluttered by the tidings that on 18 April she had dined with Orford, one of the whig leaders (Noorden, ii. 248 note). Some influence was probably exerted by these rumours on the issue of the parliamentary elections held in May in the midst of unusual excitement fanned by audacious party libels against Queen Sarah and the regicide whigs; for when parliament met on 25 Oct. the election of speaker proved the whigs to possess a considerable majority in the commons. It is certain that the queen's interest had been exerted on behalf of the whig candidate for the speakership (see her letter to Lady Bathurst, cited by Miss Strickland, xii. 142). But she had not been converted. Before the houses assembled, a long struggle had been waged against the unwillingness of the queen to remodel her administration in deference to the wishes of the victorious whigs and their staunch advocate, the Duchess of Marlborough. Of the whig leaders—the Junto as they were called— Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton, and Sunderland, the last two were the most distasteful to the queen: Wharton, because of his profligacy and undisguised contempt for religion; Sunderland, because, as she had already experienced, no member of his party surpassed him in unyielding resoluteness. The efforts of the whigs and the duchess to obtain a high office of state for her son-in-law, Sunderland, were not supported by Marlborough; but the queen was at last prevailed upon to send him as ambassador to Vienna, where the accession of the Emperor Joseph I in May 1705 gave special importance to the selection. Next, a struggle began for the removal of Sir Nathan Wright from the lord chancellorship; and the efforts of the duchess, who speaks with unmitigated contempt of this ‘warm stickler for the church,’ were on this occasion seconded by Godolphin. The queen's hesitation to confer upon a whig an office to which so great an amount of church patronage belonged is very noteworthy; but when in her difficulty she appealed to Marlborough himself, whom she had hitherto found so reasonable, he plainly told her that she must choose between following the advice of Godolphin and ‘sending for Lord Rochester and Lord Nottingham.’ On 11 Oct. the great seal was transferred to Cowper; and a step—but no more—had been taken towards the construction of a whig government (Coxe, i. 483–4. The duchess, Conduct, 147, modestly says: ‘I prevailed with her majesty to take the great seal from Sir Nathan Wright’).
Mindful, no doubt, of the changed aspect of parties, the queen, in the speech with which she opened parliament in October 1705, after dwelling on the importance of prosecuting the war and bringing about a union with Scotland, promised to make the support of the church her chief care, adding the curious words: ‘I mention this with a little more warmth because there have not been wanting some so very malicious as even in print to suggest the church of England as by law established to be in danger’ (Stanhope, 205. The special allusion seems to be to a publication called ‘The Memorial of the Church of England;’ see the scornful reference in Conduct, 148. The author, Dr. Drake, resorts to the artifice of representing
