Oxford, and her promise of the two vacant sees of Exeter and Chester to Dr. Blackall, an uncompromising churchman, and Sir William Dawes, who was supposed to hold similar opinions, aroused the wrath of the whigs. Their wishes were supported, in the matter of the Oxford chair effectually, by Marlborough and Godolphin. But the duchess foresaw a greater danger threatening the position of herself and her friends; and her indignation was fired by the discovery that she had herself nourished the serpent that was to sting her. According to the duchess's account, Abigail Hill was an indigent first cousin of her own, for whom she had obtained the place of bedchamber-woman in the establishment of the Princess of Denmark. The steps by which a personal attendant becomes a personal friend, and as such acquires an influence over the mind of master or mistress, rarely admit of being fixed by dates; moreover, Queen Anne was often more or less of an invalid, and invalids are apt to become the prey of their servants. Though the duchess had begun to find the queen more shy of her company and more reserved when with her than before, she was not rendered suspicious of her ‘cousin Hill’ till she had been informed of her private marriage to Mr. Samuel Masham. She speaks of this information as having reached her in the summer of 1707; already, on 3 June, the duke advises her, ‘if Mrs. Masham does speak of business to the queen,’ to warn the former cautiously, ‘for she certainly is grateful, and will mind what you say.’ (In the Private Correspondence, i. 77, this letter is dated 9 June.) The duchess goes on to state that when she tenderly expostulated with Mrs. Masham, both her conduct and that of the queen convinced her that there was some mystery in the affair. ‘And in less than a week's time I discovered that my cousin was become an absolute favourite; that the queen herself was present at her marriage in Dr. Arbuthnot's lodgings’ (Arbuthnot, though a strong tory, had been appointed physician to the queen in October 1705; see Craik's Swift, 127), ‘at which time her majesty had called for a round sum out of the privy purse; that Mrs. Masham came often to the queen, when the prince was asleep, and was generally two hours every day in private with her. And I likewise then discovered beyond all dispute Mr. Harley's correspondence and interest at court by means of this woman.’ She then remembered many signs and tokens to which she had previously been blind (Conduct, 177–85; cf. Coxe).
There can be no reasonable doubt that the duchess had made a real discovery. In the measure in which her influence over the queen had declined, that of her kinswoman had risen. The intrigues of Harley are not proved by any direct evidence, but they were suspected by a correspondent of the Duke of Shrewsbury as well as by Lady Marlborough, and are admitted by the tory writer who, in answering the narrative of the duchess, proposed to show ‘The Other Side of the Question’ (see Coxe, ii. 259 note). The duchess, to whom Godolphin had in vain induced Mrs. Masham to make an overture of reconciliation, now opened all portholes for the combat, while the duke and Godolphin adopted a more temperate course of conduct, consisting in the main of threats of resignation at first neither made nor probably received very seriously. Harley in some measure diminished their zeal by protesting that he was their sincere and loyal friend, and the queen declared that, though she had a very good opinion of Mr. Harley, and would never change it unless she saw cause, she relied entirely on none but ‘Mr. Freeman [Marlborough] and Mr. Montgomery [Godolphin].’ Thus the lord treasurer hesitated, and Marlborough on 8 Nov. from the Hague advised his wife to leave off struggling ‘against wind and tide’ (Coxe, ii. 341–68). The duchess, however, continued to make the queen, as the latter was still patient enough to phrase it, ‘truly sensible of her kindness in telling her her mind freely upon all occasions,’ and told some of it to Mrs. Masham likewise. On paying her respects to the queen at Christmas 1707 the duchess was coldly received, and some days passed before a letter in which she had (not disrespectfully) reproached the queen obtained a kindly answer (Conduct, 203–11).
It was a sign of the growing power of the whigs that at the end of 1707 the queen had filled the contested Oxford chair with the whig candidate, and had appointed a whig (Dr. Trimnel) bishop of Norwich. The party had effectually shown its strength to Marlborough and Godolphin, and on 22 Dec. it completely identified itself with their war policy by carrying in both houses an address which declared that no peace could be honourable or safe if any part of the Spanish monarchy were left in the power of the house of Bourbon. Under such circumstances it was impossible that the queen, in spite of her personal confidence in him, should any longer continue Harley in office, for he had hoped to stand against the whigs with the aid of Marlborough and Godolphin, while probably at the same time undermining the influence of these latter with the queen. In January 1708 they finally made up their
