Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [190]
But, she declared, they would soon find they could not do without the Marlboroughs.
Bolingbroke, realizing the danger of his position on the accession of George, had fled to France and there went into the service of James whom he had tried so hard to bring to the throne. As a result, James made an attempt to gain it in 1715; and then Marlborough as Captain-General, was called in to serve the King.
Alas, he was showing his age and it was clear even to him that he was no longer fit for the field. Although he directed operations he took no active part, and this more than anything brought home to him the fact that his days of glory were over.
When the rebellion was at an end, Sarah took him to St. Albans there to nurse him back to health.
It was at this time that a further blow struck the household. A letter came to the house addressed to the Duke and the Duchess from the Earl of Sunderland to tell them that his wife, their daughter Anne, had been taken ill with pleuritic fever and he thought it advisable if they would come to her bedside without delay.
When John read the letter he sank down on to a chair and trembled violently so that Sarah, desperately anxious for her daughter, was equally so for her husband. He was in his sixty-sixth year and his had been a life of stress and tension. The death of her daughter, Elizabeth, had shaken him severely, and had put years on him; and now it seemed that Anne, the favourite of all her children, was in danger.
“I will go to her,” she said, “and you will remain here, you are unfit to travel.”
John protested. He would go to his daughter and nothing would keep him away.
While they were arguing, there was a further letter. Anne, Lady Sunderland, was dead.
Sarah had wept until those about her thought she would lose her reason, and when Sarah wept the whole household knew it; hers was no secret grief.
“Why has this ill fortune come to us!” she demanded. “What have we done to deserve it? I thought I had endured all the ill fortune in the world when I lost my only son. And now … two daughters … my best loved daughters …”
She stormed through the house, one moment harrying her servants for incompetence, the next shutting herself into her room to throw herself on to her bed and give way to her grief.
Anne had been the sweetest member of the household; she had been the peacemaker—and in that family they had needed one. Sarah had loved her dearly because she never argued as her eldest Henrietta and her youngest Mary did; Anne would smile when she disagreed and bow her head, while she kept firmly to her opinions. She had been lovely—a daughter to be proud of. Marl had been against her marriage with Charles Spencer. Dear Marl, the most ambitious man alive and the most sentimental. He had feared that Charles Spencer, who had become Lord Sunderland on his father’s death, was not good enough for their Anne although he was one of the richest men in the country. But she, Sarah, had had her way and the marriage had taken place. Not that she had ever liked Sunderland. Dearest Anne! She had been one of the beauties of the Court—for she surpassed her sisters, and Marl used to say that she and Elizabeth were the ones who rivalled their mother for beauty, although even they could not quite equal her. The Little Whig they called her and the Whigs had toasted her in their coffee houses. And now she was dead.
“My only son, my two daughters!” moaned Sarah. “Why should I have to suffer like this.”
Marl had tried to comfort her. “We still have Henrietta and Mary.”
A hollow comfort! Henrietta and Mary had always gone their own way. Their wills were almost as strong as Sarah’s and they could not be together for long without quarrelling. Those two left out of her family of five! It was heartbreaking.
There seemed nothing to live for. Even the days when they were wandering about the Continent were better than this.
Sarah stormed into the bedroom she shared with John and found him sitting in his chair. He did not look up when she entered and she cried: “We’ll have to go to Court. We