Source:
Private correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough: illustrative of the court and times of Queen Anne, volume 1, H. Colburn, London, 1838
Above: Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, painted after Sir Godfrey Kneller.
Above: Queen Anne, painted by Charles Jervas after Sir Godfrey Kneller.
The letter:
When I was last at Windsor, looking among my papers, I found a letter from my cousin Hill, in which she uses this expression to me: — "You are so far happy that your greatest enemies never reproached you either with want of sense or sincerity." She concludes with professions of her own sincerity, and that she is my most faithful servant. I have several letters under her hand to acknowledge that never any family had received such benefits as hers had done from me, which I will keep to shew the world what returns she has made for obligations that she was sensible of. Whether she then spoke the same language of me to your Majesty that she did to me, I can't tell; though I am apt to think that at first she did not rail at me, and got a footing by making you think that she loved you extremely, and was very sincere. But let that be as it will, I believe she has changed her note, as to me, a good while; and I think, notwithstanding the conclusion of her own letter, in which she professes so much sincerity, she has given sufficient demonstration that she has none. Since what she did in my lodgings and in my office for Abrahal, was begun at a time when she made those professions to me; and certainly nothing could be more foolish, as well as ungrateful, than to give it under her hand that she owed so much to me, and then publickly do what she ought to have been ashamed to have done in many particulars, though she had never been obliged to me.
But, after all this, your Majesty says this fine lady is the very reverse of what I take her to be. To which I can only answer that she is the reverse of what I took her to be, or I had certainly never trusted her; and I do not at all question but when her master Harley has tutored her a little longer, if I do not die very soon, your Majesty and I shall come to agree in our opinion of her, whatever we may do in other matters.
Though I cannot help congratulating your Majesty upon this occasion, and feeling a secret pride myself, that, as to the politics, we seem to be more of a mind already than I thought had been possible, since you have now taken into your service all the very same persons that, for your own ease and safety, I so long ago begged you to employ; so that we have no difference remaining now, that I know of, but about this most charming useful lady. And yet my only crime, at least that you are pleased to tell me of, is that I think you have an intimacy with her. Therefore, to shew that I am not singular in that opinion, I will transcribe a few passages out of a book that is lately printed, which is a very unaccountable one, I must own.
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