A History of England, Period III. Constitutional MonarchyBright, J. Franck (James Franck)
History
A History of England, Period III. Constitutional Monarchy
Bright, J. Franck (James Franck)
Great Britain -- History
Anne enabled him to secure her adhesion to his plans. She wrote friendly
and repentant letters to her father. With the army at his command, and
with the Protestant heiress inclined to favour his projects, Marlborough
would declare for James, and secure his return without the danger of
foreign invasion, without the shedding of a drop of blood. Such at least
was the story he told the Jacobites. Men who knew his character
mistrusted him. It was more likely, they thought, and this seems to have
been his real plan, that he would declare not for King James, but for
Princess Anne herself. He would thus become indirectly the ruler of
England, and as such the head of the European coalition, and the arbiter
of Europe.
[Sidenote: Marlborough is deprived of his offices. Jan. 10, 1692.]
[Sidenote: The Queen's quarrel with the Princess Anne.]
Luckily for William, even the Jacobites looked with suspicion on the
scheme; Bentinck received information of Marlborough's treachery. The
King, placed on his guard, stripped him of all his offices; and when
Anne, who knew well the reason of his disgrace, persisted in ignoring it
and in bringing the Duchess of Marlborough to Court, the spirit of the
Queen was roused, and a bitter quarrel broke out between the sisters.
The full details of the plot were not at the time known, and a false
plot, invented and brought to light by a wretched informer of the name
of Fuller, gave Marlborough an opportunity of ostentatiously clearing
his character. He was thus regarded as a martyr to the jealousy of
William, and to an unreasonable dislike of her sister on the part of the
Queen.
Although for the time the danger of Marlborough's treason seemed to have
been escaped, it was undoubtedly the knowledge of its existence, and of
the feeling prevalent among William's other ministers, that encouraged
James still to retain hopes of success in England.
[Sidenote: Massacre of Glencoe. Feb. 13.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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