Blood Royal: The Story of the Spencers and the Royals Page 5

  Already James was blaming his misfortunes on Sunderland, and before he left he wanted the pleasure of dismissing him in person. Fearing one final act of regal vengeance, Sunderland humbly begged his pardon.

  ‘My Lord, you have your pardon,’ the King answered. ‘Much good may it do you; I hope you will be more faithful to your next master than you have been to me.’

  Sunderland took his leave and hurried from the court. As he wrote later, ‘I thought I escaped well, expecting nothing less than the loss of my head … and I believe none about the court thought otherwise.’

  This was a crucial moment for the Spencers, with the fate of the family hanging in the balance. Had Sunderland indeed lost his head - as his enemies wanted and expected - and had Althorp and its lands been forfeit, the Spencers would have faced a very doubtful future. It was a future in which it is hard to imagine members of the family making their mark in society or as patrons of the arts, or pursuing any great political endeavour. Given such circumstances, it is most unlikely that three centuries later Diana Spencer would have married Charles Windsor.

  And so, if only for the sake of the distant future, it was important for Robert Sunderland to preserve his skin and continue his career. That he could do so now was due as much to luck as judgement, his chief asset being the most unappealing thing about him - the speed with which his arrogance had turned to abject terror in the face of danger. Had he tried to justify himself or save his honour, he would almost certainly have perished. Instead fear drove him back to Althorp, to seek the help of the only person who could save him now, his wife.

  She was still angered and ashamed at what she saw as his apostasy in changing his religion, but felt pity at the pathetic state that he was in. ‘My Lord, whatever his faults, poor man, they have all been to himself and not to others,’ she reflected; and being a religious woman, she was genuinely concerned for his soul. ‘Forget not my Lord in your prayers’, she ended a letter to John Evelyn, adding that, provided she could be assured of her husband’s reconversion, ‘I would with comfort live in any part of the world on very little.’ At the same time she sent packing the Catholic chaplain Sunderland had brought from London - and possibly saved Althorp from the threat of burning at the hands of the anti-papist local peasantry.

  If current gossip was correct, and she really was in love with Henry Sidney, that may have also played its part in Sunderland’s salvation. His uncle and his wife were certainly extremely close, and since Sidney was one of the very few Englishmen the aloof King William trusted, his discreet support became invaluable once Sunderland decided he must flee the country.

  When Louis XIV refused to grant him asylum Anne wrote to Sidney asking him to use his influence to get them into Holland. No one knows his answer, but someone must certainly have helped them to reach the Hook of Holland, nor could they have subsequently remained in Amsterdam without at least the tacit approval of King William. Later, when Sunderland was inadvertently imprisoned, it was Sidney’s intervention that secured his release. Funds arrived - almost certainly by courtesy of influential Uncle Henry - and the Sunderlands were soon enjoying ‘a very pretty and convenient house’ at Utrecht. Every Sunday morning Lord Sunderland and his wife were seen proceeding to the French Reformed Church in Utrecht following a footman carrying his lordship’s Bible.

  Shortly before leaving England the Sunderlands had had a further stroke of heavily disguised good fortune in the shape of the death in Paris of their drunken and delinquent son, Lord Robert Spencer. His behaviour had grown steadily more outrageous since Sir Stephen Fox had rejected him as his son-in-law, and when his father sent him on a mission to Genoa, Lord Robert got no further than Turin before debauchery and drink delayed him. From there he returned to Paris and died of his excesses.

  His mother mourned him as ‘the prettiest boy imaginable’ and his death must have been particularly hard on his parents, in addition to their other troubles. But had he survived it is difficult to see how Sunderland could possibly have prevented an heir like Robert Spencer from bringing total disaster upon the family. Luckily, his younger brother, Charles, was a very different proposition. A bookish, precociously clever boy, the new heir was no trouble to his parents, and they specially took up residence in Utrecht so that he could study at the university.

  Slowly the crisis in the house of Spencer lifted. Later in 1689 Lady Sunderland returned to Althorp to ensure that everything was still in order - which it was. While back at Utrecht her husband forgot that he had ever been a Catholic and reverted to whatever religion he believed in. It would soon be time for him to end his exile and resume his rudely interrupted political career in England.

  One of the Sunderland’s descendants, Winston Churchill, speaking of his own return to the Conservatives after deserting to the Liberals some years earlier, remarked that ‘rattling isn’t difficult … What takes real skill is to re-rat’ - and it was now that Sunderland ‘reratted’ with all the virtuosity of his wonderfully devious nature.

  With Dutch William and his wife Mary now established as joint sovereigns on the throne of England, they published an Act of Indemnity forgiving almost everyone who had been against them in the recent revolution. Sunderland was not included. Nor was he included when ex-King James, in exile outside Paris, extended his pardon to almost anyone who would now support him.

  The name of Sunderland was still anathema. So when King William wanted his advice, the royal yacht had to be surreptitiously despatched to Holland to collect him. It was some time before anyone realised that he was back in England. Rumours started. He had been sighted in Whitehall. He had attended the House of Lords. He had kissed hands with the King at St James’s. For most of the time he was in fact safely back at Althorp with his gardens and his pictures, only gradually emerging into a sort of twilit royal favour. Not until 1692 was he finally accepted as one of King William’s principal advisers, but even then he called himself ‘the minister behind the curtain’ - which more or less summed up his situation.

  Historians have argued over how he made this final come-back. Professor Plumb, who was fascinated by him, ascribed it to charm, and Professor Foxcroft, who hated him, to sorcery. Neither explanation is convincing. Sunderland would seem to have possessed the charm of a rattlesnake, and King William was not susceptible to magic.

  Curiously, for a man so congenitally disloyal, the answer lay partly in his undoubted loyalty to King William - if only because, as the Earl of Portland drily pointed out, ‘he must serve the King faithfully since his whole future depends on his success’. Also as Kenyon writes, ‘in their cold appraisal of men and things, their willingness to forsake principle for expediency, and their impatience with fools, William and Sunderland were not unalike. Sunderland’s brazen rudeness also impressed a man who had never had much time for flatterers’.

  But the true key to Sunderland’s return was simple. The King needed him. William was unacquainted with England, which he regarded chiefly as a useful ally in his war in the Netherlands against the French, and Sunderland was the most effective and experienced politician in the country, an unprejudiced adviser with a matchless skill at managing - and bribing politicians.

  In 1692 he publicly re-entered society by taking up his seat in the House of Lords. Given his notoriety, even for him this must have been a considerable ordeal. In spite of this, ‘his mask of sarcastic indifference saw him through, but at the cost of what little reputation he had left’. In fact he was probably past worrying what people said about him, and a year later came the crowning coup of his extraordinary career.

  In August 1693 an anonymous correspondent was writing to Lord Halifax: ‘The great news is about the meeting of the Great Men at Althorp, viz the Lords Shrewsbury, Godolphin and Marlborough and Messrs Russell, Wharton, etc. Every politician is making his own reflections about it.’ As well they might, for this so-called ‘Althorp Conference’ marks an important moment in English political history, which has also given Sunderland his place in the history of the En
glish constitution.

  Like all his predecessors, King William was suspicious of political cliques, and tried to assert his right to use any politician he pleased in a coalition government. But, smart as ever, Sunderland had made another private transformation by siding with the Whig majority, and finally convinced King William that the Tories were so tainted by Jacobite dealings with ‘the Kings across the Water’ that only Whig politicians could be trusted. By such arguments Sunderland persuaded William to accept the notion of definite party ministries, which foreshadowed the ultimate adoption of full-scale party government.

  But as far as Sunderland was concerned, his purpose in arranging the Althorp Conference was a personal show of strength to convince this impressive gathering of mainly Whig grandees that it was in their interests to support the King in Parliament. Not for nothing was Sunderland still the most persuasive man in politics, and after several days in which the great Whig lords savoured the Italianate charms of Althorp they reached an all-important understanding. In return for Whig support in the country and in Parliament, the King would respect the immortal principles of what was already being called the sacred ‘Whig Revolution’ of 1688.

  If it was odd to have the man who had been the hated chief minister of tyrannical King James now arguing the case for Whiggish solidarity, no one said so. For Sunderland had not invited these great men to his house empty-handed. In return for their support he was able to promise, on behalf of William, dukedoms for the great Whig families of Bedford, Devonshire, Clare, and Shrewsbury.

  If anyone deserved a dukedom it was Sunderland, but he was far too disreputable for honours, and had probably grown too worldly-wise to want them. But after the success of the Althorp Conference his true power steadily increased. In 1695 King William, on a pre-election tour, spent three whole days at Althorp, enjoying the conversation and the hunting. Later in the year John Evelyn found himself dining at the fine house in St James’s Square which was now the London residence of Lord Sunderland. Despite the rise of the latter’s fortunes it was still hard for Evelyn to find a good word to say for the man he called ‘the great royal favourite and underhand politician’, who was still ‘obnoxious to the people for having twice changed his religion’.

  Evelyn had put his finger on the problem which, despite Sunderland’s power, would finally defeat him. In 1697 King William thought the time had come for his chief minister to be ‘underhand’ no longer but to take his place in public at the centre of his government; so he appointed Sunderland Lord Chamberlain and one of the Lord Justices who governed England in his absence. Times might have changed since the Revolution, but there were still limits to what members of Parliament would accept. Appointing the Althorp Apostate to these two great offices of state overstepped them, and the uproar against Sunderland was more sustained and scurrilous than ever.

  In the old days he would probably have shrugged this off and angrily continued in his great position. But no longer. He was not quite sixty, but the stress of life had prematurely aged him, particularly the added recent strain of trying to prevent the murderous in-fighting among the Whigs in Parliament. When the Whig leaders, some of whose necks he had saved a year earlier, failed to defend him against the attacks of the opposition, Sunderland panicked, returned the Lord Chamberlain’s silver key to the King and, for the last time, took the road to Althorp.

  William tried hard to make him change his mind, and for several months refused his resignation; but Sunderland was adamant, and although continuing to advise the King ‘behind the curtain’ at times of crisis, his career in active politics was over.

  The truth was that, give or take the odd betrayal, Sunderland had served his country rather well - and Althorp and the Spencers even better. Had he been a man of honour he could never have achieved this. For he had lived through stormy times and, like the true gambler he was, had taken the most exaggerated risks, not only with his life and his career, but also with his house and the future of his family. Amazingly some of his gambles had paid off, and he had been a great survivor, having helped to govern England under three separate, very different monarchs. He had been wildly profligate, but with every twist and turn in his career he had advanced the Spencers’ interests and their expectations. Now as his life was ending he was placing everything in order.

  Sunderland, the one-time Catholic and protagonist of absolutist government, was backing the Protestant Whig aristocracy to run the country through constitutionalist, parliamentary means. It was a shrewd decision, for with his assistance the Whig grandees were entering into their inheritance. Distrustful of the crown, assured of their position following their revolution, and enthusiastic in encouraging trade and industry (unlike their continental counterparts) these great landowners were set to run the country for the greater part of the coming century and enormously enrich themselves and those around them in the process. Sunderland’s extravagance with his ill-gotten gains had prevented the Spencers from joining them in his lifetime; and his widow would have to sell still more of the depleted family estates to pay the most pressing debts. But like the great gambler he was, he had still to make one final wager which, by succeeding against the longest odds, would raise the Spencers far beyond their wildest dreams after he was dead.

  At Althorp the one task still requiring his attention was the marriage of his son and heir, Lord Charles Spencer. Two years earlier, acting for once according to family tradition, Sunderland had married Charles to Arabella Cavendish, heir to the wildly rich Earl of Newcastle. Being Sunderland, he didn’t lose out on the marriage, discreetly pocketing £20,000 of Arabella’s £50,000 dowry to pay off debts and improve Althorp. Charles raised no objections. For unlike his father he was the most uxorious of men, and was deeply happy in his marriage. When Arabella died, barely a year later, he was broken-hearted.

  But it was not in Sunderland’s nature to let sadness come between him and family advancement. Over the years he had developed an uneasy friendship with the handsome courtier and soldier he had first met at the court of Charles II - John Churchill, who was now the Earl of Marlborough. Simultaneously Anne Sunderland had befriended Marlborough’s fair-haired countess, Sarah, and the Sunderlands had recently decided that the Marlboroughs’ second daughter, fifteen-year-old Anne Churchill, would make the perfect wife for widowed Charles Spencer.

  It was an unexpected decision, for as a marriage this was not in the same financial league as Charles’s union with Arabella Cavendish. Anne was not an obvious heiress, having both an elder sister and a brother, young Lord Blandford, who would presumably inherit Marlborough’s money and possessions. Nor were the Churchills in a particularly strong position at the time. Marlborough was still emerging from prolonged royal disfavour, and not even Sunderland could have possibly foreseen the series of astounding victories which the great ‘Captain General’ was to win against the French a few years later - victories which would make him and Sarah the most famous - and possibly the richest - couple in the country.

  As it happened, the marriage was not easy to arrange. Charles, still grieving for one wife, was not anxious for another, and Marlborough had no wish to force his favourite daughter onto this mournful intellectual. So while Sunderland needed to convince Marlborough that his son would make an ideal son-in-law, who ‘would always do his lordship’s bidding’, Anne was busily persuading Sarah that he would make her daughter happy. Anne’s turned out to be the easier task, for Charles was susceptible, and on meeting Churchill’s daughter he fell as deeply in love with her as he ever had been with Arabella. His enthusiasm was contagious, and plans for the union of the Spencers and the Churchills now proceeded.

  In fact the marriage was to prove the richest gift that Sunderland bestowed upon his family - making it ironic that, after all the risks and near-disasters of his extraordinary career, the ‘Great Gamester’ would not live to see its outcome. But already Althorp was itself immeasurably enriched from his stewardship, and he was leaving everything in readiness for a calmer future.


  In the Long Gallery the Lelys were gleaming from the gilded frames he had had made for them many years before by craftsmen in Madrid. Le Notre’s gardens had reached maturity. The woods were full of game, and the deer were belling in the park. In the first month of the first year of a new and hopeful century, the wedding on which so much of the future of the Spencers would depend took place at Marlborough House: and to ensure that nothing could go wrong it was held in secret.

  Chapter 3

  The Great Inheritance

  Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland (1675-1722)

  Lord Marlborough’s fears for the happiness of his daughter Anne were quite unfounded. True, her husband, Charles Spencer, in contrast with his unlamented elder brother Robert, was not particularly attractive. His mother-in-law described him as ‘tall and of a large make’, with ‘no more genteelness than a porter’. His face was badly scarred from smallpox contracted as a child and, according to one contemporary, ‘his manners also were repelling and his disposition harsh’. But not, apparently, with Anne. Within the privacy of his family Charles Spencer was the most uxorious of men, and loved his young wife dearly. Pretty Anne was happy with her large ungainly husband, and within a year they had a son. They called him Robert, but whether in honour of Charles Spencer’s father or in memory of his brother is uncertain.

  Charles himself was essentially a private man and something of a scholar. Evelyn who knew him in his late teens had called him then ‘a youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned for his age, and ingenious’, and after his time at Utrecht, ‘studying the laws and religion of the Dutch’, he started to build himself a library on a considerable scale, buying early volumes of the classics and the whole of Sir Charles Scarborough’s famous mathematical collection.