It is, however, with Marlborough’s wife and not with himself that we are chiefly concerned, and with the stormy course of Anne’s future intercourse with her friend rather than the battles that were fought in her name. It is said that by the time she came to the throne her faithful affection to her lifelong companion had begun to be impaired, but the date of the first beginning of their severance will probably never be determined, nor its immediate cause. Miss Strickland professes to have ascertained that certain impatient words used by Sarah of Marlborough, which were overheard by the queen, were the occasion of the breach; but as there is no very satisfactory foundation for the story, and it is added that Anne kept her feelings undisclosed for long after, we may dismiss the legend as possible enough, but no more.
All the great hopes which the pair must have formed seemed likely to be fulfilled in the early part of Queen Anne’s reign. A very short time after her accession, Marlborough, who had at once entered upon the conduct of foreign affairs and the preparations for war, according to William’s appointment, received the garter which Anne and her husband had vainly asked for him in the previous reign; and when he returned from his first campaign, a dukedom was bestowed upon him, with many pretty expressions on Anne’s part.
Indeed, the queen’s gift of “writing pretty, affectionate letters,” which was the only thing, according to the duchess’s opinion of her expressed in later days, that she could do well, is still abundantly proved by the correspondence. Anne was as anxious as ever to serve and please her friend and favorite. She prays God, in her little note of congratulation after the siege of Bonn in 1703, to send Marlborough “safe home to his and my dear adored Mrs. Freeman,” with all the grace of perfect sympathy; for the great duke was as abject in his adoration of that imperious, bewitching, and triumphant Sarah as the queen herself. With the tenderest recollection of her friend’s whims, the queen gave her the rangership of Windsor Park (strange office for a woman to hold!), in which was included “a lodge in the great park,” which the duchess describes as “a very agreeable place to live in,” ... “remembering that when we used in former days to ride by it, I had often wished for such a place,” although it was necessary to turn out Portland, King William’s friend and favorite, in order to replace him by Lady Marlborough; no doubt, however, this summary displacement of the Dutchman added to the pleasure both of giving and receiving. Lady Marlborough had a multiplicity of other offices in addition to this,--such as those of mistress of the robes, groom of the stole, and keeper of the privy purse,--offices, however, which she had virtually held for years in the household of the princess. All these brought in a great deal of money, a matter to which she was never indifferent; and along with the dukedom, the queen bestowed upon Marlborough a pension of £5000 a year; so that the resources of the new ducal house were abundant. They would seem by their posts and perquisites alone to have had an income between them not far short of £60,000 a year, an enormous sum for those times, not to speak of less legitimate profits--presents from contractors, and percentages on the pay of the troops, which Marlborough took, as everybody did, as a matter of course, though it was afterward charged against him as if he had invented the custom. The queen also promised a little fortune to each of their daughters as they married--a promise certainly fulfilled in the case of Henrietta, who married the son of Godolphin, thus uniting the colleagues in the closest family bonds. Anne also offered a pension of £2000 a year to the duchess from the privy purse, a bounty declined at first, but of which afterward, in the final breaking up of their relations, Sarah was mean enough to demand the arrears, amounting to no less a sum than £18,000. Thus every kind of gift and favor was pressed upon the royal favorite in the early days of Anne’s reign.