He executed it in the end of November, and his duchess followed him in the beginning of February. This was variously censured. Some pretended that it was the giving up and abandoning the concern of his country, and they represented it as the effect of fear, with too anxious a care to secure himself; others were glad that he was safe out of ill hands, whereby, if we should fall into the convulsions of a civil war, he would be able to assist the elector of Hanover, as being so entirely beloved and confided in by all our military men; whereas, if he had stayed in England, it was not to be doubted but, upon the least shadow of suspicion, he would have been immediately secured, whereas now he would be at liberty, being beyond sea, to act as there might be occasion for it. There were two suits begun against him—the one was for the two and a half per cent. that the foreign princes were content should be deducted for contingencies, of which an account was formerly given; the other was for arrears due to the builders of Blenheim House. The queen had given orders for building it with great magnificence: all the bargains with the workmen were made in her name, and by authority from her; and in the preambles of the acts of parliament that confirmed the grant of Woodstock to him and his heirs, it was said the queen built the house for him. Yet, now that the tradesmen were let run into arrears of thirty thousand pounds, the queen refused to pay any more, and set them upon suing the duke of Marlborough for it, though he had never contracted with any of them. Upon his going beyond sea, both these suits were stayed, which gave occasion to people to imagine that the ministry, being disturbed to see so much public respect put upon a man whom they had used so ill had set these prosecutions on foot only to render his stay in England uneasy to him."
Besides the hostility of the ministry, Marlborough owed to his fiery duchess, there is every reason to believe, the stoppage of the queen's payment of the workmen at Blenheim House. Marlborough House being completed just as the final rupture between the queen and the Marlboroughs took place, they quitted their apartments in St. James's; and when these apartments were examined, according to Cox, they appeared to have been sacked by an enemy. The locks were torn off the doors, the looking-glasses and pictures rent from their panels, and the marble slabs forced out; and the queen declared, in her anger, "that as the duchess of Marlborough had dilapidated her house at St. James's, she would not build her one;" she, therefore, stopped the payments to Blenheim.
But the causes which drove Marlborough from England were undoubtedly complicated. The tory party subjected him to repeated insults, and Oxford, aware of his correspondence with St. Germains, it is asserted by Dalrymple, had procured the original letter which he wrote to that court, betraying the expedition to Brest in 1694, by which it was defeated, and the life of general Talmadge sacrificed. If this was the case, the life of Marlborough was in Oxford's hands, though Marlborough must have been aware of Bolingbroke's correspondence with the same court, if not of the more cautious Oxford's. According to the same authority, however, a private meeting took place betwixt Oxford and Marlborough, at the house of Mr. Thomas Harley, to which Marlborough went in a sedan, and to the back-door; that this letter was shown to him, and that he quitted England immediately.
What if there should have been still further reasons for this expatriation? Marlborough, great general as he was, had all his life been a selfish and double-dealing man. He had made a princely fortune, and he wished to keep it under any change. He, therefore, continued to keep up a correspondence until the elector of Hanover and the pretender to the last, so that whichever came in he might stand well with him. He wrote to St. Germains, showing that though he had appeared to fight against the king of England, as he styled the pretender, it was not so. He had fought to reduce the power of Franco, which would be as much to the advantage of the king when he came to the throne, as it was to the present queen. He gave his advice to the pretender for his security and success. "The French king and his ministers," he says, "will sacrifice everything to their own views of peace. The earl of Oxford and his associates in office will probably insist upon the king's retiring to Italy; but he must never consent. He must neither yield to the French king, nor to the fallacious insinuations of the British ministry, on a point which must inevitably ruin his cause. To retire to Italy, by the living God, is the same thing as to stab himself to the heart. Let him take refuge in Germany, or in some country on this side of the Alps. He wants no security for his person; no one will touch a hair of his head. I perceive such a change in his favour, that I think it is impossible but that he must succeed. But when he shall succeed, let there be no retrospect towards the past. All that has been done since the Revolution must be confirmed." He added that queen Anne had no real aveision to her brother's interests, but that she must not be alarmed, as she was very timid.
Now, uneasy, humiliated, and unsafe at home, it is very obvious that, with these views, no place could be so likely to serve Marlborough's objects as an abode in the Netherlands. He was then in a country covered with his battle fields and his fame; he was most conveniently situated at Brussels or at Antwerp, where he finally located himself, for corresponding with and matching the movements of the rival claimants to the British throne, and would be ready to avail himself instantly of the ascendency of either. He did not return to England till Anne lay on her death-bed, nor to London till she was in her coffin.
At length it was announced in England that peace was signed with France at Utrecht, and it was laid before the council. Bolingbroke had made another journey to the continent to hasten the event, but it did not receive the adhesion of the emperor at last. Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy had signed, but the emperor, both as king of Austria and head of the empire, stood out, and he was to be allowed till the 1st of June to accept or finally reject participation in it. This conclusion had not been come to except after two years' negotiation, and the most obstinate resistance on the part of all the others except England. Even in the English cabinet it did not receive its ratification without some dissent. The lord Cholmondley refused to sign it, and was dismissed from his office of treasurer of the household.
