the king and the whigs which it had been the object of his assuming office to promote; for there is no proof of the assertion of the editor of the ‘Vernon Papers’ that in October Shrewsbury had become thoroughly disgusted with the conduct of the whig party, and influenced the king in the direction of tory changes (Letters illustrative of the Reign of William III, iii. 142 n.) On 28 Nov., in a parting interview with the king, he obtained his leave to go abroad. Travelling by Paris, where Louis XIV received him ‘tolerably civilly,’ he reached Montpellier. The following summer he spent at Geneva, and in November 1701 he settled at Rome (Correspondence, pp. 185–6).
In Rome Shrewsbury remained three years, refusing to listen to any suggestion of a return to England or to public life. It was from Rome that, in June 1701, he wrote the often-quoted letter to Somers, in which he expressed his wonder ‘how any man who has bread in England will be concerned with business of state. Had I a son, I would sooner bind him a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman’ ({sc|Lecky}}, History of England, i. 58; Stanhope, Reign of Queen Anne, p. 22, from Hardwicke Collection, ii. 440; cf. Correspondence, p. 633). On Queen Anne's accession he was pressed by Marlborough and Godolphin to accept the office of master of the horse, but, although flattered by the proposal, declined it without hesitation (ib. pp. 634–5). His stay at Rome was, however, shortened in consequence of rumours which had circulated in England of his having become a Roman catholic once more. Somers communicated this report to him, and he thought it necessary to contradict it in a letter, soon afterwards published, to William Talbot [q. v.], bishop of Oxford, in which he expressed his warm attachment to the church of England (ib. pp. 639–48). According to Collins, Shrewsbury while at Rome had not only refrained from attending a Roman catholic service, but had converted the Earl of Cardigan and his brother to protestantism.
In 1705 Shrewsbury proceeded via Venice to Augsburg, where on 25 Aug. he, to the disconcertment of his English friends, married Adelhida, daughter of the Marquis Palleotti of Bologna, who is said on the mother's side to have claimed descent from Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. She is stated to have abjured the faith of Rome before her marriage (Correspondence, p. 657). A cloud rests on her antecedents, possibly due to a prejudice from which she never contrived to escape; for she was certainly ignorant and flighty, and, according to insular notions, ill-bred, although Dartmouth may have gone too far in describing her as ‘the constant plague of’ her husband's ‘life, and the real cause of his death’ (note to Burnet, v. 453). In the latter half of Queen Anne's reign she played a conspicuous part in English society, provoking, however, much ridicule by a simplicity which seems to have been not wholly unassumed (see Wentworth Papers, pp. 213, 263), and some scandal by her Italian method of proclaiming her preferences (ib. p. 283). But her most signal social triumph dates from the beginning of the reign of George I, with whom she found so much favour that the town ill-naturedly said ‘she rivalled Madame Killmansack’ (ib. p. 439). To this period belongs the unflattering portrait of her in Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu's ‘Town Eclogue’ of ‘Roxana, or the Drawing Room’ (1715) (Letters and Works, ed. Wharncliffe, ii. 434):
So sunk her character, so lost her fame;
Scarce visited before your highness came.
After the marriage Shrewsbury travelled from Augsburg to Frankfort, where he had an interview with Marlborough; but notwithstanding the hopes of the latter, Shrewsbury declined to bind himself either before or after his return to England, which took place in January 1707. His proxy, however, was in Marlborough's hands (Correspondence, p. 660); and he was not disinclined in 1708 to accept the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland. Unfortunately the evidence of the family papers fails us from this period onwards; and in lieu of it little remains beyond Cowper's account of a statement made to him by Harley (Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, ch. lxxxix.). According to this, Marlborough asked and obtained the assistance of Shrewsbury's influence with Queen Anne against the overbearing whig junta; and when a reconciliation was effected between them and Marlborough, Shrewsbury, who had entered into an understanding with Harley and St. John, adhered to it. The probability seems to be that, after seeking to ingratiate himself with both factions (Wentworth Papers, p. 117), Shrewsbury, as usual timorous and sagacious at the same time, had been gradually gained over by the wiles of Harley, and became more and more estranged from the whigs while still remaining on friendly terms with Marlborough and Godolphin (cf. Burnet, v. 452). Thus he was really instrumental in bringing about the great political change of 1710. His vote in favour of Dr. Sacheverell (March) showed that he had at last definitively chosen his side, and shortly afterwards (April) the queen,
