3

Troubles, and-an Antidote

THE Comedy of Blenheim was at an end, but the last act of the Heralds' College farce was yet to be played. It had not been by chance that in the ceremony of degrading the Duke of Ormond, Clarenceux had performed the part of Garter. It was because, the last holder of the place having died, Anstis had been unable to step into it. He was in prison, on suspicion of complicity in the rebellion of '15. But when in 1718 he had cleared himself of the charge, Vanbrugh thought it worth while to fight the old battle over again with him, and spent many hours with the officials concerned, "settling the Windsor point, as to whether Anstis should be allowed to perform any part of Garter's duties". It all seemed to turn on a legal quibble. Vanbrugh urged that in a contest in the time of Charles II, the King had given up the right of nomination, but Anstis contended that Charles had merely waived the right. Waiving beat; so after the 20th April 1718 Vanbrugh had an unpleasant Tory fellow over his head, and one who had threatened to make all the heralds stink.

2

A few days later he had another disappointment. Sir Christopher Wren, now in the eighty-sixth year of his age, was summarily dismissed his post, through the intrigues of faction, and the dullness of the first sovereign of the house of Brunswick ".3 But instead of Vanbrugh getting the place, as he had every reason to expect after

1 Add. MSS. 33064: To Newcastle, f. 137. 3 Gent. Mag., April 1831.

2 D. N. B.

having been offered it in 1716, it was given to a man called Benson, who had "written a pamphlet about politicks", and was a very ignorant fellow'. Architecture may not have been his strong point, but he had the merit of being a confirmed Miltono-maniac. He spent his time in erecting monuments, striking coins, setting up busts, and procuring translations of Milton, until, thirsting for further achievements, he conceived a passion for the version of the Psalms by Arthur Johnston, a Scottish physician, and printed many fine editions of it.2 Vanbrugh's opinion of his new superiors may be clearly gathered from a postscript to a letter he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, which runs,

"I have writ to Lord Stanhope, to desire he'll speak to our new Earl Marshall, not to let Anstis put any tricks upon me; which he has already attempted in a very Benson-like manner. I have damned luck to have two such fellows get over me." 3

Altogether that was a terrible spring, in which one blow came huddling on another with scarce an interval, and the third of these was-Blenheim! If the comedy was over, it was to have an epilogue, one indeed, almost as long, and much more rancorous than the play itself. In the Easter Term of 1718 certain workmen at Blenheim, not having yet been paid the whole of the balance owed them by the Treasury, sued the Duke of Marlborough for the sum of seven thousand, three hundred and fourteen pounds, sixteen shillings, and fourpence, together with the interest from the year 1710, making in all some eight thousand pounds. Moreover, since Vanbrugh had signed the contracts as for the Duke, they bracketed his 'Hearne, 8th May 1718. 2 Dunciad, and Warburton's notes.

3 Add. MSS. 33064: Dec. 1718. 4 See Add. MSS. 19591: copies of contracts. They are signed by Vanbrugh in Marlborough's name.

name with his Grace's. Once more he was involved in a quarrel which was none of his. The Duke fought the case, not that it would have much inconvenienced him to pay the sum, but he considered the debt was not his; it was the late Queen's. The Court of Exchequer, however, decided against him, and when he appealed to the Lords, his appeal was rejected.1

But the Duchess, in whose hands the Duke's affairs virtually rested, was not to be so easily defeated. She forgot her old promise to Vanbrugh that she would always be endeavouring to be out of his debt, and tried to make him responsible for hers! The enraged architect, who considered that on the other hand it was the Duchess who owed him money, wrote thus of the affair to Tonson:

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I have the ... misfortune of losing (for I now see little hope of ever getting it) near £2,000 due to me for many years service, plague and trouble, at Blenheim, which that wicked woman of Marlborough is so far from paying me, that the Duke being sued by some of the workmen for work done there, she has tried to turn the debt due to them on to me, for which I think she ought to be hanged." 2

Her Grace's contention was that the work being charged for was unauthorized-she would not easily forget, or forgive, those walks at the Manor House-but Vanbrugh indignantly replied,

"I made no steps without the Duke's knowledge while he was well; and I made none without the Duchess's after he fell ill; and was so far, I thought, from being in her ill opinion, that even the last time I waited on her and my Lord Duke at Blenheim, she showed no sort of dissatisfaction at anything I had done.” 3

I

Coxe, III. cxvi.

3 Ward.

2 29th Nov. 1719: Gent. Mag. 1837, i.

No; but she had had up her sleeve that packet of twenty or thirty sides of paper to send to Brigadier Richards.

The most galling part of the affair for the Duchess was that the courts would not view the affair as she did, and refusing to see Vanbrugh as a monster, declined to saddle him with the debt. So to show the world that, as always, she was in the right, in 1721 she composed, and had privately printed, The Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh, of which she gave copies to Lord Chancellor Macclesfield to distribute as he pleased '.1 In it she developed the theme of the faultiness of the warrant, an idea the Lord Chancellor had given her, namely that" the manner in which my Lord Godolphin who was a better Treasurer than a lawyer, thought fit to put this matter, has occasioned all this difficulty "." Besides saying that Vanbrugh had not looked carefully enough into contracts, she declared he had tricked Godolphin into giving him the calamitous warrant, of which, until that moment, nobody had ever heard. The Duke, she swore, had known nothing about it, and Vanbrugh had taken devilish good care not to show it him. Finally she boldly taxed the creator of Blenheim with ingratitude. "And if at last ", she said, " the charge run into by Order of the Crown, must lie upon [the Duke]; yet the Infamy of it must lie upon another, who was perhaps the only architect in the world capable of building such a house, and the only friend in the world capable of contriving to lay the Debt upon one to whom he was so highly obliged."3 Her Grace was not strong in sense of humour.

Now it happened that while Atossa was scribbling her 1 Add. MSS. 9123: 28th April 1721.

2 Ibid. Not dated, simply June, but put among 1723/4 papers.

Case, quoted by Ward. I have so far been unable to obtain a copy of the case even at the British Museum.

I

Case at top speed, Vanbrugh was in more considered. manner preparing his Justification of what he Depos'd in the Duchess of Marlborough's late Tryall; the Duchess's, for he could not believe that this fiend's work was that of the poor, sick Duke, who, whatever his faults, was a gentleman. 'It was "thought fit ", he said,

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(by those who since his Grace's indisposition have taken upon them the conduct of his affairs) to try, if it might not be possible to make a short end with those people [the plaintiffs] by (Gallantly) turning the debt upon me; it was found necessary (and therefore resolved) to declare false what the late Lord Godolphin, has under his honest hand, in the plainest, fullest, and most express terms, declared to be true, viz...

And here follows the warrant in full.2

He went on to state what everybody knew, that the money was a gift from the Queen, and that only Marlborough could dispose of it-and then came the illuminating statement, yet he would neither sign any order for the issuing of money, nor have the method altered by which it was issued to him without account ". And he continued:

"If there be something odd in this, 'tis not from any inconsistencies of mine. What I have said to facts is true. But why his Grace did not call the money his, and yet was willing the Queen and my Lord Treasurer should go on in the same method of making it his—I hope I am not to account for . .

This was clever; intelligent people would 'smoke '. But it was obviously inadequate as a counterblast to the sort of thing the Duchess was saying about him, and luckily a copy of her pamphlet came into his hands before his own had gone to press. This was no occasion for

1 D. N. B. says 1718. Surely it must be later. The title was changed

to' Duke'.

2 See Appendix I.