eloquent words we shall end our article. Calumny, abuse, ... popular fury, exclusion from office, exclusion from 'Parliament:-We were ready to endure them all, rather than Irishmen should be less than British subjects. We never will suffer them to be more.'

No. CCCXLVI. will be published in April.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

APRIL, 1889.

No. CCCXLVI.

ART. I.-The Life of Sidney, Earl of Godolphin, K.G., Lord High Treasurer of England, 1702 to 1710. By the Hon. HUGH ELLIOT, M.P. London: 1888.

THAT

HAT portion of the reign of Anne, during which Lord Godolphin held the office of Lord High Treasurer of England, was one of the most remarkable periods in English history. It was distinguished by victory abroad and prosperity at home; it was illustrious from the genius of its writers and the capacity of its statesmen. Yet, by a singular mischance, its story has been never adequately related. Lord Macaulay's death interrupted his narrative on the threshold of this era. Mr. Lecky's admirable history disposes in a few sentences of the great military achievements, which his temperament and taste alike indispose him to tell. And though Lord Stanhope, Mr. Wyon, and Mr. Burton have all addressed themselves to the task, they have none of them succeeded in producing an account of Anne's reign which can be regarded as a classic. It thus happens that, while every debating society finds one of its favourite subjects for discussion in the rival glories of the reigns of Anne and Elizabeth, the speakers who prefer the reign of Anne can found their opinions on no history which has made a permanent impression on the world.

It is remarkable that the want which is experienced in considering the era has hitherto been felt in determining the character of the minister who presided throughout the greater portion of it over the destinies of the country. No statesman who has risen to equal eminence in England during the last three centuries has left so indistinct an

VOL. CLXIX. NO. CCCXLVI.

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impression as Godolphin on political history. Most people of the present day derive their chief knowledge of the history of England from the late Mr. Green's attractive pages, yet they might almost read through the short history without realising that such a man as Godolphin ever lived. Though he had held high and responsible office under Charles II., James II., and William III., his name is never mentioned by Mr. Green till 1698, when we are told that he became one of the leading members of a Tory administration. In the next twenty pages we learn incidentally that he was made Lord Treasurer in 1702; that he was dismissed from office in 1710; that he was a friend of Marlborough, who on one occasion advised him to burn some querulous letters,' and who on another occasion was induced by him to withdraw his resignation. Except that we may also infer that he secretly encouraged the Lords to resist a new religious test, we are told literally nothing of the man who stood at the helm of State when Blenheim was fought and Gibraltar was taken. Of what he did, of what he said, of what he thought, of what he was, we can gain no idea from a history which is as popular as it is in most respects excellent.*

Nor can Mr. Green be held responsible for this deficiency. Many statesmen leave autobiographies, journals, or at least papers behind them.

...

'Of Sidney Godolphin there are no such remains. Nor has the work which he was too indolent or too careless to perform for himself been performed by others. His fame inspired no contemporaneous writer to preserve, if he could do no more, those records of his career which must have been common during his life and for a short time after his death. . . . Thus the traces which [he] has left are few, faint, and uncertain. Unlike most of his great contemporaries, he has transmitted no literary work by which we can judge of the character and fibre of his mind. Such specches as he made are scarcely preserved. When he dropped into the grave a mighty silence fell upon his name and his past, and an obscurity which is almost impenetrable still defies the most painstaking inquiry into some of the most important matters of his life.'

This obscurity Mr. Hugh Elliot has now done his best to dispel. By examining the manuscripts in the British Museum and Public Record Office, by collecting scattered references to Godolphin in published works, he has pieced together the

In like manner the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica' bestows but a single column on the great minister, and the notice of him is not only brief but inaccurate, even in the date of his birth.

best account which has yet been published of a man who 'was undoubtedly great,' and who exercised a great influence on history. At the same time he has endeavoured to clear Godolphin's memory from some of the reproaches which have clung to it, and to claim for him a larger share of legislative and financial capacity than has usually been accorded to him. With much that he has written we find ourselves ready to concur. In the few cases in which we are disposed to dissent from his conclusions we gladly recognise the care and the moderation with which he has stated his own view. The vivacity of many of Mr. Elliot's descriptions, and his clear and crisp style, increase--we ought to add-the interest of his work.

Before we leave Mr. Elliot, however, we ought to notice one merit in his book which deserves to be acknowledged, and one defect which he can easily supply. The merit is the rare one, which many biographers will envy and which some will do well to imitate, of compressing the life of a great statesman into one volume of four hundred and twenty pages. The defect is the want of any index, and is the more serious because the book is also without any analytical table of contents. Both deficiencies might easily be supplied in a later edition.

Sidney Godolphin, sprung from a good and wealthy Cornish family, was born at Godolphin Hall, near Helston, in 1645. His father Francis, who fought for the king, but com'pounded with the Parliament,' was at an early age elected for St. Ives, and continued to sit in the House of Commons for various constituencies.' His mother Dorothy was a ' daughter of Sir Charles Berkeley of Yarlington, and sister of the future Lord Berkeley of Stratton.' A large family of sixteen children blessed the marriage of Francis Godolphin and Dorothy Berkeley. Sidney, the third son, though eventually, through the death of his elder brothers, the successor to the family estates, owed his christian name to his uncle, another Sidney Godolphin, a man of some repute in his day-with whom the future Lord Treasurer, Mr. Elliot tells us, is occasionally confounded.

Of Godolphin's youth little is known. Mr. Elliot rejects, apparently on good grounds, the story that he was educated at Oxford, and inclines to the belief that at a very early age he joined Charles II. on the Continent. It is, at any rate, as a page at Court, after the Restoration, that we are first able to make his acquaintance; and it is through the patronage which a Court affords that he rises to be Groom

of the Bedchamber with, in those days, the not inconsiderable income of 1,000l. a year.

Yet, though bred a page at Whitehall,' as Macaulay rhetorically put it, Godolphin was singularly free from the faults and vices of the gay throng that fluttered round the bright but dissolute King of England. Burnet tells us that he was the most silent and modest man that was perhaps 'ever bred in a court;' and the king himself paid him the striking compliment that he was 'never in the way, nor out of the way.' His steady conduct was probably promoted by the influence of the lady to whom he was married in 1675. Mistress Margaret Blague, the daughter of a staunch Royalist, was educated in Paris. At the Restoration she returned to England, and in 1661 became one of the ladies of the Court. Her elder sister, Henrietta, is described in De Grammont's pages as foolish, frivolous, and plain. The younger sister is not mentioned by the gay Frenchman. De Grammont required food for scandal, and . . . scandal ' about Miss Margaret Blague there was none.' But her merits have been preserved by a very different writer. Evelyn wrote her life; and she lives in his pages as the most ex'cellent and inestimable friend that ever lived. Never was Ia more virtuous and inviolable friendship; never a more religious, discreet, and admirable creature. . . . She was for wit, beauty, good nature, fidelity, discretion, and all accomplishments the most incomparable. She was the best wife, the best mistress, the best friend that ever 'husband had.' With such qualities Margaret Blague would have adorned any society. She shone with added lustre in the vicious atmosphere of Charles II.'s Court.

6

Such was the lady for whom Godolphin waited, according to Mr. Elliot, for at least five, but, if Evelyn be right, for nine, years, and who was only spared to him for another three. She presented him a few days before her death in 1678 with a boy, whose marriage twenty years afterwards was to have a decisive influence on his father's fortunes. But Godolphin's grief at the time left him no heart for the future. Struck with unspeakable affliction, [he] fell down as dead. So afflicted was [he] that the entire care of her funeral was committed to me' (Evelyn).

Though her body, by her own directions, was carried to Cornwall and buried among the Godolphins, her husband was too overwhelmed with grief to attend the funeral.

'Nor in the course of years was it destined, as it often is, that the grave should reunite those who have been separated for half a lifetime.