Lady Cowper's Diaries August 1716
Audio footage of extracts from Lady Cowper's diary
Read by Caroline Churton
To listen to the audio clip, click play on the bar below the image on the right.
August 1716
My health not having permitted me to set down things as they have happen’d since the Kings going out of England to his return, & there being so many lyes going about now, it will not be amiss here to recollect as near as I can all the facts that have come within my knowledge that hereafter if my memory should fail me upon any one particular I may have recourse to the truth.
The King was no sooner gone, but the Prince (contrary to the expectation of every body) took a turn of being civil & kind to every body, & apply’d himself to be well with the Kings Ministers, & to understand the State of the Nation. My Lord Townsend flatter’d, & cring’d. The Duke of Roxbrough [Roxburgh] he expected to govern either by his wife or cousin but the first had been a good while out of favour, & his cousin was so farr from helping him that she showed the Prince a letter she had had from him, to influence him in the affair of the Duke of Argyll, & which shocked the Prince to that degree that he never showed him any favour from that time…
The Court in the mean while was lull’d asleep by the report of the Duke of Marlborough’s illness, who was thought to be now entirely uncapable of doing anything. People did not so much as remember the taste the Duchess had for government, & that having the Duke’s purse at her command, she could do that, which the Duke’s love to money would never permit him to do; & tis no wonder that Sunderland was so devoted to her, since he was so well paid for it, for since this illness she got the Duke to alter his will, & take every thing from my Lady Godolphin he could hinder her of, & leave the bulk of his estate to Sunderland & his children, (as I was told by one of their own creatures) besides now all the money was in her hands…
Lord Townsend…began his tricks against Lord Cowper. It was very plain he had insinuated many things to the Prince tho’ without effect. He violently pushed on the interest of Parker, whom he had stole [sic] from Lord Cowper, who had made him Chief Justice…Lord Townsend was the most a Politician that ever any man was. There was nothing so low & mean that he could not stoop to, when it was his interest…
About the middle of August Lord Sunderland begun his journey. He had been at Hampton Court to take leave, & in the gallery, the Princess & he had so loud a conversation that the Princess desired him to speak lower, for the people in the garden would here [sic]; to which he answer’d – let them hear, & the Princess added – well, if you have a mind they should, let them; but you shall walk next the window, for in the humour we are both, one of us must certainly jump out at window, & I’m resolved that it shan’t be me. One may easily guess by this sample, what the rest of the conversation was.
Add your comment about this page