Queen Victoria

by Bartley, Paula;

  Gladstone continued to find his sovereign obstinate and obstructive during his second term of office. He even judged that the Queen’s partisanship might bring the Crown into disrepute, making notes in his Cabinet meetings which contained ‘frequent references to the Queen’s intolerable and ill-judged attempts at interference’.13 Undoubtedly, Gladstone would have been even more troubled had he discovered that his sovereign was also in contact with the opposition. When he was alive, Victoria had confided to Disraeli that she always tried to avoid dealing with Gladstone and never wrote to him ‘except on formal official matters. . . I always look to you for ultimate help’.14 Part of the problem lay with the fact that Gladstone remained impervious to the Queen’s feminine guile and ‘never gave in to her ways. . . certainly did not comply with her wishes as they have been complied with in the last 6 years’.15 In addition, Gladstone’s second premiership was dogged by controversy: the Bradlaugh affair, the extension of the franchise, the Irish question and problems in Afghanistan, Egypt and the Sudan. The Queen disagreed with Gladstone’s approach to every one of these matters.

  On 29 April 1880 the new parliament met for the first time. Each MP swears a religious oath of allegiance to the Queen before taking his seat in the House of Commons but Charles Bradlaugh, well known for his Republicanism and radical ideas, wanted to affirm rather than take the oath. He was not allowed to do so. Victoria was happy at this outcome since she thought that Bradlaugh was a ‘horrible, immoral Atheist’.16 Bradlaugh was duly ousted from his seat in the House of Commons and a by-election took place in his constituency. His Northampton electorate were annoyed at the removal of their elected representative and returned Bradlaugh as its MP – in June 1880, July 1881, August 1881, February 1882 and also in 1884. Each time Bradlaugh refused to take the oath, each time he was forbidden to take his seat and each time he was re-elected. There were frequent skirmishes between Bradlaugh and the police officers who tried to prevent him from taking his seat. The Queen, who disliked radicals, and disliked none more so than Charles Bradlaugh, spoke of how ‘there was a most frightful scene this evening, in the Hse of C on Mr Bradlaugh trying to force his way in, and being ejected. Much violence was displayed, and Mr Bradlaugh got his clothes torn!’17 On one occasion Bradlaugh was forced to spend the night in a prison cell under Big Ben. In 1886, after the reports of two select committees and four re-elections, Bradlaugh was eventually allowed into parliament to represent his constituency. Democracy, after a four-year battle, had won the day but Queen Victoria predictably was not amused.

  At this time Gladstone dominated the House of Commons and his government put forward a number of reforms. The 1882 Married Women’s Property Act consolidated and amended the English, Welsh and Irish law relating to the property of married women by allowing married women to have the same rights over their property as single women. The Queen, who by the virtue of her position had sole control over her property, made no comment. In 1883 the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act aimed to eliminate corruption in elections by making it a criminal offence to bribe voters. Once more, the Queen expressed little interest. However, encouraged by her eldest son, Bertie, she voiced her disquiet at the deplorable condition of housing in the towns. The Queen asked Gladstone to mitigate ‘this great and growing evil which threatens the prosperity of this country’. She wanted ‘to learn whether the Government contemplated the introduction of any measures. . . to the true state of affairs in these overcrowded, unhealthy and squalid abodes’.18 In March 1884 a Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Class was set up: and Bertie was on the commission. It was a hard-working commission which met 51 times, toured the slums and interviewed a range of public officials. It was left up to the next prime minister, Lord Salisbury – on 24 July 1885 – to introduce a Bill into parliament which granted local authorities the power to shut down substandard houses.

  Third Reform Act: 1884

  Gladstone and his Liberal government were keen to increase democracy further by extending the vote to men in rural areas. The Queen was against the idea because she disliked the increased power that a wider electorate would give the House of Commons. Not only did she complain that the present House of Commons was ‘allowed to dictate and arrogate to itself the power of the executive, disregarding both the House of Lords and the Crown’19 but – once again – she threatened to abdicate. The Conservatives, who feared an increase in Liberal votes if the franchise was extended, agreed with the Queen.

  On 29 February 1884, Gladstone introduced a Franchise Reform Bill to extend the household suffrage enjoyed by town dwellers to those living in the country. It would add about six million to the number of men who could vote. The Bill, however, did not run smoothly. ‘The Franchise Bill’, Victoria noted in her journal, ‘which I consider a misfortune, drags on in the House of Commons.’20 Eventually, in June, the Bill was passed. Not surprisingly, the Bill caused a renewal of difficulties between the Queen, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. In Victoria’s view, the Commons was gaining too much power at the expense of the House of Lords and the Crown; in Gladstone’s view, the Lords was undermining democracy. The Lords, which had been encouraged by both the Queen’s disapproval and the Conservative opposition in the Commons, refused to pass the Reform Bill unless one condition was met: the introduction at the same time of a Redistribution Bill. This was perhaps a fair request as the new Reform Act would make it necessary to redraw boundaries to make electoral districts more equal. Gladstone and his government agreed that a Redistribution Bill was needed but had no wish to be bullied by the Lords into this and refused. A political impasse ensued: many viewed it as the ‘Peers against the People’.

  The Queen’s sympathies lay with the Upper House. In her view, the House of Commons was only one out of three elements in the Constitution and should not send up Bills to the House of Lords to which the Lords could not agree. In response, Gladstone – who now nicknamed his sovereign ‘Her Infallibility’ – insisted that the House of Lords had been a ‘habitually formidable opponent to Liberal policy’.21 He later threatened the Queen with curtailing, and perhaps even abolishing, the House of Lords, telling her that the House of Lords was ‘purely Tory and out of harmony with the prevailing sense of the nation, and ought to be reformed’.22 Indeed, the more radical politicians spoke so strongly against the tendency of House of Lords to block Liberal reform that the Queen complained to ‘Mr Gladstone, that hardly a day passed, without some violent and contemptuous language against the Hse of Lords. . . . Mr Gladstone appeared to think there ought to be a Radical Hse of Lords. . . so that any Radical measure should pass. The monarchy would be utterly untenable, with no restraining balancing power left.’23

  It was a tense situation. Her eldest son, Bertie, considered the crisis so serious that any remedy would be justifiable to avert a conflict which would be ‘dangerous to both Party and Constitution’.24 Gladstone once again told the Queen that the House of Lords had, ‘especially during the last 30 years, been a formidable opponent of the Liberal policy and its tendency to separate from the People was becoming more marked’ and ‘only by great discretion and moderation in the use of wholly irresponsible power, could the Hse of Lords continue in possession of it.’25 Victoria was angered by Gladstone’s threats and wrote a draft letter to him insisting that ‘to threaten the House of Lords . . . is in fact to threaten the Monarchy itself. . . . she will not be the Sovereign of a Democratic Monarchy’.26 The letter was amended by her private secretary with this provocative paragraph removed.

  Finally, after protracted discussions and in order to avert a constitutional crisis, the Queen was persuaded to end the deadlock between the government, the opposition and the House of Lords. She wrote to both Gladstone and Salisbury suggesting that the leaders of the two parties meet together personally and privately to discuss the Reform issue.27 A secret meeting duly took place behind closed doors in the Carlton Club, not in parliament where the debate should properly have taken place.28 An agreement was reached: the
Conservatives in the Lords would pass the Reform Bill if the Liberals promised to put forward a Redistribution Bill after it was passed. Gladstone graciously wrote to the Queen thanking her ‘for that wise, gracious and steady exercise of influence. . . which has so powerfully contributed to bring about this accommodation and to avert a serious crisis of affairs’.29 The Queen relished the compliment, but was more pleased when another leading Liberal told her (more simply) that she should be ‘proud of the influence I had exercised in the settlement of this burning question’.30 Nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that the crisis could have been averted if the Queen had only withheld her views on parliamentary reform.

  Ireland: 1880–1885

  Once more, Ireland represented a blot on the political landscape. Queen Victoria faced the biggest threat to the composition of the United Kingdom whenever Gladstone became prime minister because he grew increasingly sympathetic to Home Rule. Naturally, Victoria disapproved of any disintegration of her country. However, in the eyes of the Irish, England was to blame for Ireland’s suffering. In the early 1880s Irish farmers faced a series of poor harvests, which, combined with a significant dip in agricultural prices, resulted in destitution and starvation for many. Large numbers of tenant farmers were unable to pay their rent: between 1879 and 1883, 14,600 tenant farmers were evicted from their property. Ireland was set to be the main political problem facing the Queen until the mid-1890s.

  In 1879 the Irish Land League was formed to protect tenants from eviction and to obtain rent reductions. Led by Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish MP and Home Ruler, the League channelled the anger of the poor and dispossessed into rent strikes, boycotts and violence against English property owners. The League hoped to make Ireland ungovernable and thus force England to grant Irish independence. In the Queen’s opinion, the Irish Land League had caused mischief and was to blame for ‘the crime, distress, murders &c’ and the refusal to pay rent.31 She resisted any attempt to separate Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.

  Tensions escalated further when Parnell proposed that land-agents who took over farms where someone had been evicted should be ostracised. One particular land-agent, Captain Boycott, who had evicted tenants for non-payment of rents, subsequently found himself without domestic servants or farm labourers. Shops refused to serve him. This system of ‘boycotting’ as it became known spread throughout Ireland. And violence continued. Victoria criticised the government in ‘allowing a state of affairs like the present in Ireland to GO ON. The law is openly defied, disobeyed, and such an example may spread to England. It MUST be put down.’32 The Queen was so agitated by Irish unrest that on Christmas Day she wrote to Forster, chief secretary for Ireland, insisting on the immediate suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland before any attempt at land reform took place.33

  The Liberal government was split as to what to do. Some wanted the rebels imprisoned whereas others felt the need to redress the agricultural injustices which prompted the rebellions. Queen Victoria thought it was more important to repress than redress and she ‘tried to impress upon Mr Gladstone very strongly, the necessity of not bringing land measures forward, until, a strong one was brought in to put down this dreadful state of affairs’.34 Forster, however, believed in a combination of repression and emancipation and brought in two Bills to address the problem: a Compensation for Disturbance Bill which reimbursed tenants who had been evicted and a Coercion Bill to enable the government to arrest people without trial who were ‘reasonably suspected’ of crimes. For the rest of his term in office, Gladstone was caught in a vortex of Irish violence which he tried to curb by a mixture of repression and reform. Queen Victoria, on the other hand, favoured crackdown.

  The Irish Compensation Bill was rejected by the House of Lords; the Coercion Act was passed. This Act suspended habeas corpus, thus enabling the authorities to arrest and imprison anyone it considered a threat. Shortly after, in April 1881, Gladstone attempted to remove the underlying injustices which led to rebellion by putting forward an Irish Land Act based on the three Fs: fair rents, fair sales and fixity of tenure. This Act provided Irish tenant farmers with greater security and fairer rents. Victoria approved of the principles of fairness but warned that it should not be done at the expense of the ‘innocent Landlord’ who needed the security of an adequate rental income. The Act did not quell unrest in Ireland and the Queen wrote to Gladstone ‘that greater efforts may be made to arrest the agitators. . . and to punish those who are intimidating and alarming the well affected inhabitants’.35

  The government’s solution to the continuing disturbances was to imprison the Land League’s leaders and outlaw the organisation. Charles Parnell and 13 of his followers were arrested and duly imprisoned in Dublin’s gaol. The Queen thought it a ‘very good thing’.36 However, rather than diminishing, the unrest escalated even more: secret societies terrorised Ireland, burning farms, destroying cattle and murdering land-agents. Victoria was told ‘the state of affairs is as bad as possible, and the insecurity of everything, dreadful. . . . In many parts, the people behave really like savages.’37 In the Queen’s opinion the need for strong measures was essential. She had not visited Ireland since 1861 and had no intention of visiting in the near future. This was a pity as the Queen, a symbol of constitutional order, might have quelled the unrest if only she had shown the slightest bit of affection for this part of her country.

  In the end the government decided to release Parnell. Queen Victoria ‘very reluctantly’38 agreed: she could not do otherwise, as her consent was merely a formality. The Queen feared that Parnell’s release would be a ‘triumph to Home Rule’ and was anxious that it might undermine the ‘maintenance of authority and respect of law and order’.39 At the same time the government eased the operation of the Coercion Act and helped tenants in arrears with their rents. In return for his release, Parnell promised to curb the violence against landowners and work with the Liberals to promote Home Rule constitutionally.

  Parnell’s assurances were futile. In May 1882 the new chief secretary, Mr Burke, and Lord Cavendish were murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Naturally, the Queen thought it ‘too terrible. . . . Everyone was horror struck. . . . How could Mr Gladstone and his violent radical advisors proceed with such a policy, which inevitably has led to all this?’40 The Queen held those who recommended the release of Parnell responsible and called on the government to ‘take such strong measures as may give her and the country security. . . that valuable lives will not be brutally murdered’.41 Gladstone was advised to ‘make no concessions to those whose actions, speeches and writings have produced the present state of affairs in Ireland’. Queen Victoria told him how much she regretted the ‘sudden and hurried release’ of the Irish prisoners and Gladstone was instructed to ‘protect her subjects from murder and outrage’.42 The Queen would never admit that the Irish rebels had legitimate grievances. In 1883 the murderers were caught, five were hanged and three sent to prison.

  A new, and even more repressive, Coercion Act was put forward on 11 May 1882, the same day as Lord Cavendish’s funeral. This authorised special judges, rather than juries, to hear serious crimes. It also gave increased powers to the police force. When the Queen heard of these measures, she told Gladstone that ‘she rejoices to hear that a vigorous measure’ was to be brought in.43 Not surprisingly, the Irish MPs opposed the Bill. The Queen stood firm, telling her government to ‘resist any attempt to give way’44 while complaining to her private secretary about Gladstone’s ‘strangely indulgent’ attitude towards the Home Rulers.45 In July 1882 she was pleased when 18 Irish MPs were suspended because of their conduct in parliament when the Coercion Bill became law.46 Bloodshed in Ireland continued.

  In 1883 a wave of violence perpetrated by Irish protesters swept across Britain: in January a gas works was blown up in Glasgow and attempts were made to blow up an aqueduct in March. The Queen was ‘horrified to hear of an explosion’47 in Whitehall. There was an endeavour to blow up The Times offices; in April a nitrogly
cerine factory was discovered in Birmingham; in October two explosions took place in the London Underground. The Queen was thankful when on 9 April an emergency and stringent Explosives Bill was passed regarding the ‘dreadful explosions’.48 But the violence continued. In February there were explosions at Victoria Station and attempts were made at Paddington, Charing Cross and Ludgate Hill but failed; in May considerable damage was done to Scotland Yard and St James’s Square; in December an arch of London Bridge was damaged. There was a fear that Queen Victoria might be a target, therefore when she returned to London from Balmoral ‘the stations were kept quite clear, for prudence sake’.49

  Violence was endemic throughout Europe. In February 1881 Victoria had been shocked by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. The Queen heard of how the Tsar ‘was killed on the spot, from concussion of the brain, having been blown high up into the air, and everything destroyed and pulverised. . . he can never have felt anything, or breathed, after the explosion’.50 She later received reports of how the Tsar ‘was carried up in a carpet and the marks of blood were all over the staircase. The mattress, on the small camp bed which he drew his last breath, was absolutely saturated with blood!’51 Alexander III became the new tsar; his wife Maria was the Danish sister of Alexandra, Bertie’s wife, thus forging another link in the royal chain. Even so, Queen Victoria later confessed her ‘dislike of the fat Czar. I think him a Paul-like violent Asiatic full of hate, passion and tyranny.’52