Queen Victoria

by Bartley, Paula;

  In March 1894, now aged 84, Gladstone resigned after a political career of nearly 62 years. The Queen thought ‘his decision is not to be wondered at because he was growing blind and is already deaf’.24 When she met Gladstone to accept his resignation, the Queen thought that he ‘was looking very old and was very deaf. I made him sit down.’25 But she did not thank her aged prime minister for all his devoted service to her country. It would also have been courteous, and constitutionally proper, for the Queen to ask Gladstone’s advice over who should take his place as prime minister. The Queen did not. Rhodes James maintains that this was ‘a heartless, brutal snub which Gladstone felt keenly. It did not reflect well on the Queen.’26 Moreover, the Queen made no effort to disguise her unutterable relief at her former prime minister’s departure. Her loathing of Gladstone and his government’s policies had led her to make repeated attempts to destabilise the Liberal Party and its policies. Clearly such behaviour was detrimental to the idea of constitutional monarchy that had been evolving over the century. Gladstone did not leave lightly. In his final speech as prime minister – on 2 March 1894 – he criticised the tendency of House of Lords to reject Bills put forward by the House of Commons. The conflict between the two Houses, he threatened, was a problem which needed to be resolved. In the early twentieth century, further clashes between the Liberal government and the House of Lords convinced the Liberals that reform was vital. In 1911 the Parliament Act removed the ability of the House of Lords to veto money bills and gave the House of Commons the powers to overrule the House of Lords after three parliamentary sessions. In 1999 the Labour Party removed most of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

  When Gladstone died in May 1898, the Queen confided to Vicky, her eldest daughter, that Gladstone was not a ‘great Englishman’ as some thought. She complained that ‘he never tried to keep up the honour and prestige of Great Britain. He gave away the Transvaal, he abandoned Gordon, he destroyed the Irish church and tried to separate England from Ireland and to set class against class. The harm he did cannot easily be undone.’27 Queen Victoria’s ungraciousness was altogether unwarranted. In effect, Gladstone saved the Crown by trying to distance the Crown from politics while at the same time enhancing its moral and emotional appeal.28 In particular, in staging the thanksgiving for Bertie’s recovery, he had helped boost the popularity of the monarchy.

  Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery: March 1894–June 1895

  In March 1894 the Queen, neither seeking advice from her ministers nor conferring with Gladstone, sent for Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery, to offer him the premiership. She thought it important for her health that the ‘present political crisis should be over in time to allow her to start for Italy on 13th March’.29 Rosebery, a lifelong Liberal, was the youngest of her prime ministers, making it easy for the Queen to treat him like an ‘opinionated schoolboy’.30 It did not help that he inherited a divided party, a quarrelsome Cabinet and a government with no real policy. His short-lived tenure as prime minister was beset with difficulties: the House of Lords had just rejected the third Home Rule Bill and the Liberals only held office with the support of the Irish MPs. For the next 15 months, Rosebery led a Cabinet constantly under threat of collapse both because of its fractious and unruly members and because a newly confident House of Lords rejected or emasculated any Bill proposed by his Liberal government.

  Initially the Queen welcomed Rosebery, especially when he declared that Home Rule would have to wait until the English electorate as a whole gave it its support. As one historian has noted, ‘the Gladstonian Liberal party had endured years of strife, division and unpopularity because of its principled adherence to Home Rule’31 and Rosebery had jettisoned it all in a sentence or two. The Liberal Party and the Irish MPs were horrified; the Queen, however, was overjoyed. Rosebery was a strong Radical and political reformer and he was bound, sooner or later, to clash with his sovereign. The Queen continued to call herself a Liberal but essentially she was a reactionary Tory who would do her utmost to undermine any Liberal government if she disapproved of its policies. Furthermore, she appeared to reject utterly the changes in her constitutional role brought about by increasing democracy. By resisting the evolution of the British Constitution, she remained in a state of perpetual denial, sticking to the same view of monarchy and monarchical rights which had prevailed in her youth.

  Queen Victoria’s initial joy about the resignation of Gladstone and the appointment of someone more congenial quickly disappeared. Soon, differences of opinion between the monarch and her prime minister began to surface. On 15 February 1894 a French anarchist tried to bomb the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. A few days later the Queen heard about ‘a shocking anarchist Club in London, almost entirely composed of foreigners’ 32 and wrote to Rosebery protesting about ‘allowing these monstrous anarchists and assassins to live here and hatch their horrible plots in our country’.33 She wanted to expel them. At the time, Britain had a tradition of giving asylum to political refugees, thus the Queen was told that ‘it is too soon to exchange our present system for one which would be a departure from our ancient position as regards asylum’.34 For the moment, political refugees were safe; until 1906 no asylum seeker was expelled from Britain.

  One of the early clashes between the monarch and Rosebery occurred over the Liberals’ electoral promise to Disestablish, that is, to sever the links between the Scottish and Welsh Churches and the state. The Queen was ‘horrified’ that her role as Defender of the Faith was being undermined, and urged that it be taken out of the government programme. Her physician told Rosebery that he had ‘never seen Her Majesty more upset than she is tonight. I have just left her very much agitated indeed and I feel sorry for her as I am concerned about her.’35 But Rosebery stood firm and threatened to resign rather than change the government plans. In the end, the Queen, realising that she could not risk losing her government a mere couple of weeks after appointing it, agreed to a compromise: instead of ‘Bills for disestablishment’ which would have meant some action, the speech said, there would be ‘measures for dealing with ecclesiastical disestablishment’, which was more of a vague promise. The Church of Wales was eventually disestablished in 1920; the Church of Scotland in 1929.

  In addition, Queen Victoria objected when Rosebery brought in a budget which established death duties – these are taxes levied on an estate when the owner dies. Rosebery was told that it was ‘wrong in principle and will have such disastrous effects. Can it still be modified? The Queen is much alarmed and distressed about it.’36 However, Rosebery was adamant, informing his sovereign that it would be impossible to make any change in the Bill’s provisions, even though he ‘recognised that it would have a negative effect on the class to which he himself belongs. But believed it was logically just.’37 The Act was passed in August 1894. Cleary the Constitution was being modified by the practical power struggle between monarch and government.

  The biggest disagreement between Queen Victoria and Rosebery occurred over the fundamental question of who led the country: the elected House of Commons or the hereditary House of Lords. The failure of Home Rule and other Liberal measures in the House of Lords convinced Liberals that reform of the Upper House was essential if the government of the day was to represent the electorate. Victoria’s relationship with her prime minister deteriorated when Rosebery referred to the House of Lords as a permanent barrier against the Liberal Party and pronounced that the next election would be fought on the ‘great national danger’ of the House of Lords. Queen Victoria advised her prime minister to curb his radicalism:

  The House of Lords might possibly be improved, but it is part and parcel of the much vaunted and admired British Constitution and CANNOT be abolished. It is the ONLY REALLY independent House, for it is not bound as the House of Commons is . . . by their constituents. . . . The House of Lords is not merely there to do all the House of Commons wishes, but to act as a check (and the only one that is) to measures of the House of Co
mmons which of late, go far to upset many safeguards of the Constitution.38

  Queen Victoria may also have realised that if the Lords were abolished, then the other hereditary element in the constitution, the monarchy, might be next.

  Rosebery was not as easily intimidated as the Queen hoped. He reminded his sovereign that the House of Commons was a more representative chamber than the House of Lords – it was elected by six million voters – yet it was controlled by an unelected, unrepresentative and hereditary chamber. When the Conservative Party was in power, Rosebery claimed, the House of Lords was redundant as it simply passed ‘whatever the Conservative Government brings it from the House of Commons without question or dispute; but the moment a Liberal Government is formed, this harmless body assumes an active life, and its activity is entirely exercised in opposition to the Government’.39 Naturally the Queen did not agree. In her view the House of Lords represented the opinion of those who had the greatest stake in the country, namely land, commerce, employers, church men and an ‘independent opinion which the House of Commons alas! does not represent!’40 Queen Victoria disliked MPs being swayed by the electorate.

  In October 1894 Rosebery decided to inhibit the right of the Lords to ‘summarily mutilate and reject’ Bills put forward by the Commons. He notified the Queen that ‘the cry’ in the Liberal Party, vexed by constant blocking of its Bills, was for the abolition of the House of Lords. The Queen was warned that her prime minister would put the reform of the House of Lords before the country. Immediately the Queen wrote back voicing her concern that if the reform became law, the House of Lords would be ‘compelled to accept whatever passes through the Commons. . . This is tampering with our Constitution and where will it stop?’41

  On the same day, the Queen telegraphed the opposition leader, Lord Salisbury, urging him to help, stating that she ‘cannot let the Cabinet make such a proposal without ascertaining first whether the country would be in favour of it’.42 She also wrote to her son the Prince of Wales asking him to intervene – he sensibly declined. Queen Victoria was on dangerous constitutional grounds for it represented a serious breach of her political impartiality. It was the duty of the Queen to take advice from her ministers, not to consult others without the approval of her prime minister. The Queen seemed fully aware of the impropriety of her behaviour because she insisted that her discussions remain absolutely confidential.

  Lord Rosebery went ahead with his plans for reforming the House of Lords. He made a series of speeches to the electorate, telling his audiences that the next election would be fought on the question of the House of Lords. The Queen was furious. She criticised Rosebery’s speeches and demanded that he ‘gain her approval before speaking’.43 Rosebery remained unruffled and reminded the Queen that she had no right to sanction his political debates: it was unnecessary, he told her, for a minister to receive the approval of the sovereign before putting policy before a popular audience.44 He repeated his complaint that the House of Lords, rather than being an independent body, was a party organisation dominated by the Conservatives and that the ‘constitution cannot long stand the strain of a permanent control exercised by a Conservative branch of the legislature on all Liberal governments’. 45 The Queen, ‘bothered and troubled beyond measure by this House of Lords question’46 thought this disloyal. Fortunately for the Queen there seemed to be little public appetite for Lords reform, thus a serious constitutional crisis was averted. However, House of Lords reform continued to be a really vexatious issue for the British sovereign and the Liberal Party. Later, both Edward VIII and George V were reluctant to accept a diminution in the power of the Lords and it took two successive general elections before it was accepted that their Lordships’ powers should be watered down.

  Queen Victoria and Lord Rosebery worked better together over the question of army reform. The government wished to remove the Queen’s cousin the 76-year-old George, Duke of Cambridge, from his post as commander-in-chief of the British Army. Unfortunately, the aged George was reluctant to resign. He had been in the post for 39 years. He complained to Victoria that he was anxious to ‘do what is best for the Crown and to maintain the Office of Commander in Chief, so that it should never become Parliamentary. . . . What he wishes is not to be kicked out by these violent radicals, who have made such attacks on him’.47 Victoria acted as intermediary between the government and her cousin. The three – the Queen, her cousin and her prime minister – agreed that the Duke should leave in November 1895. However, the Duke grew obdurate and reneged on his commitment until threatened with dismissal. Even when he accepted the inevitable, he tried to delay his departure and demanded a pension of £2,000. His delaying tactics tested the patience of an already impatient Queen. The Cabinet refused to grant the pension and the mortified Duke retired to be replaced by General Wolseley. According to the Queen, Wolseley was not a success: Victoria had wanted her son Arthur to be given the post as commander-in-chief and was disappointed when he was turned down.

  Rhodes James argues that Rosebery’s ‘government drifted dismally towards inevitable disaster, its councils acrimonious, its leaders divided, its supporters dispirited or violently disillusioned, its stature at home and abroad visibly disintegrating’.48 On 21 June 1895 the Rosebery administration ended abruptly and unexpectedly over a debate on ammunition supplies. During the debate, the Conservative opposition criticised the Secretary of State for War for failing to ensure there were sufficient supplies of arms and demanded a reduction in his salary of £100. The opposition won by seven votes. The next day Rosebery travelled to Windsor to hand in his resignation. The Queen, who had warmed again to Rosebery, said she was very sorry to lose him. Rosebery replied that ‘to him personally it would be an immense relief. . . as the scenes in the Cabinet had been quite dreadful. His only regret was to leave me.’49 In Rosebery’s view there were ‘two pleasures in life. One is ideal, the other real. The ideal is when a man receives the seals of office from his Sovereign. The real pleasure is when he hands them back.’50

  A Conservative revival – Lord Salisbury: June 1895–1902

  In June 1895, the Queen sent for Salisbury again. He was to be Queen Victoria’s last prime minister, remaining in office after her death. As soon as Salisbury came into power he quickly dissolved parliament. In the July general election, the Conservatives won 350 seats and enjoyed a crushing majority of 152 seats over the Liberals’ 177 (Irish Nationalists won 82; Liberal Unionists 71). The less than impartial Queen was delighted. She agreed that it was an ‘important sign of the good sense of the country, which did not wish for violent changes, like Home Rule, and the violent attacks on the House of Lords’.51 When she met with Salisbury, they talked ‘on many subjects, including the wonderful majority’. 52 In 1895 the parties re-aligned when the Liberal Unionists, led by Joseph Chamberlain, joined with the Conservative Party. The Queen was satisfied with this outcome because she had worked covertly behind the scenes for this political repositioning to happen. Victory in the general election marked the beginning of a long period of Conservative Unionist rule.

  Salisbury’s record of domestic reform was not impressive. There were modifications in the administration of the Poor Law; a London Government Act (1899) which established 28 London boroughs; these were legal reforms concerning infant life protection, running of the prisons and money-lending; amendments to the Factory Acts; Bills to improve the working conditions of miners, cotton workers and shop assistants; and laws destined to improve working-class housing. The Queen hoped that something would be done ‘rendering education more practical for the working classes, who were being taught useless things’. She had earlier ‘pointed out the great danger of over education and the necessity for making the people feel and realise that to be labourers and house servants was as good and necessary, as being Clerks’.53

  The Diamond Jubilee

  On Sunday 20 June 1897 Queen Victoria, now aged 78, prepared to celebrate her sixtieth year on the throne: her Diamond Jubilee. Hers had been the longest
reign in British history. As ever, there was a substantial number of foreign royal representatives including the Grand Dukes and Duchesses from Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Hesse and Russia, the Prince and Princes of Bulgaria, Prince and Princess Charles of Denmark, the Crown Prince of Siam, the Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxemburg and the Prince of Persia.54 Nevertheless, this time there were no other sovereigns to witness the ceremony – the Queen refused to invite them because the exertion and expense of entertaining them would be too much for her. When Joseph Chamberlain suggested that representatives of the colonies should be invited instead, the Queen acquiesced, pleased that they would be cheaper to entertain and considerably less troublesome than kings, queens and emperors. As a consequence, the Jubilee became an extravagant celebration of Britain’s imperial triumphs and marked the zenith of national enthusiasm for empire.55 Certainly, there was a strong imperial tinge to the event as representatives – prime ministers, presidents, governors – from every colonised country came to attend this very special occasion. Most of the country was swept up in a patriotic fervour: the British seemed to love an excuse to party. Once again, flags, flowers, bunting and other decorations were put up on buildings to celebrate Queen Victoria’s reign. The Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London, was decorated sumptuously: the royal crown, flanked on each side by the letters V.R., took centre stage, a central pillar was adorned with a large royal standard surrounded by 25 national banners and wreaths; a shield of London was displayed; windows were swathed with crimson curtains and gold ornaments; and a banner with ‘God Bless our Queen’ written on it was prominently displayed.56 People were in a mood to celebrate: a public holiday was declared. Tons of fireworks – 3,000,000 coloured stars, 100,000 rockets, 100,000 Roman candles, 500 V.R.s, and 100 firework portraits of Queen Victoria – were ordered from one pyrotechnic firm alone.57 A few days before the ceremony the branches of trees just outside Buckingham Palace were lopped off and ‘cartloads of leafy limbs’ carried away so that people could see the Queen in her carriage. The trees were encircled with barbed wire to prevent people climbing them to get a better view.58