Unfortunately the Princess was much less happy at the King’s choice of preceptor for her son. She and George had wanted the High Church Dean of Canterbury, Dr Hooper, but the King would not hear of him. Instead William wanted the position to go to Gilbert Burnet, the talkative Bishop of Salisbury, known for his Low Church tendencies. Anne was appalled by the prospect, but gave in after Marlborough and Godolphin told her it would not do to make a stand on this issue. She raged to Sarah ‘Though I submit to this brutal usage because my friends think it fit (whose judgements I shall ever prefer before my own) my heart is touched to that degree as is not to be expressed’.134
This was not the end of her tribulations. When William had decided that Gloucester should have a separate establishment, Parliament had voted £30,000 a year to pay for it. After hanging on to this money for some months, the King informed his sister-in-law that he would contribute only £15,000 a year towards Gloucester’s expenses. Furthermore he refused to advance anything at all towards the cost of equipping the separate quarters the child had been allocated at St James’s Palace, meaning that the Princess had to pay for it out of her own pocket.135
William did at least agree that Anne should be allowed to choose all other members of Gloucester’s household. ‘This message was so humane and of so different an air from anything the Princess had been used to that it gave her an extreme pleasure’. She had promised employments to various applicants when the King upset everything by saying, just before he departed on a visit to Holland, that he would send back from there a list of people whom he wanted appointed. When Marlborough reminded him that Anne had already awarded these places, and that her pregnancy meant ‘anything of trouble might do her prejudice’, William flew into a rage, shouting ‘she should not be Queen before her time’. In the end the matter was sorted out by Lord Albemarle, who prevailed on William to approve of most of the Princess’s appointments, but the episode nevertheless exposed the underlying ill feeling between William and his sister-in-law. One person reported that ‘this, and a commendation the King gave to the Prince of Wales in public, makes a world of odd stories about the town’.136
In October 1697 the Earl and Countess of Marlborough had started making arrangements to marry their eldest daughter Harriet to Lord Godolphin’s only son. The couple were quite affluent enough to provide for their daughter, but the Princess seized this opportunity to help them. ‘Knowing myself to be a poor speaker’ she wrote that she wanted to give Lady Harriet ‘something to keep one in her thoughts’, and that she hoped her ‘poor mite’ would be acceptable. In a later letter she clarified what she meant by this, explaining diffidently, ‘I am ashamed to say how little I can contribute … but … I hope dear Mrs Freeman will accept of £10,000, a poor offering from such a faithful heart as mine’. This was a stupendous sum, which the Princess could ill afford. After consulting with Godolphin, Sarah and her husband decided that they would only accept half the amount offered, albeit on the understanding that Anne would give another £5,000 to Harriet’s younger sister Anne Churchill when she married.137
The Princess’s gesture was all the more remarkable considering her perennial shortage of money. In late 1697 Sir Benjamin Bathurst was caught out by Sarah in ‘ill practices’ which verged upon the fraudulent. He had failed to invest Anne’s assets in a manner that would have protected her from the effects of a currency devaluation that took place in 1696, with the result that when he made up his accounts towards the end of 1697 her funds had depreciated by almost a third. If the Princess had accepted his figures she would have incurred a capital loss of about £20,000, but the vigilant Sarah stepped in and ‘got all that to be undone’.138
In Sarah’s opinion Sir Benjamin had ‘showed himself a great knave’ by his actions, but because of her former fondness for his wife, Anne did not want Sarah to take him to task. ‘Since there is nobody perfect but dear Mrs Freeman I must have patience with the rest of the world and look as much into all my affairs as I can’, the Princess told her serenely. The following year, however, Anne’s patience with Bathurst finally snapped. After noticing some discrepancies in her domestic accounts, the Princess summoned her cook and some other servants and discovered they had been inflating their expenses because Sir Benjamin had extorted money from them when they had taken up their jobs. Finding this ‘abominable’ the Princess called Bathurst before her, and was not appeased when he blustered that the servants had volunteered these sums of their own accord. ‘I told him he must excuse me [from] believing him in this, it was so unlikely a thing’, Anne reported to Sarah. Being in no doubt that ‘for all his solemn protestations … what he said was false’, the Princess informed Sir Benjamin that he would have to repay the money.139
At the end of June 1698, Anne calculated that she was four months pregnant, and resolved to look after herself with the utmost care. ‘She keeps her chamber religiously’ a foreign diplomat recorded. She eagerly tried remedies said to have helped women with similar histories of multiple miscarriage, taking powders recommended by the ambassadress of Sweden and spa waters that an English lady had found beneficial. She also abandoned all thought of taking her usual summer holiday in Windsor. As the weeks went by, hopes began to rise that these stringent measures would allow the Princess to ‘avoid those misfortunes that she is too subject to’.140
In early September however, when Anne was six months into her pregnancy, she became worried that she could no longer feel the child kicking. Since she also felt unwell, she was blooded, and initially it was thought that this had solved the problem, diagnosed as a passing attack of gout. Yet Anne remained fearful that something was wrong. ‘She fancies she feels the child stir, but wants the assurance of it’, the King’s Secretary of State reported. Drawing on past experience George became convinced that Anne’s child had died in the womb, and that she would be in great danger unless it expelled itself naturally. From that point of view it was arguably a mercy when, after a short labour, the Princess was delivered of a stillborn male child on 15 September. It was estimated that the baby had died eight to ten days previously but the cause remained a mystery. As the experienced diplomat Monsieur Bonet put it ‘A calamity of this kind, after so many precautions, creates fears that Madame la Princesse will not have children in future’.141
Although the Princess had been spared post-parturition complications this time, she was once again incapacitated by gout in January 1699. George too was now intermittently afflicted in the same way, suffering an attack himself the following April. Yet despite their increasing decrepitude, the couple were still intent on having more children. By the late summer this was once again in prospect, as Anne embarked on her seventeenth pregnancy.
Their relations with the King were now ostensibly polite, but with a strong undercurrent of mutual antipathy. When, in November 1699, ‘their royal highnesses … dined with his Majesty at Kensington’, after giving him a birthday ball at St James’s, to outsiders it seemed an agreeable occasion. In reality, the Prince and Princess were burning with resentment. George’s brother the King of Denmark had recently died, but when Anne had asked if they could attend the party in mourning, William had insisted they wore brightly coloured clothing.142
One long-standing grievance did at least appear on the brink of resolution by the end of 1699. At the opening of Parliament in November the King publicly admitted that the debt owed to Prince George for surrendering his lands in 1689 was still outstanding, and he asked the House to give the matter urgent consideration. A government minister admitted that the delay in bringing the debt to Parliament’s attention ‘partly proceeded from a coldness and misunderstanding that was for some time between the two courts’. In the Lords, Marlborough ‘bestirred himself’ to ensure that George was treated generously, but there was some grumbling that a debt secretly incurred by William was having to be borne by his subjects. At one point it was proposed that George should be repaid with Irish lands confiscated from Lady Orkney. ‘You may imagine how disgustful that will be to the
King!’ Secretary of State Vernon commented in panic, although doubtless Anne was delighted by the prospect. In the end other means were found to compensate the Prince. On 15 February 1700 it was resolved that a subsidy would be levied, whose proceeds would be ‘laid out in land’ for him. The following day Anne wrote a heartfelt letter to Sarah, explaining that she had wished to thank Marlborough for his kindness in settling George’s business, but had found herself unable to articulate the words. She therefore asked Sarah to convey her and George’s gratitude.143
However pleasing it was to have this matter resolved, Anne was hardly in a mood to celebrate. Despite her taking every care, her pregnancy had ended in the usual failure ‘within six weeks of her time’. On 25 January, nothing had appeared amiss when she had retired for the evening after playing cards. Between ten and eleven that night she was delivered of a stillborn male child, estimated to have been ‘dead in her a month’. She did not know that she would never be pregnant again. Whether this was due to pelvic inflammatory disease, very common at the time, or simply a natural decline in fertility now that she had reached the age of thirty-five, can only be speculated upon.144
Her health was appalling in other ways. At one point in 1700 her right hand became so painful that it was impossible for her to write, which Anne found doubly distressing as it prevented her communicating with Sarah. She wrote of being ‘in apprehensions of an ill night again’ on account of having ‘that sickness in my stomach by fits’, and assumed this was because ‘ye gout is not yet thrown out’. Stoically she told Sarah, ‘I hope in the next world I shall be at ease, but in this I find I must not expect it long together’.145
Matters were made worse because Anne was now seriously overweight. Numerous pregnancies had obviously played a part in ruining her figure, but it is clear that the Princess also had a hearty appetite. One source who describes her as ‘extremely fat and unwieldy’ suggests that her health would have been much better ‘if she had not eat so much … and not supped so much chocolate’. We know that as well as retaining two cooks, Anne employed a ‘confectioner’, and so her dinner table was loaded with ‘sweetmeats’ that while considered unsuitable for little Gloucester, should perhaps have also been resisted by his mother. In 1700 a diplomat reported ‘She is becoming so fat that she cannot take any exercise, and this, added to her appetite and diet, inspires fears in some people that she will not live long’.146 Her arthritis made it impossible for her to adopt a more active lifestyle, and this too contributed to her obesity. The only form of physical exertion she remained capable of was driving her chaise out hunting, and even this could only be done when she visited Windsor during the summer.
In July 1700 Anne and George went with their son to Windsor for their holidays and for the Duke of Gloucester’s eleventh birthday on 24 July, which saw great celebrations. The little boy’s health had caused less concern in recent years. Seeing him back in 1698, Lady Rachel Russell had pronounced ‘He improves every way very much’. He had not had a recurrence of his ague for a considerable time, and the most worrying complaint that had affected him of late had been a severe eye infection in 1696. Now that the child had come through so many problems, there was optimism about his future prospects. ‘We hoped the dangerous time was over’, his preceptor Gilbert Burnet recalled, as he professed himself delighted by his pupil’s progress in his studies. Once a quarter the young Prince was tested by the King’s ministers, and they were reportedly ‘amazed both at his knowledge and the good understanding that appeared in him’.147
So no one was particularly worried when Gloucester complained of feeling out of sorts on the evening of his birthday, for it was thought he had been tired by the festivities. Twenty-four hours later, he developed a severe headache, and by 26 July he was ‘hot and feverish’. When Dr Hannes came on the morning of Saturday 27 July the child had an alarmingly high temperature. After being blooded the little boy made a slight improvement, but that night his fever rose again and he had an attack of diarrhoea. He also developed a rash. Another physician, Dr William Gibbons, was called in, arriving in the early hours of Sunday morning, but when Gloucester deteriorated further Anne swallowed her pride and summoned Dr Radcliffe. He reached Windsor on Sunday evening, complaining he had been brought in too late. The doctors prescribed ‘cordial powders and cordial juleps to resist the malignity’ and ‘bled, blistered and cupped’ their patient. All this achieved was to make the child’s last hours more unpleasant. He got little rest thanks to their attentions, and passed Sunday night in ‘great sighings and dejections of spirits … Towards morning [he] complained very much of his blisters’.148
All this time Anne had not left her son’s bedside, attending on him ‘with great tenderness but with a grave composedness that amazed all who saw it’. Having been with him night and day, on Sunday evening she was so distressed by the spectacle of his ‘short broken sleeps and incoherent talk’ that she fainted. One report said she collapsed because one of the attending physicians (most likely Dr Radcliffe) ordered her from the sickroom. The doctor was subsequently much criticised for being so unfeeling.149
On Monday it was thought possible the child would recover, for at midday ‘his head was considerably better and his breathing freer’. Two more blisters were promptly applied, but not long afterwards there was a sudden deterioration, as the boy was ‘taken with a convulsing sort of breathing, a defect in swallowing and a total deprivation of all sense, which lasted about an hour’. He died towards one in the morning of Tuesday 30 July.150
For a time Dr Radcliffe had believed that Gloucester had caught smallpox, but in the end the physicians agreed that he had been killed by a ‘malignant fever’. This diagnosis is confirmed by his autopsy report, which revealed that his neck glands were severely swollen and ‘the almonds of the ear … had in them purulent matter’. After studying the evidence, a modern medical authority concluded the Duke died of acute bacterial infection of the throat with associated pneumonia in both lungs. The autopsy also makes plain, however, the extent he was affected by water on the brain, for four and a half ounces of ‘a limpid humour’ were taken out of the ‘first and second ventricles of the cerebrum’. This had not caused his death, but almost certainly would ultimately have had fatal consequences. At the time the College of Physicians stated the ‘entire medical faculty could not have cured him’ and that it was only surprising he had enjoyed such good health over the last few years.151
As was usual, the child’s parents did not attend his funeral. His body was taken to London by coach and laid in state for some days in the Palace of Westminster. On the night of 9 August his coffin was carried to Westminster Abbey through a lane of four hundred guards holding lighted torches. There he was interred in the Henry VII chapel alongside his dead siblings. Meanwhile, Anne and George remained at Windsor ‘overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his Highness’.152
‘The affliction their royal Highnesses are in is not to be expressed’ reported an apothecary who had been present when Gloucester died. It was noted that Anne ‘bore his death with a resignation and piety that were indeed very singular’, but in a life beset by sadness, this was the greatest tragedy of all. She was left physically prostrate, falling ill with a fever shortly afterwards, and remaining ‘much indisposed’ for some time. ‘This death has penetrated Madame la Princesse with the most acute pain, and in effect her loss could not be greater’, a diplomat commented on 2 August. The Marlboroughs had been absent when Gloucester had fallen ill but on learning of the crisis they had rushed to Windsor, arriving there on 29 July. However, not even Sarah could console her mistress. A fortnight after Gloucester had died it was reported,
one could not live in a more retired way than their highnesses since this severe blow. Entirely preoccupied by their misfortune, they admit nobody to see them apart from the Earl and Countess of Marlborough, and that only rarely. They pass most of the day together, shut up in a chamber, where they take turns to read a chapter of A Christian’s Defence Against the Fear of D
eath.
In the evenings Anne was carried in her chair to a neighbouring garden ‘to divert her melancholy thoughts’ but she remained plunged in a ‘sorrow … proportionate to its cause’.153
At the time of Gloucester’s death it had been thought the Princess was pregnant, but by 16 August it had become clear that this was not the case, making Anne’s grief all the sharper. Towards the end of August the Dean of Carlisle informed an acquaintance ‘The Prince now goes a-hunting, shooting and the like and I hope in a little time the Princess will use those diversions she used to do, and that her sorrow will abate in time, which as yet she cannot wholly overcome’. In late September physicians had to be summoned after she experienced fever and dizziness, ‘but her indisposition went soon off again, it proving only to be the vapours’. A week or so later she felt strong enough to pay a brief visit to the Marlboroughs at St Albans, but it was not until late November that she could face returning to London.154 From now on Anne saw herself as someone indelibly marked by suffering. Her letters to Sarah often ended with an allusion to her tragic history of bereavement, for she took to signing them ‘your poor unfortunate faithful Morley’.
King William was deeply upset by the death of his nephew, whom he had sincerely loved. He was in Holland when the news reached him, and shut himself away for two days out of grief. He sent his sister-in-law a gruff but poignant note, saying he saw no need to write at length to convey his ‘surprise and pain’. ‘It is so great a loss for me and all England that my heart is pierced by affliction’ he told her, before concluding that he would be pleased to demonstrate his friendship for her ‘on this and every other occasion’.155 When he returned to England in late October one of his first acts was to go to Windsor to offer his condolences in person.
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 23