Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

by Anne Somerset

  In April 1708 Lord Godolphin blamed George for inflaming Anne’s antipathy to the Whig party; but most people regarded him as a force for moderation. One Whig believed that his party would have fared worse at Anne’s accession had it not been for George, who was ‘the promoter of those healing and wholesome measures’ that kept a few Whigs in office. Another person who praised George because he prevented ‘the Queen from being beguiled to her dishonour by sycophants that were about her all the time of his life’, stated that ‘he kept whisperers off’. A leading dissenting clergyman remarked that the Prince ‘never appeared vigorous or active, but was singularly useful in keeping the Queen steady’.32

  Anne herself told Sarah that she found it valuable to discuss politics with her husband. Sarah – who had such a low opinion of George that she maintained that winning large sums of money off him at cards was ‘but a small recompense for the penance of keeping him company’ – simply dismissed the idea that the Prince could provide Anne with guidance. While being sure that ‘Your Majesty certainly does not determine things wholly upon your own’, she belittled George’s influence, observing, ‘though you were pleased to say once you consulted the Prince in your affairs, I can’t but think HRH is too reasonable to meddle so much … in things that it is impossible for one in his high station and way of living to be perfectly informed of’. In fact, Sarah was wrong to discount George’s opinions. He played a crucial part in the political crisis of February 1708 by convincing his wife that she must dismiss Robert Harley. One of his household officers believed he had been proved correct when he prophesied that the Whig politicians who criticised George’s handling of naval affairs ‘would find the loss of him’ once he was dead.33 Posthumously, indeed, the Prince’s judgement was cited approvingly by Sarah, who told Anne in 1710 that her late husband would have disapproved of the political course she was following.

  Anne’s Coronation took place on St George’s Day, 23 April, which curiously was the same date her father had been crowned seventeen years earlier. Because the Queen was still having difficulty walking, a low-backed chair of rich crimson velvet was fashioned to carry her from Westminster Hall to the Abbey. In the view of one observer, far from detracting from the splendour of the occasion, this merely gave it ‘the face of a triumph’. The Coronation procession was certainly impressive. Anne was preceded in state to the Abbey by the aldermen of London, Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, judges, Privy Councillors, peers, peeresses, and bishops. Then came the Queen on her chair, borne by four Yeomen of the Guard, flanked on both sides by the unmarried daughters of four earls, ‘richly dressed’. Under a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, the Queen wore a robe of gold tissue, and her six-yard-long train flowed over the back of her chair and was carried by the Master of the Robes and England’s highest ranking Duchess. Her head had been dressed with a hairpiece of ‘long locks and puffs’ supplied by her tirewoman Mrs Ducaila, and ‘diamonds mixed in the hair, which at the least motion brilled and flamed’. Atop it all she wore a crimson velvet cap, trimmed with ermine and diamonds.34

  The Queen left her chair at the door of the Abbey to participate in a ritual that, for one in her poor physical condition, can only have been arduous. First she was conducted to the altar, and then, after the litany and prayers, the Archbishop of York made what Sarah considered a ‘very dull and heavy’ sermon. When he had finished Anne ‘arose and returned thanks’ to the Archbishop, remaining standing while the question was put to the congregation, ‘Do you take this to be your sovereign to be over you?’ Once all present had roared out their assent, the Coronation oath was put to her, and ‘she distinctly answered each article’, promising to maintain all privileges of Church and State. She was then presented with the gold spurs and sword of State, masculine symbols of regality that had been offered to William alone during his and Mary’s Coronation. The ring signifying she was married to her kingdom was placed on her finger, and she was given the orb and sceptre. Having been anointed, a crown ‘vastly rich in diamonds’ was ‘fixed on the Queen’s head with huzzas and sound of drums, trumpet, and guns’. After taking the sacrament, the Queen sat enthroned to receive the homage of the bishops and peers, with Prince George at the forefront. She briefly retired to pray privately in King Edward’s chapel and then emerged, clad in a mantle of purple velvet and wearing another crown of State. At the door of the Abbey she again took her chair to be carried to Westminster Hall, bestowing ‘obliging looks and bows to all that saluted her and were spectators … in the Abbey and all the streets’. In Westminster Hall a Coronation banquet was held, with Prince George seated at his wife’s side, in defiance of strict protocol. It was eight-thirty at night by the time Anne was back at St James’s Palace, having left it nearly twelve hours earlier.35

  5

  These Fatal Distinctions of Whig and Tory

  With her Coronation behind her, Anne had to finalise her appointments to her ministry and all offices of State, a task considerably complicated by the bitter political rivalries that would characterise her reign. The Whig and Tory parties spawned during the Exclusion Crisis of Charles II’s reign, not only survived, but were in some respects more fiercely antagonistic than ever. In general, the Whigs were in favour of limiting the power of the Crown and exalting Parliament’s authority. They took the view that the monarch had to fulfil obligations to his people, and that, if he failed to do so, he broke an unwritten contract, justifying his subjects in withdrawing their allegiance. The Whigs were instinctively hostile to France – the centre of absolutism and Popery – and believed that toleration should be extended to all English Protestants, to present a united front against the menace of Catholicism. This attitude made them the natural allies of English dissenters. The Tories, in contrast, saw themselves as the upholders of the royal prerogative, and were uncomfortable at the idea that resistance to the sovereign could ever be permissible. As devoted adherents of the Anglican Church, they looked with suspicion on the dissenters, who were associated in Tory minds with the excesses and fanaticism of the Civil War and Commonwealth. The Tories had little fondness for the Low Church republic of Holland, the maritime and trading nation which was England’s natural commercial rival. This made the Tories less enthusiastic about defending the Dutch against France.

  In 1688 the rival parties had been temporarily united by a shared detestation of James II’s activities, but during the Convention Parliament of 1689 ‘the buried names of Whig and Tory were revived … and from thence dispersed through the nation’. The Tories were annoyed by the suggestion that James had forfeited his right to the throne by ‘breaking the original contract between king and people’. During heated discussions in the Commons, one Tory MP demanded the debate be ‘adjourned till the original contract be produced and laid upon the table for the members to peruse, that we may see whether his Majesty broke it or no’. To the annoyance of the Whigs, the Tories prevailed insofar as there was no mention of the contract in the final text of the Declaration of Rights. The Tories clung to the idea that James had abdicated, rather than been deposed, and therefore, since the Prince of Wales was an imposter, the crown devolved upon Anne by hereditary right alone. The Whigs, however, were becoming bolder about saying that James II and his son had been excluded on other grounds. One declared, ‘A right Whig lays no stress upon the illegitimacy of the Prince of Wales’, while John Dalrymple asserted, ‘To defend the Revolution upon a pretended supposititious birth is to affront it; it stands upon a much nobler foundation, the rights of human nature’.1

  Tories who favoured a regency in 1689, or who had wanted Mary to rule alone, had feared that disrupting the established order of succession would mean that monarchy had become elective, whereas they revered it as an institution based on hereditary right. Their reluctance to let William take the throne enabled the Whigs to depict them as hostile to the Revolution, and to suggest that in their hearts Tories were Jacobite.

  Tory ambivalence towards William’s rule was illustrated by the question of oaths. Ha
ving sworn allegiance to James, some Tories were bothered about disavowing their oath by taking a new one pledging loyalty to William. The dilemma was particularly acute for Anglican churchmen, who had been eloquent proponents of the doctrine that resistance to the monarch was inadmissible. Although the new oath of allegiance was worded deliberately vaguely to ease consciences, eight bishops and 400 clergymen declined to take it, as did some lay ‘non-jurors’. More problems arose in 1696, when a new oath was devised after a plot to assassinate William came to light. For the first time he was described in the text as the ‘lawful and rightful King’, which Tories had qualms about acknowledging. In the end almost all Tories managed to take the oath, but were unhappy about doing so.

  Just before William’s death there had been a new development. In response to Louis XIV’s proclaiming the Prince of Wales – known to some as the Pretender – to be King James III, another oath was made mandatory for all Parliamentarians, office holders, clergy, teachers, and lawyers. All were now required to swear that the Pretender ‘hath not any right or title whatsoever to the crown of this realm’. Such an explicit repudiation troubled Tory consciences and it was said that the High Church Earl of Nottingham, who had been William’s Secretary of State for some years, ‘shed tears’ when the Act passed. William had died before the measure came into effect, and those upset by it nourished hopes that Anne would understand that ‘the oath abjuration troubles many’, and would modify it to take account of their misgivings.2

  As King, William III had found himself ‘ground between the two parties as between two millstones’. Despite aspiring to have mixed ministries, he generally had to settle for administrations in which one party predominated, even if it was not able to monopolise office to the extent its members would have liked. In 1689 William accepted the wisdom of employing mainly Whigs on the grounds that they were the most committed supporters of the Revolution. However, their anti-monarchical tendencies made him wary, and their behaviour soon confirmed him in the view that ‘the Whigs have a natural sourness that makes them not to be lived with’.3

  At the end of 1689 William dissolved Parliament, intending to form a predominantly Tory administration after the election. His Whig Secretary of State, the Duke of Shrewsbury, protested, ‘I wish you could have established your [government] upon the moderate and honest principled men of both factions, but as there be a necessity of declaring’ for one or the other, the King should have retained the Whigs in power. Shrewsbury acknowledged the Tories to be ‘the properest instruments to carry the prerogative high, yet I fear they have so unreasonable a veneration for monarchy, as not altogether to approve the foundations yours is built upon’.4

  Ignoring Shrewsbury’s warnings, for the next three years William relied largely upon the Tories. By the end of that time he had grown disenchanted with them, not least because they showed insufficient commitment to fighting the French in alliance with Holland. In 1693 he therefore moved back towards the Whigs, but remained reluctant to become wholly dependent on one party, resenting Whig attempts to install their supporters in every office of note. He faced his greatest challenge when the Whigs attempted to impose upon him the radical Earl of Wharton as his Secretary of State. William’s refusal to employ him so annoyed his Whig ministers that henceforth they did not much exert themselves to implement policies favoured by the sovereign. It was understandable that the King believed ‘the public interest was lost in the private passions of party’.5

  When peace came in 1697, a split developed between Whig ministers and the rest of their party, so that in Parliament backbench Whigs often voted with the Tories. His ministers’ failure to prevent the passage of measures he disliked caused William to lose confidence in them, and in late 1700 he decided to bring the Tories back into government, in the hope that moderate Whigs would support them. One onlooker was hopeful that politics was on the verge of entering a new era, for ‘if this Parliament be of that healing disposition which all true patriots most heartily desire’ there would be progress ‘towards abolishing these fatal distinctions of Whig and Tory’.6

  Unfortunately various issues combined to crystallise party divisions. The issue of succession after the death of the Duke of Gloucester in 1700 saw William accept assurances from the Tories that they would settle the crown upon the Hanoverians, but although they duly did so, their manner of performing it betrayed a marked reluctance. When introducing the necessary legislation they first addressed themselves to reducing the power of a Hanoverian monarch. It was stipulated that in future a foreign ruler must not go overseas without Parliament’s permission or involve the country in war for the benefit of Hanover. King William clearly understood that this was intended as a criticism of his own behaviour. A distinguished Whig lawyer would later remark that while the Tories had not dared reject the Act of Settlement, their attempts ‘to clog it and indeed render it absurd’ by placing such restrictions on a future monarch made clear their ‘contempt and aversion’.7 Some Whigs suspected that a fair number of Tories would have liked to overturn the Act of Settlement altogether and make James Francis Edward Queen Anne’s heir.

  The death of Carlos II of Spain, and the subsequent imbalance of power in Europe, made foreign policy more divisive, aligning men along party lines. The Whigs were keen to counter what they perceived as a growing French menace, while the Tories were less concerned by the threat this posed to William’s Dutch homeland. They focused instead on starting impeachment proceedings against three former Whig ministers, Lords Somers, Orford, and Halifax, whom they blamed for endorsing the Spanish partition treaties drawn up by William without consulting Parliament. In June 1701 the case against Somers and the other Whig peers collapsed because of a procedural dispute between the Lords and Commons, but the defendants’ narrow escape created intense bitterness. One knowledgeable person observed, ‘This matter hath made a feud that I fear will not die’, while Secretary Vernon lamented to the Duke of Shrewsbury, ‘We are torn to pieces by parties and animosities. For my part I see no end to them’.8

  With Anne’s accession everyone assumed that the complexion of politics was bound to change, and some were optimistic that her reign would bring an end to traditional rivalries. In his Coronation sermon Archbishop Sharp expressed the hope that her subjects ‘would not for difference of opinion about the methods of public conduct, break out into parties or factions’. A diplomat who served the Dutch republic was confident that now that Anne was on the throne, ‘the animosities on one side and the other will be less violent’, and within days of her accession Sir Robert Southwell proclaimed ‘’tis already visible we shall have more union at home … and … the true interest of England will have preference to any other’.9 Unfortunately all three deluded themselves, for the reign of Queen Anne was the high water mark of vicious party politics.

  One reason for this was that there were numerous elections in consequence of the Triennial Act of 1694. Daniel Defoe believed that having elections every three years caused ‘irreparable mischief’ as it ‘sets us triennially together by the ears all over the nation’. Another political analyst agreed that the Act ‘served for no other end but to keep alive our animosities, which by the short intervals between elections had not time to cool’. Elections often proved turbulent. The 1705 contest in Coventry, for example, was marred by serious riots, and at Norwich in 1710 angry Tories ‘pelted [the Whig candidate] Mr Walpole with dirt and stones … spoiling his fine laced coat’. Public drunkenness was a feature, as candidates frequently bribed voters with alcohol. One miller remarked, ‘I am always drunk for a week at every election, and I won’t vote for the man who won’t make me drunk’. At election time the town of Weobley was transformed into a ‘liquid metropolis’ and candidates were left in no doubt that to win the seat, they must spare no expense ‘to set taps a’running’.10

  The electorate was larger than is sometimes thought. In boroughs there was a bewildering variety of rules regarding qualifications for the franchise, leading to great variation in the numb
er of those entitled to cast their vote. In the counties all possessors of freehold property yielding forty shillings a year had the vote, and inflation meant that more men of modest means passed this test. According to one calculation ten percent of the population were enfranchised, while another source estimates that one in four adult males had the vote.11 While some supported candidates at the behest of a local squire or magnate, many were floating voters, who considered the issues at each election and made their decisions accordingly.

  Newspapers whipped up political excitement. The Licensing Act that formerly regulated the press had lapsed in 1695, and now that it was not subject to such strict controls, journalism flourished. England’s first daily paper, The Daily Courant, was launched in March 1702. By 1712, 67,000 newspapers were sold each week, and numerous other political tracts appeared on an irregular basis. At election times, pamphlets came ‘thick as hail’.12 Not only did these publications help to shape opinion, but they made the populace better informed. Leaks to the press resulted in details being printed of treaties and negotiations, which even recently would have been kept from Parliament itself.

  Members of the House of Commons were mostly affiliated to parties, as were the majority of peers in the Upper House. After the 1710 election a list was compiled for the Elector of Hanover of all MPs returned. The Elector’s agents in England accompanied it with a breakdown of political loyalties, marking each name with a ‘W’ or a ‘T’ to indicate party allegiance. Very few individuals were marked with a ‘D’ for ‘doubtful’. Perhaps fifty or so placemen could be relied upon to vote for the government whatever the issue, but other office holders proved difficult to control. Some had been awarded their places for life, and even those with less job security tended to put party loyalty first and defy the ministry on the rare occasions when intense pressure was applied to make them vote as the government wished. Although relatively few division lists survive, those that do exist show that individuals voted with astonishing consistency along party lines.13