Anne attended more Cabinet meetings than any other British monarch, being present, on average, once a week for every year of her reign. They were generally held in whichever royal palace she happened to be resident, although sometimes when at Windsor she would drive to Hampton Court for Cabinet meetings, as it was nearer to London and hence more convenient for her ministers. Meetings mostly took place on Sunday evenings, though when necessary additional ones were held at other times of the week. It was, perhaps, a slightly surprising arrangement, considering the stern Sabbatarian regulations in force at the time, and a German visitor to England noted that Sunday was ‘nowhere more strictly kept’. For Anne, however, Sunday was far from being restful, being a day ‘not only of business but of devotion’.4
The Privy Council no longer played much part in government as most of its functions had devolved upon the much smaller Cabinet. The majority of great officers of State were automatically members of the Cabinet, such as the Lord Treasurer, Lord President of the Council, Lord Chancellor (or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal if no Chancellor had been appointed) and the Lord Privy Seal. The two Secretaries sat there, as did the Secretary for Scotland, when there was one. While in England, Marlborough attended in his capacity as Master of the Ordnance, and the Archbishop of Canterbury also had a place, although he was somewhat erratic in his attendance. Some of the Queen’s principal household officers were also granted Cabinet places, but this was not inevitable, being dependent on the individuals concerned. Thus the Queen’s first Lord Steward, the Duke of Devonshire, sat in Cabinet, but Anne stipulated that his successor could not expect to do the same.
The Cabinet now dealt with a huge variety of business. Almost the only aspect of government that did not concern it was finance, handled exclusively by the Treasury. Often the first item on the agenda was naval affairs, with Prince George’s council being called in to answer questions and ‘give the weekly account’. Domestic matters also featured, as, for example, when they heard in July 1704 a ‘report from the Justice of Peace in Westmorland against Mr Fleming for words against her Majesty … He is to be left out of the commission from these words’.5
Most of the Cabinet’s time was taken up with the conduct of the war and foreign affairs. Whereas William III had been very ‘much the master of foreign transactions’ during his reign, now ministers and Cabinet played a greater role. Before being presented to the Queen and Cabinet, foreign policy tended to be formulated in advance by an inner ring of ministers, with Marlborough, Godolphin, and Harley doing most of this work in the early years of the reign.6 Numerous letters from English diplomats abroad and commanders in the field were also submitted to Cabinet, though often the Queen had already been made aware of their contents by Godolphin or one of the Secretaries.
When Marlborough was overseas, his reports on the military situation and his dealings with the allies were often read aloud in Cabinet. Both Queen and Cabinet allowed him to operate with a good deal of freedom in the field and when conducting diplomacy. In July 1704, for example, after hearing a letter from Marlborough, the Cabinet decided to ‘leave the Duke at his liberty to accept the Emperor’s offer’. Three years later, Godolphin informed Harley that Anne wished to entrust Marlborough with the direction of military aid to Catalonia, although she would take it on herself to press other allied powers to send what was needful. The following April, when informed that it had not yet been agreed whether Imperial forces under Prince Eugene of Savoy should attack the French on the Moselle, or come to Flanders, Godolphin wrote to Marlborough, ‘As to the project you sent over, the Queen leaves it to you to agree to whatever you judge most for the advantage of the Common Cause’. However, in the summer of 1711, when Marlborough wanted to make arrangements to facilitate an early start to his next campaign, Godolphin’s successor as Lord Treasurer insisted that the plans were submitted to the Queen for approval. After they were explained to her by an officer sent over by Marlborough, she ‘asked certain questions as to the secrecy and how it be kept, having to be done in conjunction with the States, and if the making of the magazines would not declare the design’.7
A good deal of detailed war planning was carried out by Cabinet ministers when the Queen was not present. In her absence these men were given the collective name of ‘Lords of the Committee’, and their meetings usually took place at the Cockpit in Whitehall. It was understood, however, that their decisions could not be enacted unless subsequently ratified by Anne. Thus, in June 1711 Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth recorded that the Lords of the Committee had agreed ‘that I should write in the Queen’s name recommending the interest of the King of Prussia at the court of Barcelona, but that I should propose it tomorrow before the Queen at Kensington’. Usually the Queen and Cabinet accepted the advice of the Lords of the Committee. For example, Dartmouth’s minutes for a Cabinet meeting at Hampton Court in November 1710 read, ‘The Lords are of opinion that the supplies and recruits for the war in Spain should be sent for the future to Spain itself and not Portugal, to which the Queen agreed’. There were, however, exceptions. Sometimes letters drafted by the Lords of the Committee were amended in Cabinet, and the Queen’s consent to their recommendations could not be taken for granted. In September 1710 Dartmouth was ordered ‘to wait upon the Queen this afternoon and acquaint her the Lords at the Cockpit are of opinion that her Majesty should send down Sir J. Leake to command the fleet immediately … My Lord Berkeley should be mentioned to the Queen in case she should not approve of Sir J. Leake’s going’.8
In May 1702 the Prussian Resident in England declared ‘The will of the King [i.e. the sovereign] decides the resolutions of the [Cabinet] council here’. While William III was doubtless more masterful in Cabinet than his successor, the Queen’s opinion still mattered. Early in the reign it was reportedly she who insisted that a projected expedition to Cadiz should go ahead, as William III had envisaged, ‘although it appeared impracticable to her council’. In March 1707 the Cabinet minutes noted, ‘Mr Stepney’s letter [from The Hague] is read. The Queen not converted by the arguments used … to explain that’. Word got out about an argument in Cabinet in 1703, when the Earl of Nottingham opposed a proposal favoured by Anne, of sending military aid to rebels in southern France. ‘The Queen and Prince’s sentiments prevailed’, although in the end circumstances necessitated the plan’s abandonment. The fact that the Queen had decided views on war policy is also suggested by Marlborough’s statement in a parliamentary debate of January 1711, regarding an attack on Toulon that had taken place four years earlier. The Queen, he said, had strongly supported this ‘attempt on Toulon, which her Majesty from the beginning of the war had looked upon as one of the most effectual means to finish it’.9
Evaluating the Queen’s responsibility for policies pursued is not a simple matter, because politicians tended to emphasise or minimise her role as it suited them. In April 1707, the Queen’s forces in Spain suffered a disastrous defeat at Almanza. Four years later a Tory ministry sought to blame the setback on Anne’s Whig former Secretary of State, the Earl of Sunderland. However, when Sunderland was attacked in Parliament for having ordered her commander in Spain to go on the offensive, he insisted that the Queen had ‘entirely approved’ the course embarked on, and had made her opinions plain in letters sent to Spain. The idea that ‘the Queen was to answer for everything’ incensed the Earl of Rochester, who protested that, ‘according to the fundamental constitution … the ministers are accountable for all’.10 The Tory-dominated Parliament duly voted that Sunderland and his Whig ministerial colleagues were responsible for the Almanza fiasco.
It was not just in Cabinet that the Queen considered matters relating to the war. At their frequent meetings alone with her, the Secretaries of State would summarise despatches received from diplomats and high ranking soldiers, and take down directives from her. Godolphin, too, passed on communications he received, and not all that she learned in this way was shared with the Cabinet. For example, when Marlborough was planning his march to the
Danube in 1704 he repeatedly cautioned Godolphin ‘What I now write I beg may be known to nobody but her Majesty and the Prince’. The Cabinet were also kept in ignorance of a projected expedition to capture Quebec until the Queen saw fit to enlighten them in March 1711.11
In September 1706 an expedition to Spain under the command of Lord Rivers was on the point of embarkation. Before sailing, Rivers wrote to Secretary Hedges, asking for clarification from Anne on various issues. On 14 September Godolphin informed Rivers that his letters would be shown to the Queen next day – but in the meantime he advised Rivers not to let the King of Portugal know where the expedition was headed. He nevertheless ended circumspectly, ‘These are only my own notions, you will receive the Queen’s directions upon the subjects of your letters after tomorrow night, from the Secretaries of State’.12
The following day, after his letters had been duly ‘laid before her Majesty’, Robert Harley – by that point a Secretary of State – wrote to Rivers, ‘This is what I have received in command from her Majesty to signify to your Lordship’. Besides the matter of his dealings with the King of Portugal (on which Anne took the same view as Godolphin), Rivers wanted advice on how best to preserve discipline, on which Harley assured him that ‘the Queen is extremely pleased with the remarks you make on it’. He also wished to be instructed how he was to pay for carriage, food and artillery, and how to set about obtaining forage, and arrange for payment of the troops. The Queen’s answers on all these points were sent to him.13
Not long after this, Rivers requested guidance about whether he could grant the Spaniards freedom of navigation, saying he would ‘be very cautious in doing it without her Majesty’s directions therein’. No definitive answer was sent until after the Queen had returned from Newmarket and reviewed the matter in Cabinet. Three months later Rivers wrote home that he needed more horses for next year’s campaign. He suggested obtaining them from Italy, ‘but of this her Majesty is the best judge whether it be feasible or no’. Clearly he did not mean this literally, but instead expected to receive instructions from the Queen and her ministers, who had indeed discussed this very question days earlier in Cabinet.14
While it would of course be absurd to suggest that Anne was the lynchpin of Britain’s struggle against France in the War of Spanish Succession, equally it would be wrong to suppose that it was conducted without reference to her. Far from leaving its planning and direction wholly in the hands of men who served her, she involved herself in such matters to a greater degree than is sometimes imagined. It is true that she was never called upon to make decisions unaided, but considerations relating to the war effort demanded much attention from her, and added to the burdens she faced as a working monarch.
In the early years of the reign Godolphin and Marlborough exercised considerable influence over diplomatic appointments and policy. Even when overseas, Marlborough had no doubt that he would always be consulted before important decisions on foreign relations were taken. In September 1702 he declared to Heinsius, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, ‘I believe the treaty with Denmark is very far from being near a conclusion … I dare assure you that the Queen will never do anything of this consequence without having first my opinion’. Within a few years, one ambassadorial secretary formed the impression that in his dealings with foreign powers, Godolphin was taking too much upon himself. In August 1707 this man was shocked when Godolphin asked the British ambassador to Venice to find out if the Venetians were prepared to join the Grand Alliance, even though orders ‘of that great moment’ should not have been sent unless ‘signed at top and bottom by her Majesty’. Such irregularities, the ambassador’s secretary implied, had become habitual with Godolphin. Yet though there clearly were occasions when the Queen was bypassed, her role in maintaining relations with foreign powers was far from negligible. Having been persuaded with great difficulty in 1705 to agree that the Earl of Sunderland should be sent as ambassador to Vienna, she exerted herself to ensure that he carried out his mission in conformity with her own wishes. She summoned her Secretary of State to Windsor so he could ‘take her directions … for anything … to be added’ to Sunderland’s instructions prior to departure. In the later years of her reign, her correspondence with her Lord Treasurer abounds with suggestions regarding diplomatic appointments, showing she took a keen interest in such matters. The fact that on one occasion her primary concern was that the proposed emissary was not a nobleman has been taken as demonstrating her essential shallowness of mind, but in the past there had been complaints about the lowly rank of Britain’s representatives, and certainly Louis XIV would have understood her priorities.15
The Queen’s letters to foreign princes or allied heads of state were usually drafted by Godolphin or one of the Secretaries, but when copying them out in her own hand she amended them as she considered appropriate. The majority of her dealings with foreign ambassadors consisted of formal audiences where they presented their credentials or took their leave when going home, but occasionally she was required to have more meaningful discussions which took place in private. According to the Duchess of Marlborough, performing such a task was beyond the Queen’s abilities. Sarah claimed that because Anne knew herself to be incapable of impromptu exchanges, she would ask her advisers to ‘make … speeches’ for her to deliver, ‘getting them by heart’ before embarking on a conversation. ‘In weightier matters she never spoke but in a road, and had a certain knack of sticking to what had been dictated to her’, Sarah asserted, maintaining that the Queen was left utterly at a loss if things did not go as scripted. Should ‘you happen to speak of a thing that she has not had her lesson upon’, so the Duchess said, the Queen was reduced to mumbling incoherently, and there were allegedly ‘many occasions’ when, not knowing what to say, Anne would ‘move only her lips and make as if she said something when in truth no words were uttered’. Clearly it was true that before important meetings with foreign envoys Anne did obtain guidelines from her ministers on how to proceed. After seeing the States General’s representative, Paul Buys, in October 1711 with regard to commencing peace negotiations with France, the Queen informed her Treasurer, Lord Oxford, ‘I answered him in those words you proposed’. Yet it was hardly a sign of stupidity to be well-briefed and prepared for such encounters, and Buys was impressed by the way she handled herself on this occasion.16 Despite Sarah’s strictures, there is nothing to suggest that during such meetings with foreign ministers, she did not acquit herself satisfactorily if something was put to her that had not been anticipated.
Unlike her predecessor, who had regularly attended Treasury meetings when in England, Anne was not equipped to be her own finance minister. Nevertheless, early in her reign she did sometimes go to the Treasury when applications for payment and petitions from private individuals were under consideration. The Duchess of Marlborough mocked the Queen for deluding herself that ‘her presence there was so useful as to make her sit with them as she did at first some hours in a day’, and Anne herself concluded after a time that it was more sensible to leave all such matters in Godolphin’s hands. However, after the Treasury was put in commission in the summer of 1710, she took to attending meetings once more, being concerned at the parlous state of the national finances. She begged the board to be ‘good husbands for the public in the first place and for her Civil List in the second place and that they did endeavour to get her out of debt (especially to her poor servants) as fast as they possibly can’. As a result, measures were taken to reform the way figures for Civil List expenditure were compiled but, after this minor achievement, Anne absented herself from Treasury meetings for the last four years of her reign.17
The Queen took great care in the exercise of her royal prerogative of mercy. She had the right to pardon those sentenced to death, and to help her make the correct decisions the judges were required to ‘attend [on her] and give an account of their circuits’ when they had completed their tours of assize. They were also sometimes called upon to provide her with written information. Three
weeks after Anne’s accession, Judge Hatsell was asked to furnish details regarding the case of Philip Devon, condemned to death at the last Surrey Assizes. Having learned that Devon was aged only seventeen, and had previously been a good servant, Secretary Hedges instructed Judge Hatsell to describe ‘how the fact appeared to you on the trial, that the Queen may consider the question of pardon’. Four months later the High Sheriff of Wiltshire was ordered to defer the execution of William Hull until the judges had returned to London and reported whether, as the Queen had been led to understand, he was deserving of mercy.18
The Queen was often prompted to intervene after receiving petitions from the families of condemned persons, who represented their plight in the most harrowing terms. In March 1702 Anne asked for more information about John Banfill, a young man reportedly convicted on slender evidence, and whose wife and small children ‘must perish’ if his execution went ahead. On another occasion, the Queen told Hedges that a petition on behalf of a married man with six children ‘makes me think it a case of compassion’, and she asked him to make the necessary enquiries. Evidently it was felt in some quarters that Anne was too soft-hearted, for at one point she wrote to Hedges, ‘I have been so often found fault with for interposing in the case of deserters that I am almost afraid to do it; but the enclosed paper seems to me so moving that I can’t help sending it to you’. Yet if desertion was held to merit severe punishment, the necessity to keep the forces manned offered a lifeline to some offenders, who obtained mercy by promising to enlist in the army or navy if their lives were spared.19
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 31