For much of the summer of 1706 Sarah was absent from court, and in July she even contemplated resigning her places. Instead, on 27 August she decided to make her thoughts known on the crisis caused by Anne’s refusal to dismiss Sir Charles Hedges. In the next fortnight Godolphin’s life became even more of ‘a burthen’ for, to add to his political difficulties, he had to try and calm the Queen’s anger with Sarah. He noted glumly on 18 September, ‘Since this hurly burly, I have never had one easy conversation [with Anne], but all coldness and constraint’.49
In her letter of 27 August the Duchess wrote that she had recently avoided seeing the Queen because doing so would inevitably lead to arguments about Anne’s insistence on retaining Sir Charles Hedges. Now, however, ‘I can’t resist saying that I wonder your Majesty should be so unwilling to part with a man that was never thought fit for his place’. Having insisted that her sole concern was that Godolphin was on the point of resignation, she ended grandiloquently, ‘Your security and the nation’s is my chief wish, and I beg of God Almighty … that Mr and Mrs Morley may see their errors as to this nation before it is too late’.50
Her letter infuriated the Queen, as she made clear to Godolphin when she next saw him. He duly passed this on to Sarah, who was not in the slightest bit penitent. Instead she penned another letter, opening provocatively, ‘Your Majesty’s great indifference and contempt in taking no notice of my last letter did not so much surprise me as to hear my Lord Treasurer say you had complained much of it’. Confident that her conduct was irreproachable, she asked the Queen to show her previous letter to Godolphin so that he could judge whether she was in any way at fault.51
When Anne saw Godolphin on 31 August, she handed it over for his inspection, and he clearly was alarmed by what he saw. However, he persuaded the Queen that Sarah had not meant to impugn Anne’s governance of her kingdom by writing ‘errors as to this nation’; instead, she had wanted to convey that Anne was acting misguidedly on the specific issue of the Secretary’s appointment, and the phrase should have been read as ‘errors as to this notion’. When he wrote to Sarah to explain all this, he hinted that the alternative wording could indeed be considered offensive, and made plain his regret that ‘that word “notion” was not so distinctly written but that one might as naturally read it “nation”’.52
Having accepted that Sarah had made a genuine slip of the pen, the Queen wrote back to her on 6 September. She began with the slightly barbed comment that, since Sarah had attributed her failure to respond immediately to the letter of 27 August to ‘indifference or contempt’, the Duchess would perhaps be still more offended that another week had elapsed before she sent this reply. Yet after this mild reproof she adopted a conciliatory tone, assuring Sarah that she understood she had written ‘nation’ by accident and that ‘all you say proceeds from the concern you have for my service’. She stressed that, far from being unconcerned at the prospect of Godolphin’s resignation, ‘his leaving my service is a thought I cannot bear’. In conclusion Anne asked the Duchess to abandon her self-imposed boycott and gratify her with ‘one look’ before travelling to Oxfordshire to inspect the building works at Blenheim.53
Sarah gave this friendly overture a distinctly ungracious reception. It is almost certain that, far from making a mistake, she had fully intended to write ‘nation’, and she saw no reason to be apologetic, observing subsequently that if Anne’s ‘heart had been the same’ as in former days, ‘I am apt to think she would not have been displeased at the shape of any of my fine letters’. Instead of being relieved that the matter had been smoothed over, she fired off another letter, proclaiming that ‘I cannot for my life see any essential difference betwixt these two words’. Since Anne had decided to lay such weight on the matter, she could only conclude ‘you were in a great disposition to complain of me’, for her letter, ‘which it seems has been so great an offence, and how justly I leave you to judge’, had merely warned that the ministry could not survive if Anne continued to show indulgence to disaffected Tories. ‘If you can find fault with this I am so unhappy as that you must always find fault with me, for I am incapable of thinking otherwise’.54
Having dwelt at length upon a matter that would have been better left alone, Sarah decided to ‘say two or three words’ about Anne’s letter to Godolphin of 30 August, which he had shown her. Seizing on Anne’s remark that she was reluctant to employ Sunderland because he was ‘a party man’, the Duchess accused her of being ready to ‘put all things in confusion’ by her obsession on this subject, warning that once the Queen had driven Marlborough and Godolphin out of her service, ‘you will then indeed find yourself in the hands of a violent party, who I am sure will have very little mercy or even humanity for you’. She followed this with a gratuitous attack on Hedges’s competence and integrity, heedless of the fact that Anne liked and respected the man. ’Tis certain he is no more fit to be Secretary of State than I am’, the Duchess pronounced. ‘He has no parts, he has no quality, no interest’. As a parting shot she spurned the Queen’s request to look in on her before she went to Woodstock, ‘for I am sure it must be uneasy to speak to one you think of as you do of me; at best it would be but so much time lost’. Understandably aggrieved at the Duchess’s harsh tone, when the Queen next saw Godolphin she indicated, ‘with a great deal of stiffness and reservedness in her looks’, that she considered this letter ‘very extraordinary’.55
On 7 September the Lord Treasurer had another meeting with Anne, and once again rehearsed the arguments as to why she must employ Sunderland. To his distress, the Queen suddenly ‘burst into a passion of weeping and said it was plain [she] was to be miserable as long as [she] lived, whatever [she] did’. Being already thoroughly uncomfortable to find Anne looking on him almost as an enemy, Godolphin was so disconcerted by this upsetting scene that he agreed not to press her further until Marlborough could advise her, by letter or in person. He feared, however, that even if Marlborough backed him unreservedly, ‘this thing cannot end without very great uneasinesses one way or the other’. Furthermore, having come to realise how much harm had already been done by Sarah, he now had to face the fact that ‘there is no room to hope for the least assistance from Mrs Freeman in this matter’.56
The Duchess herself was not in the least moved when Godolphin informed her of his fraught encounter with the Queen; instead she told him off for not taking a tougher line. In shock, Godolphin protested ‘You are much better natured in effect than you sometimes appear to be, and though you chide me with being touched with the condition [of the Queen] … you would have been so too, if you had seen the same sight I did’. However, not wanting to seem feeble, on 13 September he decided to write to the Queen without waiting for word from Marlborough to arrive. He took great trouble composing his letter, and having done so told Sarah, ‘I cannot help flattering myself that it will have a good effect’.57
Godolphin began by assuring the Queen that it would be no hardship for Sir Charles Hedges to be placed in a less demanding post than the Secretaryship. Turning to what he took ‘to be the main point’ of Anne’s earlier letter to him, Godolphin argued that making Sunderland her Secretary was the best way to avoid enhancing the power of a single party. If she rejected Sunderland, she would become completely dependent on the Tories, because the Whigs would be so furious that their recent services had been overlooked that they would ‘sit sullen in the Parliament’. On the other hand, once Sunderland was given office, the Whigs would make it ‘their chief concern to vindicate your Majesty’s administration’, while being ‘so far from being in a condition of imposing on your Majesty’ that they would readily submit to being ‘entirely governed and influenced by the Duke of Marlborough and me’.58 It was an inviting scenario, but unfortunately one that was seriously misconceived, as events would prove that his forecast was much too optimistic.
The Queen did not reply for some days and, in the meantime, Sarah caused more trouble. She sent Anne a letter pointing out that she had initially resisted Lo
rd Cowper’s appointment but that, once he became Lord Keeper, the Queen had liked him better than expected. While this sounds innocuous enough, it was evidently expressed in particularly shrill terms, for when Anne saw Godolphin once more on 17 September she ‘complained much’ about the letter. Godolphin took Sarah’s side, saying that ‘all Mrs Freeman’s complaints proceeded from having lost Mrs Morley’s kindness unjustly, and her telling her truths which other people would not’. Anne protested, ‘How could she show her any more kindness … when she would never come near her?’ To this Godolphin countered that Sarah claimed ‘she had tried that’, and their encounters always ended unsatisfactorily. The Queen acknowledged that under provocation she could not always keep her temper, for ‘Mrs Freeman would grow warm sometimes’ and then ‘she herself could not help being warmer than she ought to be’. However, ‘She was always ready to be easy with Mrs Freeman’. Godolphin commented fervently, ‘I would die with all my soul to have them two as they used to be’, but Sarah greeted the Queen’s offer with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Even when Anne wrote to thank Sarah for ‘writing her mind so freely’ in her last communication, the Duchess took exception because she declined ‘to answer any of the particulars’. Contemptuously the Duchess scribbled on the paper, ‘a shifting letter that made no answer’.59
On 21 September the Queen finally replied to Godolphin’s letter of 13 September, which in the past week she had read ‘over and over’. Contrary to Godolphin’s hopes, it had not altered her views, for not only was she as reluctant as ever to dismiss Sir Charles Hedges, but she was still apprehensive that she and Sunderland would ‘never agree long together’. It remained, furthermore, her unshakeable conviction that accepting him as her Secretary would amount to ‘throwing myself into the hands of a party’. Presciently she warned Godolphin, ‘If this be complied with, you will then, in a little time, find they must be gratified with something else, or they will not go on heartily in my business’. She told him she considered it inevitable that the Whigs would demand more seats in the ministry as the price of their support, and ‘if this is not being in the hands of a party, what is?’
Accordingly she hoped that her proposal to give Sunderland an unofficial place in the Cabinet would prove acceptable. In her view such a gesture ought to be enough to allow the Whigs to support the ministry in Parliament, particularly since the measures they were being asked to vote for were not inimical to their principles, but in ‘their own and their country’s interests’. ‘One of these things would make me very easy, the other quite contrary; and why, for God’s sake may I not be gratified as well as other people?’ she demanded heatedly. If the Whigs continued to insist that Sunderland must be imposed upon her, ‘It is very plain, in my poor opinion, nothing will satisfy them but having one entirely in their power’. Having forcefully put her case, she concluded by once again imploring Godolphin not to resign.60
Godolphin was plunged into despair to find the Queen ‘leans still towards expedients’ when he had made it plain ‘the thing was not capable of any expedients’. By the time that he received her letter, the Whigs had indeed already rejected the offer of an undefined Cabinet post for Sunderland with utter contempt. Sunderland told his mother-in-law that he and his colleagues were ‘all of the same mind, that for me to hearken to any such offer would be in effect to be both fool and knave’. He warned that everything promised ‘must be done, or we and the Lord Treasurer must have nothing more to do together about business’. This ultimatum drove Godolphin ‘almost distracted’. Aware that the Whigs would revenge themselves by doing everything possible ‘to vex and ruin’ him and Marlborough, he saw ‘no possibility of supporting himself or anything else in this winter … To make brick without straw is an Egyptian labour’.61
On 25 September the Lord Treasurer once again wrote to the Queen. He reproached her, ‘Your Majesty will have me think you are desirous of my advice and of the continuance of my service and yet you are not pleased to have any regard to it’. In sorrowful tones he reminded her that the coming session of Parliament was ‘like to be the most critical of your whole reign’ because, with no end to the war in sight, it would be necessary to seek huge sums from Parliament. ‘These are not slight things’, he told Anne dolefully. His tone irritated the Queen, who was annoyed by the implication that she had failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation. She wrote back testily, ‘I am as sensible as anybody can be that the particular things you mention are of the greatest consequence’.62
At this point a letter arrived from the Duke of Marlborough, begging the Queen to abandon her resistance. He echoed what the Lord Treasurer had earlier told her, arguing that employing Sunderland would be the only ‘sure way of making [Godolphin] so strong that he may hinder your being forced into a party’. On the other hand, if she did not stand by her Lord Treasurer, ‘all must go to confusion’. Still the Queen refused to bow to Whig demands. On 7/18 October Marlborough wrote to his wife, ‘I did flatter myself … that my representations would have had more weight than I find they have’. Upset at having his advice ignored, he told Sarah if Godolphin resigned ‘I cannot serve in the ministry’.63
On 2 October Anne had gone to Newmarket for the racing but there had been no question of enjoying herself. Not only was she in mental agony over the political crisis but she also fell ill, suffering from ‘gripes’ in the stomach. To add to her woes, she was pursued by the usual letters from the Duchess of Marlborough, who accused Anne of ‘taking a prejudice against any thing’ that came from her. The Queen had delayed replying, being ‘so dispirited for some days that it was uneasy for me to write’, but at length she summoned up the strength to object, ‘I do not deserve such hard thoughts nor never will’.64
Sarah remained on the attack, informing Anne that since Marlborough was on the verge of resignation, she felt compelled to be ‘honest and plain’. ‘I will tell you the greatest truths in the world’, she declaimed, for though doing so ‘seldom succeeds with anybody so well as flattery’, she owed Anne this out of friendship. ‘As one mark of it, I desire you would reflect whether you have never heard that the greatest misfortunes that ever has happened to any of your family has ever been occasioned by having ill advices and an obstinacy in their tempers that is very unaccountable?’ It seems that she then added some still more offensive comments, for in the surviving copy of the letter some lines have been erased by the Duchess at a later date. Presumably she did this because she realised that what she had written was not fit to be seen by posterity.
Having given the Queen her views on ‘those just misfortunes’ that had assailed earlier Stuarts, Sarah next ridiculed Anne’s reluctance to employ Sunderland, saying she had never put forward any argument ‘that has the least colour of reason in it’. ‘I have some reason to think Mrs Morley will dislike this letter’, Sarah opined correctly, adding that the Queen would probably also be surprised to hear from her, having doubtless been ‘in hopes she had quite got rid of me’. Nevertheless, the Duchess expressed confidence that if Marlborough and Godolphin saw her letter, they would applaud her candour. In a final burst of self-congratulation, she ended, ‘Nothing sits more heavy upon me than to be thought in the wrong to Mrs Morley’ when she had made her ‘the best return … that any mortal ever did, and what I have done has rarely been seen but upon a stage’.65
Anne’s reply showed great forbearance. With dignity she told Sarah, ‘Though I believe we are both of the same opinion in the main, I have the misfortune that I cannot agree exactly in everything, and therefore what I say is not thought to have the least colour of reason’. She assured the Duchess that she was extremely concerned at the possibility that Marlborough and Godolphin might leave her service, and begged her not to encourage them to do so.66
More abusive letters followed. In one Sarah voiced a fear ‘that there is somebody artful that takes pains to mislead Mrs Morley, for otherwise how is it possible that one who I have formerly heard say she was not fond of her own judgement could persist in such a thin
g?’67 The Duchess of course had always been apt to believe that Anne had no mind of her own, despite much evidence to the contrary. In this instance, however, there was something in what she said, for the Queen was being secretly encouraged to withstand Sunderland’s appointment by Robert Harley.
By the early autumn of 1706 Harley no longer believed that the ministry could survive by relying principally on moderate Tories, but he was opposed to courting the Whig Junto by offering one of their number an important post. Instead he thought the government should build up its strength with the aid of less committed Whigs such as the Duke of Newcastle. Harley was sure the Junto would not be satiated by Sunderland becoming Secretary, for ‘the more they have the more they crave’.68 He also feared that once the Junto had obtained a toehold on power, he would be ousted from office.
Godolphin did not agree with Harley’s analysis, telling him firmly that unless the Junto were brought on side before Parliament met ‘the majority will be against us upon every occasion of consequence’. Unfortunately for the Lord Treasurer, the Queen remained ‘very far yet from being sensible of her circumstances in that particular’. There can be no doubt that this was partly because whenever Harley was alone with her, he took the opportunity to convey his own views on the subject, as is evident from a set of notes he compiled prior to an interview with Anne. Clearly referring to Sunderland’s appointment, his jottings read: ‘Nothing will satisfy them. If so much pressed now to take him in when most think him unfit, will it be possible to part with him when he appears to be so? All power is given them … If you stop it now it will make you better served and observed by all sides … It will be too late hereafter. Everybody will worship the idol party that is set up’.69 The Queen eagerly drank in these arguments, which chimed exactly with her own beliefs.
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 43