Within four months of Somers and Wharton taking office, the Junto focused on ousting Lord Pembroke from the Admiralty and replacing him with another of their members, Lord Orford. Godolphin knew that Anne would inevitably set herself against it, and foresaw being embroiled in further difficulties. He wrote moodily, ‘I am pretty sure [the Queen] will not be brought to do what only will be liked and if it be not done the blame will be laid where it uses to be in cases’ – that is, on himself. In June Marlborough was informed ‘the Juntonians grow more pressing in the Admiralty affair’, for they were now arguing that their parliamentary strength entitled them to impose on the Queen party government in its purest form, on the grounds that their Whig followers ‘will not be easy without [the ministry] being of a piece’.10
Despite his great triumphs, Marlborough felt no less insecure than the Lord Treasurer. His confidence had been understandably undermined by attacks on him in the press, the most notable of which was the tract entitled A Dream at Harwich (in which Harley may have had a hand) published in January 1709. This piece not only fulminated against the entire Marlborough family’s plundering of national resources, but was particularly unflattering about Sarah, who was portrayed as breathing ‘sulphurous smoke’ at the Queen. The envoy of the States General in London was shocked that, ‘notwithstanding all the great wonders that the Duke of Marlborough has done’, he and his wife should be so horridly abused.11
Marlborough had also been incensed when the Tories in Parliament had introduced an address congratulating their supporter General Webb, who, during the siege of Lille, had kept the army’s supply route open by winning an encounter with the enemy at Wynendale. Marlborough had mistakenly failed to mention Webb in despatches, whereupon the Tories put it about that he had deliberately sought to deprive him of his share of glory. The Duke was bitter at the Whigs’ failure to protect him against such attacks. What was worse, however, was that he believed the Tories had been encouraged by Abigail, ‘and that they are told by her and [Harley] that [the Queen] will not be displeased at this proceeding’. By mid 1709 he was convinced that Abigail had succeeded in alienating Anne from him, telling Sarah bitterly that knowing full well the Queen had ‘no more tenderness’ for him, he had steeled himself ‘never to expect any’. This belief was confirmed when he heard that Abigail had assured Harley ‘and some of his wretches that, let my services or successes be what they would … I should receive no encouragement’ from the Queen, forcing him to retire.12
Fearing that royal favour was inexorably ebbing away, Marlborough decided to demand a mark of confidence from Anne. Probably in April 1709, when he was in England on a brief visit, Marlborough went to the Queen and asked that his office of Captain-General, currently held during royal pleasure, should be conferred on him for life. He could argue that this would reassure the Dutch and other allies that his standing was unassailable and, by heightening his prestige, make it easier for him to uphold British interests. It would also free him from the necessity of worrying about domestic party politics, enabling him to devote all his energy to his military command. Yet, from the Queen’s point of view, the prospect of the army being permanently entrusted to a man who held his command independently of the Crown was deeply disquieting, for it would arguably give Marlborough the power to establish a military dictatorship. Some eighteen months after Marlborough first approached the Queen on the matter, Swift would assert that even making the request had been ‘highly criminal’, because ‘a general during pleasure’ who had evolved into ‘a general for life’ might subsequently metamorphose ‘into a king’.13
Understandably the Queen reacted warily to Marlborough’s proposal, saying she ‘would take time to consider it’. Instead of letting the matter rest, the Duke then consulted Lord Cowper, now promoted to Lord Chancellor, asking him to unearth precedents justifying the grant. After a time Cowper reported back that he could discover none, and that he would not be in favour of such an arrangement. Lord Somers too was hostile when he learned what Marlborough wanted, and told the Queen that it would be inadvisable and dangerous to comply.14 Yet Marlborough was not deterred, and after going abroad again he wrote to the Queen reiterating his request that his command should be made permanent.
Writing shortly after Anne’s death in 1714, Swift declared that ‘the Queen was highly alarmed at this extraordinary proceeding and talked to a person whom she had then taken into confidence as if she apprehended an attempt upon the Crown’. The person alluded to would have been Abigail Masham, who provided Swift with some of the information on which he based his account of political developments in Anne’s reign. On the other hand, in October 1709, Anne herself told Marlborough that Abigail was at that stage unaware of his desire to be given lifetime tenure of his post, and had nothing to do with her reluctance to grant it.15 Yet even if Abigail and Harley initially remained in ignorance, the fact that Marlborough had rendered the Queen uneasy played into their hands, and made it easier for them to make her mistrustful of the duumvirs.
Memos penned by Harley in 1709 show how hard he worked to portray them as having abused the Queen’s goodwill, and to exacerbate her resentment at having the Whigs imposed upon her. In one of these papers, dating from April 1709, he expressed regret that the Queen was in the grip of ‘bullies’; three months later he noted, ‘the more she yields, the worse she is used as appears by experience’. Sure that ‘they will never forget that she was of another opinion from them, nor never forgive it’, he warned, ‘Every ill thing … [they get] the Queen to comply with encourages them to ask more’. This statement would certainly have struck a resonant note with Anne when Marlborough put his demand regarding the Captain-Generalcy to her.16
The memos provide backing for Sarah’s belief that Abigail and Harley magnified the financial benefits the Marlboroughs had gained from the Queen, while belittling the Duke’s services. At one point Harley alludes to the cost of Blenheim, wanting to know ‘how long a nation will suffer themselves to be cheated?’ He scathingly termed Marlborough and Godolphin ‘the two Kings’ and condemned their ‘unsatiable avarice’ and ‘unreasonable powers’. It seems that Sarah had a point when she wrote indignantly of ‘these wicked people persuading the Queen my Lord Marlborough was dangerous’; perhaps it was also true that when Abigail was alone with her mistress she referred to Marlborough as ‘King John’ and cautioned Anne that he ‘aimed at no less than her crown’.17
Abigail was diligent about conveying Harley’s sentiments to the Queen, even though she had to proceed with care, as Anne clearly had qualms about encouraging these confidences. In August 1709 Abigail told Harley that she intended to read a recent letter of his to the Queen, who was in need of ‘such good instructions’. She nevertheless cautioned him that when he next wrote he must be wary of dwelling on a certain topic, as the Queen would be nervous ‘of being examined about it, so I dare answer she would much rather know nothing of the matter’. The following month another communication arrived from Harley, and Abigail passed on its contents to Anne. She received it in silence, so that Abigail had to admit, ‘I can’t tell you what use my friend has made of the advice was given her in your letter but she heard it over and over’. Nevertheless, although it was somewhat disappointing that Anne ‘keeps me in ignorance and is very reserved, does not care to tell me anything’, Abigail could console herself that she had at least managed to deliver her message. There were times, however, when she chose the wrong moment to try and engage the Queen’s attention. On one occasion, late at night she sought to discuss ‘the main point in hand’ with Anne, only to be cut short. She subsequently regretfully reported to Harley, ‘Whenever I said anything relating to business she answered, “Pray go, for if you begin to talk I shall not get to bed in any time”’.18
By putting forward his misconceived request, Marlborough had opened himself to the charge that he nurtured sinister ambitions. Meanwhile, his wife was behaving in a fashion guaranteed to make the Queen yet more disenchanted with her. Her disrespectful attitude
towards the Queen was now becoming public knowledge, not least because Sarah scarcely troubled to conceal it. In the autumn of 1709 the Queen would write to Sarah complaining that she looked on her with ‘disdain’, an accusation that the Duchess dismissed as ‘ridiculous’ on the grounds that ‘I never looked upon her at all, but talked always to other people when I waited upon her in public places’. As people became aware that a rift had developed between them, even observers like the envoy in England of the Dutch republic, Saunière de l’Hermitage, who had previously regarded Sarah with approval, grew critical. In September he informed the Grand Pensionary of Holland, ‘The Duchess of Marlborough is still conducting herself in a very extraordinary manner towards the Queen’.19
Sarah was absenting herself from court for long periods, without even bothering to inform the Queen of when she could expect to see her again. In July 1709 l’Hermitage heard that the Queen had recently unburdened herself to a confidante – probably the Duchess of Somerset, one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber – complaining that Sarah was planning to spend a fortnight in the country without having cleared this beforehand with her. The Queen had indicated that Sarah had already given her ample grounds to dismiss her, but she intended to ignore her provocations. Within a month Godolphin had grown concerned at the recent rise in favour of the Duke and Duchess of Somerset, who he feared were capitalising on the effects of Sarah’s behaviour towards the Queen. He warned her that the Duchess of Somerset and ‘her noble prince’ harboured ‘deep designs’, and ‘seldom fail … to set a weight upon’ Sarah’s absences from court. The pair were themselves in constant attendance that summer at Windsor, and the Duke visibly preened himself on ‘being mighty useful and important about the Queen’s person’.20
Although Sarah was somewhat erratic in the performance of her duties, she jealously guarded the privileges that came with her court offices. Earlier in the year, she and the Queen had had a disagreement over a trivial matter to which Sarah had attached absurd significance. At the beginning of the reign, in her capacity of Groom of the Stole, Sarah had appointed Elizabeth Abrahal to be the Queen’s laundress and starcher. Since that time Mrs Abrahal had become friendly with Abigail, and, as Sarah put it, ‘served Mrs Masham when she lay in [to have babies] and could not attend the Queen herself to bring messages to her Majesty and help to carry on her own intrigues’. Mrs Abrahal’s salary had originally been set at £100 a year, but in the spring of 1709 the Queen had raised this by a trifling amount at Abigail’s request. Sarah believed that out of deference for her position, the Queen should have consulted her beforehand, but in fact Anne had not even informed her of her decision. As soon as Sarah learned what had happened she went to the Queen and snarled that ‘Mrs Masham … might better have intermeddled in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s affairs … than in mine’. She insisted Mrs Abrahal’s wage increase contravened court regulations, to which Anne answered she ‘did not think it a wrong thing, nor improper, for Masham to ask or for [her] to grant’.21
Months later, Sarah was still brooding on this, when the Queen affronted her further by making another change in the household. On 27 July Anne wrote to her that, since ‘I would not take anybody into my family in a station under you without first acquainting you with my intentions’, she wanted her to know that she had decided to take on Bella Danvers, the daughter of her long serving dresser Beata Danvers, as an additional Woman of the Bedchamber. She asked that Sarah return to court so that the young woman could be formally presented to kiss the Queen’s hand, although, if Sarah wished to stay away for longer, she would arrange for another Bedchamber Lady to preside at the ceremony. Sarah was infuriated, for while she could not complain that the Queen had failed to notify her, she considered that it was her prerogative to award posts in the Bedchamber. She wrote the Queen a sarcastic letter in which, as well as taking a passing swipe at Abigail’s ‘falseness and ingratitude’ she expressed surprise that Anne had done her the courtesy of informing her, ‘considering how great a mortification I had lately received in a stronger instance of that kind’. Nevertheless she promised to come to court the following Sunday for Bella Danvers’s presentation.22
On the appointed day the Queen did her best to make things pleasant, and ‘put on a great smile’ when Sarah entered, convincing others in attendance that she was genuinely pleased to see her. The Duchess, however, was not prepared to pass over the insult to her position in silence. When they were alone together she complained to Anne that she was ‘not used as others are of my rank’, and protested at the Queen’s failure to seek her recommendation before taking on another Bedchamber Woman. The Queen found it easier to address her complaints in a letter that Sarah complained was written in so harsh a style that ‘if I had not been so well acquainted with the hand I should not have believed it possible to have come from you’. To her astonishment Sarah read that in the Queen’s opinion, ‘Nobody thinks me ill used but myself’, and that Anne had resolved from henceforth to treat her ‘no otherwise than as Groom of [the] Stole and the Duke of Marlborough’s wife’.23
As one contemporary put it, ‘the more averse the Queen grew to the Duchess of Marlborough, so much the more desirous she was … to put an end to the war’. While this was somewhat simplistic, the failure of peace negotiations that had started in the spring of 1709 not only came as a great disappointment to the Queen, but served to lower the Duke of Marlborough in her estimation. Seven years of fighting had left the nation profoundly war-weary. It would later be claimed that the Queen’s mindfulness of the human cost of war made her ‘melancholy in the midst of triumphs’ and that ‘the lists of the slain and wounded were seldom laid before her but her eyes swum with tears’. With the army needing additional men every year, recruitment was posing more of a problem. As early as 1706 there had been riots in Abergavenny sparked by the activities of recruitment officers, and a desperate Gloucestershire man ‘rather than serve his Queen and country, … cut the great sinews of his legs above the heels’.24 Even a Parliament so well disposed to the war as that elected in 1708 was not prepared to pass the more stringent recruiting act that Marlborough had wanted in 1709; the one currently in force, permitting anyone unemployed to be drafted into the army, was unpopular enough.
The economic cost of war was also prohibitive. In 1709 additional finance was raised when Parliament extended the Bank of England’s charter and allowed it to double its capital by raising money by public subscription. The Bank then circulated £250,000 in exchequer bills (effectively, banknotes) but though in this way liquidity was maintained, paying for the war looked increasingly problematic.
The early months of 1709 had been notable for freezing weather, and this had caused domestic hardship. The temperatures in France had been even colder, leaving much of the populace famished, but though England had not been so badly affected, the price of corn still rose sharply. In times of scarcity, the government’s policy of permitting needy Protestant refugees from the Palatinate to settle in England was deeply unpopular, as they had to be supported by charity and were feared as carriers of disease. All this contributed to the sense that the nation was grievously overburdened, and that it could not sustain the war much longer.25
There was a strong feeling among country gentlemen that although soldiers and financiers had done well out of the war, ‘the burthen of this charge has lain upon the landed interest during the whole time’, impoverishing those who ‘neither served in the fleets nor armies, nor meddled in the public funds’. Swift would later exhort his readers, ‘Let any man observe the equipages [horse-drawn coaches] in this town: he shall find the greater number of those who make a figure to be … either generals and colonels or [those] whose whole fortunes lie in funds and stocks’. Since the Whigs had forged strong links with ‘the monied men [that] are so fond of war’, and the majority of army officers were Whig supporters, it could be argued that they were ‘the party that is founded upon war’. Not only had it brought them prosperity, but they had reaped political dividends, and the Tor
ies suspected that because their opponents feared they would lose power during the ‘slippery state of peace’, they had little interest in ending the war.26 It also did not escape hard-pressed Tories that it was the Marlborough family who had been most enriched by years of conflict.
For the French the burden of war had become so oppressive that by early 1709 they were ready to discuss peace. Louis XIV hoped that the allies could be prevailed upon to agree that his grandson Philip would be given Naples and Sicily in return for renouncing the throne of Spain, but in March the British Parliament passed a resolution reiterating that the Bourbons must not be permitted to retain any Spanish territory. It also stipulated that the French must acknowledge Anne as Queen, recognise the Protestant succession and expel the Pretender from France. Marlborough and the Whig Lord Townshend were sent to The Hague to draw up preliminary articles of peace that the French would have to accept in their entirety.
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 53