Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

by Anne Somerset

Sarah stipulated that the Queen must write to tell her she had ‘read this history’ before next taking the sacrament, as she knew that Anne always carefully examined her conscience before going to communion. The Duchess wanted her to ask herself if she had transgressed the obligations of friendship as set out by Jeremy Taylor in his popular devotional work, The Whole Duty of Man, and suggested that the Queen should reflect on whether she was guilty of sins such as being ungrateful and angry at a friend who had lovingly admonished her. ‘I beg your Majesty would please to weigh these things attentively, not only with reference to friendship, but also to morality and religion’.47

  Unable to resist one last lunge at Abigail, the Duchess remarked ‘I do not comprehend that one can properly be said to have malice or inveteracy for a viper because one endeavours to hinder it from doing mischief’. She promised, however, that once she knew that the Queen had read her diatribe, she would never mention Mrs Masham to her again. The Queen could assure herself that ‘I have not the least design of recovering what you say is so impossible, your kindness … After you have read these papers … I will come to you no oftener than just the business of my office requires’.48

  The Duchess let Godolphin see the dossier she had drawn up, and asked him to ensure that the Queen returned any original letters enclosed in it. She told him viciously ‘I own I have some pleasure in making her see she is in the wrong, though I know she has not worth enough to own it, or religion enough to make anybody amends … notwithstanding the clutter she keeps about her prayers’. All she wanted now, she said, was to ‘vex her so much as to convince even her stupid understanding that she has used me ill, and then let her shut herself up with Mrs Masham’. Godolphin was shaken by these wild words. On 1 November he thanked her for ‘letting me know so particularly all that has passed’, commenting guardedly that what she had written, and the enclosed letters from Anne, were ‘very curious; but I think … they should not be seen but by very few’.49

  On 7 November the Queen wrote briefly to tell Sarah she had ‘not yet had leisure to read all your papers’, and that she would write further once she had done so. In fact, as Sarah wrathfully noted, ‘there never was any other answer’, as the Queen never once ‘mentioned that narrative’.50 This neglect on Anne’s part drove the Duchess to a new pitch of fury.

  In her rage, she sent Maynwaring a ‘bitter invective against sovereigns’, which he praised lavishly. Yet even he was unnerved when she wrote again six weeks later confessing that she could not rid herself of the ‘passion of hatred’ for her mistress. She continued, ‘I am sensible that ’tis a great weakness, and I can say nothing in my excuse but that … I do not hate Mrs Morley for loving another, but for being so brutal to me after such professions to me, and such very faithful service as I have done her’.51

  Astonishingly, Maynwaring still deluded himself that Sarah could win back Anne’s affection and persuade her to look more kindly on the Whigs, so he was dismayed by this outburst. He protested that he was sure Sarah did not really hate the Queen and suggested that the best course was for the two of them ‘to shake hands and promise to forget all that is past and to live … if not upon the former terms, yet at least like good friends and acquaintances’. Maynwaring thought this should not present a problem in view of the Duchess’s ‘sweet forgiving nature’, especially if Marlborough, who had recently returned to England, mediated an agreement.52 In reality matters had gone too far for even someone of Marlborough’s consummate diplomatic skills to retrieve. Anyway, far from wanting a reconciliation, Marlborough himself now desired a showdown with the Queen.

  Ironically, although by the end of 1709 Sarah and the Queen were on more acrimonious terms than ever, the political situation was not at that time a major source of discord. The Duchess herself recognised this, having written to Anne in November, ‘As to politics, we seem to be more of a mind already than I thought had been possible, since you have now taken into your service all the very same persons … I so long ago begged you to employ. So that we have no difference remaining now … but about this most charming useful lady’.53

  Throughout the summer and early autumn, Anne had steadfastly refused to entrust control of the navy to Lord Orford, whom she could not forgive for attacking Prince George’s record as Lord High Admiral. Godolphin had been diffident about pressing her on the point, partly because he himself was far from eager to increase the Junto’s power but also, the Queen believed, ‘out of good nature’ to her. However, after Lord Somers told her bluntly in late September that the Admiralty must be put in other hands, Anne agreed that she would ask Lord Pembroke to resign, although it was not until a month later that she conceded that Orford could replace him. More time was then wasted after Orford insisted that he should be offered the post of Lord High Admiral, on the understanding that he would turn it down and instead head an Admiralty Commission. Orford’s ‘punctilio … kept everybody … in great agitation’ for a couple of days, as the Queen initially ‘could not be brought … so much as to hearken to it’. Once she had given way, more difficulties arose when she refused to let Orford bring onto the commission Sir George Byng and Sir John Jennings, both of whom had been bêtes noires of her late husband. The Whig leaders threatened that if the matter was not resolved to their satisfaction, their followers would withdraw support from the government when Parliament met on 3 November, but the Queen declared excitably that ‘if a commission was brought to her with their names in it she would not sign it’. At length she relented sufficiently to permit Byng to serve as commissioner but not Jennings, and the Junto had to accept this one setback. Considering that four out of their five members now had places in the Cabinet, their consenting to Jennings’s exclusion was not much of a sacrifice.54

  While the Queen had submitted to almost all of the Junto’s demands, this did not mean she was happy at her state of subjugation. In October Sarah had taunted her, ‘Though you comply as yet with the advice of your ministers in settling the chief points of your government, all the world concludes that is for no other reason but because Mrs Masham and her tools propose no tolerable scheme that can possibly be put in practice’. Marlborough too believed that Anne’s willingness to accommodate the Junto ‘proceeds from her being told that she can’t do other than go on with [the Whigs]’.55 Now, however, her Whig overlords would take a fatal step that would expose their unpopularity and weaken them to a point where it became apparent that the Queen could discard them.

  Since the beginning of Anne’s reign a clergyman named Dr Henry Sacheverell had on several occasions made sermons savagely attacking dissenters as ‘vipers that will eat through the very bowels of our Church’. On 5 November 1709, at the invitation of the Tory Lord Mayor of London, he preached a sermon at the annual service held at St Paul’s commemorating the Gunpowder Plot. Instead of attacking Popery, as was traditional, he first focused his ire on the nonconformists, and then condemned the Whigs’ most cherished political philosophy by fulminating about ‘the utter illegality of resistance upon any pretence whatsoever’.56

  Sacheverell’s sermon was printed on 25 November and proved a runaway success, with an estimated 100,000 copies being sold. The Whig ministers believed that if they did nothing to counter this attack on their most fundamental beliefs ‘the Queen would be preached out of the throne and the nation ruined’. They could have opted to have Sacheverell tried at the bar of the Commons for having flouted the parliamentary resolution of 1705 that the Church was not in danger, and then to imprison him until the end of the session and order his sermon to be burnt by the public hangman. Rashly, however, the ministry decided that Sacheverell’s offence merited nothing less than ‘exemplary punishment’.57

  On 13 December the House of Commons branded Sacheverell’s words as ‘malicious, scandalous and seditious libels, highly reflecting on the Queen, the late Revolution and the Protestant succession’. The following day the doctor was called before the bar of the House and, after placing him in custody, the Commons resolved he should be impeac
hed for ‘high crimes and misdemeanours’.58 If found guilty, he could in theory have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

  The vindictive treatment of Sacheverell struck some people as little short of sacrilegious. Not only did it anger the clergy, who ‘thought themselves attacked in the person of their brother’, but it prompted the public to rally to the defence of an institution perceived as being at risk from Whig bullying. By victimising Sacheverell, the ministers made their own position precarious, and Godolphin would realise too late that he and his colleagues were mad to have needlessly stirred up such indignation. In this heedless way, a ministry that had asserted itself over the Queen, and seemed entrenched in power, ‘put all to the test by an experiment of a silly project in the trial of a poor parson’.59

  12

  The Heat and Ferment that is in This Poor Nation

  Following the death of the Earl of Essex on 10 January 1710, the Queen summoned the Duke of Marlborough and informed him that she intended to make Earl Rivers Constable of the Tower of London, in Essex’s place. Marlborough was annoyed, partly because he had wanted to give the post to a protégé of his own, but also because he believed that Rivers was intriguing with Robert Harley against him. He had in fact given Rivers permission to apply to the Queen for the job, but had assumed Anne would make no move without consulting him, and was angry to find he had miscalculated. However, far worse lay in store, for to his fury he next learned that Anne had decided to give Essex’s prestigious regiment of dragoons to Abigail Masham’s brother, Jack Hill.

  Arguably this was not unreasonable, for Jack Hill had fought bravely at Almanza and the siege of Mons. Marlborough insisted that there were many officers far more deserving than Jack Hill, and this was doubtless true, but at a time when the army was not run on strictly meritocratic grounds and promotion was partly dependent on having the right contacts, most people would have considered the Queen to be within her rights. The Queen herself defended her action on the grounds that ‘it was [only] the second time she had interposed in anything of that kind, and that few princes could say the like’, declaring herself ‘surprised that so much offence should be taken’. Indeed, the wily Harley may have encouraged Abigail to press for her brother to be given the regiment in the expectation that Marlborough would put himself in the wrong by making a disproportionate fuss. As the Duchess of Marlborough bitterly remarked, Marlborough’s objections to the appointment afforded ‘an excellent pretence for grievous complaints and outcries that the Queen was but a cipher and could do nothing’; certainly the rumpus made things easier for those who sought to convince Anne ‘she was a kind of state prisoner’ and ‘a slave to the Marlborough family’.1

  The real reason why Marlborough reacted so violently was his detestation of the Hill family, but he justified his stance by arguing that unless he retained complete control of army patronage, it would undermine his authority as a commander. Yet when he informed the Queen that he would regard it as an intolerable affront if Hill was given the regiment, she merely told him coldly, ‘He would do well to advise with his friends’. Marlborough stormed from her presence ‘with tears in his eyes’.2

  Over the next few days Godolphin begged the Queen to relent, but when he met with an equal lack of success, Marlborough resolved to take a firm stand. He was supposed to attend a Cabinet meeting on the evening of Sunday 15 January, but earlier that day he withdrew with Sarah to the Ranger’s Lodge at Windsor, without having taken leave of the Queen. Instead of showing dismay, Anne presided over the Cabinet meeting as though nothing was wrong, and ‘did not ask where [Marlborough] was nor so much as take the least notice of his absence’.3 When she saw Godolphin the following day she likewise made no mention of the Duke.

  Marlborough counted on his ministerial colleagues rallying to him as they had in February 1708, and initially it seemed they would not disappoint him. They held a meeting on 16 January and, according to Arthur Maynwaring, ‘unanimously agreed they would support [Marlborough] to the utmost’. However, divisions soon appeared in this united front. Later that day Lord Cowper and Lord Somers had separate audiences to warn the Queen that they understood why Marlborough was so concerned, only to be told that his fears were groundless. Alluding to Abigail, Anne assured Cowper that ‘the person she perceived was meant’ by Marlborough when he complained of undue influence, ‘did really and truly meddle with no business’. This was not strictly true, but Cowper was sufficiently impressed to urge Marlborough to return to London. When Somers represented to her that Marlborough’s main worry was that the Queen listened to ‘persons who endeavour to do him ill offices with your Majesty’, Anne was adamant that no one would dare attempt such a thing, ‘because if they did their malice would recoil on themselves’.4

  Godolphin too believed that Marlborough should come back to town, but at Windsor the Duke was busy drawing up an ultimatum. He drafted a letter to Anne stating that Mrs Masham’s ‘pretensions to prefer the officers in the army … will make it impossible to have success the next campaign. Her behaviour to me and mine has been such … that I hope your Majesty will be pleased to dismiss her or myself’. He sent copies to Godolphin and Cowper, but they did not pass it on to their colleagues or offer their approval. On 19 January the Lord Treasurer did try once more to show the Queen the ‘ruinous consequences’ of upsetting Marlborough but she merely made him a silent bow, convincing him that all parties were set on ‘coming to extremities’.5

  As it became clear that the ministers would not offer him their unqualified support, Marlborough wavered. Although his wife and son-in-law, Sunderland, were urging him to stand firm, on 20 January he slightly toned down his letter to the Queen, so that it no longer explicitly demanded Abigail’s dismissal. Instead, after expressing bitterness that ‘all I have done … has not been able to protect me against the malice of a Bedchamber Woman’, he asked Anne’s permission to retire.6

  On the same day Marlborough wrote this latest letter, the Queen had received another visit from Godolphin. She told him that as a result of her conversation with Somers, she had decided against giving the late Lord Essex’s regiment to Jack Hill. She asked him to inform Marlborough, and when he suggested it would be more appropriate for her to convey the news herself by letter, she declined to do so, saying that she would discuss the matter with Marlborough once he came to see her.

  The following morning Anne again met with the Lord Treasurer, having by now received Marlborough’s letter. She showed it to Godolphin, who implored her to respond as soon as possible. She remained reluctant, thinking it preferable to wait and see how Marlborough reacted to her change of heart about the regiment, but Godolphin finally prevailed on her to write. When forwarding this letter to the Duke, Godolphin told him that while its opening was ‘a little dry … the latter part makes it impossible for you to resist coming to town without giving your enemies the greatest advantage imaginable against you’.7

  Even after hearing from the Queen, Marlborough remained unwilling to leave his self-imposed exile. Sarah was desperate for him to stay where he was, believing it would be ‘the most ridiculous thing’ for him to return unless Abigail was dismissed, and that her husband would ‘make a strange figure’.8 Nevertheless, after most of Marlborough’s ministerial colleagues joined together on 22 January and urged his return, the Duke finally agreed to come back to London.

  However, he had not yet abandoned hope of pressuring the Queen into removing Abigail. Lord Somers now alerted the Queen that it was being proposed that a parliamentary address should be presented to her, demanding that she dismiss Mrs Masham. How far this had been encouraged by Marlborough is difficult to assess. He himself later protested to Anne that ‘it never entered into his thoughts to stir up Parliament to prescribe to her what servants she should keep about her person’, and Sarah – somewhat disingenuously – also swore to her that ‘neither Lord Marlborough nor I ever desired any such thing’. Yet when Maynwaring had told Sarah on Marlborough’s leaving London that he looked forward to the mat
ter being raised in Parliament, she had not appeared against the idea, and nor did she voice dismay on learning that Sunderland was ‘for pushing this matter’. It may be that Marlborough only abandoned the idea after sounding out his colleagues, and discovering that many of them were vehemently opposed.9

  The Marlboroughs had better reason than anybody to know that nothing was guaranteed to make the Queen more savage than such a proceeding. They should have remembered that Anne’s fury when William and Mary had sought to force her to dismiss Lady Marlborough in 1692 had been inspired not just by her love for Sarah, but by her determination to order her own household affairs. The Queen had reaffirmed this principle in October 1702 after she had dismissed the Bishop of Worcester as her almoner because he had engaged in aggressive electioneering on behalf of the Whigs. When some Whig Lords had lodged a protest, she declared firmly that ‘she ‘looked upon it as her undoubted right to continue or displace any servant attending upon her own person when she should think it proper’.10

  Now the Queen sprang into action to protect her privileges. Having sent Vice Chamberlain Coke ‘to tell all her friends in the House of Commons … that any such address would be very disagreeable to her’, she followed this up by summoning numerous members of both Houses to individual audiences. ‘Speaking personally … with tears in her eyes’, she ‘earnestly pressed them one by one in her closet’, begging them not to ‘consent to a motion to deprive her of the liberty allowed to the meanest housekeeper in her dominions, viz, that of choosing her own domestic servants’. When she ‘declared with great spirit and courage … that she should take it as an indignity to herself’, almost all of them hastened to ‘assure her of their detesting any such proceeding’ for, as one MP remarked, it was ‘impossible for any man of sense, honour or honesty to come into an address to remove a dresser from the Queen … only to gratify my Lady Marlborough’s passions’.11