Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (25 page)

On 1 December 1691 Anne wrote to tell James that she had long desired to make a humble submission to him, but had had to wait for a suitable opportunity. She entreated her father to believe ‘that I am both truly concerned for the misfortune of your condition and sensible, as I ought to be, of my own unhappiness … If wishes could recall what is past, I had long since redeemed my fault’. She averred that it would have given her great relief to have informed him of her ‘repentant thoughts’ before now, but hoped that James would accept that this belated avowal was sincere.
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It is not easy to assess why Anne had decided to write this letter. Four months later, after hearing a rumour that the Princess had corresponded with Saint-Germain, a foreign diplomat stationed in England remarked that he found it ‘hard to conceive of this commerce between King James and the Princess, whose interests are so different’.
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His puzzlement was very natural, for it is difficult to argue that Anne genuinely wanted her father to regain his throne. There is no indication that her own desire to succeed to the crown had diminished, and she desperately wanted her son to inherit it in due course.

It has been argued that her letter to her father was nothing other than a cynical stratagem aimed at strengthening her own position. According to this theory, what she dreaded above all was that William would betray her by making a peace with France which provided for the crown to revert to James’s son once William and Mary were dead. Certainly there were people in England who believed that William was contemplating a settlement on these lines, and such rumours could have convinced Anne that she must prevent an understanding developing between William and her father by distracting James with overtures of her own.
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It seems likely, however, that her thinking was slightly different. The need to insure the safety of herself, her husband and son obviously provided a powerful imperative in itself, and her desire of safeguarding the Marlboroughs would have been an additional incentive. She had convinced herself that William and Mary had behaved so monstrously to her that she was absolved of her loyalty, and felt under no obligation to be dragged down with them in the all too likely eventuality of her father’s restoration. Yet in seeking these advantages, she stopped short of committing actual treason. It was not yet illegal to correspond with the exiled King, and she did not offer to work for his restoration, or to overthrow the current monarchs. Her letter afforded her the solace of expressing remorse without committing her to undoing what she had helped to bring about.

Anne could hope that whereas Mary had put herself beyond redemption in her father’s eyes, James would be more inclined to forgive her transgressions. Not long before this, so it was said, James had been complaining of the conduct of his eldest daughter, but had broken off to speak ‘with tenderness of the Princess Anne’. Admittedly this had been too much for his supporter David Lloyd, who was heard to mutter ‘Both bitches by God!’ Anne may even have cherished a faint hope that if her father did recover his throne, she would not automatically be disinherited. It is notable that her letter contained no reference to her half
brother, or apology for having cast doubt on his birth. There is no indication she had abandoned her belief that he was an imposter, and she could have deluded herself that James would one day acknowledge this to be the case. This was of course a ridiculous notion, but in Anne’s defence it should be noted that even some of James’s supporters in England remained sufficiently uneasy about the Prince to feel that James would be well advised ‘to satisfy the nation’ by letting it be known that Anne would succeed him. Since James was likely to die long before Mary, it would mean that Anne would ascend the throne much sooner than would otherwise have been the case.
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Marlborough entrusted Anne’s letter to the reliable hands of the Jacobite agent David Lloyd, ironically the very man who had spoken so disparagingly of the Princess in her father’s presence. However, adverse winds and fears of capture prevented him from crossing the Channel for some weeks, and the letter had yet to be delivered when a dramatic development occurred. On 20 January 1692, King William abruptly dismissed the Earl of Marlborough from all his positions at court and in the army.

The King did not publicly explain his decision, but he believed that he had ample reason to act. Besides his conviction that Marlborough and his wife had deliberately inflamed Anne by feeding her ‘inventions and falsehoods’, William had a shrewd idea that Marlborough was in correspondence with Saint-Germain, and that he was encouraging Anne to follow suit. Much worse than this, in William’s eyes, was Marlborough’s campaign to promote disaffection in Parliament and the army by stirring up anti-Dutch sentiment.
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The King and Queen feared that Anne was privy to all of Marlborough’s intrigues for, as Mary put it, ‘I heard much from all hands of my sister’. The night before Marlborough was dismissed, Mary confronted the Princess. Taking the view that Mary wished simply ‘to pick quarrels’, Anne angrily denied that he had done anything wrong. After reflecting on the matter, the Queen was ‘apt to believe’ that her sister was in fact ignorant of what Marlborough had in mind, but she did not feel more secure on that account. On the contrary, she concluded that although Marlborough had as yet avoided acquainting Anne and George with his plans, he was ‘so sure of the Prince and she’ that he was confident of bringing them in when he judged the time appropriate.
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William and Mary assumed that Marlborough’s dismissal would automatically prise Anne from his and the Countess’s pernicious clutches, for the Princess would realise there could be no question of retaining the wife of a disgraced man in her service.

A few days after Marlborough’s dismissal, Anne received an anonymous letter, cautioning her that his misfortunes had been caused by spies within her own household. In particular her mysterious source begged her to ‘have a care of what you say before Lady Fitzharding’, who allegedly leaked much damaging information. Anne’s correspondent warned that her enemies at court were ‘not ignorant of what is said and done in your lodging’, entreating her to persuade ‘poor deluded Lady Marlborough’ to be less trusting.
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Anne was only too ready to comply, for it greatly bothered her that Sarah was currently ‘as much bewitched … as ever’ by Lady Fitzharding. She accordingly implored ‘dear Mrs Freeman to have a care of Mrs Hill for I doubt [fear] she is a jade, and though one can’t be sure … there is too much reason to believe she has not been so sincere as she ought’. The Princess added bitterly ‘I am sure she hates your faithful Morley’, but as yet she could not prevail on Sarah to sever the friendship.
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The King and Queen had meanwhile been waiting impatiently to hear that the Countess had been dismissed from the Princess’s household, but Anne made no such move. Then, to Mary’s astonishment and outrage, on 4 February Anne took Sarah with her when she attended the Queen’s Drawing Room at Kensington Palace. Not wanting to risk an upsetting scene in public, Mary made no comment at the time, but neither she nor William were prepared to let the matter drop. The following day Mary penned a blistering letter to her younger sister, explaining that since she knew that what she had to say would ‘not be very pleasing’, she thought it best to communicate in writing. She then declared that while the Earl of Marlborough was not welcome at court, it was ‘very unfit Lady Marlborough should stay with you, and … I have all the reason imaginable to look upon your bringing her as the strangest thing that ever was done’. She continued, ‘but now I must tell you, it was very unkind in a sister, would have been very uncivil in an equal, and I need not say I have more to claim … I know what is due to me and expect to have it from you’.

In a slightly more emollient tone the Queen carried on, ‘I know this will be uneasy to you and I am sorry for it … for I have all the real kindness imaginable for you and … will always do my part to live with you as sisters ought … for I do love you as my sister, and nothing but yourself can make me do otherwise’. Mary said she was confident that once Anne had ‘overcome your first thoughts … you will find that though the thing be hard … yet it is not unreasonable’. Assuring her sister she looked forward to a time when they could ‘reason the business calmly’, she
concluded ‘it shall never be my fault if we do not live kindly together’.
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For Anne this letter came as a clarion call to battle. Her conscience apparently untroubled by her approach to Saint-Germain, she clung fiercely to the belief that she had an inalienable right to choose her own household. She set herself against what she considered spiteful bullying, as much out of self-respect as because the prospect of losing Sarah appalled her. Her letters to Sarah now became marked by a visceral hatred of her sister and brother-in-law, containing ‘violent expressions’ that at times alarmed even Sarah.
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Besides giving vent to a virulent anti-Dutch prejudice, she referred to the King and Queen as ‘the monsters’; William was given some additional epithets of his own, notably ‘Caliban’ and ‘the Dutch abortive’.

As soon as Mary’s note arrived Anne alerted Sarah that she had received ‘such an arbitrary letter from the Q[ueen] as I am sure [neither] she nor the King durst … have writ to any other of their subjects’. The Princess dismissed this as the sort of provocation ‘which, if I had any inclination to part with dear Mrs Freeman would make me keep her in spite of their teeth’, declaring herself ready to ‘go to the utmost verge of the earth rather than live with such monsters’.
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The following day the Princess sent a reply to her sister that blazed with indignation. Mary was right, she said, to think that her letter would come as a terrible shock, for the Queen could hardly doubt how much it would pain Anne to dismiss Sarah. Declaring herself satisfied that her friend ‘cannot have been guilty of any fault to you’, she requested Mary to ‘recall your severe command’, which struck her as ‘so little reasonable … that you would scarce require it from the meanest of your subjects’. Confident that ‘this proceeding can be for no other intent than to give me a very sensible mortification’, Anne stated ‘there is no misery that I cannot readily resolve to suffer’ to avoid parting with the Countess of Marlborough.
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The King and Queen were enraged by Anne’s letter. William responded with a message delivered by the Lord Chamberlain ordering Sarah to vacate her lodgings at the Cockpit. It was arguable that he had no right to do this, for the Cockpit was Anne’s personal property, but the Princess decided not to argue the point. Instead she resolved that if Sarah could not live with her in London, she would remove to the country. She at once made arrangements to lease Sion House, situated a few miles west of the capital, from the Duke of Somerset. Although she retained the Cockpit for use during brief visits to London, most of her furniture was sent down to await her arrival.

Before withdrawing the Princess paid her sister a farewell visit, ‘making all the professions that could be imagined’ in hopes of softening her. In vain, however, for the Queen remained ‘insensible as a statue’. When the brief interview ended, the Lord Chamberlain failed to escort Anne to the palace door. Forced to find her own way, Anne could not even make a speedy exit, as her servants were not waiting with her coach, having assumed the visit would last longer. Still smarting at this additional indignity, on 18 February Anne was ‘carried in a sedan [chair] to Sion, being then with child, without any guard or decent attendance’.
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Prince George endorsed this drastic action, although he had done nothing to encourage the quarrel. A foreign diplomat noted that he ‘remains very calm in the midst of this commotion, as if it was none of his concern’. However, his equanimity was tested when he went to London for the day on 23 February and the royal guards in St James’s Park did not present arms to him as he passed. Anne had no doubt that the King had instructed them to slight him, commenting viciously ‘I can’t believe it was their Dutch breeding alone without Dutch orders that made them do it’. She assured Sarah fiercely that ‘these things are so far from vexing either the Prince or me that they really please us extremely’.
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At Sion the Marlboroughs were given their own apartments, and when the King sent a further ‘peremptory message’ demanding Sarah’s removal, Anne simply ignored it. Soon afterwards the Duke of Gloucester was brought down to Sion with his governess, though Anne did agree that he should be taken to see the Queen before his departure. To avoid burning bridges irrevocably, Prince George went to take leave of the King before William went abroad on campaign on 4 March, but his presence was barely acknowledged.

Sarah later stressed that, not wanting to make things more difficult for Anne, she repeatedly ‘offered and begged the Princess to let me go’, but when she did so her mistress invariably ‘fell into the greatest passion of tenderness and weeping that is possible to imagine’. She entreated Sarah ‘never to have any more such cruel thoughts’, since ‘I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of all the world without you’. Anne declared that if Sarah abandoned her, ‘I swear to you I would shut myself up and never see a creature’, and argued that Sarah was not responsible for her breach with William and Mary. ‘Never fear … that you are the occasion’, the Princess urged, ‘it would have been so anyway’, for ‘the monster is capable of doing nothing but injustice’. Before long Sarah came to accept that Anne and George were somehow to blame for her and her husband’s misfortunes, rather than the other way round.
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