Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (26 page)

When Sarah queried whether Prince George supported his wife’s stand, Anne reassured her ‘he is so far from being of another opinion, if there had been occasion he would have strengthened me in my resolutions’. Anne also made light of the possibility that the King would strip her of her parliamentary allowance, leaving her with just the money granted by her marriage treaty. While hoping that Godolphin would use his influence to protect her, she proclaimed that if necessary she was ready to endure financial hardship. ‘Can you think either of us so wretched that for the sake of twenty thousand pound, and to be tormented from morning to night with flattering knaves and fools, we would forsake those we have such obligations to?’ she demanded. The Princess opined that Sarah surely could not ‘believe we would ever truckle to that monster’, for besides the distress of their separation, it would entail intolerable humiliation. She put it to Sarah:

Suppose I did submit, and that the King could change his nature so much as to use me with humanity, how would all reasonable people despise me? How would that Dutch abortive laugh at me and please himself with having got the better? And, which is more, how would my conscience reproach me for having sacrificed it, my honour, reputation and all the substantial comforts of this life for transitory interest … No, my dear Mrs Freeman, never believe your faithful Morley will ever submit. She can wait with patience for a sunshine day, and if she does not live to see it, yet she hopes England will flourish again.
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On 17 April the embattled Princess Anne suffered another appalling blow. In her seventh month of pregnancy she went into premature labour, experiencing more severe pain than in previous childbirths. She sent word to the Queen ‘she was much worse than she used to be, as she really was’, but elicited no response. In the end the child was delivered by the ‘man midwife’ Dr Chamberlen, one of a famous dynasty of accoucheurs whose forebear had invented the forceps. He was paid £100 for his efforts, but could not save the baby, a boy who was born alive but died within minutes.
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A foreign diplomat resident in England commented ‘it is thought this event will bring about a reconciliation’, but things turned out otherwise. That afternoon, when the Princess had not physically recovered from her ordeal, let alone from the heartbreak of losing another child, Mary visited her at Sion. Unfortunately she came not in a spirit of forgiveness, but intent on imposing her will. Her mood was not improved when she
was given what she considered a ‘poor reception’, taking offence at being ‘obliged to go up through the backstairs to her sister’s apartment unattended by any of her royal highness’s servants’. Even the sight of Anne lying in bed looking ‘as white as the sheets’ failed to excite her compassion. According to Sarah (who was not present), ‘the Queen never asked her how she did, nor expressed the least concern for her condition’. Instead she stated curtly, ‘I have made the first step by coming to you, and I now expect you should make the next by removing my Lady Marlborough’. Sarah claimed Anne answered ‘with very respectful expressions’ that ‘she had never in all her life disobeyed her except in that one particular, which she hoped would some time or other appear as unreasonable to her Majesty as it did to her’. A German diplomat later suggested that her response was rather less civil. He heard that Anne snapped that ‘if the Queen had only come to talk against that lady, she could save herself the trouble of coming another time’. With that, the Princess rolled over on her side, turning her back on her sister.
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It was the last time the two women would ever meet.

Sarah heard that, on her way back from Sion, Mary showed some remorse for having been so unbending, but soon afterwards news arrived that convinced the Queen that her tough approach was the right one. Towards the end of April intelligence reports revealed that a Jacobite invasion was about to be launched. A French fleet had been fitted out, with orders to clear the way for James II to cross over from Normandy, where he was waiting with a large army. Having decided that leniency to Anne would be interpreted as weakness, on 27 April the Queen issued an official announcement prohibiting anyone in the royal household from visiting Anne at Sion, and making it plain that anyone who did so could not attend court.

Anne declared herself unmoved by this tightening of the screw. Nevertheless, the ruling left her effectively isolated. One person heard ‘Her highness has but a melancholy court at Sion’, and a foreign diplomat reported that ‘at present there is almost no one who does not condemn her behaviour, apart from declared Jacobites’. Even her own servants were disgruntled at finding themselves stranded at Sion, and some were suspected of passing information back to court. Others did their best to bring about Sarah’s dismissal. In particular, a Mr Maul, who despite having gained a place in Prince George’s household with the Countess’s aid, now tried to persuade his master that Sarah must be sacrificed. George answered ‘he had so much tenderness for the Princess that he could not desire to make her so uneasy as he knew the parting …
would do’. Having failed to get his way, Mr Maul went into a sulk. Anne described to Sarah ‘in what ill humour he waited on the Prince and her at dinner, how he used to hurry the meat off the table and never speak one word to ’em’. In revenge Anne ‘took a sort of pleasure to sit at dinner the longer’, which Sarah noted was ‘a thing very unusual with her, who generally the first thing she thinks of is to send her servants to dinner and to make ’em easy’.
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Anne remained adamant that though so many people had shown themselves ‘base and false’, she would ever be constant. She would not hear of Sarah resigning, begging her not to ‘deprive me of one of the greatest comforts of my life’. Insisting that she did not mind living out of London, she told Sarah, ‘Mrs Morley … is so mightily at her ease here that should the [here, a word has been deleted: possibly ‘monsters’] grow good natured and indulge her in everything she could desire, I believe she would be hardly persuaded to leave her retirement – but of these great changes I think there is no great danger’.
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At this juncture, however, with the invasion scare at its height, the outlook dramatically worsened. On 4 May 1692 the Earl of Marlborough was sent to the Tower on suspicion of treason, after an unscrupulous informant concocted evidence that he had been plotting to seize the Queen. Anne was appalled, not just because ‘it is a dismal thing to have one’s friends sent to that place’, but also because she feared that Sarah would be restrained from seeing her by some kind of legal injunction. Before long there were even reports that the Princess herself faced confinement. Anne heard ‘by pretty good hands’ that as soon as the wind turned westerly, enabling the French fleet to sail for England, she and George would be placed under guard.
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Marlborough urged his wife to stay with Anne at Sion, but instead she came to London to work for his release. Having not yet recovered from the illness that had followed her traumatic childbirth, the Princess was left fretting that she could not be on hand to provide comfort. Haunted by the memory of her friend being ‘in so dismal a way when she went from hence’, Anne begged her to look after herself. ‘I fancy asses’ milk would do you good’, she fussed, saying that ‘next to hearing Lord Marlborough were out of his enemies’ power’, the best news she could hope for was that Sarah was bearing up under the strain.
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As tension mounted on account of the expected invasion, the Jacobite Lord Ailesbury sent his wife to Sion in a bid to persuade Anne that she should repeat her flight of 1688 and go over to the enemy. Anne was already in bed when Lady Ailesbury arrived about ten at night, but she
agreed to receive her and sent her other ladies out of the room. Suspecting that some were listening at the door, Lady Ailesbury ‘begged of her highness to speak with a low voice’, and then delivered her sensitive message. She explained that in the belief that ‘the King your father, if wind permit, might very well be in twenty-four hours in the kingdom’, her husband had arranged for ‘upwards of 5000 men’ to be on hand to escort the Princess if she made a dash to join the invading forces. Lady Ailesbury reminded Anne that she had ‘exerted herself’ in the same manner in 1688; ‘Why may not you as well get on horseback … for to restore him to what you assisted in taking away from him?’ In his memoirs Lord Ailesbury stated that though Anne ‘seemed melancholy and pensive’, she heard this in a ‘very attentive’ manner. Then, ‘fetching a sigh’ she allegedly declared, ‘Well Madam, tell your Lord that I am ready to do what he can advise me to’. It seems unthinkable, however, that Anne genuinely contemplated taking up Ailesbury’s offer. After giving birth the previous month, she had been severely weakened by a fever, and it was not until 22 May that she described herself as being ‘able to go up and down stairs’. In the circumstances a gruelling cross-country ride would have been quite out of the question.
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On 20 May Anne took an entirely different initiative by asking the Bishop of Worcester to deliver a message to the Queen, requesting permission to pay her respects now that she was strong enough to leave her house. Mary sent back a coruscating reply. ‘’Tis none of my fault we live at this distance’, she spat, ‘and I have endeavoured to show my willingness to do otherwise. And I will do no more. Don’t give yourself any unnecessary trouble, for be assured it is not words can make us live together as we ought. You know what I required of you, and I now tell you, if you doubted it before, that I cannot change my mind but expect to be complied with … You can give me no other marks that will satisfy me’.
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Anne was meditating her next step when she learned that Sarah’s youngest child, a boy of two, had died. Hot on the heels of this came news on 21 May that English warships had defeated the French fleet at the Battle of La Hogue two days earlier, forcing James to abandon his projected invasion. Distracted by her quarrel with the Queen, Anne could barely break off to offer her friend her sympathy. She assured Sarah that she was ‘very sensibly touched’ by her misfortune, ‘knowing very well what it is to lose a child’, but observed that in cases like theirs, when ‘both know one another’s hearts so well … to say any more on this sad subject is but impertinent’. Then, ‘for fear of renewing [Sarah’s] passion too much’, she changed the subject.
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Doubtless hoping that Sarah would find the latest details of her feud with Mary a welcome distraction, Anne informed her of the letter she had just received. ‘I confess I think the more it is told about that I would have waited on the Queen, but that she refused seeing me, it is the best, and therefore I will not scruple saying it to anybody when it comes my way’, she confided to Sarah. ‘Sure never anybody was used so by a sister!’
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The Princess also reported that when news arrived that Jacobite hopes had been dashed by the Battle of La Hogue, Lady Fitzharding and Mr Maul had urged her to congratulate Mary on the victory. Anne wrote that from the first she had been disinclined to do so, ‘and much less since I received this arbitrary letter’. She was pleased to take this dig at Lady Fitzharding, whose relationship with Sarah had already suffered because she had avoided her after Marlborough’s arrest. In October 1692 Anne would note happily, ‘God be thanked ’tis not now in her power to make me so uneasy as she has formerly done’.
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The informer who had invented evidence against Marlborough was soon exposed as a liar, but for the time being the Earl remained in prison. Fortunately the Habeas Corpus act ensured that he could not be kept there much longer. Anne told Sarah that it was a comfort that he would have to be freed before the end of the current legal term, ‘and I hope when the Parliament sits, care will be taken that people may not be clapped up for nothing, or else there will be no living in quiet for anybody but insolent Dutch and sneaking mercenary Englishmen’.
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He was released on 15 June, but remained in disgrace, with the Queen personally striking his name from the register of Privy Councillors. Anne, however, was as supportive as ever, extending an invitation for him to visit her and George at Sion before he went back to the family home at St Albans.

Sarah spent much of the summer at her country house, while Anne remained at Sion. Occasional treats were provided by outings to Sarah’s home. After a trip to St Albans in late July, Anne informed her hostess that she and Prince George ‘got home in three hour and it was then so light she repented she had not tried Mr Morley’s patience half an hour longer’.
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At this time, Anne had various concerns about her health, complaining in April of suffering from ‘my old custom … of flushing so terribly after dinner’. This might have been an early sign of erysipelas, a streptococcal skin infection often associated with lupus, and which results in facial inflammation and blemishes. Her favourite physician Dr Lower
had died in 1691, and she was now mainly in the hands of the well-respected but irascible Dr Radcliffe. As always Anne was desperate to conceive again, but her menstrual cycle had become alarmingly unpredictable. In her letters to Sarah she referred to her period as ‘Lady Charlotte’, a mysterious term that could perhaps have been a distasteful joke at the expense of Lady Charlotte Beverwort, who had become one of her ladies-in-waiting in 1689. Sarah later noted that the Princess was apt to be ‘unkind’ about her new attendant, even though the poor woman ‘deserved well from her’. At any rate, Anne’s letters in the late summer of 1692 are full of laments about the vagaries of ‘Lady Charlotte’. On 1 August, for example, she described herself as being ‘in a very splenetic way, for Lady Charlotte is not yet come to me’. While thinking it unlikely that she had conceived again after so short an interval, she was fearful that ‘if I should prove with child ’tis too soon after my illness to hope to go on with it’. On the other hand, ‘if I am not, ’tis a very ugly thing to be so irregular’.
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