Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (55 page)

To Sophia’s surprise, Parliament was angered at its actions being stigmatised in print, and ‘hurled thunderbolts’ at the letter. After the letter was declared libellous by both Houses, Sophia thought it prudent to disavow it. Nevertheless, she paid little heed when her agent in England, Pierre de Falaiseau, urged her henceforth to abandon all thought of ‘frightening the Queen’ by acting ‘with a high hand’. Falaiseau had by this time revised his opinion of Anne’s character: whereas he had formerly regarded her as a puppet dominated by favourites, he now described her as ‘very tenacious and fierce’. Unfortunately Sophia preferred to listen to Leibniz, who continued to advocate irresponsible projects. He even suggested that one of her younger sons should replace Prince George of
Denmark as Lord High Admiral, deluding himself that the appointment would be popular in England.
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The Duke of Marlborough heard that Sophia spoke disparagingly of such honours as being naturalised by the terms of the Regency Bill, or the Order of the Garter being bestowed on her grandson. This so concerned him that he wrote in protest to the Elector, which led to George Ludwig having a firm talk with his mother. Afterwards he pretended to Marlborough that she much appreciated Anne’s kind gestures, and on her son’s orders Sophia herself wrote in similar vein, adding unctuously, ‘I believe that it would be for the good of England and all Europe that the Queen should live for a hundred years’.
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In April 1706 the Junto peer Lord Halifax was sent on an official visit to Hanover to present the Electoral Prince with the Garter. While there he not only worked hard to lessen Sophia’s displeasure with the Whigs, but he also convinced George Ludwig that he would be inconvenienced if Sophia visited her prospective kingdom. Halifax pointed out that once the precedent had been established that the successor’s presence in the country was necessary, the Elector himself would have to reside there – which he had no wish to do – if Sophia predeceased Anne.
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Leibniz had advised Sophia to take advantage of Halifax’s visit by asking that her grandson should not only be awarded an English title, but also an establishment to go with it. It is not clear whether the Electress dared to voice both of these demands; certainly Halifax only passed on her request for the title, and Anne was ‘not very easy’ about granting that, being fearful that the Electoral Prince would come to England and take up his seat in the House of Lords. Only once Godolphin persuaded Anne she need not worry, as the Electoral Prince was busy fighting the war, did the Queen reluctantly agree to make the young man Duke of Cambridge. Once again, however, Sophia was not particularly grateful. She grumbled that it would have been infinitely better if her grandson had been given a pension, ‘but they prefer to flatter us with meaningless things’.
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With Sophia as indomitable – or, some would say, incorrigible – as ever, Anne remained fearful that she would succeed in imposing her presence on her in the not too distant future.

The Tories had tried to be cunning, and had ended up being completely outfoxed. Hoping to increase the Queen’s disenchantment with their rivals, the Whigs goaded them into a further blunder. A Whig peer now suggested that, in view of the ‘tragical stories’ that had been put about regarding the fragile state of the Church, a debate should be held on its
condition. The Tories relished the opportunity, even though the Queen had made it clear that she was insulted by the very suggestion that she had not done enough to safeguard the Church. When the debate was held on 6 December 1705, with Anne in attendance, Tory peers such as Rochester tied themselves in knots in their attempts to convey that their complaints were not directed against the Queen, whose ‘example … [was] a great barrier’, but at atheists and dissenters. The only time the Tories scored against their opponents was when Lord Wharton asked the Tories to reveal who ‘these rogues’ were whom they held responsible for the Church’s decline? Alluding to a shameful incident perpetrated by Wharton in his youth, the Tory Duke of Leeds fired back, ‘if there were anyone that had pissed against a communion table or done his other occasions in a pulpit he should not think the Church safe in such hands’. Wharton, it was noted, remained ‘very silent for the rest of that day’. Finally, however, the Tories had to endure fresh humiliation when a majority of the Lords voted not only that the Church was ‘in a most safe and flourishing condition … under her Majesty’s administration’, but that anyone who argued to the contrary was ‘an enemy to the Queen, the Church and her kingdom’.
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The following day a similar resolution was passed by the House of Commons.

If the Queen could draw comfort from the outcome of this debate, in other respects she was by no means free of tribulations, for her physical state was deplorable for much of 1706. She was in serious pain as well as being frequently immobilised, so that, although she did not neglect her duties, carrying them out was a struggle. On 6 January 1706 Anne was too infirm to come to Cabinet, and instead all its members and attendant clerks were ‘admitted into her bedchamber … where she lay on a couch’. She missed a second meeting altogether the next day, and the following week the Cabinet had to be held again in her closet. Despite her wretched condition, her birthday was celebrated in customary style the next month: a play called
The Anatomist
was staged at St James’s, and there was also a performance by a noted singer, displays of dancing, and a ball.
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On 9 February Prince George fell ill in his turn. Six weeks later he was still spitting blood, and the court’s proposed visit to Newmarket was cancelled. From now on he ceased to accompany his wife to long thanksgiving services at St Paul’s, ‘being unable to endure the fatigue’. Anne continued to grace these occasions, although it cost her a great effort. She now found it disagreeable to wear heavy formal clothes, but remained
conscious of the need to put on a good show for the public. That summer, when a thanksgiving was held to mark another of Marlborough’s victories, she told Sarah that, notwithstanding the discomfort, ‘I have a mind to be fine, so I intend to have two diamond buttons and loops upon each sleeve’.
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A young Scot, Sir John Clerk – who visited the Queen at Kensington with the Duke of Queensberry in the spring of 1706 – was appalled ‘to observe the calamities which attend human nature even in the greatest dignities of life’. Not only was ‘her Majesty … labouring under a fit of the gout and in extreme pain and agony’, but Clerk was shocked by the scene of ‘disorder’ which greeted him. He noted with a shudder that ‘her face, which was red and spotted, was rendered something frightful by her negligent dress, and the foot affected was tied up with a poultice and some nasty bandages’. Accompanying Queensberry to Kensington for a second time that summer, Clerk was distressed to find the Queen no better, and when he returned the following year he was once again revolted by what struck him as a positively squalid sight. To him Anne appeared ‘the most despicable mortal I had ever seen, ill dressed, blotted in her countenance and surrounded with plasters … and dirty like rags’.
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It is possible that Clerk was an unduly fastidious young man who made rather too much of what he saw. On the other hand, it is probable he did not even catch the Queen at her worst, for when most severely afflicted she hid herself from outsiders. Only the most trusted servants were allowed near her at such times, as it caused her great ‘uneasiness … to have a stranger about me when I have the gout and am forced to be helped to do everything’.
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Clerk’s description of Anne’s blotchy complexion provides backing for the hypothesis that her ailments were not caused by gout, but by Hughes syndrome, coupled with lupus. People with Hughes syndrome are relatively more likely to develop lupus, and a characteristic symptom of both conditions is a facial rash known as
Livedo Reticularis
or, more colloquially, ‘corned beef skin’. The diagnosis of Hughes syndrome would accord with other symptoms experienced by Anne, such as the ‘starting … in my limbs’ she complained of in 1693 – and which she feared would lead people to assume she suffered from fits – sore eyes, and the stomach pain she periodically experienced, attributed at the time to gout in the bowels, or colic. Furthermore, lupus would account for the pain in her limbs, caused by arthritis inflaming the soft tissues surrounding the joints.
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In November 1705 the English Parliament had agreed to repeal the Alien Act, paving the way for formal negotiations for a treaty of Union. By February 1706 the Queen had chosen her Scots commissioners, almost all of whom were men known to favour Union. The English Union commissioners, named two months later, included all the Junto peers and other leading Whigs, who had now decided that an amalgamation of the two kingdoms would benefit their party. Previously they had been less than keen on the idea, but they had a change of heart after calculating that by pushing forward proceedings, they would acquire an influence over the Scottish political scene. An astute political observer commented, ‘I suppose our pilots, by the hand they have in the present negotiations, hope afterwards to steer those northern vessels’.
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The Whigs on the Commission would not only take an active role in thrashing out acceptable terms, but would also prove eloquent in defending the treaty when it came to be debated in Parliament.

Proceedings opened on 16 April 1706, when the commissioners assembled in Anne’s former Whitehall lodgings, the Cockpit. Having agreed that any questions relating to religion would be excluded from discussion, it was also laid down that negotiations would not take place directly between the national representatives. Instead a dialogue would be conducted in the form of written submissions, to be considered by each set of commissioners sequestered in separate rooms. The representatives of both nations only came together when Anne signified her personal commitment by appearing before them on 21 May and asking to be updated on their progress.

The English commissioners had quickly made it clear that they would settle for nothing less than an incorporating Union, with only one Parliament representing the two countries, rather than a federal Union, which provided for separate legislatures. Their Scots counterparts were aware that retaining two Parliaments would make it easier to dissolve the Union in future, and they accepted that such an impermanent arrangement would be ‘ridiculous and impracticable’. Knowing that a federation of the two countries was ‘most favoured by the people of Scotland’, they did make a half-hearted proposal along these lines, but when the English refused to consider it they promptly capitulated.

According to the Scot George Lockhart (whose presence on the Commission was an anomaly, because, as a Jacobite sympathiser, he genuinely wanted negotiations to fail), his compatriots gave in to English pressure at every turn, saying ‘We must not be too stiff’ whenever difficulties arose.
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Yet from a financial point of view, the terms ultimately
agreed were far from ungenerous to Scotland, and were a great deal better than those offered earlier in Anne’s reign. The most contentious question proved to be the level of representation that the Scots would enjoy at the Westminster Parliament. In the end it was fixed that sixteen Scots Lords, elected by a ballot of their peers, would sit in the Upper House, while there would be forty-five Scots members of the House of Commons. It was a compromise figure, disproportionately high if one considered the Scots’ share of the taxation burden, but erring on the low side when population statistics were taken into account.

In the end a treaty took shape comprising twenty-five articles, of which the chief provided that England and Scotland were to be united into one kingdom, to be known henceforth as Great Britain. There would be a formal Union of crowns, and if Anne died without issue the throne would devolve upon her Hanoverian heirs. While the Scottish Parliament would cease to exist, the Scots did retain their own legal system, although it would later emerge that the House of Lords was to be its ultimate court of appeal. England and Scotland were to have the same system of weights and measures and a shared coinage. There was to be free trade between the two countries, and Scotland could participate in all areas of English colonial trade. To compensate Scotland for becoming liable for a proportion of the national debt, England agreed to make a payment known as the ‘Equivalent’, amounting to nearly £400,000. The Jacobite Lockhart noted balefully that the money proved ‘a mighty bait’ to persuade influential figures in Scotland to support Union.
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While the Scots commissioners were in London for the negotiations, their English counterparts had scrupulously avoided issuing invitations ‘so much as to dine or drink a glass of wine with them’, for fear that any hospitality would be misinterpreted as an attempt to corrupt their guests. However, once the treaty had been drawn up, the two nationalities were able to fraternise. On 23 July 1706 the commissioners lined up in pairs – with a Scot partnering an Englishman – to present the Queen with copies of the signed articles at St James’s Palace. Most uncharacteristically, Lord Keeper Cowper ‘miserably mangled’ his prepared speech praising the Queen’s ‘very great encouragement and assistance to us in the difficulties we met with’ but the Queen redeemed the situation by making ‘a very handsome return, with a very graceful pronunciation and tone of voice’.
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To have reached this stage was a notable achievement, but Union was by no means guaranteed, for first the legislatures of both countries had
to ratify the treaty. The Queen might declare to Godolphin that, seeing so many difficulties relating to Union had been overcome, ‘I … wish with all my heart it may meet with none in Scotland’, but she knew well enough that securing its passage through the Scots Parliament would prove a challenge, not least because that body was being called upon to vote for its own abolition. It seemed likely, too, that the measure would not have an easy ride in England, as strong Tories were already making plain their disapproval. Godolphin reported gloomily that ‘great preparations are making by the angry party here to oppose it’ and ‘it begins to be preached up and down that the Church is in danger from this Union’.
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