Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (72 page)

Marlborough had in fact been more realistic about what was necessary to secure peace with France than all other members of the government, but inevitably the Tories blamed him when negotiations foundered. In late July, Godolphin indignantly warned the Duke that Harley was going about saying that the two of them were ‘resolved not to admit of [peace] on any terms’ as ‘was very demonstrable two or three years since’. Angrily Marlborough proclaimed his readiness to ‘defy all his devilish contrivances’, but it is likely that Harley contrived to convey views such as this to the Queen via Abigail.
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The Queen was disappointed by the failure of the 1709 peace talks, which had broken down largely as a result of the Whig ministers’ intransigence. When she opened Parliament in November her speech presented it as statesmanlike to have resisted the enemy’s ‘deceitful insinuations’, and that war remained in the country’s best interests. However, since she spoke in faltering tones, she did not seem to have much faith in what she was saying.
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That autumn, hostilities between the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough also continued unabated. After Anne had written to tell her that no one else considered that Sarah had any grounds for complaint, the Duchess sent back an angry letter on 6 August, insisting that this was far from the case. ‘Your Majesty is very wrong informed in that matter’ she raged, ‘… I can assure you my Lord Marlborough thinks so, and if he has not yet complained of it to you, it is because he has so many other things to do that are of more consequence to the public, though none, as I have reason to think, that are of nearer concern to himself’.
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In fact, despite the Duchess’s bluster, Marlborough was currently making ineffectual attempts to restrain his wife. After Sarah had complained to him about the Queen appointing a Bedchamber Woman without reference to her, he had agreed that Anne’s behaviour was ‘by no means obliging’ but decided he ‘would not expose myself, but meddle as little as possible’. A little later he suggested that her best policy was to ‘be obliging and kind to all your friends and avoid entering into cabals’, and when he saw that Sarah had instead invoked his name in her letter to Anne of 6 August, he gingerly expressed disapproval. While maintaining that the letter was ‘very reasonable’, he asked ‘What good can you expect from it?’ considering that ‘it has been always my observation in disputes,
especially in that of kindness and friendship, that all reproaches, though never so reasonable, do serve to no other end but the making the breach wider’.
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Sarah was furious, accusing him of being ‘unkind’ by not rallying to her, but Marlborough stolidly replied that if he took up the matter with the Queen, she would merely show his letter to Abigail, making their position worse. Then, at the end of August, something happened that made Marlborough change his mind. Almost certainly the catalyst was his receiving a letter from the Queen informing him that she considered it to be in neither his interest nor hers to make him Captain-General for life. Concluding that Anne had been put up to this by Harley and Abigail, he wrote to Sarah on 27 August, ‘It is not fit that anybody but yourself should know that I have just reason to be convinced that [the Queen] has been made jealous of [Marlborough’s] power’. Having no doubt that ‘this villainy has been insinuated by [Abigail] by the instigation of [Harley] who certainly is the worst of men’, he had decided on measures which, he wrote grimly, would ensure that he was no longer ‘in the power of villains, nor even of [the Queen]’.
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Filled with a new sense of resolve, Marlborough immediately despatched a letter that Maynwaring had drafted for him earlier, but which the Duke had hitherto held back from sending, urging the Queen to bow to Junto demands about the Admiralty. Days later he promised Sarah that he would confront Anne over her treatment of his wife, undertaking to ‘speak to [the Queen] just as you would have me’ in a manner that would ‘make [her], as well as all the world, sensible that you are dearer to me than my own life’.
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When Marlborough wrote this he had just embarked on the siege of Mons, having captured Tournai days earlier. He had to break off the letter on hearing that the French were marching to the relief of Mons, giving him an opportunity he welcomed to take them on in battle. His aim was to destroy their army and inflict such a serious defeat that the French would have no alternative but to sue for peace. The ensuing Battle of Malplaquet, which took place on 31 August/11 September, involved 190,000 men, and proved particularly gruesome. With the French entrenched behind strong defences, savage hand-to-hand fighting went on in woodland, with ‘very little quarter on either side’. This ‘action … both desperate and bloody’ was accompanied by ‘such a butchering that the oldest general alive never saw the like’; when it was over the seasoned soldier, Lord Orkney, declared ‘I hope in God it may be the last battle I may ever see’.
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Victory came, but at a tremendous cost. Many more allied soldiers were killed than French, with an estimated 24,000 men perishing, and with the Dutch alone losing 8,000. French losses were reckoned at between 12,000–14,000. While Marlborough himself hailed the day as ‘extreme glorious for the arms of the allies’, he also called it ‘a very murdering battle’, and was shaken ‘to see so many brave men killed … when we thought ourselves sure of a peace’. In England, Malplaquet prompted Tory complaints about ‘the late carnage’. It was said that Marlborough could have avoided a battle by building protective lines prior to besieging Mons, or that, if he had been intent on fighting, he should have done so a day earlier, before the French had built such formidable defences. One officer recalled ‘Our generals were greatly condemned for throwing away so many brave men, when there was not any necessity of coming to a battle … It gave a handle to his Grace’s enemies at home to exclaim loudly against him’. Marlborough had initially believed that his victory would prove decisive, telling Sarah, ‘it is now in our powers to have what peace we please’, but the results were more disappointing than he had hoped.
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Not only had he failed to destroy Louis XIV’s army, but its morale had been lifted by a strong performance on the battlefield, heartening the French to continue the fight.

Marlborough’s sense of being ill treated by the Queen was exacerbated by her failure to congratulate Sarah on his victory, or to express relief that he was safe. He devoted much thought to composing his projected letter to the Queen, ensuring that it was absolutely as Sarah wanted by sending it to her so she could add her own corrections. All this took time, so it was not until the end of September that he posted it to Anne. Regarding his request to be made Captain-General for life, Marlborough explained that he had asked for this mark of favour because he understood that Mrs Masham was undermining him. He claimed that the Queen’s decision to reject his application ‘made me very uneasy, but no ways lessened my zeal’, but he could no longer contain his mortification on seeing ‘your Majesty’s change from Lady Marlborough to Mrs Masham and the several indignities Mrs Masham has made her suffer, of which I am much more sensible than of any misfortune that could have befallen my self’. This, he said, had convinced him that it would be best for him to retire once the war ended.
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The Queen greeted the letter with an ominous silence. She had not yet replied to Marlborough’s earlier letter relating to the Admiralty, having been ‘mighty melancholy’ for much of September on account of sore eyes. Unfortunately, although ill health gave her an excuse to avoid
entering into correspondence, it could not protect her from having to see Sarah. Godolphin and her Whig friends had encouraged the Duchess to give Anne the benefit of her opinions, and when Abigail left Windsor to go and have her second child at Kensington, the Duchess seized the chance to make repeated forays to the Castle.
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On 30 September she had a preliminary skirmish with Anne when she asked to be assigned an additional set of rooms at St James’s Palace, enabling her to make a more spacious entrance into her own apartments. When the Queen turned down this request, Sarah exacted permission to spread it about ‘that, after all the services Lord Marlborough had done her, she would not give him a miserable hole to make him a clean way to his lodgings’.
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A week later Sarah was back at court for another two-hour visit, during which she harangued the Queen unmercifully. As the Whigs desired, she lectured Anne on the importance of putting Lord Orford in charge of the Admiralty, but she also addressed the breakdown of her relationship with the Queen, demanding ‘to know what her crime was that had wrought in her so great an alteration’. Perhaps it was on this occasion that Anne said Sarah’s major fault was to have accused her of an intimacy with Abigail, but she tried to avoid a prolonged argument by saying that she would give Sarah a full answer in writing. The Duchess could see that Anne was flustered by the prospect of her saying further discomfiting things about her association with Mrs Masham, and Sarah later told the Queen that ‘your turning away from the candle whenever you thought I was going to mention a disagreeable subject’ had betrayed her agitation.
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Sarah waited eagerly for the Queen’s promised account of herself, but days passed and not a word appeared. Beside herself with anger, on 16 October Sarah sat down to write for Anne what she herself described as ‘more like a narrative than a letter’. In this she reviewed the events of February 1708, attacking the Queen’s attempt to rule without Marlborough and Godolphin. She raged that, considering Anne had the pair of them to thank for ‘having and keeping’ her crown, it was iniquitous that the Queen had supported Mrs Masham’s ‘monstrous design … of setting up Mr Harley to ruin those men’. Sarah continued that it was evident that Anne was embarrassed by her infatuation with that ‘low creature’ and that she was aware of the ‘reflections that are made all over town upon it’. She warned Anne that ‘if there can be any pleasure in company that one is ashamed to own … I am sure you will pay very dear for it’, for it was hardly ‘possible for … a prince to keep his power long
or preserve the esteem of his subjects’ once it became known that he or she was ‘entirely given up to one’ who had incited ‘so many wrong things’. The Duchess had surpassed herself by writing something even more offensive than the series of remarkably unpleasant letters she had sent Anne over the past few years.
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Another nine days elapsed before the Queen took any action. However, once her eye problem had been cured by a Mr Gueche (who was paid £100 for his efforts), she felt ready to answer both the Duke of Marlborough and his wife. On 25 October she wrote to Marlborough regretting that he seemed set on resigning after the war ended, and hoping that he would think better of it. She said she was aware he had been upset by her rejection of his application to be Captain-General for life and undertook, though with an obvious lack of enthusiasm, that if on his return he really still believed the appointment was appropriate she would ‘comply with your desires’. She was emphatic, however, that he was wrong to blame Mrs Masham for the earlier refusal as she had known ‘nothing of it’.

She likewise stressed that she did not believe Abigail had promised Harley to turn the Queen against Marlborough, although she agreed to question Mrs Masham on this point. She commented sorrowfully ‘It is not to be wondered at you should be so incensed against poor Masham, since the Duchess of Marlborough is so and has used her so very hardly … which I know she does not deserve, but it is vain to go about vindicating one against whom there is so great a prejudice’. The Queen then addressed the Duke’s complaints about her treatment of Sarah. ‘You seem to be dissatisfied with my behaviour to the Duchess of Marlborough. I do not love complaining but it is impossible to help saying … I believe nobody was ever so used by a friend as I have been by her ever since my coming to the Crown. I desire nothing but that she would leave off teasing and tormenting me and behave herself with that decency she ought both to her friend and Queen, and this I hope you will make her do … Whatever her behaviour is to me, mine to her shall be always as becomes me’.
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The following day the Queen wrote to Sarah, although unfortunately no copy survives of the letter, and we only have the Duchess’s summary of its contents. Clearly, however, it was a devastating document, described in one of Sarah’s memoirs as ‘a letter which was, in truth, a giving up all friendship with the Duchess’. As Sarah later recalled, Anne ‘charged her with inveteracy … against poor Masham and with having nothing so much at heart as the ruin of her cousin’. Having advised the Duchess ‘for
her soul’s sake to lay aside her malice’ and cease to ‘torment her about Masham’, the Queen suggested that the misunderstandings between them had arisen principally because Sarah could not accept that Anne ‘could not see with her eyes and hear with her ears’. Sarah had, however, been guilty of ‘saying shocking things’. All this meant that ‘it was impossible for her to recover her former kindness’, although the Queen did repeat her earlier undertaking ‘that she should behave herself to her as the Duke of Marlborough’s wife and her Groom of the Stole’.
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At the same time as the Queen was writing this, Sarah was taking steps to protect what she conceived to be her rights as Groom of the Stole. Having heard that the royal sempstress, Mrs Rainsford, was mortally ill, the Duchess demanded to appoint her successor, being fearful that otherwise Mrs Abrahal would be given the post. ‘I beg leave to put in my claim beforehand’, she wrote to Anne, warning that Marlborough would not tolerate any further infringement of her privileges. The Queen returned a withering response. ‘You need not have been in such haste, for Rainsford is pretty well again and I hope will live a great while’, she informed the Duchess. If, however, ‘this poor creature should die … I shall then hearken to nobody’s recommendation but my own’.
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