Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (85 page)

Abigail attended a concert on the evening the news arrived to show she was ‘not downcast’ but there was no disguising her brother had covered himself in ignominy. For St John, who had ‘counted much’ on the expedition making England ‘masters … of all North America’, it was a bitter blow, not softened by Oxford’s cheery demeanour at the failure of a venture he had prophesied would miscarry.
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All hope that Britain would emerge from the war with territorial gains in Canada had to be abandoned.

The Queen now had to persuade her allies that it was in their interests to embark on peace negotiations with France. The task was complicated by the fact that it had been decided not to reveal to them the particular advantages Great Britain had secured for herself, but only the more general provisions promising satisfaction to the allies in shadowy terms. Lord Rivers was sent to Hanover to inform the Elector and his mother, bearing letters from Oxford, which made much of the fact that France had agreed to acknowledge the Protestant Succession. The new Emperor
Charles’s representative in London, Count Gallas, was also shown an abridged version of the articles, which he received in a most disrespectful manner. On 13 October this confidential information was printed in the Whig newspaper,
The Daily Courant
. The government had no doubt Gallas had leaked it and, despite the Queen’s trepidation at bringing about ‘a kind of rupture’ with Emperor Charles, she was prevailed upon to tell Gallas he was no longer welcome at court. Soon afterwards he left England in disgrace, but the damage he had caused was not easily rectified. Since the public remained ignorant of the more appealing aspects of the agreement reached with France, their disappointment was acute. The Hanoverian Resident, Kreienberg, reported, ‘almost nobody, whether Whig or Tory, is pleased’.
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The Dutch too were given an incomplete picture of what had been negotiated. The Earl of Strafford, the Queen’s ambassador at The Hague, was ordered to explain to the States General that ‘though the several articles do not contain such particular concessions as France must, and to be sure will make, yet they are, in our opinion, a sufficient foundation whereupon to open the conferences’. If the Dutch appeared suspicious that the Queen had ‘settled the interests of these our kingdoms … by any private agreement’, Strafford was to brush this aside and to warn that his mistress would have ‘just reason … to be offended … if they should pretend to have any further uneasiness upon this head’. Should Holland refuse to explore the opportunity for peace, Great Britain would remain in the war, but would ‘no longer bear that disproportionate burden’ she had shouldered in the past.
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The Dutch did indeed fear that Britain had procured better conditions for herself than she was willing to admit. The Pensionary of Amsterdam, Paul Buys, was accordingly sent to England to see if he could discover the truth. When he subjected the Queen to what she called ‘a long harangue’ on 21 October, she declared that ‘her people were so overburdened with the war that it was time to think in good earnest of peace’. Holland remained distrustful, and reluctant to proceed without favourable terms being guaranteed. Already there were signs they would have to settle for a less extensive barrier than that set out in the Barrier Treaty of 1709, which Britain now seemed disinclined to honour. But though they scented trickery, Holland too had been financially drained by the war, and the Dutch had suffered dreadful loss of life. Prolonging the war was such a grim prospect that on 10/21 November the States General agreed that a peace conference could be held at Utrecht in the New Year. When the news arrived in England on 14
November, Mrs Masham exclaimed, with tears in her eyes, ‘God be thanked! … This will prolong the Queen’s life’.
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One major obstacle had been cleared, but the government next had to secure Parliament’s endorsement, which was going to be a struggle. Whig pamphleteers were pouring out propaganda insisting the war must be continued, and despite St John’s attempts to stem the tide by arresting a dozen printers, the nation remained ‘half bewitched against a peace’. The fact that both Oxford and the Queen were ill in November 1711 enabled the meeting of Parliament to be postponed but, as Swift acknowledged, what really caused the delay was that ‘the Whigs are too strong in the House of Lords; other reasons are pretended, but that is the truth’. Oxford had dealings with Whigs such as Somers, Halifax, and Somerset but could not persuade them to favour peace, even though Somers provided no rationale for carrying on the war other than ‘he had been bred up in a hatred of France’.
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The ministry were alerted that the Whigs planned to mount a lurid show on 17 November, the anniversary of Elizabeth I’s accession. Pasteboard figures of the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender were to be carried through the streets to the cry of ‘No peace on the present terms!’ before being ceremonially burnt. Such spectacles had been a feature of the Exclusion Crisis thirty years earlier, inflaming public feeling. Just in time, the mannequins were seized and the procession banned, much to the Queen’s relief. She wrote to Oxford ‘I look upon it as a great happiness that the mob was disappointed of their meeting, for God knows of what fatal consequence it might have proved’.
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It was still uncertain what attitude the Duke of Marlborough would adopt towards peace. Perhaps he would embrace the opportunity for a well-earned retirement, but the ministry were taking no chances. Earlier in the year the government scribe Mrs Manley had sought to exploit the squirearchy’s anti-Semitism by claiming in
The Examiner
that the warmongering Whigs were in league with Jewish profiteers. As she put it, they had sought ‘reinforcement from the circumcised’, one of whom was the army’s bread supplier, Sir Solomon de Medina. Mrs Manley found it scandalous that a young Whig Duchess – almost certainly Marlborough’s daughter, the Duchess of Montagu – had attended a ball given by Medina and had appeared not ‘in the least disgusted at giving her hand to dance in partnership with a frowzy Jew’.
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Now the administration decided to see if they could extract information from Sir Solomon that could be used against Marlborough.

When questioned earlier that autumn by a Commons committee, Medina had admitted that he had given Marlborough money from his bread contracts, amounting cumulatively to £63,000. Marlborough immediately explained to the Commissioners for Public Accounts that he had used this money to gather intelligence. He volunteered that in addition he had taken a commission of two and a half percent from foreign rulers paid by Great Britain to supply the allies with troops. He produced a warrant signed by the Queen in 1702 authorising this, although it had long since expired. The sums deducted came to at least £175,000, but the government put the figure much higher. Although Marlborough claimed that this too had been spent on military intelligence, it is unlikely that such an enormous amount would have been needed for such purposes. Possibly some of the money had indeed gone into the general’s pockets but, if so, he certainly deserved it more than St John, whose own corrupt practices did not deter him from hounding Marlborough.
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The Queen was very shocked when Oxford informed her what had emerged. Possibly too, she was alarmed to hear that at The Hague Marlborough had been busily conferring with Dutch politicians and foreign ministers, for it seemed likely he had urged them not to countenance peace. On 15 November Anne wrote to the Lord Treasurer, ‘The news you sent me … concerning the Duke of Marlborough is something prodigious and … his proceedings since, I think … very extraordinary’.
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Having returned to London on 17 November, Marlborough met with the Queen next day at Hampton Court. Any hopes that he would acquiesce in ending the war were immediately dispelled: he told Anne that the only object of peace was the introduction of the Prince of Wales, and that her life would not be safe thereafter. As Bishop Burnet recorded, the Duke ‘found her so possessed that what he said made no impression’. Over the next few days Marlborough refused to attend Cabinet, giving out ‘that he would not do it, and that he was happy for all the nation to see that he did not have a hand in such a peace as was making’.
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Oxford knew that he would have to neutralise Marlborough. It is not clear how hard he found it to persuade Anne of this, but by 15 December the Earl was confident enough to inform the Grand Pensionary of Holland that the Duke would be dismissed.
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Marlborough, however, was far from being the ministry’s only problem. The Whigs had secured an unlikely ally in the shape of the High Church Earl of Nottingham, whom they had approached through Marlborough and Godolphin.
Deeply embittered by his continued exclusion from office, Nottingham had indicated he would work with them on condition that the Whigs allowed the passage of an Act against Occasional Conformity. To secure a majority against the ministry, the Whigs were willing to betray their allies, the dissenters. They consoled themselves that Nottingham had agreed that his bill would be relatively mild, drafted ‘with all possible temper’, and they may also have reflected that if they succeeded in bringing the government down, they could repeal the measure later. When the dissenters expressed dismay at being offered up for sacrifice, the Junto informed them that, at this time of crisis, the overwhelming necessity was ‘to unite against the common enemy … Popery’.
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Oxford was busily canvassing peers for their votes, and calculated that he could count on a majority of ten in the House of Lords. The Queen too played her part. One anonymous letter reported that ‘as severe a closeting as has been known in England was put in practice’. Jonathan Swift later accused her of being too languid, alleging that she showed ‘perfect indifference’ to the fate of the ministry when talking with one nobleman, but this was unfair. Although she failed to change the vote of a single peer she undoubtedly did her best, having interviews with the Dukes of Marlborough, St Albans, and Grafton; the Earls of Dorset and Scarborough; and Lord Cowper. She also spoke with the Bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet, who responded with an apocalyptic vision. He told her that if Philip V kept Spain, all Europe would shortly be delivered ‘into the hands of France … and we were all ruined; in less than three years time she would be murdered and the fires would be again raised in Smithfield’.
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Oxford hoped to turn around public opinion by employing Swift to present the arguments in favour of peace. On 27 November his tract
The Conduct of the Allies
was published. This stated that Great Britain should never have fought as a principal in a war from which she had little to gain. Instead of sending armies to the Continent, she should have concentrated more on naval operations, but it was ‘the kingdom’s misfortune that the sea was not the Duke of Marlborough’s element’. Swift alleged that the Emperor Joseph had counted on securing a crown for his younger brother at English expense, pointing out that he had been a selfish ally who had pursued his own objectives in Italy and Hungary to the common cause’s detriment. Swift accurately reminded his readers that, despite having far more to fear from France than had Great Britain, Holland had never fulfilled her quotas for ships or men. However, his claim that the Dutch thrived on a war ‘which every year
brought them such great accessions to their wealth and power’ was a grotesque slander. As for the Duke of Marlborough, Swift asserted that his only reason for wanting to continue the war was ‘that unmeasurable love of wealth which his best friends allow to be his predominant passion’.
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The Conduct of the Allies
was a runaway success, going into numerous editions. Almost immediately, however, it was trumped by another publication. Wanting to show solidarity with the Emperor Charles, who had sent a circular round German courts condemning the articles signed by Britain and France, the Elector of Hanover despatched his adviser Baron Bothmer to England to protest. On 28 November, Bothmer presented St John with a memorial by the Elector, denouncing peace in the strongest terms. In the view of George Ludwig, entering into negotiations on the basis on the ‘vague generalities’ offered by France, would cause ‘all Europe to fall into confusion and sooner or later into enslavement’.
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St John kept this from the Queen, but Bothmer circulated the memorial among various notables, including the Duke of Somerset. On 5 December it was published in
The Daily Courant
, and the Duchess of Somerset showed the paper to Anne. The memorial caused a sensation: ‘many thousands’ of copies were sold, with some being ‘printed on a large sheet to be preserved in frames’.
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The Duke of Somerset said that reading the memorial finally decided him to vote against peace, and he then worked hard to sway others, assuring doubtful lords that the Queen would not object if they opposed the ministry. Everyone in Parliament had to bear in mind that if they supported the government’s policy, they would incur the Elector’s enmity, blighting their prospects in the next reign. This meant, of course, that Tories who were undeterred from favouring peace now had strong reason to dread George of Hanover’s accession, prompting Oxford to observe ‘Whoever advised that memorial have given the succession a terrible wound’. Abbé Gaultier’s assessment to Torcy was that ‘Bothmer’s impertinent memorial much advances the affairs of [the Pretender] and does not retard our own’.
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On 7 December the Queen opened Parliament. In her speech she announced that, ‘notwithstanding the arts of those who delight in war’, a peace conference would open at Utrecht in January. She insisted that this was with the ‘ready concurrence’ of the States General, who had ‘expressed their entire confidence in me’.
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