Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (86 page)

The opposition countered at once. In both Houses it was proposed to add a clause to the traditional address of thanks, stating that ‘No peace could be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe if Spain and the West Indies were allotted to any branch of the House of Bourbon’. In the Commons the Whig Peter King told St John that pretending the Dutch were happy about joining in peace talks was to treat MPs ‘like schoolboys’. The unhappy Secretary had to shelter behind his mistress, blustering, ‘They had their answer in the Queen’s speech, which assured them of it’. Observers concurred that the opposition had much the best of the Commons debate, although when the question was put to the vote, the ministry secured a majority.
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In the Lords the Queen watched as the Earl of Nottingham made a long speech demanding the address be amended. He was supported by Godolphin, who warned peers that the proposed peace ‘would make them and all their posterity the vilest slaves’. Lord Anglesey objected that the country ‘might have had a peace, a good one too, after the battle of Ramillies’, implying that the Duke of Marlborough had blocked it then in his own selfish interests. At this Marlborough leapt up ‘and spoke like a Roman general’. ‘Making a bow towards the place where her Majesty was’, he said he was glad for an ‘opportunity … of vindicating himself’ in her presence, as she more than anyone knew the injustice of such claims. He wanted peace, he said, but not of a kind ‘that must ruin both her self, her subjects and all the world about her’.
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The Earls of Wharton and Sunderland both gave impassioned speeches, but the ministry received no assistance from the Dukes of Shrewsbury and Buckingham, who remained silent. Oxford tried to put off the vote on a technicality, only to be exposed for misunderstanding Lords procedure. When the House divided, the additional clause was approved by a majority of eight. As the results were announced the Earl of Wharton mocked the ministers by placing his hands around his neck in the form of a halter, indicating that hanging was their likely fate.
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As her ministers reeled from this setback, the Queen left the House of Lords. She caused further panic when the Duke of Shrewsbury asked if he or another government supporter should escort her from the building. ‘She answered short, “Neither of you” and gave her hand to the Duke of Somerset, who was louder than any in the House for the clause against peace’.
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The Whigs were naturally jubilant, believing that before long they could force the Queen to dissolve Parliament. They envisaged that in the New Year they would be invited to form a ministry, with Somers as Lord
Treasurer and Nottingham (who introduced his Occasional Conformity Bill on 15 December and saw it quickly pass both Houses) Lord President. Oxford would then be impeached.

Most of the ministers and Swift were gripped by terror. Their fears that Anne intended to desert them deepened when Abigail hinted as much. Sure that ‘the Queen is false or at least very much wavering’, Swift roared, ‘This is all your damned Duchess of Somerset’s doings!’ Oxford pretended not to be worried, but could not hide that he was ‘mightily cast down’. By 15 December, however, he seemed more cheerful; four days later he told Swift, ‘Poh, poh, all will be well’.
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On 21 December the ministerial counterattack began when it was announced that the Commissioners of Accounts had discovered irregularities committed by the Duke of Marlborough, which would be examined by the Commons in a month’s time. This was a blow for Marlborough, for the Queen had led him to believe he had nothing to fear on this score. When she had first seen him on 18 November, he had appeared ‘dejected and uneasy’ about the matter, whereupon Anne ‘put on the guise of great kindness and said “she was sure her servants would not encourage such proceedings”’. Now Marlborough went to her to complain about things being taken further, to which the Queen replied ‘She was sorry about that, but she was also sorry to see him vote against the peace’.
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More than this was necessary to save the government’s skin. The Queen’s reluctance to act may have stemmed partly from the unjustified belief that Oxford had been lax about cultivating support for the ministry, and that his problems were his own fault. She was also concerned that the ministers would insist that she dismiss the Duke of Somerset from his post of Master of the Horse. While she did not much mind losing Somerset’s services, she dreaded that he would force his wife to resign as Groom of the Stole, and was determined to avoid this. Above all, however, what seemed to be the only way of extricating the ministry from its difficulties filled her with abhorrence. A mass creation of new peers was necessary if the government was to recover control of the House of Lords, but Anne had always been guarded about handing out titles, or raising men higher in the peerage. Only in early December she had told Lord Cowper, ‘the House of Lords was already full enough. I’ll warrant you I shall take care not to make them more in haste’.
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The peers themselves did not welcome additions to their number, as was demonstrated on 20 December when they voted that the Scots Duke of Hamilton could not receive an English ducal title that brought with it
a hereditary seat in the Upper House. In some ways this compounded Oxford’s problems, as the Scots representative peers were so outraged they temporarily ceased to support the government. Paradoxically, however, the Hamilton case did make the Queen more willing to assert her right to confer titles, as she considered ‘’twas pity the prerogative should be so lessened’. It also made her angry with the Duke of Somerset, who had pretended he would support Hamilton by proxy, when he knew full well that only votes in person were allowable. Over the Christmas season Oxford wore down her resistance, as it was borne in upon the Queen that she had ‘no way of securing herself but exerting her power to protect her ministers’ and that, if she failed to do so, it would entail ‘sacrificing her present servants to the rage and vengeance of the former’.
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It was probably after a long meeting with Oxford on 26 December that Anne agreed she would create the requisite number of peers, and the Lord Treasurer wasted no time drawing up a list.

Unaware that the outlook was more favourable, Swift had been occupying himself writing a rude rhyme entitled
The Windsor Prophecy
. This was a vicious satire against the red-haired Duchess of Somerset, whom he called ‘Carrots’. Implying that, having murdered her former husband Thomas Thynne, she would progress to poisoning the Queen, Swift urged Anne to ‘bury these Carrots under a Hill’. As soon as Abigail Masham learned of the intended publication, she begged Swift to destroy all copies and ensure that none were distributed, as she knew an attack on the Duchess would only infuriate Anne. Swift acted too late to prevent the poem being circulated, and thus destroyed his own career. Greatly angered by Swift’s ‘endeavouring to bespatter’ her Groom of the Stole, the Queen commented grimly ‘that would have no influence on her to turn her respect from the Duchess’. While conceding that Swift was ‘good for some things’, she never forgave him, and when the Dean of Wells died in February 1712 she made sure Swift did not succeed him. Later Swift would write bitterly of how his ambitions had been permanently blasted ‘by an old red-haired murdering hag … and a royal prude’.
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Oxford carefully chose the men who would have titles, selecting three who were the eldest sons of peers and thus destined to enter the Lords anyway. When one man turned down the honour, considering it disreputable to obtain a peerage in such circumstances, Oxford suggested that Samuel Masham should be made a Lord, but Anne was not pleased. Oxford recorded, ‘She desired me not to put it into his head, for she was sure Mrs Masham did not desire it. She took me up very short last night but for mentioning it’. Anne later explained that ‘she never had any
design to make a great lady’ of Abigail, fearing she ‘should lose a useful servant about her person’. Mindful of how often Abigail slept on a camp bed in her room when acting as her night nurse, the Queen was worried ‘it would give offence to have a peeress lie upon the floor and do several other inferior offices’. However, on the condition that Abigail ‘remained as a dresser, and did as she used to do’ the Queen finally consented to Masham’s ennoblement. Abigail was ‘very well pleased’, partly because she hoped a peerage would provide ‘some sort of protection to her upon any turn of affairs’.
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Having been ignorant of what Oxford and the Queen had been planning, Lord Dartmouth was stupefied when Anne ‘drew a list of twelve Lords out of her pocket and ordered me to bring warrants for them’. He asked in amazement if she intended to create all at once, not questioning the legality of the proceeding, but greatly doubting its wisdom. The Queen ‘said she had made fewer lords than any of her predecessors’, and since ‘the Duke of Marlborough and the Whigs were resolved to distress her as much as they could … she must do what she could to help herself’. She added, ‘She liked it as little as [Dartmouth] did, but did not find that anybody could propose a better expedient’.
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On 31 December the Queen announced in Cabinet that she had made twelve new peers. She also declared that the Duke of Marlborough was to be deprived of his offices pending the parliamentary enquiry into his financial dealings, so ‘that the matter might have an impartial examination’. Marlborough was informed of this by a letter ‘so very offensive that the Duke flung it in the fire’. Writing back to observe that Anne had deliberately dismissed him ‘in the manner that is most injurious to me’, he reiterated his view that ‘the friendship of France must needs be destructive to your Majesty’.
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When the mass creation of peers was made public that same day, there was consternation at this ‘mighty stretch of the prerogative’. A courtier reported, ‘The Whigs roar and cry this is altering the constitution’ and another observer claimed, ‘People were as much stunned with this daring innovation as if Magna Carta had been ordered to be burnt’. Clearly feeling some qualms of conscience, Anne took informal legal advice from an unnamed person (probably Lord Cowper) who declared that while technically she had acted within her rights, what she had done was not only unprecedented but ‘a violation of the freedom of parliaments’.
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At least the measure proved effective. After a brief Christmas recess, the House of Lords reconvened on 2 January 1712. The Whig leaders had
hoped to repeat their earlier successes with further votes against the ministry. Instead, the House tamely voted to adjourn till later in the month, with some moderate Whig peers voting with the court alongside the new creations. Anne and Oxford, it seemed, had recovered control of the situation.

14

The Great Work of Peace

Having embarked on a peace process to which Austria was avowedly hostile, Queen Anne and her ministers had been appalled to learn that Emperor Charles VI was planning to send Prince Eugene of Savoy, his most successful general, to visit England. The Emperor had recently announced that he intended to send an army to Spain, and it was obvious that Eugene would try to persuade the Queen to despatch more troops herself, just when she was hoping to scale back her commitments there. Every effort was made to discourage Eugene from coming, and it was even hinted that the Queen could not guarantee his personal security. Nevertheless, on 5 January 1712 the unwelcome guest landed at Greenwich. The following day he had a brief meeting with the Queen, whose manner he described as ‘somewhat embarrassed and aloof’. Evidently ‘primed beforehand’, she refused to discuss anything relating to peace, saying this could only be dealt with at Utrecht. After fifteen minutes she terminated the audience, telling him she ‘was sorry the state of her health would not permit her to speak with his Highness as often as she would like’.
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On 17 January the Earl of Oxford wrote to reassure the Marquis de Torcy that Eugene’s visit would not affect the Queen’s outlook in any way. The ministers hoped the Prince’s exhausting round of social engagements would sap his energy, and he was indeed so enthusiastically feted that one observer feared he was ‘in some danger of being killed with good cheer’.
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On Eugene’s arrival in England, a government emissary had advised him that ‘the less he saw the Duke of Marlborough the better’, but the Prince had ignored this warning. He attended the opera with the recently dismissed Captain-General, and was heartily cheered by the audience. He made no secret of his political sympathies, but instead ‘upon all occasions publicly owned the character and appellation of a Whig’. A Jacobite sympathiser reported indignantly he ‘cabals daily with the Whigs in a
very indecent manner’, and at these conferences he encouraged them to maintain their opposition to peace.
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