Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (90 page)

If Abigail’s influence had been curbed, it was partly because the Queen was determined not to allow her to assert herself too much. Lord Dartmouth, who disliked Lady Masham, observed that Anne was not ‘pleased that anybody should apply to her’. He recorded that at one point, ‘the Queen told me I was not in [Lady Masham’s] good graces … because I lived civilly with the Duchess of Somerset; which, she said, she hoped I would continue without minding the other’s ill humours’. He also claimed that ‘the Queen had a suspicion that she or her sister listened at the door all the time’ and this, coupled ‘with some disrespects shown to the Duchess of Somerset’ made Anne consider seeing less of Abigail. Hamilton clearly feared that Abigail upset the Queen by nagging her, but Swift’s account suggests that Anne never let herself be intimidated. According to him, whenever Lady Masham ‘moved the Queen to discard some persons who upon all occasions with great virulence opposed the court, her Majesty would constantly refuse, and at the same time condemn her for too much party zeal’. In January 1713 Anne intervened after Louis XIV sent some expensive gifts to England. She wrote to Oxford, ‘My Lady Masham told me she heard one of the chaises that are come out of France was intended to be given to her. Do not take any notice of it to her but find out if it be so and endeavour to prevent it; for I think it would not be right’.
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In October 1712 a Dutch diplomat reported that some people detected ‘a certain coolness’ between the Queen and Lady Masham, but only a fortnight before, Anne had given striking proof that she remained extremely fond of her Bedchamber Woman. For some reason Abigail, who was heavily pregnant, had lost her temper with the men carrying
her sedan chair. Having leapt out in a fury, she tripped in the courtyard of Windsor Castle, giving herself a black eye and bruising herself badly. For a time it looked as if she might lose her baby, whereupon Anne became so ‘very much concerned for her, that there was as much care taken of her as it had been the Queen herself; she was pleased to sit by her three hours late at night by her bedside’.
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Swift still believed Lady Masham provided the Tories with invaluable assistance. He became very alarmed when, after suffering a miscarriage in March 1713, she absented herself from court to care for a very sick child. Grumbling that ‘she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all’, he ranted, ‘She is so excessively fond it makes me mad; she should never leave the Queen, but leave everything to stick to what is much in the interest of the public as well as her own. This I tell her but talk to the winds’.
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Following his humiliation in Cabinet, Bolingbroke had flounced off to sulk in the country, and Oxford too had retired from court for a fortnight to nurse ill health. On 14 October 1712 the two men had a long conference in London, and next day returned to Windsor to see the Queen. Unfortunately any hope of a reconciliation between them was overturned at the end of the month when Anne held a chapter of the Knights of the Garter. Oxford was given the Garter, as was the Duke of Hamilton and several others, but Bolingbroke was not made a member of the order. This resulted in a fresh burst of ‘outrageous expressions’ from Bolingbroke.
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Bolingbroke vented some of his anger on his fellow Secretary, Lord Dartmouth. He remorselessly bullied his colleague, treating him ‘in so rough a manner’ that Dartmouth was on the verge of quitting. However, after the Queen declared she would be ‘very sorry’ to part with Dartmouth, ‘for I believe him an honest man and I think it would be prejudicial to my service’, matters were smoothed over. By mid November the two Secretaries had reached an understanding, with Bolingbroke back in charge of communications with France.
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By the end of October 1712, Louis XIV had accepted that he could not obtain peace on such favourable terms as he had hoped. Instructions drawn up on 25 October/5 November for the Duc d’Aumont, named as French ambassador to England, stated that the poor state of Anne’s health raised concerns that negotiations would be broken off in the event of her death, and for that reason the King had decided to ‘abandon his just demand to have Tournai’. Another favourable development
occurred the following day, when Philip V formally signed his renunciation of the French crown, now couched in a form acceptable to Britain. When confirmation arrived of this Anne wrote cheerfully to Oxford, ‘I think one may reasonably hope now the great work of the peace is in a fair way of coming to a happy conclusion’.
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To finalise details it was necessary to send an ambassador to negotiate directly with the French. There was shock when the Duke of Hamilton was selected for the task, for there was ‘not a man more obnoxious in the whole kingdom for the suspicion of a favourite of the Pretender’. Oxford probably chose him because he wanted the Duke to persuade the Scots representative peers to support the government in Parliament, but his appointment occasioned ‘melancholy speculations’ in those already fearful for the Protestant succession. As for the Jacobites, they engaged in wild fantasies that Hamilton had official instructions to conclude an agreement with the Pretender. It is true that the Duke of Hamilton had sought the Pretender’s permission before accepting the post of ambassador, but it is highly doubtful that he would have exerted himself further to advance James’s cause. In January 1712 he had written to the Pretender’s Secretary of State, Lord Middleton, stating that while the Queen was saddened by her brother’s misfortunes, her sympathy was lessened by his ‘imbibing tenets repugnant to her people’.
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Hamilton had delayed setting off for France because he was awaiting a favourable outcome to a bitter lawsuit he was engaged in against the Whig Lord Mohun. The Queen had done her best to hasten him on his way, but just when the Duke was on the point of departure, Mohun challenged him to a duel. On 15 November both men died after a dawn encounter in Hyde Park. A witness claimed that the fatal sword thrust against Hamilton had been delivered not by Mohun, but by his second, the Whig General Macartney, one of the officers Anne had cashiered from the army in late 1710. Macartney was already odious in the Queen’s eyes, and she had no doubt of his guilt. She took a keen interest in the manhunt for him, and was disappointed when Macartney escaped abroad. Tories alleged that the Whigs had masterminded Hamilton’s murder in order to obstruct the peace, while the Pretender was downcast, telling Torcy, ‘We have all lost a good friend in the poor Duke of Hamilton’.
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In late 1712 the Duke of Marlborough decided to leave England after being harried by the ministry for much of the year. At a Cabinet meeting in April Marlborough’s alleged malpractice had been discussed, and Dartmouth had been ordered to inform the Attorney General that ‘the
Queen would have him prosecuted according to the desire of the House’. However, after receiving legal advice that proceedings against Marlborough were unlikely to be productive, the ministry thought again. It was easier to try and ‘cover him with eternal infamy in the mind of the people’ by publishing unpleasant articles dwelling on his cheating. This had such an effect that at a performance of Farquhar’s
The Recruiting Officer
in July 1712 the audience clapped and cheered when a song was sung satirising Marlborough’s avarice. Marlborough’s daughter, the Duchess of Montagu, who happened to be present, ‘blushed scarlet’.
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In August it was reported that an action was being brought in the Exchequer to force Marlborough to return sums he had misappropriated. All building at Blenheim had been stopped and there was also talk of obliging the Duke to reimburse some of the previous construction costs. It is possible that over the next few months Oxford came to ‘a kind of composition’ with Marlborough, indicating that proceedings against him would be dropped if he went overseas.
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Anne was pleased by Marlborough’s decision to go abroad, describing it as ‘prudent in him’, but the Duke was ‘denied the favour of paying his personal duty to the Queen’ prior to his departure on 25 November.
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Sarah would join him on the Continent early the following year. Neither would ever see the Queen again.

Bolingbroke had sent word to Torcy that there was no reason to fear that Marlborough would cause trouble while abroad, for it was no longer in his power to harm anyone. In fact, Marlborough represented more of a threat than the Secretary realised. He sent his former Quartermaster General, Cadogan, to The Hague to try and organise an international invasion of England. Cadogan met with the Hanoverian diplomat, Baron Bothmer, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, Heinsius, and the Emperor’s envoy Count Sinzendorf, informing them of Marlborough’s belief that only bringing about ‘a revolution’ in England could prevent the Pretender’s restoration. Marlborough gave assurances that once a joint Dutch and Hanoverian force had invaded, Lord Sunderland and James Stanhope would coordinate events in England.
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On 18/29 December the States General informed the Queen they were ready ‘to enter into the measures you have taken for peace’ and to revise their Barrier Treaty with England. A new agreement was duly signed in late January 1713, which both reduced the number of frontier towns to be allocated to Holland, and modified Holland’s commitment to guarantee the Protestant succession. Previously the Dutch had been required
to intervene automatically if Anne or the succession were deemed in danger, but now they should only send military assistance if formally requested to do so. In Hanover this loosening of the terms aroused disquiet.
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In late December an ambassador from France, the Duc d’Aumont, arrived in England, and was granted a private audience with the Queen on 4 January. Initially he made himself popular with the public by throwing handfuls of money out of his coach, but once he ceased to do so the crowd pursued him with cries of ‘No Pope and no Pretender’, and dead cats and dogs were thrown into his garden. When the house he had rented burnt down on 26 January, some suspected arson.
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To the Duc’s relief his grand costume was saved from the flames, enabling him to cut a fine figure when he attended a court ball a few days later. An English observer took pride in the ‘numerous and magnificent appearance’ at court that day, but d’Aumont considered it compared very unfavourably with similar events at Versailles. He reported that people crowded about ‘without any order, or respect for the Queen’, and he was struck by the contrast between the ‘polished, brilliant and deferential court’ from which he came, and this ‘gathering of people … whom party spirit has stripped of the little politeness the national genius permits’.
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Early in the New Year, the Duke of Shrewsbury went to France as Britain’s ambassador in place of the slain Duke of Hamilton. It was assumed that as soon as a few trifling details had been sorted out, peace could be signed, but in fact matters were far from finalised. Since the ministry had counted on everything being resolved by this time, the date for Parliament’s reassembly had originally been fixed for early February, and MPs had come up to town in readiness. However, the opening of the session was repeatedly postponed, for the ministers dared not face Parliament empty-handed. In Paris Shrewsbury struggled with new complications, and discussions on a commercial treaty ran into difficulties when the French tried to renegotiate terms in a manner the Queen regarded as ‘a direct violation of faith’. Bolingbroke warned that France must not ‘chicane with us’ in the belief that the ministry were too desperate to withstand their demands, for though ‘We stand on the brink of a precipice … the French stand there too’.
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By 17 February the French had so tried British patience that Bolingbroke presented them with ‘the Queen’s ultimatum’. Parliament was now due to meet on 3 March, and he declared if by that date the outcome of the negotiation was still uncertain, Anne would ‘demand
such supplies … as may be necessary for the carrying on of the war’. This prompted the French to be more accommodating, although the deadline of 3 March passed without agreement being reached. Parliament had to be adjourned yet again, angering its frustrated members. Swift reported on 9 March ‘You never saw a town so full of ferment and expectation’.
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At least, however, there were grounds for thinking that the agony would not be protracted much longer.

Anne could congratulate herself that peace was within her grasp, but this had been achieved at the expense of good relations with Hanover. In her speech to Parliament on 6 June 1712, the Queen had declared that safeguarding the Protestant succession was ‘what I have nearest at heart’, but her feelings for the Elector of Hanover were still overshadowed by the publication of the Bothmer memorial, which Bolingbroke noted had ‘justly provoked’ her. In the summer of 1712 Oxford’s cousin Thomas Harley was ordered to Hanover in hopes of bringing the Elector into a more amenable frame of mind. When they met on 4/15 July, Harley suggested that unless the Elector aligned himself with British policy, it ‘would do him an injury in the minds of the people [in England] who were set upon peace’. George Ludwig was unmoved. Stolidly he announced, ‘I do not put myself upon the foot of one pretending immediately to the throne of Great Britain. The Queen is a young woman and I hope will live a great many years; when she dies my mother is before me. Whenever it pleases God to call me to that station I hope to act as becomes me for the advantage of the people. In the meantime speak to me as to a German prince and a Prince of the Empire; as such … I cannot depart from what I take to be the true interest of the Empire and the Dutch’.
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