Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (66 page)

Indeed, far from being ready to increase Junto representation in government, Anne wanted to dismiss the only member of it who currently held Cabinet office. Just as she had expected, Anne had not found it congenial having Lord Sunderland as her Secretary. Sunderland had what Swift described as a ‘rough way of treating his sovereign’, who found his ‘violent temper and sour carriage’ deeply trying. While Sarah maintained that her son-in-law said ‘nothing disrespectful or uneasy’ to the Queen, another source alleged that he ‘always treated her with great rudeness and neglect and chose to reflect in a very injurious manner upon all princes before her’. Marlborough was sufficiently concerned about Sunderland’s confrontational manner with the Queen that in July 1708 he cautioned him that, rather than deliberately saying things to her that she was bound to ‘take ill’, he should ‘endeavour to please as much as is consistent with his opinion’.
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What finally provoked the Queen beyond endurance was the discovery that Sunderland had been intriguing to strengthen the Whigs in Parliament, regardless of the fact that this was likely to cause difficulties for the ministry. When elections were held in Scotland, the government set out to manage them so as to ensure the return of MPs and representative peers whose support could be relied on, but Sunderland exerted himself in favour of candidates who would vote with the Whigs in Parliament, even in opposition to the ministry. He let it be understood that the Queen had authorised him to do this, although he knew full well that the last thing she wanted was a Parliament filled with Scots who
took directions from the Junto. Just before the elections the Queen was alerted to his activities, and at once took measures to counter them, but these were only partially successful. Where once the Queen could count on all sixteen of the Scots representative peers being men ‘such as would have voted as I would have them’, thanks to Sunderland now only ten of those elected could be depended upon to do the ministry’s bidding.
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As soon as she had discovered what Sunderland was doing, the Queen had written to Marlborough in fury. She fumed, ‘It is such a behaviour … as never was known, and what I really cannot bear’, though she claimed she was not entirely surprised, on account of ‘all Lord Sunderland’s own actions having shown so much of the same spirit’. Declaring it ‘impossible to bear such usage’, she wrote to tell Marlborough on 22 June that she intended to deprive Sunderland of the seals.
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As was his custom, Marlborough forwarded this letter to his wife, despite being aware that the Queen would have looked on it as betrayal had she known that he habitually showed Sarah her confidential communications. Now, while taking care to conceal the extent to which her husband shared secrets with her, Sarah decided in early July to tackle the Queen herself.

Sarah wrote that Marlborough had complained of having lost all his influence with the Queen, and rebuked Anne for preferring to take advice from Prince George and ‘the object of his favour’. This last phrase was a reference to Sarah’s brother-in-law, George Churchill, but the Queen misread the possessive pronoun and thought she was alluding to Abigail. On 6 July, Anne wrote back pointing out that, as ‘all impartial people’ would acknowledge, she had consistently demonstrated that she had the highest regard for Marlborough. She then sharply requested Sarah not to ‘mention that person any more who you are pleased to call the object of my favour, for whatever character the malicious world may give her, I do assure you it will never have any weight with me … nor I can never change the good impressions you once gave me of her, unless she should give me cause, which I am very sure she never will’.
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This letter provoked Sarah into scaling new heights of rudeness. Having corrected the Queen’s misunderstanding about George Churchill, she wrote snidely she did not want Anne ‘to think I am making my court to Abigail’, whom she regarded as ‘low and inconsiderable in all things’. Then, seizing on the Queen’s reminder that the Duchess herself had once thought highly of Abigail, Sarah said she had been careful never to overrate her cousin’s merits. ‘My commendation went no further than being handy and a faithful servant … but I never thought her education was such as to make her fit company for a great queen. Many people have
liked the humour of their chambermaids and have been very kind to them, but ’tis very uncommon to hold a private correspondence with them and put them upon the foot of a friend’. Sarah should have recognised it as a dangerous sign when, in reply, the Queen adopted a tone of mock humility. She wrote sarcastically that being ‘very sorry whenever I happen to make any mistakes in what dear Mrs Freeman says to me, as I find I have done’, she had decided to defer answering Sarah’s last letter until she had ‘read it over and over again … for fear of making any more mistakes’.
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Furious that her staggeringly insolent comments had not met with a fuller response, Sarah decided to go to Windsor and confront the Queen in person. During July, Anne received her in private on several occasions, and their exchanges grew increasingly acrimonious. At one of these encounters, when Sarah warned her of the dire consequences of standing by Abigail, Anne blurted out, ‘Sure I may love whom I please’, which only confirmed the Duchess in the view that Anne’s attachment to Mrs Masham was now all-consuming. After Sarah taunted her that there was no one other than Marlborough and Godolphin to whom she could turn, the Queen made another unguarded comment, firing back that ‘she had friends’ who could ease her current political difficulties. Sarah passed this on to Marlborough, who believed this proved that Anne was intriguing with his and Godolphin’s Tory opponents.
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Looking back upon this period, Sarah was sure that the Queen was having meetings with Harley during these weeks. She recalled that Anne spent much of that summer at her little house at Windsor, on the pretext that it suited George because it was cooler than the Castle, ‘though it was really hot as a melon glass’. In fact, Sarah believed, the Queen had found it convenient because, while there, she could see ‘anybody … that Mrs Masham pleased without being observed’, and in this way ‘kept up a constant correspondence with Mr Harley’. The Duchess confidently asserted that Harley ‘came a private way out of the park into the garden … but sometimes there was blunders made about the keys … which made some take notice of it’.
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In reality the Queen had not had any personal encounters with Harley since his fall in February. On the other hand, by late summer, she was no longer cut off from him completely. Although Harley himself would state in a letter he sent Abigail in October that he had ‘had no sort of communication’ with the Queen during the past eight months, this was somewhat disingenuous and misleading. While Anne had been telling
the truth when she had assured Godolphin the previous May that she no longer had ‘the least commerce with Mr Harley at first or second hand’, towards the end of July, the situation changed.
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As Sarah’s behaviour became ever more offensive, and Marlborough and Godolphin intensified their attempts to force the Queen to take into government men whom she disliked, Harley started to edge his way back into Anne’s life, courtesy of Abigail.

In the weeks following Harley’s dismissal, the Queen had forbidden Abigail to meet with him. On 17 April 1708 a dismayed Mrs Masham had written to him, ‘I am very uneasy, but my poor aunt [the Queen] will not consent to it yet … which gives me a great deal of trouble’. Three months later the Queen again prohibited Abigail from leaving Windsor to go and see Harley in London. On 21 July Abigail informed him in vexation, ‘I repent heartily my telling my aunt the reason why I desired to go, but did not question having leave’.
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On both these occasions, Abigail proved ingenious in overcoming the restrictions placed on her by her mistress. In April she had written to Harley ‘I think it necessary for her service as well as my own for us to meet … [and] therefore have a mind to do it without her knowledge and so secret that [it] is impossible for anybody but ourselves to know it’. When detained at Windsor that July she had sent her brother to see Harley in London. She also corresponded with Harley, guarding against the danger of interception by employing a code that allowed them to pretend they were gossiping about family matters, when really they were discussing the political situation. In their private cipher system, the Queen featured as ‘Aunt Stephens’, Marlborough was ‘Cousin Nat Stephens’, Abigail ‘Cousin Kate Stephens’ and Harley ‘Cousin Robin Packer’.
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By the summer of 1708, Mrs Masham was once again passing on some of Harley’s views to the Queen. On 21 July Abigail wrote to him, ‘I shall be very glad to have your opinion upon things that I may lay it before her, for that is all can be done’. As a result Harley sent her ‘papers’ and a ‘book’, probably written by him, that Abigail showed to Anne. Abigail later referred to him having offered the Queen ‘wise and good advice’, and while we do not know what this consisted of, it is safe to say that he would have urged the Queen not to give in to Junto demands. He may, however, have gone further, by seeking to make her resent her treatment at the hands of Marlborough and Godolphin. In a private paper jotted down in April 1708 he had demanded, ‘Do they not tear everyone from her who would treat her like a Queen or obey her? … It is now
complained of that the Queen presumes to argue with her ministers’. The messages he relayed to Anne through Abigail are likely to have dwelt upon similar matters. Possibly, too, the papers and writings he sent to Anne at this point reproduced some of the arguments put forward in an unpublished tract entitled
Plain English
that Harley wrote in August 1708, and which savagely attacked the Marlboroughs and Godolphin for monopolising power and enriching themselves at national expense.
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Harley and Abigail were frustrated that Anne was very guarded in her response. In July Abigail had ‘told her all’ the rumours she had heard concerning a new attempt by the Whigs to bring over the Elector of Hanover’s son to England, but she had been disappointed by the Queen’s reaction. ‘While she is hearing it, she is very melancholy, but says little to the matter’, she reported to Harley. Although the Queen did not forbid Abigail from putting across her point of view, she invariably heard her in silence and gave her no reason to think that she would act on her advice. While Marlborough and Godolphin’s correspondence from this period abounds with complaints that Anne was being extraordinarily stubborn and uncooperative, the letters of Abigail and Harley provide an almost comical contrast, for they lament that the Queen dare not defy her ministers, and attribute this to cowardice. On 21 July Abigail wailed to Harley, ‘Oh my poor aunt Stephens is to be pitied very much for they press her harder than ever … They come so fast upon her I have no hopes of her deliverance, for she will put it quite out of her friends’ power to save her’. Six days later Abigail repeated that she was ‘very much afraid of my aunt’s conduct in her affairs’, for in her opinion the want of courage Anne displayed ‘has made her make a most sad figure in the world’.
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As yet Harley had established only the most tenuous link to the Queen, and his part in stiffening her resistance to her ministers was still limited. Anne herself was adamant that her rejection of her ministers’ advice owed nothing to outside interference, and that she was guided solely by her personal convictions. She pointed out that these were notable for their consistency, and in early August asked Marlborough to explain ‘why my not complying with some things … which you know I have ever been against, should be imputed to something extraordinary … especially since my thoughts are the same of the Whigs that ever they were from the time I have been capable of having notions of things and people.’ She expressed incredulity at ‘what I am told every day of my being influenced by Mr Harley, through a relation of his’, and declared categorically that there was ‘nobody but you and Lord Treasurer that I
do advise with’. By that time this stretched the truth. For Harley, the door to power had now opened a chink, which he would do everything possible to widen.

Sarah had not been exaggerating when she had told the Queen in one of her letters that Marlborough was deeply demoralised. As well as being worried by Anne’s intransigence over Whig appointments, he claimed that her threat to dismiss Sunderland had made him physically ill. He was despondent, too, to hear from his wife that the Queen appeared ‘fonder of [Abigail] than ever’, remarking gloomily that as long as that situation continued, ‘I am sure there can be no happiness’. To compound his depression, the military outlook was grim, for in late June the strategically important towns of Ghent and Bruges, in allied possession since 1706, voluntarily opened their gates to the French. Nevertheless, on 30 June/11 July Marlborough achieved another ‘great and signal victory’ when he thwarted an enemy attempt to capture the town of Oudenarde, taking a great risk by attacking before his whole army had crossed a river to reach the battlefield, but being vindicated by the triumphant outcome.
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The Duke would have liked to follow up the victory by making for Paris but deferred to advice from other allied commanders that this would leave his army exposed to an attack from the rear, and that first it was necessary to take the great fortress of Lille. In view of the town’s formidable defences, this posed a terrible challenge, and during the next four months allied casualties from the siege were three times greater than those incurred at the Battle of Oudenarde.

The Queen wrote Marlborough a warm letter of congratulations on ‘your glorious success’, acknowledging ‘I can never say enough for all the great and faithful services you have ever done. But be so just as to believe I am as truly sensible of them as a grateful heart can be’. She went on that since her continued ‘esteem and friendship’ for him could hardly be in doubt, she trusted he did not think ‘that because I differ with you in some things, it is for want of either. No, I do assure you’. Plaintively she concluded, ‘If you were here, I am sure you would not think me so much in the wrong in some things as I fear you do now’.
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Contrary to her hopes, however, her current conduct met with nothing but his disapproval.