Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (82 page)

Immediately after the attack, St John had run ‘to Mrs Masham’s lodgings in the fright’ and located the Queen’s ‘physician and favourite’ Dr Arbuthnot. Together they went to inform Anne, who took the news badly. She ‘did not believe they had told her truth, but that he was dead’, and insisted on speaking to the surgeon who had dressed the wound. Even after being reassured that Harley was alive, she did not calm down, but wept uncontrollably for two hours.
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Many people had no doubt that Guiscard had really wanted to assassinate the Queen. It was known that for some days he had been lurking about the backstairs seeking an audience with her in hopes of enlarging his pension. In fact, according to the Earl of Dartmouth, he had actually been admitted to her presence on the evening of 7 March, ‘and nobody in the outer room but Mrs Fielding or within call but Mrs Kirk, who was commonly asleep’.
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The encounter obviously passed without mishap, but it was thought better not to reveal that the ruffian had gained access.

Measures were promptly taken to tighten security. The guards at St James’s were doubled and the locks changed. The Duke of Shrewsbury suggested that henceforth visitors should not be admitted up the backstairs for audiences with the Queen, as now invariably happened. Whether Anne welcomed these extra precautions may be doubted, as she was apt to be phlegmatic about assassination threats. Once, when warned of a plot to poison her, she answered serenely that the reported ‘design against my person does not give me any uneasiness, knowing God Almighty’s protection is above all things, and as He has hitherto been infinitely gracious to me, I hope He will continue being so’. This prompted St John to comment ‘the Queen extends a little too far that maxim of Caesar’s that it were better to die at once than to live in the continual fear of death’.
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While it may be doubted that Guiscard had ever planned to murder Anne, at one point it seemed he would be the death of her, as the shock and distress caused by his attack on Harley made her ill. Having passed
a sleepless night on 8 March, she was struck by fever in the early hours of 10 March, necessitating her doctors being summoned at five in the morning. For the next month she barely left her bedroom, suffering ‘sometimes from fever and sometimes from gout’. Her symptoms may have been exacerbated by her medical treatment: when Dr Radcliffe heard that her physicians had immediately prescribed cinchona, he said they must be in the Elector of Hanover’s pay.
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Soon after Sir David Hamilton had started regularly attending the Queen as her physician-in-ordinary, he told Godolphin that her gout was milder now that ‘she took nothing but spirit of millipedes, and that since the use of it she had taken fewer medicines than before’. Unfortunately the improvement had been temporary. As well as periodically suffering from ‘gout in her bowels’, the all too familiar pain in her limbs remained a near constant affliction. Swift noted that she was ‘seldom without it any long time together; I fear it will wear her out in a very few years’. Harley, for one, was ‘against her taking too much physic’, and the Queen herself sometimes defied her doctors’ advice about medication. In June 1711 she refused to take the ‘course of steel’ prescribed by Dr Mead, consisting either of iron filings taken internally, or water in which a red-hot poker had been quenched. As well as being so disabled that she could only intermittently walk even with the aid of a stick, it appears she was now pre-menopausal. In early 1710 Hamilton had recorded, ‘the menses happened to her as if she had been but twenty years old’ but eighteen months later a Hanoverian diplomat gathered that she sometimes did not have a period for three months and then experienced heavy bleeding. During a visit to England in 1711 Baron Bothmer reported that she seemed to be swelling before his eyes, largely because ‘she eats to excess’. According to him, she sought to mitigate the fevers and colic that had recently assailed her by drinking more.
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Because the Queen saw so much of her doctors, it was believed they exerted political influence. One Whig wrote disapprovingly of her being ‘seduced by the chatterings of her physicians’. In fact, of her medical advisers, only the Scot John Arbuthnot was a truly ardent Tory. In 1712 he would write a successful political satire,
The History of John Bull
. In this allegorical tale the Duke of Marlborough featured as a crooked lawyer named Hocus, who embroiled honest John – the embodiment of England – in an expensive lawsuit with the Baboon (code for Bourbon) family, and then prolonged it for his own benefit. Long before its publication, Arbuthnot was reckoned as something of an
éminence grise
. In August 1710 one courtier reported he was ‘hardly a moment from
Kensington’, adding that he was ‘a very cunning man and not much talked of but … what he says is as much heard as any that give advice now, and his opinion is that there must be a new Parliament’. Swift declared in September 1711 ‘The Doctor has great power with the Queen’, and shortly before Anne’s death in 1714 he reminded Arbuthnot ‘you acted a great part four years ago’ in bringing about the change of ministry.
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Almost all the Queen’s other doctors, such as Hamilton, were Whigs. Besides seeking to delay her dismissal of Sarah, Hamilton urged her to confide more in the Duchess of Somerset, acted as an intermediary between the Queen and Lord Cowper and once informed her ‘that nobody spoke well of Harley but herself’. Hamilton claimed that Tory members of the household – and by implication Abigail in particular – were so nervous of his persuasive powers that they did their best to curtail his access to the Queen. He recorded in his diary that fear of their disapproval ‘often forced [Anne] to have conversation with me incognito’, although she was somewhat shamefaced about having to resort to such subterfuge. If he called on her when Tory sympathisers were on duty, they ensured the Queen’s door was left open so they could overhear what was said. At such times Anne was reluctant to talk to him at length, but was much more forthcoming when Whig attendants were in waiting.
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In July 1711 Swift became so worried about the royal doctors’ political sympathies that he announced facetiously, ‘I have a mind to do a small thing, only turn out all the Queen’s physicians; for in my conscience they will soon kill her among them’. Shortly before that, his successor as editor of
The Examiner
, Mrs Mary Delarivier Manley, had published an article expressing concern about Anne’s doctors, but Harley evidently thought this ill-advised. When Swift suggested that the Queen was not receiving the best medical care, Harley cut him short, saying ‘Leave that to me’. As it was, Mrs Manley’s piece prompted a rejoinder from the Whig journal
The Medley
, noting that if the Queen discarded her current physicians, it would be difficult to replace them with Tories, who were notoriously ‘as great quacks in science as in politics’. It appears that sometime in 1712 Harley did in fact try to persuade the Queen to dismiss Hamilton, but she would not hear of it. She also remained so firmly set against going back to the Tory Dr Radcliffe, whose behaviour during the Duke of Gloucester’s last illness she had never forgiven, that in June 1711 she authorised Hamilton to put it about town that ‘Radcliffe was the last man she would take in’.
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When the death of Dr Martin Lister in 1712
necessitated adjustments in the Queen’s medical establishment, he was replaced by Dr Shadwell, while Dr Hans Sloane became the Queen’s Physician Extraordinary. Doubtless to the disappointment of her ministers, both men were Whigs.

In the six weeks when Harley was recovering from his wounds, the Commons became more unmanageable than ever. Swift declared on 26 March, ‘All things are at a stop in Parliament for want of Mr Harley; they cannot stir an inch without him’.
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The same day the Commons voted against the Leather Tax, a vital contribution to war revenue. Twenty-four hours later they came to their senses and accepted a virtually identical measure, but the episode demonstrated the extent to which the ministry was dependent on Harley’s political skills.

Guiscard’s attack had enhanced Harley’s prestige, but his temporary incapacitation prevented him from stopping an ambitious expedition to Quebec going ahead. The genesis of this project dated back to the visit to England in April 1710 of four Native American chiefs. Fed up with French incursions on their hunting grounds, local tribes in North America were willing to ally with the British to drive the French out of Canada and so, at the prompting of the Governor of Virginia, four of their chieftains sailed to England to urge that an amphibious expedition be mounted to capture Quebec.

The ‘four Indian Kings’ caused a sensation. They were clothed and entertained at royal expense, and Anne commemorated their visit by commissioning Antonio Verelst to paint portraits of them in native garb. They were shown sights such as Greenwich Observatory, Windsor, and Hampton Court, and taken to the opera and Shakespeare plays. At a performance of
Macbeth
, the audience proved so eager ‘to survey the swarthy monarchs’ that the lead actor invited them onstage. When granted an audience with Anne they explained through interpreters that they had travelled to ‘the other side of the Great Water’ to beg their mighty ruler to proceed with the capture of Canada, which would bring them ‘free hunting and a great trade with our Great Queen’s children’. After a fortnight the exotic quartet returned to Boston bearing gifts from the Queen including her portrait, necklaces, hair combs, scissors, textiles, and a magic lantern.
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Henry St John was inspired by the notion of securing for the Queen a massive North American empire, yet while it seems the Queen was in favour of the venture, Harley was sceptical. He requested Rochester to try to prevent it, but in Cabinet on 25 March, ‘the Queen declared the
design of the expedition to Canada to the Lords’.
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The expedition sailed in May 1711, its destination a secret. The Tory Admiral Hovenden Walker was given command of the fleet, while Abigail Masham’s brother, Jack Hill, was put in charge of all troops on board. As yet Mrs Masham remained on good terms with Harley, but St John clearly hoped to ingratiate himself with her by this appointment. St John had been given sole charge of the expedition’s planning and, according to Harley, he took corrupt advantage of this. Harley later recalled that in June 1711 the Treasury was asked to pay out £28,000 to cover arms and clothing supposedly purchased to equip the expedition. Harley questioned the amount, whereupon St John came to see him in a rage. A fortnight later, ‘the Secretary of State signified the Queen’s positive pleasure to have that money paid’. This was duly done, but Harley had no doubt that the public had been ‘cheated of above £20,000’.
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In early April 1711, during Harley’s convalescence, Abbé Gaultier was sent secretly to France to see what kind of peace terms the French were prepared to offer. Shrewsbury and Harley were still maintaining that nothing less than what France had acceded to at Geertrudenberg would be acceptable, but Gaultier had received ‘more moderate private instructions’ from Jersey, who declared the ministers were only pretending this to protect themselves. Gaultier also brought messages of encouragement for the Pretender. Torcy arranged for Gaultier to visit the Duke of Berwick, an illegitimate son of James II who was one of Louis XIV’s most successful generals and a Jacobite adviser. Berwick recorded that Gaultier wanted an undertaking that ‘Queen Anne should enjoy the crown in tranquillity during her life, provided that she confirmed the possession of it to her brother after her death’. To this Berwick ‘readily consented’. Berwick claimed that he then sent Gaultier to see the Pretender himself, but Torcy’s memoirs contradict this.
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Certainly Torcy’s main priority was to secure an end to the war, and he did not want to jeopardise that with projects to restore the Pretender.

On 11/22 April Louis XIV’s council drew up peace terms to be sent to England. They were remarkably vague. Great Britain was promised security of trade in Spain, the Indies and the Mediterranean. The Dutch were also to have liberty of commerce and a barrier ‘agreeable to England’, a formula indicating it would be less substantial than that allocated in the Barrier Treaty of 1709. England and Holland’s allies would be given satisfaction and ‘new expedients’ would be found to regulate the monarchy of Spain.
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Gaultier brought this schedule to England, and Jersey then showed it to the Queen. While it is unclear how much she knew of what had been going on during the past few months, she welcomed this initiative. She now longed for peace, being conscious that the country could not sustain the war for much longer, and feeling increasingly overwhelmed with what Harley called ‘her … Christian horror of bloodshed’. It appears that Harley had intended to pass on the overtures to Holland without notifying the Cabinet of their existence, partly because he wanted to exclude St John from the peace process. However, the Duke of Shrewsbury urged that the Queen should inform the Cabinet that these offers had arrived although, like the Dutch, the ministers should be given the impression that the proposals had emanated spontaneously from France. Reluctantly, Harley complied with Shrewsbury’s wishes.
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By this time a development of the utmost significance had occurred. On 6/17 April 1711 the Emperor Joseph had died, and in due course his brother, the former Archduke Charles, succeeded him as Holy Roman Emperor. This meant that if Charles was also established as King of Spain, a formidable power bloc would be created, scarcely less dangerous to the balance of power in Europe than a union between France and Spain. As Swift observed, ‘To have the Empire and Spanish monarchy united in the same person is a dreadful consideration’, and for Britain to go on fighting to achieve such an outcome was little short of senseless. When the news arrived, several emergency Cabinet meetings were held to discuss the implications. Clearly, Anne was fully alive to these. In a later letter to the Earl of Orrery, St John referred to ‘the alteration made in the system of war by the Emperor’s death’, which had made the need for peace more apparent. ‘The Queen, my Lord, was of this mind’, he added.
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