Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (101 page)

The fact is, just as Anne’s contribution towards the reign’s triumphs should not be overlooked, so she cannot be absolved from her part in less praiseworthy events. The idea that Anne was hopelessly weak and ineffectual, and constantly imposed upon by others, does not stand up to scrutiny. Her natural reserve, and reluctance to appear overbearing was misleading, as was the habitual modesty which ensured the disclaimer ‘in my poor opinion’, was a recurring phrase in her letters. At times the monarch’s humility attained almost comic levels. When making arrangements she could be unnecessarily furtive, implying that she was seeking a clandestine favour rather than simply making her wishes clear. In 1709 the Duchess of Marlborough and Arthur Maynwaring were full of scorn when they heard that upon instructing her Secretary at War, Sir Robert Walpole, not to send overseas the regiment of a favourite royal equerry, the Queen had begged, ‘but pray don’t say a word to anybody’. Maynwaring sneered, ‘I think this is an admirable sense for one that is supposed to give laws to the world and to hold the balance of Europe … Abroad there never was so great a figure; at home all is the reverse of it’. Sarah assumed the Queen was acting at the behest of Abigail Masham, and for her the incident typified the way Anne ‘loved a secret to manage with anybody in a low place’.
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In reality, however, the Queen’s surreptitious air owed more to her instinct for privacy and discretion, and her unwillingness gratuitously to flaunt her own power.

It is plain that, when it mattered, Anne was perfectly capable of being authoritative, even masterful. Bolingbroke later justified his failure to protest against the Restraining Orders of 1712 by claiming that ‘after the Queen had delivered her pleasure to the Lords [in Cabinet], she made a sign with her fan at her mouth, which Lord Bolingbroke knew she never did but when she was determined on a measure’. The Earl of Oxford did not doubt the Queen’s ability to impose her will on her ministers, telling the French in the spring of 1712 that as soon as they produced an acceptable peace offer, ‘the Queen of England takes it upon herself to communicate it to her Cabinet council and have it approved’.
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Queen Anne’s earliest biographer, Abel Boyer, pronounced that ‘She was not equal to the weight of a crown and management of arduous affairs’, but his verdict should not go unquestioned. Undeniably Anne
was far from having a brilliant intellect. However, as the Marquis de Torcy remarked, she ‘had a great share of good sense’, and applied this well in governing her country.
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While even the Duchess of Marlborough acknowledged, ‘There was something of majesty in her look’, Anne was not a charismatic figure. Nor was she a good communicator. Incorrigibly shy, ‘her discourse had nothing of brightness or wit’. Only on paper did she sometimes show a certain aptitude for words, obliging Sarah to concede that ‘some of her letters are better than one could imagine is possible for her to write when one only hears her speak’.
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By the time Anne came to the throne she had long lost her personal attractions, was overweight and lame. On occasion she showed a certain artfulness at disguising her bulk, swathing herself in voluminous folds of velvet which made it difficult to assess how fat she was.
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Nevertheless for the most part it was all too apparent that she was corpulent, coarse-complexioned, and ungainly. The sight of her was not such as to inspire devotion, and Anne could never rely on feminine allure to secure her the hearts of her subjects.

Anne did her best to conceal the full extent of her invalidism, disliking to be seen as an object of pity. At one point Abigail asked Robert Harley to keep the Queen’s severe pain secret, for ‘she does not care to have it known till it is so bad she cannot hide it’. As with her obesity, however, her chronic ill health was too obvious to escape notice. Bishop Burnet, often so critical of the Queen, praised her ‘high degree of patience and submission to the will of God under long and sharp pains’, but it is more than just her Christian fortitude that compels admiration. Not only was she ‘little querulous or impatient under the infirmities of a broken constitution’, but she refused to let her afflictions interfere with her duties. In January 1713, for example, an attack of gout prevented her from appearing at a court reception, but she did not cancel her scheduled evening conference with Lord Oxford to discuss the arrangements for Emperor Charles VI’s evacuation of Catalonia.
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After seeing the Queen at home in 1706, Sir John Clerk exclaimed, ‘Nature seems to be inverted when a poor infirm woman becomes one of the rulers of the world’. What prompted this reflection, however, was the contrast between Anne’s pitiable state of decrepitude, and the regal assurance with which she referred to ‘her people of Scotland’. When describing the scene Clerk recalled he had asked himself, ‘What are you, poor mean-like mortal … who talks in the style of a sovereign?’ but if, from a corporeal point of view, Anne was a miserable specimen, the
condition of the monarchical ‘body politic’ was much sounder. The Italian Cardinal who dismissed her as ‘a princess weak in body and mind’ was wrong as regards the latter,
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for while Anne was undoubtedly a very sick woman, she was often a shrewd ruler.

A monarch usually derives strength from the sense of being part of a dynasty but for Anne, whose children had predeceased her and whose heirs were unloved and distant cousins, things were different. As the last of her line, she was sustained not by family feeling but by a genuine concern for ‘the happiness and prosperity of England’. The Duchess of Marlborough’s claim that the Queen was ‘insensible of what related to the public’ was as false as it was malevolent.
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Anne’s much derided husband proved an invaluable support to her, but when death ‘tore from her this tenderly cherished spouse, this faithful and inseparable companion, the sole repository of the secrets of her heart, who carried conjugal virtue as far as possible’, no one could take his place.
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Prior to her accession, Anne had of course cherished hopes that her friendship with Sarah would afford her happiness of a kind generally denied to one of her calling. It was, therefore, another personal tragedy for the Queen when Sarah’s impossible behaviour caused the relationship to collapse in acrimony.

In 1705 Queen Anne declared to Lord Godolphin, ‘Though those that come after me may be more capable of so great a trust as it has pleased God to put into my poor hands, I am sure they can never discharge it more faithfully’. Yet despite being made of unpromising material for a ruler, Anne acquitted herself well in a role for which her temperament, education and intellectual abilities left her seemingly unfitted. Towards the end of Anne’s reign, the Duchess of Marlborough referred to England’s being blessed in having ‘so good and so wise a Queen’.
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Sarah was of course being sarcastic, but though in her eyes her statement was an obvious absurdity, Anne was deserving of both epithets.

Picture Section

The Duke and Duchess of York pictured with their daughters, Mary (left) and Anne. The portraits of the two little girls were inserted into the painting some years after the death of their mother in 1671.

The Lady Anne, as a child, with a spaniel, painted while she was in France having treatment for sore eyes.

Anne, around the time of her marriage in 1683.

Anne’s favourite, Sarah Churchill (later the Duchess of Marlborough) pictured on the right in 1691 with Lady Fitzharding, whose friendship with Sarah made Anne jealous.

Prince George of Denmark, painted on horseback, 1704, with the fleet in the background.

Anne with her son the Duke of Gloucester, c. 1694.