Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (15 page)

Disappointed by the many rebuffs he had received, James announced that Parliament would not reassemble until November. In the meantime, however, he continued to do all he could to ensure that when it did meet, it would be an amenable body. As yet Lord Churchill had not been called upon to indicate where he stood with regard to the Test Acts, but in his wife’s view it was obvious that ‘everybody sooner or later must be ruined, who would not become a Roman Catholic’. Anne too was despondent, telling her sister in March, ‘I believe in a little while no Protestant will be able to live here’.
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In early March 1687 Anne went to her father to ask permission to visit her sister in Holland in the summer, while George would be in Denmark seeing his family. At first James had no objection, but subsequently the King’s advisers told him that a meeting between the two sisters ‘could only serve to bring them closer together and to strengthen them in their attachment to the Protestant religion’.
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Accordingly James withdrew permission for Anne to go overseas.

Furious at being denied her wish, the Princess tried hard to change her father’s mind, but he refused to lift his veto. However, he could not prevent Anne from communicating secretly with her sister. Her correspondence with Mary became increasingly controversial and indiscreet, and was transmitted through unofficial channels. ‘Since I am not to see my dear sister I think myself obliged to tell you the truth of everything this way’, she told Mary. She blamed Sunderland – ‘the subtillest workingest villain that is on the face of the earth’ – not just for the King’s reversal of his initial decision, but for ‘going on so fiercely for the interests of the Papists’. Though Anne had taken the precaution of entrusting her letter to a reliable messenger, she begged Mary not to disclose a word of its contents to anyone apart from her husband. Quite apart from the fact that the King had explicitly instructed her not to reveal that he had forbidden her to visit Mary, the Princess was guiltily conscious that ‘it is all treason I have spoke’.
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Anne took care to be present when Anglican divines made sermons intended to emphasise the danger of Popish encroachments, ‘openly bearing witness to her zeal for the Protestant religion’ by going ‘incognito to individual churches to listen to the most popular and fashionable preachers’.
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Having demonstrated her solidarity for her embattled faith, she withdrew to Richmond. George’s need to convalesce was used as a pretext for her spending several weeks there, but really she was signalling her estrangement from the court.

Although apparently living a quiet life at Richmond, the Princess was not cut off from the opposition movement that was gradually forming against the King. In February 1687 William of Orange had sent a diplomat named Dykvelt to England as his ‘ambassador extraordinary’, with orders to form links with those who opposed the repeal of the Test Acts. He brought with him a letter to Anne from William and Mary, but even after receiving this, the Princess thought it imprudent to meet with Dykvelt. On 13 March she explained to Mary that she had been fearful Lord Sunderland would hear about the meeting and besides, ‘I am not used to speak to people about business’. Instead she sent Lord Churchill to see the envoy. Two months later Churchill gave Dykvelt a letter to take back to Holland, stating that the Princess of Denmark ‘was resolved, by the assistance of God, to suffer all extremities, even to death itself, rather than be brought to change her religion’.
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On 12 February 1687 King James had issued a Declaration of Indulgence to Tender Consciences in Scotland, suspending operation of the Test Act there. On 4 April he issued a similar Declaration for England. In this he stated that since he believed that ‘conscience ought not to be constrained’ he had decided to grant ‘free exercise of their religion’ not just to Catholics but also to Protestant nonconformists. The measure nullified the requirement that anyone employed in a court or government office, or other place of trust, should have to take an oath disavowing transubstantiation. For the moment this was done solely on the King’s authority, although the Declaration blandly concluded that James had ‘no doubt of the concurrence of our two houses of Parliament when we shall think it convenient for them to meet’.
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The Declaration of Indulgence marked a change of direction on the King’s part. Until now he had hoped that he could abolish laws harmful to Catholics with the cooperation of Anglican Members of Parliament, but the disappointing outcome to James’s private interviews had indicated that this was unrealistic. Accordingly the King’s strategy was to form an alliance with the dissenters, who were far more numerous than Catholics. In the first eighteen months of the reign, the laws against Protestant nonconformists had been rigorously enforced, but James now set out to enlist their support. Recognising this as an astute change of tactics on his father-in-law’s part, William sought to convince the dissenters to be patient until Mary ascended the throne, for then they would be treated equitably without incurring the odium of coupling themselves with Catholics.

As a member of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church, sympathy for English dissenters came naturally to William, and since her marriage Mary too had come to believe that the Anglican clergy were unnecessarily harsh to dissenters. Anne’s viewpoint was different. It is true that the Declaration of Indulgence appalled her primarily because she believed that it would enable Catholics to become dominant within the state. She told Mary, ‘In taking away the Test and Penal laws, they take away our religion; and if that be done, farewell to all happiness: for when once the Papists have everything in their hands, all we poor Protestants have but dismal times to hope for’. In addition, however, she considered the Declaration pernicious because of its concessions to nonconformists. Unaware that her sister was not wholly of her mind on this issue, she told her, ‘It is a melancholy prospect that all we of the Church of England have; all the sectaries may now do what they please. Every one has the free exercise of their religion, on purpose no doubt to ruin us’.
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The King’s treatment of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge exacerbated fears that he was not merely trying to secure toleration for Catholics, but wanted all power to be concentrated in Catholic hands. The two universities were the principal educational establishments for Anglican clergymen and hence any attack on their rights ‘struck at the root of the Protestant Church’. The richest college in Oxford, Magdalen, was ordered to install a crypto-Catholic as its President. When the College Fellows declined, they were called before the Ecclesiastical Commission and their Vice President and another Fellow were suspended. Cambridge received similar treatment. After the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge had been removed from office for refusing to confer a degree on a Benedictine monk, a worried Anne wrote to Mary, ‘By this one may easily guess what one is to hope for henceforward, since the priests have so much power with the King as to make him do things so directly against the laws of the land’.
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In late April Anne abandoned her earlier caution and had an interview with Dykvelt. She also continued to write regularly to Mary. For the sake of appearances she still occasionally sent letters using the official postal service, but because of the danger of interception these were trifling in content. One such communication was full of inane information about court etiquette and Anne’s routine at Richmond. After apologising for her untidy writing, which she attributed to being distracted by ‘a very pretty talking child’ of Lady Churchill’s, the Princess added unctuously, ‘Tomorrow the King and Queen does me the honour to dine here’.
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The letters Anne sent secretly to Holland ‘by sure hands’ were very different in tone. As well as making plain her views on political matters, the Princess took this opportunity to express violent animosity towards the Sunderlands. The pen portrait Anne drew of the Countess was devastating in its malice, describing her as ‘a flattering, dissembling, false woman … [who] cares not at what rate she lives, but never pays anybody. She will cheat, though it be for a little’. Anne continued, ‘To hear her talk you would think she was a very good Protestant’, when in fact ‘she has no religion’. The Princess was sure Lady Sunderland took lovers, despite making ‘such a clatter with her devotions that it really turns one’s stomach’.
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Next, Anne targeted her venom on Queen Mary Beatrice. Giving full rein to the virulence of her descriptive powers, she proved remarkably successful in poisoning her sister’s mind against their stepmother. In May 1687 she wrote,

The Queen, you must know, is of a very proud, haughty humour … though she pretends to hate all form and ceremony … She declares always that she loves sincerity and hates flattery, but when the grossest flattery in the world is said to her face, she seems extremely well pleased with it. It really is enough to turn one’s stomach.

Anne insisted that her views were widely shared, and that Mary Beatrice ‘is the most hated in the world of all sorts of people; for everybody believes that she pressed the King to be more violent than he would be of himself … for she is a very great bigot in her way’. Continuing with her remorseless character assassination, Anne declared ‘one may see … she hates all Protestants’, and that it was ‘a sad and very uneasy thing to be forced to live civilly and as it were freely with a woman that one knows hates one’. She went on, ‘She pretends to have a great deal of kindness to me, but I doubt it is not real, for I never see proofs of it’. Then, having lambasted Mary Beatrice for her lack of sincerity, she proclaimed that she herself would take great care to dissemble her feelings for her stepmother. ‘I am resolved always to … make my court very much to her, that she may not have any just cause against me’ she told Mary, apparently unaware of any contradiction. Though Anne’s hatred for her stepmother was so fierce, she still made excuses for her father, whom she depicted as led astray by malevolent influences.
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Anne prevailed upon George’s brother, King Christian V of Denmark, to submit a formal request to King James, asking that she might
accompany her husband when he visited Denmark in the summer. However, by the time this arrived, in mid April 1687, Anne was pregnant again, and a long sea voyage was inadvisable. George did not cancel his trip, and Anne was apprehensive that her father would see this as a good opportunity to proselytise. She shared her concerns with Mary: ‘When he is away I fancy the King will speak to me about my religion, for then he will find me more alone than yet he has done’. Some considered it negligent of Prince George to abandon his wife at such a time. One London citizen noted in his journal ‘Very many wonder what can induce him … to leave … the Princess here to be exposed to all temptation’.
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George sailed for Denmark on 17 June and was away for six weeks. For much of that time Anne withdrew to Hampton Court, using the excuse of her pregnancy to live quietly there. She could not avoid giving an audience on 10 July to the Papal nuncio, Count d’Adda, as a ‘mark of submission and respect to the King her father’, but the French ambassador was being fanciful when he opined that ‘this docility … must give hope of her conversion’. By this time Anne herself was starting to feel cautiously optimistic that she would be spared a paternal attempt to convert her, having told Mary on 22 June, ‘The King has not yet said anything to me about religion, and if he does not before the Prince comes back again, I shall begin to hope that he will not do it at all’.
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Anne’s fear of Catholics nevertheless remained strong. Believing them capable of almost any wicked act that would advance their purposes, in March 1687 she had warned Mary against visiting England. ‘It would be better … not to do it’, she cautioned her sister, ‘for though I dare swear the K[ing] could have no thought against either of you, yet … one cannot help being afraid … Really, if you or the Prince should come, I should be frightened out of my wits for fear any harm should happen to either of you’. Now she became concerned that Catholics might menace the safety of the child she was carrying. In the past Anne had used a midwife recommended by her stepmother, but because the woman was a Catholic, Mary had urged her to make different arrangements. Anne agreed that this would be desirable, but did not dare to tell the Queen outright. Instead she proposed to employ ‘some sort of invention to bring it about, to give as little offence or obstruction in the thing as could be’. She even talked of ‘keeping her labour to herself as long as she could’ so that a more suitable
accoucheur
could be called in at the last minute. Alarmed by this proposal, Mary warned Anne of the risk that ‘out of too much precaution she might prejudice herself’.
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The King dissolved Parliament on 2 July 1687, having become convinced that the current assembly would never vote to repeal the Test Acts. He set about ensuring that when another Parliament was elected, it would be more compliant. In late summer James set out on a progress through western England but though Prince George had returned home in mid August, Anne’s pregnancy gave the couple the perfect excuse not to accompany the King. Even when James returned from his travels and went to Windsor, they used George’s bad chest as a reason to avoid joining him there. Maintaining that the climate at Windsor was ‘too cold and piercing’, in early September they settled instead at Hampton Court, where conditions were allegedly more favourable. The Danish envoy in England, who was displeased that the Prince and Princess were deliberately distancing themselves from the court, sarcastically declared himself ‘surprised that a Dane could not live in the air of Windsor’.
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