Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (22 page)

Initially all seemed well. George not only remained a member of the Privy Council, but in early April he was naturalised as an English subject and created Earl of Cumberland and Duke of Kendal. Although he continued to be styled Prince George of Denmark, he was now entitled to sit in the House of Lords and ranked as England’s foremost nobleman. Anne’s great friends, the Churchills, also looked set to prosper. In the April coronation honours Lord Churchill was raised in the peerage, taking the title Earl of Marlborough. Court observers tipped him to ‘be a great favourite’, and after being ‘extremely caressed’ by Mary upon the latter’s arrival, Sarah too flattered herself that ‘I was as like to make as great progress in the Queen’s favour as any in the court’.
²

On 7 May 1689 England declared war on Louis XIV who, besides trying to extend French power within Europe, was championing the cause of the exiled James II. In March James had landed in Ireland, accompanied by a French army, with the ultimate aim of launching an invasion of England or Scotland. Army officers such as the Earl of Marlborough welcomed the outbreak of war, while Prince George likewise looked forward to proving himself in an important naval or military post.

As the summer advanced, some people became worried about the state of Anne’s pregnancy. By July she had become ‘monstrous swollen’ and, since it had never been made clear that the Princess had not really been pregnant in September 1688, it was naturally thought that the birth
was worryingly overdue. Lady Rachel Russell fretted that ‘the Princess … goes very long for one so big’, while John Evelyn suspected that she was not with child at all, and that her abdomen was merely inflated by gas. However, Anne proved him wrong. At five in the morning of 24 July 1689 Anne was delivered of a son in Hampton Court Palace. To prevent allegations of trickery, Queen Mary was present for the entire labour, which lasted about three hours, ‘and the King with most of the persons of quality about the court came into her royal highness’s bedchamber’ for the birth itself.
³

The boy was named William after the King, who stood as godfather when the baby was christened on 27 July. It was also announced that the child would be given the title of Duke of Gloucester. Anne took some time to recover from the birth, but Mary looked after her attentively. The Queen recalled that over the next fortnight she was ‘continually in [Anne’s] bedchamber, or that of the child’, and a contemporary praised the way she cared for them both ‘with the tenderness of a mother’.
⁴

Although an optimist hailed the little duke as a ‘brave, lively-like boy’, one of Anne’s household servants described him as ‘a very weakly child’ who was not expected to live long. The first wet nurse chosen for him had nipples too big for him to fasten on to, but after a suitable replacement had been found he began to feed, and his prospects of survival improved. Then at six weeks ‘he was taken with convulsion fits, which followed so quick one after another that the physicians from London despaired of his life’. When they suggested that another change of milk might help, an urgent appeal was put out, and for days ‘nurses with young children came many at a time … from town and the adjacent villages’. It was specified that applicants must have only recently given birth themselves, and one woman who initially was taken on was sent away after a vigilant lady-in-waiting inspected the parish registers and discovered that she was lying about her child’s age. The position remained vacant until George caught sight of a woman named Mrs Pack, whose ugliness made her ‘fitter to go to a pigsty than to a Prince’s bed’, but nevertheless looked sturdy enough to do the job well. Sure enough, when she offered her breast, the child latched on, and within hours his condition visibly improved. Revered as the Prince’s saviour, Mrs Pack was accorded high status within the household, and ‘the whole time she suckled the Duke there were positive orders given that nobody should contradict her’.
⁵

In fact, the child’s recovery may have owed little to the health-giving properties of Mrs Pack’s milk. His convulsions had probably been caused
by an illness such as meningitis or a middle ear infection, and the passing of the crisis merely happened to coincide with Mrs Pack’s appearance on the scene. Furthermore, his recovery was not complete. An infection of this kind can interfere with the absorption of the cerebro-spinal fluid, causing arrested hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. It seems that this is what happened in this case.
⁶

By 7 October the child was well enough for the Princess to move back to London. Motherhood now offered her a chance of personal fulfilment, but relations with the King and Queen were proving difficult. Once the excitement of their reunion had faded, Mary’s initial friendliness towards her sister had abated. Sarah, now Countess of Marlborough, attributed this to the two women having incompatible temperaments, as the Queen, who was naturally talkative, found her uncommunicative sister dreary company. As for William, he soon developed a strong antipathy for his sister-in-law. Judging that Anne and George ‘had been of more use to him than they were ever like to be again’ (as Sarah acerbically put it), the King saw no need to make much of the couple. He regarded George as unattractive and stupid, telling an English politician he was simply ‘an encumbrance’. In 1688 he had dismissed the Prince as incapable of weighty affairs, and he despised him for not being more assertive with his wife.
⁷

William’s contempt for George was transparent. Always ‘apt to be peevish’, the King had ‘a dry morose way with him’, and he rarely took trouble to make himself agreeable. In Anne’s case, the King’s ‘cold way towards her was soon observed’, and he exacerbated matters with petty acts of rudeness. When he was sent gifts of fruit, he grudgingly allocated some to be passed on to Anne and George ‘but always took care to pick out the worst bunch of grapes or the worst peach that was in the parcel’. He was equally ungracious on other occasions. At one point Anne dined with the King and Queen while pregnant with the Duke of Gloucester, and the first peas of the season were served. ‘The king, without offering the Princess the least share of them, ate them every one up himself’. Anne later admitted to Sarah that she had found it difficult not to gaze longingly at the dish while the King gorged himself on the delicacy.
⁸

Besides slighting Anne and George, the King showed little warmth towards the Marlboroughs. From the start, his attitude towards the two of them was very guarded, and as early as December 1688 he had growled that the couple ‘could not govern him, nor … his wife as they did the Prince and Princess of Denmark’.
⁹
Although Marlborough was made a Privy Councillor and Gentleman of the Bedchamber, William remained
impervious to his charm. This did not ease relations between the court at Whitehall and the Cockpit.

Before long Anne took umbrage on another count. Immediately after William and Mary had been proclaimed King and Queen, Anne had requested that she be given the famously luxurious Whitehall apartment formerly occupied by Charles II’s mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. This was granted, but the Princess then asked for another set of adjoining rooms for her servants, offering in return to surrender her lodgings at the Cockpit. She was angered to be told that the Earl of Devonshire had first call on the rooms she coveted, and that only if he consented to exchange them for the Cockpit could her wishes be met. Furiously Anne snapped ‘She would then stay where she was, for she would not have my Lord Devonshire’s leavings’.
¹⁰
She retained the Duchess of Portsmouth’s apartment for the use of her son and his household, remaining herself at the Cockpit. This meant she was one of the most lavishly accommodated persons at court, but the episode left her feeling resentful.

However, what really envenomed relations within the royal family were disagreements over Anne’s allowance. On James II’s departure, payment of this had ceased, and within months the Princess was in debt. Partly this was because of her heavy gambling losses to Sarah amounting, according to one report, to as much as £15,000. However, the Prince and Princess of Denmark’s financial situation was also worsened by a sacrifice that George made at King William’s request. George’s only assets were lands that had once belonged to the Duke of Holstein, but which had been seized by the Danish crown more than a hundred years earlier. In 1689 war looked likely between Denmark and Sweden, until William mediated a settlement. When Sweden demanded that George’s lands should be returned to their original owner, King William personally guaranteed the Prince that if he surrendered them, he would be compensated in full. In July 1689 George ‘immediately and generously signed the release’ of the property, declaring ‘he desired no better security than the assurances his majesty had given him’.
¹¹
Much to William’s relief, a Baltic war was thus averted, but the money owing to George would not be paid for years.

Although William was partly responsible for Anne and George’s shortage of cash, he showed little sympathy for their needs. William apparently ‘wondered very much how the Princess could spend £30,000 a year’.
¹²
The Princess was counting on her allowance being vastly increased and may indeed have understood that this had been promised to her when she had agreed William could become King. Months passed
without the King giving any indication of how he intended to provide for Anne, causing her grave disquiet. It was true that William’s own financial situation was currently uncertain, as Parliament had only granted the Crown a revenue for one year. Nevertheless, he should at least have discussed the situation with the Princess, and striven to convince her that he would obtain her the best settlement in his power.

As a result the Countess of Marlborough became convinced that the Princess must fight for her rights. Rather than waiting for the King to act, she persuaded her mistress to press for an independent revenue to be settled on her by Parliament. To ensure support in the House of Commons, Sarah formed contacts with Tory Members of Parliament who were disgruntled that William’s first government was composed mainly of Whigs. The King and Queen were shocked by Anne’s readiness to exploit political divisions for her own advantage. When the matter was first raised in Parliament Mary was outraged to see Anne ‘making parties to get a revenue settled’, and an ardent Whig later warned William that the Princess’s intention was to secure herself enough money to be ‘the head of a party against you’.
¹³

Mary at once confronted Anne, asking her ‘What was the meaning of those proceedings?’ When the Princess mumbled that ‘she heard her friends had a mind to make her some settlement, the Queen hastily replied with a very imperious air, “Pray, what friends have you but the King and me?”’ Anne was left fuming and Sarah later recalled that when the Princess recounted what had happened, ‘I never saw her express so much resentment as she did at this usage’.
¹⁴

Undeterred, Anne and Sarah pressed on with their plans, and in August 1689 the Princess’s supporters in the Commons proposed that she should be awarded an income of £70,000 a year. After a debate, the matter was adjourned and soon afterwards the King prorogued Parliament. He still avoided talking to Anne on the subject of money, and told Mary not to bring it up with her either. Subsequently attempts were made to ensure that the matter was not revived when Parliament reassembled. William and Mary employed Sarah’s great friend Lady Fitzharding (the former Mrs Barbara Berkeley, who had fled London with Anne and Sarah during the Revolution) to apply pressure on Sarah. Lady Fitzharding, who had been reappointed as royal governess upon the birth of the Duke of Gloucester, used a variety of arguments. Having told Sarah she would harm herself and her family if she angered the King and Queen, she then cautioned her that Anne’s interests would be jeopardised if, as was likely, the measure her friend favoured was rejected by
Parliament. She warned that in those circumstances William and Mary would consider themselves under no obligation to give Anne anything, and so the Princess would find herself destitute. However, she could not prevail on Sarah to abandon the project, which she pursued with a tenacity that she herself acknowledged verged on the demented.

On 17 December 1689 the matter came before Parliament again, occasioning ‘great heats’ when it was debated in the House of Commons. Lord Eland was one of those who urged that the Princess should be awarded £70,000 a year, though some members willing to confer an independent income on her thought £50,000 a more appropriate figure. Their opponents, ‘being influenced by the King, were for leaving that matter wholly to his Majesty’s discretion’. To those who urged that it was undesirable to give Anne a lot of money at a time when wartime taxation was heavy, Sir Thomas Clarges retorted ‘Is it not seasonable that the Prince and Princess and the Duke of Gloucester should have meat, drink and clothes?’ In response to concerns that the Princess could pose a threat to the King if he had no control over her finances, one member commented that disturbances were usually caused by ‘persons not at their ease; let the Princess be at ease’. William would have done well to heed these words, but the Solicitor General, John Somers, came closer to his master’s views when he growled, ‘granting a revenue by act of Parliament to a subject is always dangerous’.
¹⁵

The next morning the King sent the Earl of Shrewsbury to urge Sarah to abandon her campaign. Shrewsbury tried first to enlist the Earl of Marlborough on his side but he refused point blank, confiding that his wife ‘was like a mad woman’ in her determination to push the measure through. When Shrewsbury saw Sarah herself he informed her that William was prepared to settle Anne’s debts and to give her £50,000 a year, although as this would not have statutory authority, it could be withheld if the King saw fit. Shrewsbury promised to resign if William reneged on his word, but Sarah correctly observed that his doing so would scarcely help the Princess. He then spoke directly to Anne, but found her equally unaccommodating. Appearing somewhat flustered, she told him ‘she had met with so little encouragement from the King that she could expect no kindness from him and therefore would stick to her friends’ in Parliament.
¹⁶