Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (31 page)

Her health was appalling in other ways. At one point in 1700 her right hand became so painful that it was impossible for her to write, which Anne found doubly distressing as it prevented her communicating with Sarah. She wrote of being ‘in apprehensions of an ill night again’ on account of having ‘that sickness in my stomach by fits’, and assumed this was because ‘ye gout is not yet thrown out’. Stoically she told Sarah, ‘I hope in the next world I shall be at ease, but in this I find I must not expect it long together’.
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Matters were made worse because Anne was now seriously overweight. Numerous pregnancies had obviously played a part in ruining her figure, but it is clear that the Princess also had a hearty appetite. One source who describes her as ‘extremely fat and unwieldy’ suggests that her health would have been much better ‘if she had not eat so much … and not supped so much chocolate’. We know that as well as retaining two cooks, Anne employed a ‘confectioner’, and so her dinner table was loaded with ‘sweetmeats’ that while considered unsuitable for little Gloucester, should perhaps have also been resisted by his mother. In 1700 a diplomat reported ‘She is becoming so fat that she cannot take any exercise, and this, added to her appetite and diet, inspires fears in some people that she will not live long’.
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Her arthritis made it impossible for her to adopt a more active lifestyle, and this too contributed to her obesity. The only form of physical exertion she remained capable of was driving her chaise out hunting, and even this could only be done when she visited Windsor during the summer.

In July 1700 Anne and George went with their son to Windsor for their holidays and for the Duke of Gloucester’s eleventh birthday on 24 July, which saw great celebrations. The little boy’s health had caused less concern in recent years. Seeing him back in 1698, Lady Rachel Russell had pronounced ‘He improves every way very much’. He had not had a recurrence of his ague for a considerable time, and the most worrying complaint that had affected him of late had been a severe eye infection in 1696. Now that the child had come through so many problems, there was optimism about his future prospects. ‘We hoped the dangerous time
was over’, his preceptor Gilbert Burnet recalled, as he professed himself delighted by his pupil’s progress in his studies. Once a quarter the young Prince was tested by the King’s ministers, and they were reportedly ‘amazed both at his knowledge and the good understanding that appeared in him’.
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So no one was particularly worried when Gloucester complained of feeling out of sorts on the evening of his birthday, for it was thought he had been tired by the festivities. Twenty-four hours later, he developed a severe headache, and by 26 July he was ‘hot and feverish’. When Dr Hannes came on the morning of Saturday 27 July the child had an alarmingly high temperature. After being blooded the little boy made a slight improvement, but that night his fever rose again and he had an attack of diarrhoea. He also developed a rash. Another physician, Dr William Gibbons, was called in, arriving in the early hours of Sunday morning, but when Gloucester deteriorated further Anne swallowed her pride and summoned Dr Radcliffe. He reached Windsor on Sunday evening, complaining he had been brought in too late. The doctors prescribed ‘cordial powders and cordial juleps to resist the malignity’ and ‘bled, blistered and cupped’ their patient. All this achieved was to make the child’s last hours more unpleasant. He got little rest thanks to their attentions, and passed Sunday night in ‘great sighings and dejections of spirits … Towards morning [he] complained very much of his blisters’.
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All this time Anne had not left her son’s bedside, attending on him ‘with great tenderness but with a grave composedness that amazed all who saw it’. Having been with him night and day, on Sunday evening she was so distressed by the spectacle of his ‘short broken sleeps and incoherent talk’ that she fainted. One report said she collapsed because one of the attending physicians (most likely Dr Radcliffe) ordered her from the sickroom. The doctor was subsequently much criticised for being so unfeeling.
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On Monday it was thought possible the child would recover, for at midday ‘his head was considerably better and his breathing freer’. Two more blisters were promptly applied, but not long afterwards there was a sudden deterioration, as the boy was ‘taken with a convulsing sort of breathing, a defect in swallowing and a total deprivation of all sense, which lasted about an hour’. He died towards one in the morning of Tuesday 30 July.
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For a time Dr Radcliffe had believed that Gloucester had caught smallpox, but in the end the physicians agreed that he had been killed by
a ‘malignant fever’. This diagnosis is confirmed by his autopsy report, which revealed that his neck glands were severely swollen and ‘the almonds of the ear … had in them purulent matter’. After studying the evidence, a modern medical authority concluded the Duke died of acute bacterial infection of the throat with associated pneumonia in both lungs. The autopsy also makes plain, however, the extent he was affected by water on the brain, for four and a half ounces of ‘a limpid humour’ were taken out of the ‘first and second ventricles of the cerebrum’. This had not caused his death, but almost certainly would ultimately have had fatal consequences. At the time the College of Physicians stated the ‘entire medical faculty could not have cured him’ and that it was only surprising he had enjoyed such good health over the last few years.
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As was usual, the child’s parents did not attend his funeral. His body was taken to London by coach and laid in state for some days in the Palace of Westminster. On the night of 9 August his coffin was carried to Westminster Abbey through a lane of four hundred guards holding lighted torches. There he was interred in the Henry VII chapel alongside his dead siblings. Meanwhile, Anne and George remained at Windsor ‘overwhelmed with grief for the loss of his Highness’.
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‘The affliction their royal Highnesses are in is not to be expressed’ reported an apothecary who had been present when Gloucester died. It was noted that Anne ‘bore his death with a resignation and piety that were indeed very singular’, but in a life beset by sadness, this was the greatest tragedy of all. She was left physically prostrate, falling ill with a fever shortly afterwards, and remaining ‘much indisposed’ for some time. ‘This death has penetrated
Madame la Princesse
with the most acute pain, and in effect her loss could not be greater’, a diplomat commented on 2 August. The Marlboroughs had been absent when Gloucester had fallen ill but on learning of the crisis they had rushed to Windsor, arriving there on 29 July. However, not even Sarah could console her mistress. A fortnight after Gloucester had died it was reported,

one could not live in a more retired way than their highnesses since this severe blow. Entirely preoccupied by their misfortune, they admit nobody to see them apart from the Earl and Countess of Marlborough, and that only rarely. They pass most of the day together, shut up in a chamber, where they take turns to read a chapter of
A Christian’s Defence Against the Fear of Death
.

In the evenings Anne was carried in her chair to a neighbouring garden ‘to divert her melancholy thoughts’ but she remained plunged in a ‘sorrow … proportionate to its cause’.
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At the time of Gloucester’s death it had been thought the Princess was pregnant, but by 16 August it had become clear that this was not the case, making Anne’s grief all the sharper. Towards the end of August the Dean of Carlisle informed an acquaintance ‘The Prince now goes a-hunting, shooting and the like and I hope in a little time the Princess will use those diversions she used to do, and that her sorrow will abate in time, which as yet she cannot wholly overcome’. In late September physicians had to be summoned after she experienced fever and dizziness, ‘but her indisposition went soon off again, it proving only to be the vapours’. A week or so later she felt strong enough to pay a brief visit to the Marlboroughs at St Albans, but it was not until late November that she could face returning to London.
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From now on Anne saw herself as someone indelibly marked by suffering. Her letters to Sarah often ended with an allusion to her tragic history of bereavement, for she took to signing them ‘your poor unfortunate faithful Morley’.

King William was deeply upset by the death of his nephew, whom he had sincerely loved. He was in Holland when the news reached him, and shut himself away for two days out of grief. He sent his sister-in-law a gruff but poignant note, saying he saw no need to write at length to convey his ‘surprise and pain’. ‘It is so great a loss for me and all England that my heart is pierced by affliction’ he told her, before concluding that he would be pleased to demonstrate his friendship for her ‘on this and every other occasion’.
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When he returned to England in late October one of his first acts was to go to Windsor to offer his condolences in person.

Gloucester’s demise made it imperative that the question of the succession was addressed, for it had now become obscure who would have the crown once William and Anne were dead. Jacobites and the French were described as ‘greatly elated’ that Anne had been left without an heir, for they naturally hoped that James or his son would be considered her logical successor. However, by the terms of the Bill of Rights the throne could only be occupied by a Protestant. If this proviso was observed, not only were James’s children by Mary Beatrice excluded, but also the descendants of Charles II’s and James II’s sister, Henrietta Anne, whose Catholic daughter had married the Duke of Savoy. For England to secure herself a Protestant hereditary monarch, it was necessary to turn to distant relatives of the House of Stuart.

The Stuarts had some German cousins who descended from James I’s daughter Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. She had had thirteen children, most of whom had either died without legitimate heirs or disqualified themselves for the English throne by converting to Catholicism. However, Elizabeth’s penultimate child and youngest daughter, Sophia of Hanover, was Protestant. She was the widow of the late Elector of Hanover, and in 1700 she was already aged seventy. It therefore could not be assumed that she would outlive William and Anne. If she died, her son George Ludwig of Hanover, Anne’s former suitor and the current Elector of Hanover, would become next in line. Although there were fifty-seven individuals who, in terms of blood, had a better right to the throne than Sophia or her son, these two individuals were the nearest to it once all Catholic claims were overlooked.
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In 1689 King William III had wanted the succession to be regulated so that Sophia would inherit if both he and Anne died childless, but at that time Parliament had baulked at this. William had tried to attract support by putting it about that ‘the Prince and Princess of Denmark desired it as well as himself’, but when Anne produced a son, he decided it was pointless to press on with so contentious a measure.
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Now, however, the matter needed revisiting.

There still was not much enthusiasm for introducing legislation. Some people suggested that it would be preferable to do nothing in the hope that Anne would have more children. Failing that, William could remarry and produce an heir. Yet there was an obvious danger that ‘if there be not a visible successor appointed, the Prince of Wales will be put upon us very soon’. Xenophobes who grumbled, ‘What, must we have more foreigners?’ were told ‘It is better to have a Prince from Germany than one from France’.
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The Act of Settlement, regulating the succession in favour of Sophia and her heirs, was steered through Parliament by a Tory administration that came into power at the end of 1700. Later the Tories came to be thought of as inimical to the Hanoverian succession, but their support was crucial at this stage. The bill went through the legislature with surprisingly little difficulty, and protests lodged by the Duchess of Savoy that her and her son’s claims were being flouted were ignored. Perhaps remembering a time when he had aspired to be Anne’s consort, the former Lord Mulgrave, now the Earl of Normanby, proposed that if Prince George outlived Anne, the crown should go to him. However, the idea was dropped for want of support. According to the diplomat Monsieur Bonet, who was keeping the Elector of Brandenburg informed
upon English affairs, Anne was in favour of the succession being established on the House of Hanover. He wrote, ‘I do not observe that Madam the Princess of Denmark takes offence at this ruling; far from it, she regards it as a support for her’.
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After the Act of Settlement passed into law in June 1701, there was talk in some quarters of inviting Sophia to visit England, but the very idea was intensely disagreeable to Anne. She still hoped to have a child who would take precedence over Sophia in the succession, rendering the Act of Settlement redundant. In the circumstances the last thing she wanted was Sophia making herself at home.

Although there is no reason to think that Anne had been against naming the Hanoverians as her heirs presumptive, she was happy for Jacobites to think otherwise. The death of her son had made it easier for her to pretend that she was sympathetic to their cause, for it now appeared more plausible that once she was on the throne she would seek to reinstate her half brother as her successor. In 1701 Marlborough and Godolphin were in contact with the Jacobite agent James St Amand, codenamed Berry. It appears they had some success in persuading him that the Princess was well disposed, and this encouraged the idea at Saint-Germain that her accession could be desirable.
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