Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (33 page)

In some quarters there was alarm at what the future held. Evelyn feared that William’s death portended ‘extraordinary disturbance … to the interests of the whole nation in this dangerous conjuncture without God’s infinite mercy: matters both abroad and at home being in so loose a posture, and all Europe ready to break out into the most dangerous war that it ever suffered, and this nation especially being so unprovided of persons of the experience, conduct and courage … to resist the deluge of the French’.
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Anne, however, believed herself equal to the challenge that now awaited her. Despite being infirm, obese, and childless, she was ready to devote herself to the interests of her kingdom. She had never wavered in her desire to ascend the throne, and even though she lacked a direct heir to whom she could pass on her crown, she did not regard the prize as worthless. Years before she had predicted that once King William’s reign was over, ‘England will flourish again’. Her forecast turned out to be more accurate than Evelyn’s gloomy prognostications.

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We Are Now in a New World

William was not deeply mourned. John Evelyn noted ‘There seemed to be no sort of alteration or concern in the people upon the King’s death, but all things passed without any notice, as if he had been still alive’. Some of his subjects even regarded it as a cause for celebration. One lady informed a friend, ‘No King can be less lamented than this has been … The very day he died there was several expressions of joy publicly spoke in the streets – of having one of their own nation reign over them, and that now they should not have their money carried beyond sea to enrich other nations, but it would be spent amongst them’. A German diplomat resident in England was puzzled by the public’s ‘tranquillity of spirit’ and wondered whether they preferred to grieve in private for a man who had safeguarded their laws and liberties. Dutch hopes that William’s English subjects would accord him a magnificent funeral were soon disappointed. Queen Mary’s lavish obsequies had not yet been paid for, and William had died owing large sums to members of the royal household, so further expense was undesirable. In the end he was buried decently but without pomp in Westminster Abbey, with Prince George as his principal mourner.
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‘After so great a thunderclap, never was there so quick a calm’, said Sir Robert Southwell, William’s Secretary of State for Ireland. In part this was because, although Southwell considered ‘We are now in a new world’, it was evident that in many respects continuity would be maintained with Anne as the new Queen. As Lady Pye remarked, ‘affairs being so settled and going on in the same channel makes our loss of so great and good a king little felt at present’.
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Parliament remained in being for some weeks by virtue of an Act passed in the last reign and although at one point a run on the Bank of England seemed possible, the City’s nerves soon settled. Above all, it was clear that any illusions that the French might have cherished that Anne would lack the stomach to take them on in war were unfounded. Not only was Marlborough immediately given the Garter that William had withheld from him, but his position of
Captain-General of the forces was confirmed. It was announced that within days he would go to Holland to reassure allied representatives that England was ready to fight France.

From the first it was recognised that Marlborough and Lord Godolphin constituted a formidable partnership, being ‘so united that the two of them are regarded as having the principal direction of affairs’. Anne wasted no time appointing Godolphin a Privy Councillor, and the day after William’s death he declared that ‘the best way will be to go on today as if no occasion of interruption had happened’. Yet though it was clear that Godolphin would enjoy great influence in the new regime, one diplomat in Dutch service had no doubt that it was Marlborough who would be ‘the soul of this government’. Another foreign minister noted that he instilled confidence in everyone he saw. ‘One can apply to him for all sorts of affairs and count on the assurances he gives because he is quite master of his province’. He continued that when ‘great and small address themselves to him’ they were invariably treated in a ‘pleasant, polite and obliging’ fashion, which ‘makes him friends, even among those he cannot oblige’. ‘Hardly ever to be discomposed’, and ‘consummate in all the acts of a courtier’, Marlborough ‘had a particular talent of insinuating himself and gaining upon the minds of those he dealt with’. This ‘engaging, graceful manner’ would be of immense value when it came to managing ‘the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance’.
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Having been proclaimed Queen on 8 March, Anne saw her Privy Council that afternoon. The next day the Scots Privy Council came to visit, and she took the Scots Coronation oath and promised to uphold the Claim of Right, the Scots equivalent of England’s Declaration of Right of 1689. She also was presented with loyal addresses from both Houses of Parliament, which she accepted gracefully. Unlike her predecessor William, who was often abrupt, Anne had excellent manners, being described by one observer as ‘the best bred person in her dominions’. ‘She received all that came to her in so gracious a manner that they went from her highly satisfied with … her obliging deportment’.
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Physically though, Anne was in a very decrepit state, being so lame that Godolphin feared it would be too much for her to go to the House of Lords to make a speech from the throne. There was also a difficulty about finding large enough robes at short notice, but in the end she was formally decked out in red velvet robes inspired by a Coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. Despite her infirmity, on 11 March she made what would be the first of many speeches to Parliament, speaking ‘all of it without book’. She expressed sadness at the loss of the King, and
acknowledged herself ‘extremely sensible of the weight and difficulty it brings upon me’, but declared that ‘the true concern I have for our religion, for the laws and liberties of England, for the maintaining the succession to the Crown in the Protestant line and the government in Church and State as by law established, encourage me in this great undertaking’. Having stated that she would do all she could ‘to reduce the exorbitant power of France’ in conjunction with her allies, she assured her listeners that, ‘as I know my heart to be entirely English’, there was nothing ‘I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England’.
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The speech met with warm approval, and the Earl of Sunderland pronounced ecstatically that ‘if she acts as she speaks she will be safe, happy and adored’. There were some who regretted her emphasis on being ‘entirely English’, as it could be construed as a disparagement of the late King. Nevertheless a German diplomat noted that ‘this particular expression pleased people more than all the other fine things’ she said, and one Member of Parliament remarked that although ‘the Dutch may take amiss’ the comment, ‘it did very well at home and raised a hum from all who heard her’.
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Her speech, like all those Anne delivered at the opening and closing of Parliament, and her answers to parliamentary addresses, had been written for her. They were always composed by two or three leading ministers, but were then gone through ‘paragraph by paragraph’ in her presence at Cabinet meetings. She took a keen interest in their content, and did not unthinkingly accept everything that was proposed. When considering ‘heads for the Queen’s speech’ with a colleague in September 1707, the Lord Chancellor noted: ‘the best ground to speak to the Queen upon [it] together’. In Cabinet, alterations were often inserted in the text. Thus the Cabinet minutes for 16 February 1706 record, ‘Draft of the Queen’s speech read, amended, approved’.
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Anne could at least claim sole credit for her delivery of the speech, which ‘charmed both Houses … for never any woman spoke more audibly or with better grace’. Oddly for one so shy, she proved to have a talent for public speaking that was attributed to the coaching she had received when young from the actress Elizabeth Barry. Despite blushing furiously, ‘she pronounced this, as she did all her other speeches, with great weight and authority, and with a softness of voice and sweetness in the pronunciation that added much life to all she spoke’. A peer would later recall, ‘It was a real pleasure to hear her, though she had a bashfulness that made it very uneasy to herself to say much in public’. Her finely
modulated tones helped create confidence in the government, and one politician was disquieted when in November 1709 she delivered her speech ‘in a much fainter voice’ than usual, so it seemed ‘more careless and less moving’. The year before, her Treasurer Lord Godolphin feared that the ministry would be disadvantaged by the fact that Anne was unable to open Parliament in person. He told Marlborough, ‘There will not be quite so much care taken of the speech as when it is spoken by the Queen herself, nor will what is said have so much weight’. Sarah Marlborough, admittedly, disagreed, commenting scornfully, ‘I wonder very much that he should think there can be any difference who speaks the speech, which is known by all the world to be … made by the Council and … ’tis all alike who speaks it’.
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Parliament promptly granted the Queen her Civil List revenue for life. In theory the yield deriving from sources such as the customs, excise, and post office came annually to £700,000, but actually Anne’s income was never as much as this. Out of this money the Queen had to pay not only her court and household expenses but also governmental costs such as the salaries of judges, diplomats and administrative officers, pensions, and secret service expenditure. Because of the shortfall in her revenues, by the end of the reign the Civil List was seriously indebted. This was not due to extravagance on Anne’s part, for she honoured the promise she made to her first Parliament ‘to straiten myself in my own expenses’, spending less on her household than her predecessor or successor. She did, however, exacerbate the situation by promising to hand back £100,000 of her first year’s revenue. This was naturally very popular, but not altogether prudent. Furthermore, in one respect Anne was more financially circumscribed than her predecessors, for when granting her Civil List in 1702, the Commons inserted a clause in the bill prohibiting her from permanently alienating royal assets. The restriction was imposed principally because William III had lavished large amounts on his favourites, but, as Anne lamented to Sarah, it meant that ‘Mrs Morley had no power to give as others had done before her’.
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The nation now had to come to terms with being ruled by a woman. Mary’s joint occupancy of the throne with her husband should have prepared the way, but Anne’s status as sole queen regnant still came as a shock to a patriarchal society. In 1688, indeed, the prospect of Mary becoming queen in her own right had filled many men with alarm, though since she had been heiress presumptive for years one might have thought they would have grown accustomed to the idea. Roger Morrice
noted gloomily that if she was proclaimed sole Queen, ‘We are then subjects to feminine humours … which were so many in Queen Elizabeth that she made her wise counsel slaves and their lives burdens’. He had no doubt that Mary was ‘certainly more unfit to carry on this great work’ than her husband, sharing the view expressed in a current pamphlet that not only was man by ‘nature, education and experience … generally rendered more capable than a woman to govern’, but that the times required ‘vigorous and masculine administration’. Yet those who would have liked to give the crown to William alone were nervous that denying Mary’s rights would so ‘engage the one sex generally against the Prince’ that ‘in time [he] might feel the effects of that very sensibly’.
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As the Revolution Settlement was being hammered out, concern about a female ruler had been magnified by the fact that war with France seemed inevitable. Back in January 1689 an MP wanted William for King as he could ‘fight our battles … and that a woman cannot so well do’. Mary herself believed that her gender left her ill equipped to govern a nation at war. In December 1693 she told Sophia of Hanover that ‘a woman is but a very useless and helpless creature at all times, especially in times of war and difficulty’. When her husband had to go to campaign in Ireland in 1690, Mary was appalled at the prospect of wielding power in his absence. She dreaded making ‘a foolish figure in the world’ on account of being ‘wholly a stranger to business … my opinion having ever been that women should not meddle in government’. Initially she wanted all affairs to be directed by the Privy Council, but ultimately acquitted herself very well during the invasion crises of 1690 and 1692. Always, however, she was delighted to be relieved of her responsibilities when William returned home. After her death it was noted that though when necessary Mary ‘managed affairs at home with all the conduct which became a wife and virtuous princess’, she had commendably displayed ‘no appetite for government’, whose burdens had been ‘unwillingly assumed’ and ‘modestly managed’. Another writer praised the late Queen for the way in which she eagerly reverted to the role of deferential spouse, comparing her to Cincinnatus, the Roman general who voluntarily relinquished power after aiding the republic in an emergency.
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