Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (38 page)

It was also true that she feared the Whigs were instinctively hostile to the Church of England. She told Sarah in 1704, ‘as to my saying the Church was in some danger in the late reign, I cannot alter my opinion; for though there was no violent thing done, everybody that will speak impartially must own that everything was leaning towards the Whigs, and whenever that is, I shall think the Church beginning to be in danger’.
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The Whigs’ reputation for atheism and immorality further predisposed her against them.

At Anne’s accession some dissenters were very nervous. A Tory MP gloated, ‘the fanatics could not be more dejected … Some talk of persecution … and their liberty of conscience they expect will be taken from them’. The Queen, however, was not in favour of extreme measures. Early in her reign Anne told Sarah that she accepted ‘that the heat and ambition of churchmen has done a great deal of hurt to this poor nation, but it shall never do it any harm in my time’. Having assured a deputation of dissenters that they could count on ‘her protection, and that she would do nothing to alienate their affections from her’, in her speech at the closing of Parliament on 25 May 1702, she promised, ‘I shall be very careful to preserve and maintain the Act of Toleration’.
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Nevertheless she believed that it was compatible with this undertaking to take steps against what she saw as the abuse of Occasional Conformity. While not so implacable as the more extreme Tories and High Church clergy, she agreed that the dissenters’ political influence needed curbing.

Anne did not share the fears of those who believed that the Tories had never come to terms with James II’s deposition, and now hoped to give the crown to his son, James III. She once told Sarah, ‘I do not deny but there are some for the Prince of Wales, but that number I believe is very small’. When Sarah continued to impugn the Tories’ loyalty, the Queen answered sharply ‘I can’t for my life think it reasonable to brand them all with the name of Jacobite’. On another occasion she stated firmly, ‘Let the Whigs brag never so much of their great services to their country … I believe the Revolution had never been, nor the succession settled as it is now if the Church party had not joined with them … Have they not great stakes as well as them?’
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Anne disapproved of the notion that she ruled by divine right: when presented in 1710 with a loyal address from the City of London stating that ‘her right was divine’, she ‘immediately took exception to the expression’ as ‘unfit to be given to anybody’, and asked for it to be excised. However, she believed that she owed her crown to hereditary right, rather than solely to actions taken by Parliament at the time of the Revolution. To Sarah this appeared absurd. She mocked the way the Queen countenanced Tory ‘gibberish … about non-resistance and passive obedience and hereditary right’, when plainly Anne’s ‘title rested upon a different foundation’.
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Anne benefited from the fact that some Tories who had considered William III little better than a usurper, felt comfortable about recognising her. At her accession it was reported that ‘several great Jacobites declare they will spend their lives for the Queen now King James is dead’,
while Lord Weymouth believed he could swear fealty to her in good conscience, ‘the case being so much altered by the death of King William’. The Duke of Devonshire thought this illogical, as ‘’tis hard to conceive what objection they could have to the establishment in the last reign that does not remain the same in this’. Nevertheless, although the abjuration oath was not toned down, in time almost the whole Tory party took it ‘and professed great zeal for the Queen and an entire satisfaction in her title’.
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Among them was the Earl of Nottingham, whose scruples were overcome after talks with the Archbishop of York.

There were, however, a few exceptions, the most notable of whom was Anne’s uncle, the Earl of Clarendon. Soon after her accession he sought admission to her presence, but the Queen ‘sent him word he should go first and qualify himself, and then she should be very glad to see him’. Clarendon still refused to take the oath, although he assured his niece by letter that ‘no subject … can have more duty for your sacred person and authority’. He explained that while he had known his stance would disqualify him from serving her, he had hoped she would agree to see him. ‘Since you do not think fit to afford me that honour’, he begged her to consider his difficult financial circumstances. In March 1703 Anne awarded him a pension of £1,500 a year, but would grant him no further contact.
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Surprised by the readiness of Tories to take the oath, some people ‘suspected this was treachery’, and that their professions of loyalty were false. There were perhaps a few cases where this was so, for at least one of the Prince of Wales’s supporters was clear on the need for perjury. This gentleman regarded the Jacobites as ‘milksops for kicking at oaths, asserting they should never be able to do anything if they … did not take all oaths that could be imposed’.
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In general, however, Anne was correct in thinking that those who swore allegiance to her were sincere.

In view of Anne’s political sympathies, it was hardly surprising that her first ministry was predominantly Tory. Though neither were ardent party men, Sarah noted that Marlborough and Godolphin themselves ‘would not have had so great a share of her favour and confidence if they had not been reckoned in the number of Tories’. Marlborough advised the Queen to make Godolphin her Lord Treasurer ‘in so positive a manner that he said he could not go beyond sea to command our armies’ unless he was given the post, as only then could he be ‘sure that remittances would be punctually made to him’. For a time Godolphin was reluctant to accept the position, but Marlborough urged him to do so,
having the utmost trust in one who – as he wrote to Sarah – was ‘united to us both in friendship and alliance’.
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As Lord Treasurer, Godolphin effectively had the responsibilities of a modern Prime Minister, a term actually used of him by some contemporaries. Domestic, Scottish, and foreign affairs all were part of his province, as well as Treasury business. He was, however, an acknowledged expert on money matters. One foreign diplomat recorded, ‘everyone agrees that … Godolphin is particularly talented at handling finances, and that he understands them best of anyone in the realm’. Not merely could he deal with the complexities of floating loans and managing the national debt, but he supervised every aspect of public expenditure with the utmost vigilance. Unlike many public servants of the day, he did not use his post for personal enrichment, and acted as ‘the nation’s treasurer and not his own’. He also displayed a ‘wonderful frugality in the public concerns’, setting a limit on pension expenditure that was lower than in King William’s day, and asking the Queen not to exceed it during the war. Even the most minor outgoings did not escape his notice. On one occasion he chided commissioners at the Board of Trade for spending too much on stationery; another time, when issuing a warrant for a new silver trumpet for Marlborough’s bugler, he wanted to know what had ‘become of the old one?’
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Although Godolphin was indisputably well fitted to be Treasurer, Anne’s uncle the Earl of Rochester had counted on having the post himself. Rochester was a leading Tory, whose passion for the Church was such that he would become incoherent with rage during parliamentary debates on the subject. In some ways it was surprising that he expected to be favoured by his niece. Far from aiding Anne when she was in disgrace with William and Mary he had, in Sarah’s view, fanned the flames, but family loyalty inclined the Queen to overlook this. One foreign diplomat, who was sure that Rochester enjoyed her high regard, reported that while Marlborough was at The Hague during April 1702, his friends became worried that Rochester had ‘very much profited’ from his absence to advance himself further in the Queen’s confidence. Accordingly they were relieved when Marlborough returned home.
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For a time Rochester had served James II as Lord Treasurer, but there were manifest drawbacks to reinstating him in the post. Apart from his choleric nature, and the fact he was such a militant patron of the Church, he was far from being a convinced supporter of the war. At a Cabinet meeting on 2 May he argued that England should not enter it as a principal. Instead he wanted England to confine herself to naval operations
round about her colonies, and to subsidise foreign troops to fight on her behalf in Europe, rather than sending forces of her own. Marlborough was adamant that ‘France could never be reduced within due bounds unless England’ played a full part. He was also able to point out that while abroad he had with some difficulty persuaded the allies to agree to a new war aim, concerning England alone, whereby they had bound themselves to make France agree that the Pretended Prince of Wales had no right to the throne, and to recognise the Protestant succession. According to the diplomat Saunière de l’Hermitage, the Queen came down against Rochester, as she ‘wished to conform with what had been agreed with her allies’. On 4 May war was formally declared, prompting Louis XIV to remark that he must be getting old if ladies were taking up arms against him.
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Two days later Godolphin was named Treasurer.

Though Marlborough had won that tussle with Rochester, Anne’s uncle remained ominously influential. William III had been on the verge of dismissing him from the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but Anne now confirmed him in that office. Marlborough and Godolphin would have been ‘delighted to keep him away from her Majesty and her affairs’ by encouraging him to cross the Irish Sea and exercise his responsibilities in person, but Rochester preferred to remain at court. Before long Rochester was justifying Marlborough’s prediction that he would cause trouble by promoting the interests of the Tory party, rather than considering the war a priority. ‘Proud and imperious’ and wanting ‘everyone to defer to his sentiments’, Rochester (in the view of one allied diplomat) was ‘of a character to push everything to extremity, never retreating from anything he has proposed’. By August Marlborough was convinced not just that Rochester was perpetually ‘endeavouring to give mortifications’ to him and Godolphin, but was actually ‘disturbing underhand the public business’. The only way of resolving the situation, he believed, was to prevail upon the Queen to order her uncle to Ireland.
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The Earl of Nottingham, another conviction Tory with strong feelings about the Church, was appointed one of the Queen’s two Secretaries of State. The Secretaries had a daunting workload. As well as dividing much domestic business between them, they were responsible for overseeing foreign relations with countries that fell within their designated areas. They communicated regularly with envoys stationed abroad and passed on to the Queen summaries of diplomatic despatches. One of the Secretaries kept the minutes at Cabinet meetings and Nottingham in particular would show a keen interest in naval affairs. Dark and saturnine, with the appearance of a Spanish grandee, Nottingham was known
as ‘Dismal’. Wanting the Tories to look on him as their leader, he was alleged by Sarah to do all he could to stir up the Queen’s hostility towards the Whigs. He was more committed to the war than Rochester, but had his own ideas about strategy which made for potential friction with Marlborough. He believed that the key to victory lay in operations in Spain, the Mediterranean, and Caribbean, whereas Flanders was the area ‘where we so fruitlessly spent our blood and treasure in the last war’. Nottingham insisted that another Tory, Sir Charles Hedges, be given the portfolio of Secretary of State for the Northern department. Sarah claimed that Hedges was a useless nonentity who owed his appointment to his subservience towards Nottingham and Rochester, but another observer gave the more positive assessment that Hedges ‘doth not want sense, hath a very good address in business’.
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The Earl of Jersey, who had been William III’s Lord Chamberlain, as well as serving a term as ambassador to France, was kept on in his post. ‘A weak man but crafty, and well practised in the arts of a court’, Jersey was married to a Catholic and would later show Jacobite sympathies. The post of Lord Privy Seal went to the Marquis of Normanby, somewhat to the dismay of Marlborough. He told an Austrian diplomat he was well aware of Normanby’s ‘bad qualities’, but declined to intervene, perhaps bearing in mind that Normanby’s connection with Anne predated even her friendship with Sarah. Years before, as Earl of Mulgrave, he had landed in trouble for flirting with Princess Anne, and it was commonly supposed that the Queen retained a fondness for him from that time. One of those fierce Tories who, though ‘violent for the High Church … seldom goes to it’, he too was suspected of Jacobite inclinations. This was partly because, during the debates on the Act of Settlement in 1701, he had suggested that Prince George should rule the country if his wife predeceased him. Normanby’s appointment was accordingly viewed with alarm in Hanover, but in 1704 he started corresponding with the Electress Sophia, assuring her he ‘had only been for Prince George to compliment the Queen’.
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Normanby regarded Anne’s accession as a glorious opportunity to further himself. When he was presented to her, Anne uttered one of the banalities that Sarah claimed was a hallmark of her conversation, remarking that it was a very fine day. ‘Your Majesty must allow me to declare that it is the finest day I ever saw in my life’, Normanby returned effusively. Things did indeed look up for him when in March 1703 he was created Duke of Buckingham, but two years later he appeared to have permanently blighted himself in Anne’s eyes by suggesting to
Parliament that she might become too senile to exercise power. During the latter years of the reign he nevertheless bounced back, and in 1712 he was described as ‘having the favour of the Queen’s ear very much’.
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