Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (50 page)

It was understandable, then, that when the Duke of Queensberry received intelligence of a Jacobite plot involving the Dukes of Atholl and Hamilton, and numerous others, he took it seriously. Unfortunately, his informant was the treacherous and unreliable Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, who had a motive to discredit the Duke of Atholl because he had been outlawed for raping Atholl’s sister. It would later be alleged that Queensberry had listened eagerly because Lovat’s claims implicated so many prominent Scots that it would look as if Queensberry alone was loyal, providing him with an excuse for the failure of the 1703 Parliament and making his position impregnable.

On 17 December 1703 the Queen informed the English Parliament that the government had recently learned of ‘ill practices and designs carried on in Scotland by emissaries from France’ and announced that the matter was being investigated. Sensing an opportunity to gain political advantage, Whigs in the House of Lords tried to take over this enquiry by setting up their own committee, alleging that the Tory Secretary, Nottingham, had been scandalously slow to act on Queensberry’s warnings.

In Scotland, meanwhile, there was widespread fury that Queensberry had been so eager to accept Lovat’s word, and also that the English House of Lords was interfering in a matter that was the province of the Scots Privy Council. Several of those incriminated by Lovat sent a deputation to London to complain to the Queen, and on 8 March 1704 she received them graciously, pleased to discover they were not ‘such fierce barbarians as they had been represented’. She now regarded Queensberry as ‘a great liar’. He may have been ‘a complete courtier’ with the ‘habit of saying very civil and obliging things to everybody’ but the Queen had been angered by the way he had mishandled the Scottish Parliament and then
blamed everyone else for it, and also (according to Sarah) suspected him of having cheated her in a financial matter. Besides this, Anne believed he had ‘betrayed the secrets to Lords for his own ends’ by encouraging the Whigs to mount their own investigation into the so-called ‘Scotch Plot’.
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She began to think it would be advisable to employ new ministers in Scotland.

The committee of peers did not uncover any conclusive evidence regarding the plot but on 22 March the House of Lords pronounced that their investigation had proved the existence of ‘a dangerous conspiracy … for the raising of a rebellion in Scotland … in order to … the bringing in the pretended Prince of Wales’. They added that in their view nothing had encouraged this so much as the failure to settle the Scottish succession on Sophia of Hanover, and urged the Queen to remedy this forthwith. This amounted to an implicit criticism of both Queen and ministry for being lackadaisical on the issue, though Anne could at least take comfort in the fact that on the following day a motion declaring that the Earl of Nottingham ‘had not done his duty’ when investigating the plot failed to carry.
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Despite escaping formal censure, Nottingham was enraged by the attacks on his integrity, and decided that it was no longer possible for him to work with any Whigs. He went to both the Queen and Godolphin and said he would resign if the ministry was not remodelled along purely Tory lines. In particular he wanted the Duke of Somerset (who had chaired the Lords’ committee on the Scotch Plot) and Archbishop Tenison removed from the Cabinet. The Queen did not want to part with Nottingham and for a moment it appeared that she might give way to his ultimatum. However, after she and Godolphin had ‘a little talk’ she abandoned ‘these sort of notions’.
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Instead she agreed to dismiss the Earl of Jersey and Sir Edward Seymour, two of the most fanatical Tories in office. The pair were replaced by more moderate men, with the Earl of Kent becoming Lord Chamberlain instead of Jersey. Known as ‘Bug’, and notable principally for ‘money and smell’, Kent was not exactly an asset to the court, but at least his politics were inoffensive, in that he was only loosely affiliated to the Whigs.
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Jersey’s dismissal ‘greatly surprised him and everyone else’, but the Queen was now convinced she had done the right thing. No longer disturbed by the likelihood that Nottingham would leave office, she wrote cheerfully to tell Sarah that she had ‘sent a message [to Jersey and Seymour] which they will not like. Sure this will convince Mrs Freeman that I never had any partiality to … these persons’. With mischievous
good humour she added, ‘Something more of this nature it is believed will soon happen that will not be disagreeable to Mrs Freeman’. Sure enough, on 22 April Nottingham resigned from his post as Secretary. His departure came as a great relief to Marlborough and Godolphin, who had found him an increasingly difficult colleague. However, they were aware he would now ally himself with the embittered Earl of Rochester and was likely to prove an implacable political foe.
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Nottingham’s place as Secretary of State was taken by Robert Harley. Until that point, although officially he was only Speaker of the House of Commons, he had exerted great influence. Besides managing Commons business, he had taken an active role in intelligence work, ecclesiastical preferment, propaganda matters and much else. An acquaintance who wrote to him following his appointment as Secretary remarked ‘it is scarce worthwhile congratulating you for having that in name which before you had in reality’. However, Harley professed regret at being ‘pressed into the public service in a difficult and dangerous position’, being well aware that his new prominence would result in members of both parties gunning for him. His admirers nevertheless believed that Marlborough and Godolphin had come to depend upon him to such an extent that his position was unshakeable.
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Another notable ministerial change made at this time was the appointment of twenty-five-year-old Henry St John as Secretary at War. Though a strong Tory, St John believed that the country’s current main priority was to fight the war, rather than to address divisive domestic issues such as Occasional Conformity. Having already made a name for himself as an orator in the House of Commons, he had a brilliant mind, ‘adorned with the choicest gifts that God hath yet thought fit to bestow’. For all his promise, however, he was flawed in other ways, being ‘a man of bright parts but bad morals’. He spent much time in ‘frantic Bacchanals’ and pursuing ‘libertinism in a very high degree’. He was also volatile and impetuous and this, coupled with an awareness of his dissolute ways, would subsequently undermine the Queen’s trust in him. For the moment, however, he kept his bad habits in check, and proved an asset to the government.
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Anne had understandably hoped that her dismissal of key Tory figures would bring about a rapprochement between her and the Duchess of Marlborough but she was to be disappointed on this score. In the spring of 1704, Sarah’s dealings with the Queen remained so fractious that Godolphin felt compelled to tell her she was acting unreasonably. He
also suggested she was being unduly alarmist about the Jacobite threat, echoing advice previously given her by Marlborough, who had told Sarah four months earlier ‘I can’t by no means allow that all the Tory party is for King James’.
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Both men were well placed to judge this although ironically (and almost certainly unbeknown to Sarah), they continued to guard against the eventuality of a Jacobite restoration by regularly sending empty promises of support to Saint-Germain. Having tried to calm Sarah on this point, Godolphin also warned that she ‘should not abuse of that great indulgence of Mrs Morley’ by absenting herself from court for such long periods. When Sarah reacted with fury to these well-meant counsels Godolphin wrote stolidly he was ‘sorry to find you are so much in the spleen’ but that she would ultimately realise that he was right.
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Soon after this Sarah did return to court, but she retained her belligerent attitude to Anne, nagging her about the well-worn themes of Anne’s partiality towards Tories and her supposedly altered behaviour towards the Duchess. As Sarah later recalled, they frequently argued about such matters, ‘sometimes not without heat, but a reconciliation quickly followed’. After another awkward exchange, Anne wrote to apologise for having given Sarah a curt answer: ‘My poor heart is so tender … I knew if I had begun to speak I should not have been fit to be seen by anybody’, she explained, but now, because she still loved ‘dear Mrs Freeman … as my own soul’, she wanted to put everything right between them.
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Sarah still questioned the Queen’s sincerity, accusing her of lying when Anne claimed she remained ‘more yours than it is possible to express’. Despairingly Anne demanded, ‘For God’s sake tell me why I should say so if it were not true? … I was once so happy as to be believed by my dear Mrs Freeman’. Anne lost all patience when Sarah alleged that despite having dismissed Lord Jersey, the Queen still numbered him among her ‘oracles’, but Anne repented of her sharp answer the following morning. In another contrite letter, she asked her friend to excuse it ‘if I were too warm in my discourse last night and that she would not give it the name of being angry, which I can never be with you’. She did not disguise, however, that she held Sarah partly to blame, declaring that while she hoped ‘God Almighty may inspire you with just and right thoughts of your poor unfortunate faithful Morley’, she doubted this would happen until Sarah became less enamoured of the Whigs. In a further telling development, Anne by now was finding their encounters so bruising that she no longer yearned to see Sarah whenever an
opportunity arose. On at least one occasion she told the Duchess that she did not mind being told about her faults, ‘but let it be in writing, for I dare not venture to speak’.
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Anne could at least hope that her new policy towards Scotland would meet with Sarah’s approval, for in the summer of 1704 the Queen acted on the recommendations of the English House of Lords by making a serious effort to settle the succession of the Scottish crown on Sophia of Hanover. In order to achieve this, she dismissed the Duke of Queensberry and replaced him with the Marquis of Tweeddale, who led a group known as the ‘New Party’. Tweeddale assured her that he would be able to secure a parliamentary majority in favour of the Hanoverian succession by offering a series of limitations that would reduce the power of the Crown after Anne’s death so that, for example, the Scottish Parliament would in future have a say in the appointment of ministers.

When the Scottish Parliament met in June, Anne sent a message that ‘Nothing has troubled us more, since our accession to the Crown of these realms, than the unsettled state of affairs in that our ancient kingdom’. To remedy this, she declared herself ‘resolved … to grant whatever can, in reason, be demanded for rectifying of abuses’. She cautioned her subjects that ‘a longer delay of settling the succession in the Protestant line may have very dangerous consequences; and a disappointment of it would infallibly make that our kingdom the seat of war, and expose it to devastation and ruin’.
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Despite these grim warnings, the Scots proved disinclined to fall in with her wishes.

The main problem was that the new Scottish ministry did not command as much support as had been hoped. The Marquis of Tweeddale was ‘a very good man but not perfectly qualified for court intrigues’, whereas the Duke of Queensberry – still smarting at his dismissal and having gone into opposition – was expert at them.
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Queensberry feared that the newly formed government would mount an enquiry into his handling of the Scotch Plot, which would reveal that he had incited Lovat to make accusations against former colleagues. He therefore set out to undermine the ministry by ensuring that their policy was rejected, and largely because of his manoeuvres the Parliament spiralled out of control. Instead of settling the succession in the way Anne had asked, the Scottish Parliament reverted to demanding that she assent to the Act of Security, providing for England and Scotland to be ruled by different sovereigns after her death. It was made clear that no taxes would be voted that year if she refused, raising the possibility that
the Scots army would mutiny over lack of pay. Godolphin reluctantly advised the Queen that she had no alternative but to acquiesce, and on 6 August 1704 the Act of Security was touched with the sceptre. Four days later news arrived that Marlborough had won a historic victory over French and Bavarian forces in southern Germany. Had Godolphin known of this earlier, he would have felt confident enough to urge the Queen to reject the Act of Security. As it was, England and Scotland appeared poised on the brink of disaster.

Marlborough’s original plan for his 1704 campaign had been to invade France along the Moselle valley, but because Vienna was now menaced by a joint Bavarian and French army, he decided that the main priority was to save the Imperial capital. For a time he concealed his intentions from the Dutch, knowing that they would be reluctant to let their troops travel so far. He also had to prevent the French from guessing what he had in mind, and had therefore built up supply depots along his route to Germany in strictest secrecy. Having persuaded the Dutch to sanction his planned invasion of France, Marlborough informed Godolphin on 18/29 April that only once he reached Coblentz would he divulge that he intended to advance with his army down the River Danube in order to confront the Elector of Bavaria in his own domains. Knowing that if warned beforehand, the Dutch would veto his plan, Marlborough insisted that ‘What I now write I beg may be known to nobody but her Majesty and the Prince’.
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Marlborough’s ruse proved successful. Having set out on his march on 8/19 May, he wrote three weeks later to inform the States General that he wanted to head eastwards, and managed to secure their consent for the venture. As Marlborough well knew, however, the penalty for failure would be terrible. Once it became known in England that he had embarked on this risky strategy, the Tories accused him of acting irresponsibly, even talking of impeaching him for ‘having withdrawn forces capable of defending the country at a perilous moment’. In June one observer reported,