Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (51 page)

There is a greater party forming against my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Marlborough than ever there was against King William’s ministers … Much will depend upon my Lord’s success in Germany … If the Elector of Bavaria is reduced, it will stop the mouths of his enemies and they will not be able to hurt him in England; and if he fails he will be railed at in Holland and accused in England.

The diehard Tory Edward Seymour ranted that if Marlborough met with any setback in Germany ‘We will break him up, as hounds upon a hare’.
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When Marlborough took Donauworth on 21 June/2 July, the Tories merely grumbled ‘What was the sense of capturing a hill in the heart of Germany at such heavy loss?’
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Hoping to persuade the Elector of Bavaria to defect from his alliance with France, Marlborough next ordered the Bavarian countryside to be ravaged by fire. Maximilian was on the point of abandoning the French but changed his mind on hearing that Louis XIV was sending reinforcements commanded by Marshal Tallard to strengthen the troops he already had in Germany.

On 25 June/6 July Marlborough’s forces were increased when they liaised with an Imperial army led by Prince Eugene of Savoy, meaning that a confrontation with the enemy became feasible. Though still outnumbered by the French and Bavarians, the allies had superiority in cavalry and so, when Marlborough came upon the enemy he decided to attack. On 2/13 August, near the village of Blenheim, he gained a crushing victory. Marshal Tallard was captured, and the French lost over 34,000 men, with 14,000 being taken prisoner. At most, allied casualties numbered 14,000 killed and wounded.
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In the past Marlborough had been derided as ‘a General of favour’ by detractors who alleged that he had been given his command solely on account of his wife’s friendship with the Queen. The Battle of Blenheim revealed the absurdity of such slurs and provided irrefutable evidence of Marlborough’s military genius – an attribute that would be reaffirmed on many subsequent occasions.

Writing to his wife the following day Marlborough declared ‘I can’t end my letter without being so vain as to tell my dearest soul that within the memory of man there has been no victory so great as this’. Immediately after the battle he had scribbled a few lines to her on the back of a tavern bill, informing her of his success, and he had entrusted the note to Colonel Parke. After galloping across Europe, Parke arrived in England on 10/21 August and took his message straight to the Duchess in London. Next, he hurried on to Windsor to find the Queen, who on hearing his news ‘told him he had given her more joy than ever she had received in her life’, and presented Parke with a thousand guineas.
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The nation went wild with delight on learning that Marlborough had inflicted on the French ‘such a defeat as never was given in Europe these 1000 years’. London gave itself up to rejoicing: ‘Nothing was to be heard or seen in every street but the acclamations of the people, ringing of bells, bonfires, firing of guns and all kinds of fireworks’. Mrs Burnet, wife
of the Bishop of Salisbury, described herself as ‘giddy with joy’ and in a letter to the Duchess of Marlborough crowed that the Duke had delivered ‘the greatest blow to that [French] tyranny that it ever had’. ‘If I rave, you must forgive me’, she concluded happily. ‘Even the Jacobites were forced either to join in the general exultation or to shut themselves up in holes and corners, abandoning themselves to grief and despair’.
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The Queen immediately wrote to Sarah expressing jubilation at ‘this glorious victory which, next to God Almighty, is wholly owing to dear Mr Freeman, on whose safety I congratulate you with all my soul’. On 7 September there was a thanksgiving ceremony at St Paul’s ‘celebrated … with the utmost pomp and splendour’. ‘The Queen, full of jewels’, rode there in her coach with the Duchess of Marlborough at her side, and was then carried in an open chair to take her place on the throne set up in the cathedral. But despite this public show of solidarity with the Marlboroughs, all was not well between Anne and the Duchess. A week after learning of Marlborough’s triumph, the Queen wrote to Sarah lamenting ‘the coldness you have used me with of late’, and in the next few weeks matters deteriorated further. The problem, as ever, was that the Duchess was angered by what she saw as Anne’s irrational attachment to Tories. For the moment, with Marlborough a national hero there was ‘no room … for envy or malice to detract from the Duke’s honour’, but Sarah still believed the Tories remained hostile to her husband and the war itself. She singled out the Duke of Buckingham, alleging to Anne that he had been visibly displeased when he heard of Marlborough’s success. The Queen denied this, insisting that her former admirer had ‘looked with as much satisfaction in their face as anybody’ when the news came.
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The Queen tried to placate Sarah by sending affectionate letters, only to be told that these were meaningless, when ‘the kindness of your heart is quite gone from me, and for no cause … but for being so faithful to you’. The Duchess claimed Anne’s withdrawal of confidence and love was making it very hard to serve her with her customary fidelity, to which the Queen responded in distress, ‘Oh, do not wrong me so, for indeed I am not changed’.
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Despite the fact that Godolphin had warned her against exaggerating the Jacobite threat, the Duchess now attempted to persuade the Queen that she was personally in peril from assassination, implying that she was recklessly exposing herself by not being more vigilant. The Queen did not dismiss Sarah’s concerns outright, for though she remained
convinced that Jacobite numbers were negligible, she had to bear in mind that a tiny group of extremists had plotted to kill William III in 1696, and she could not rule out a similar attempt on her life. Indeed, Bishop Burnet claimed that she had not dissented to his earlier suggestion that the Jacobites would be tempted to murder her if she showed any inclination to recognise James Francis Edward as her heir. Now Anne wrote back to Sarah returning ‘a thousand thanks for the concern you express for my safety’, promising to take especial ‘care of myself, because you desire it’. She assured the Duchess ‘I do not at all doubt of the malice of my enemies and shall never be surprised to hear of plots either against my government and my self, for it is what I expect all my days from the young man in France and those of his religion’. However, she refused to live in fear, stating that while she would take all reasonable precautions, ‘more than that, life is not worth’.
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All too often now, Anne declined to give a detailed answer when Sarah accused her of political shortcomings, hoping by this means to avoid unpleasantness. The Duchess found this inflammatory. Long letters poured in from her, reiterating that Anne was ‘false’ and ‘changed’, and charging the Queen with keeping secrets from her, in contravention of Montaigne’s dictums on friendship. Anne still did her best not to be drawn into political arguments, excusing herself on the grounds that ‘since I’m unfortunate in most things I say … I think it better to let it alone’. Yet Sarah showed little interest in discussing anything else. Far from being touched when Anne wrote imploring her to abandon all thought of retiring from her post and to look in on her before going to the country, the Duchess merely marked the letter in places where she considered the Queen had expressed herself in ‘ill English’.
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Things soon became so tense between the two women that Godolphin intervened, hinting to Sarah – albeit somewhat diffidently – that the fault partly lay with her. On 1 September he wrote tactfully, ‘I am very sorry to find Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman cannot yet bring things quite right’ but added that he was sure all would soon be remedied, for ‘when this case happens betwixt people that love one another so well, it is not impossible but that both may be a little in the wrong’.
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Sarah, now increasingly self-absorbed, saw no reason to adopt a gentler approach, not least because, when Parliament met in late October 1704, several things occurred that displeased her. Shortly after the Battle of Blenheim a British fleet, commanded by the Tory Admiral George Rooke, had captured Gibraltar. The French had attempted to seize it back and on 13/24 August there had been a battle at sea off Malaga. The
British came off best in the encounter, but it was scarcely a triumph on a par with Marlborough’s. Nevertheless, when the House of Commons presented the Queen with a grateful address, they not only congratulated her on the outcome of Blenheim but also ‘hooked in the victory by sea under Sir George Rooke’, implying that it was as important as that gained in Germany. This prompted an outraged letter from Sarah, to which the Queen wearily replied that she had ‘never looked upon the sea fight as a victory, and I think what has been said upon it, as ridiculous as anybody can do’.
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This was merely a foretaste of arguments to come. It soon became clear that hardline Tories in the Commons, encouraged by Rochester and Nottingham, were ‘endeavouring to give all the disturbance they can’ to the ministry, and among other things planned to reintroduce an Occasional Conformity Bill. Enraged not only at those whom Godolphin now called the ‘hot angry people’, but at the entire Tory party, Sarah wrote denouncing them for being in league with Saint-Germain, attacking Anne for allowing herself to be ‘deluded by anybody calling themselves of the Church’. Fed up with these wild claims, Anne was now provoked into answering firmly. Reiterating that just ‘because there are some hot headed men among those that are called Tories, I can’t for my life think it reasonable to brand them all with the name of Jacobite’, she stated defiantly that her own political outlook was unchanged by Sarah’s railings. ‘I have the same opinion of Whig and Tory that I ever had’, she told the Duchess flatly. ‘I know both their principles very well, and when I know myself to be in the right, nothing can make me alter mine’.
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Sarah was unaccustomed to being contradicted in this way, and responded with a deeply unpleasant letter, in which it was hard to detect the least vestige of affection. She began by observing sarcastically that Anne doubtless believed she had ‘quite killed me with the firmness of her opinion’ but that, on the contrary, it had merely roused her further. She asked the Queen to enlighten her as to what she believed to be the Tories’ defining attributes, professing herself baffled as to what it was that the Queen liked so much about them. ‘I beg you will give me his character … what that dear creature is, so extremely beloved, for I would fain be in love too’, she sneered. Not content with this, she also brought up the contentious subject of the Civil War, on which she claimed to be an expert, having ‘read every book, little and great that has been writ upon that subject’. She noted that Anne’s political outlook had been shaped by what she had been told about that conflict, which since infancy had instilled her with such ‘a great abhorrence of what they called in those
days Whigs or Roundheads’. With mock deference she declared, ‘I will allow they had cloven feet or what you please’, but this could not alter the fact that Anne’s understanding of history was defective. She therefore took it upon herself to remedy the gaps in Anne’s knowledge. She explained that Charles I was not a blameless victim, for it was incontrovertible that ‘the extreme weakness of that unfortunate king contributed as much to his misfortunes as all the malice of those ill men’. Furthermore, he had exposed himself to ruin by allowing himself to be ‘governed by almost as bad people’ as those who had sentenced him to death, not least of whom was Anne’s grandmother, Henrietta Maria. The late Queen consort was not only French, ‘which was misfortune enough’, but ‘a very ill woman’ and a Catholic to boot; and Sarah could not resist adding that many of the Tories whom Anne so favoured at present would themselves doubtless soon convert to that faith.
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Unsurprisingly Anne was deeply offended by this letter. Having written back that she would refrain from commenting, since ‘everything I say is imputed either to partiality or being imposed upon by knaves and fools’, she opened herself up to Godolphin, making it plain that she believed that her former intimacy with Sarah had gone forever. The Lord Treasurer sought to defend the Duchess, not least because he believed that she made the Queen more manageable. Yet while agreeing ‘that all Lady Marlborough’s unkindness proceeds from the real concern she has for my good’, Anne questioned his belief that the old easiness between them could somehow be recaptured. On the contrary, she confided, ‘I quite despair of it now, which is no small mortification to me; however I will ever be the same and be ready on all occasions to do her all the service that lies in my poor power’.
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Meanwhile, the more extreme members of the Tory party had hit on a new way of enacting the Occasional Conformity Bill, deciding that they would seek to attach, or ‘tack’ it onto the Land Tax Bill for that year, and send the measure to the Lords in that form. If that happened, the Lords would face the choice of either accepting or rejecting the bill in its entirety, for they could not amend financial measures. If they decided to throw out Occasional Conformity, the money supply for that year would be lost, and those who devised this strategy reasoned that the Upper House would accept they had no option but to vote in favour. This was by no means certain, however, for it was possible that even those Lords not opposed to Occasional Conformity in principle would object to a procedure that arguably violated the constitutional privileges of their House. Yet if as a result the Land Tax did not pass, the consequences
would be horrendous, culminating in nothing less than ‘the collapse of the common cause against France’. Despite this, High Church fanatics in the Commons were set on ‘venturing the Parliament and the nation’s falling into any sort of confusion rather than not carry their point’.
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