Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (57 page)

It was a heartfelt appeal, but Godolphin replied that it had afforded him ‘all the grief and despair imaginable’ because, although the Queen insisted that she wanted him to stay in her service, she was acting so as to ‘make it impossible for me to do so’. He reaffirmed that being unable to ‘struggle against the difficulties of your Majesty’s service and yourself at the same time’, he would have to resign, even though his material circumstances were such that it would be very awkward for him to do so.
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The Queen was now highly overwrought, and needed to be handled with the utmost sensitivity. This was not Godolphin’s strongest quality, ‘negotiation not being Mr Montgomery’s talent’, as he himself put it.
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Matters were not improved when the Duchess of Marlborough decided to intervene, adopting a combative approach that made the situation still more painful.

In late 1705, after the Tories had infuriated her by intriguing with Sophia, the Queen had written ‘I believe dear Mrs Freeman and I shall not disagree as we have formerly done’, but over the next few months a fresh pall fell over their relationship. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what caused these new difficulties between the two women. Sarah claimed she was upset because the Queen ‘avoided seeing me in private’, and when they did meet, ‘she never would be free nor easy’. Anne on the other hand complained that it was Sarah who was aloof, treating her with great ‘unkindness’, even though the Queen was not aware ‘of ever having done anything that deserves so much coldness’. Sometimes the Duchess ignored Anne’s letters altogether, but if she did reply, the Queen was pained when she declined to address her ‘in the style you say is very unfit’ as Mrs Morley.
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For much of the summer of 1706 Sarah was absent from court, and in July she even contemplated resigning her places. Instead, on 27 August she decided to make her thoughts known on the crisis caused by Anne’s refusal to dismiss Sir Charles Hedges. In the next fortnight Godolphin’s life became even more of ‘a burthen’ for, to add to his political difficulties, he had to try and calm the Queen’s anger with Sarah. He noted glumly on 18 September, ‘Since this hurly burly, I have never had one easy conversation [with Anne], but all coldness and constraint’.
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In her letter of 27 August the Duchess wrote that she had recently avoided seeing the Queen because doing so would inevitably lead to arguments about Anne’s insistence on retaining Sir Charles Hedges. Now, however, ‘I can’t resist saying that I wonder your Majesty should be so unwilling to part with a man that was never thought fit for his place’. Having insisted that her sole concern was that Godolphin was on the point of resignation, she ended grandiloquently, ‘Your security and the nation’s is my chief wish, and I beg of God Almighty … that Mr and Mrs Morley may see their errors as to this nation before it is too late’.
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Her letter infuriated the Queen, as she made clear to Godolphin when she next saw him. He duly passed this on to Sarah, who was not in the slightest bit penitent. Instead she penned another letter, opening
provocatively, ‘Your Majesty’s great indifference and contempt in taking no notice of my last letter did not so much surprise me as to hear my Lord Treasurer say you had complained much of it’. Confident that her conduct was irreproachable, she asked the Queen to show her previous letter to Godolphin so that he could judge whether she was in any way at fault.
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When Anne saw Godolphin on 31 August, she handed it over for his inspection, and he clearly was alarmed by what he saw. However, he persuaded the Queen that Sarah had not meant to impugn Anne’s governance of her kingdom by writing ‘errors as to this nation’; instead, she had wanted to convey that Anne was acting misguidedly on the specific issue of the Secretary’s appointment, and the phrase should have been read as ‘errors as to this notion’. When he wrote to Sarah to explain all this, he hinted that the alternative wording could indeed be considered offensive, and made plain his regret that ‘that word “notion” was not so distinctly written but that one might as naturally read it “nation”’.
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Having accepted that Sarah had made a genuine slip of the pen, the Queen wrote back to her on 6 September. She began with the slightly barbed comment that, since Sarah had attributed her failure to respond immediately to the letter of 27 August to ‘indifference or contempt’, the Duchess would perhaps be still more offended that another week had elapsed before she sent this reply. Yet after this mild reproof she adopted a conciliatory tone, assuring Sarah that she understood she had written ‘nation’ by accident and that ‘all you say proceeds from the concern you have for my service’. She stressed that, far from being unconcerned at the prospect of Godolphin’s resignation, ‘his leaving my service is a thought I cannot bear’. In conclusion Anne asked the Duchess to abandon her self-imposed boycott and gratify her with ‘one look’ before travelling to Oxfordshire to inspect the building works at Blenheim.
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Sarah gave this friendly overture a distinctly ungracious reception. It is almost certain that, far from making a mistake, she had fully intended to write ‘nation’, and she saw no reason to be apologetic, observing subsequently that if Anne’s ‘heart had been the same’ as in former days, ‘I am apt to think she would not have been displeased at the shape of any of my fine letters’. Instead of being relieved that the matter had been smoothed over, she fired off another letter, proclaiming that ‘I cannot for my life see any essential difference betwixt these two words’. Since Anne had decided to lay such weight on the matter, she could only conclude ‘you were in a great disposition to complain of me’, for her letter, ‘which it seems has been so great an offence, and how justly I leave you to judge’,
had merely warned that the ministry could not survive if Anne continued to show indulgence to disaffected Tories. ‘If you can find fault with this I am so unhappy as that you must always find fault with me, for I am incapable of thinking otherwise’.
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Having dwelt at length upon a matter that would have been better left alone, Sarah decided to ‘say two or three words’ about Anne’s letter to Godolphin of 30 August, which he had shown her. Seizing on Anne’s remark that she was reluctant to employ Sunderland because he was ‘a party man’, the Duchess accused her of being ready to ‘put all things in confusion’ by her obsession on this subject, warning that once the Queen had driven Marlborough and Godolphin out of her service, ‘you will then indeed find yourself in the hands of a violent party, who I am sure will have very little mercy or even humanity for you’. She followed this with a gratuitous attack on Hedges’s competence and integrity, heedless of the fact that Anne liked and respected the man. ’Tis certain he is no more fit to be Secretary of State than I am’, the Duchess pronounced. ‘He has no parts, he has no quality, no interest’. As a parting shot she spurned the Queen’s request to look in on her before she went to Woodstock, ‘for I am sure it must be uneasy to speak to one you think of as you do of me; at best it would be but so much time lost’. Understandably aggrieved at the Duchess’s harsh tone, when the Queen next saw Godolphin she indicated, ‘with a great deal of stiffness and reservedness in her looks’, that she considered this letter ‘
very extraordinary
’.
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On 7 September the Lord Treasurer had another meeting with Anne, and once again rehearsed the arguments as to why she must employ Sunderland. To his distress, the Queen suddenly ‘burst into a passion of weeping and said it was plain [she] was to be miserable as long as [she] lived, whatever [she] did’. Being already thoroughly uncomfortable to find Anne looking on him almost as an enemy, Godolphin was so disconcerted by this upsetting scene that he agreed not to press her further until Marlborough could advise her, by letter or in person. He feared, however, that even if Marlborough backed him unreservedly, ‘this thing cannot end without very great uneasinesses one way or the other’. Furthermore, having come to realise how much harm had already been done by Sarah, he now had to face the fact that ‘there is no room to hope for the least assistance from Mrs Freeman in this matter’.
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The Duchess herself was not in the least moved when Godolphin informed her of his fraught encounter with the Queen; instead she told him off for not taking a tougher line. In shock, Godolphin protested ‘You are much better natured in effect than you sometimes appear to be, and
though you chide me with being touched with the condition [of the Queen] … you would have been so too, if you had seen the same sight I did’. However, not wanting to seem feeble, on 13 September he decided to write to the Queen without waiting for word from Marlborough to arrive. He took great trouble composing his letter, and having done so told Sarah, ‘I cannot help flattering myself that it will have a good effect’.
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Godolphin began by assuring the Queen that it would be no hardship for Sir Charles Hedges to be placed in a less demanding post than the Secretaryship. Turning to what he took ‘to be the main point’ of Anne’s earlier letter to him, Godolphin argued that making Sunderland her Secretary was the best way to avoid enhancing the power of a single party. If she rejected Sunderland, she would become completely dependent on the Tories, because the Whigs would be so furious that their recent services had been overlooked that they would ‘sit sullen in the Parliament’. On the other hand, once Sunderland was given office, the Whigs would make it ‘their chief concern to vindicate your Majesty’s administration’, while being ‘so far from being in a condition of imposing on your Majesty’ that they would readily submit to being ‘entirely governed and influenced by the Duke of Marlborough and me’.
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It was an inviting scenario, but unfortunately one that was seriously misconceived, as events would prove that his forecast was much too optimistic.

The Queen did not reply for some days and, in the meantime, Sarah caused more trouble. She sent Anne a letter pointing out that she had initially resisted Lord Cowper’s appointment but that, once he became Lord Keeper, the Queen had liked him better than expected. While this sounds innocuous enough, it was evidently expressed in particularly shrill terms, for when Anne saw Godolphin once more on 17 September she ‘complained much’ about the letter. Godolphin took Sarah’s side, saying that ‘all Mrs Freeman’s complaints proceeded from having lost Mrs Morley’s kindness unjustly, and her telling her truths which other people would not’. Anne protested, ‘How could she show her any more kindness … when she would never come near her?’ To this Godolphin countered that Sarah claimed ‘she had tried that’, and their encounters always ended unsatisfactorily. The Queen acknowledged that under provocation she could not always keep her temper, for ‘Mrs Freeman would grow warm sometimes’ and then ‘she herself could not help being warmer than she ought to be’. However, ‘She was always ready to be easy with Mrs Freeman’. Godolphin commented fervently, ‘I would die with all my soul to have them two as they used to be’, but Sarah greeted the
Queen’s offer with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Even when Anne wrote to thank Sarah for ‘writing her mind so freely’ in her last communication, the Duchess took exception because she declined ‘to answer any of the particulars’. Contemptuously the Duchess scribbled on the paper, ‘a shifting letter that made no answer’.
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On 21 September the Queen finally replied to Godolphin’s letter of 13 September, which in the past week she had read ‘over and over’. Contrary to Godolphin’s hopes, it had not altered her views, for not only was she as reluctant as ever to dismiss Sir Charles Hedges, but she was still apprehensive that she and Sunderland would ‘never agree long together’. It remained, furthermore, her unshakeable conviction that accepting him as her Secretary would amount to ‘throwing myself into the hands of a party’. Presciently she warned Godolphin, ‘If this be complied with, you will then, in a little time, find they must be gratified with something else, or they will not go on heartily in my business’. She told him she considered it inevitable that the Whigs would demand more seats in the ministry as the price of their support, and ‘if this is not being in the hands of a party, what is?’

Accordingly she hoped that her proposal to give Sunderland an unofficial place in the Cabinet would prove acceptable. In her view such a gesture ought to be enough to allow the Whigs to support the ministry in Parliament, particularly since the measures they were being asked to vote for were not inimical to their principles, but in ‘their own and their country’s interests’. ‘One of these things would make me very easy, the other quite contrary; and why, for God’s sake may I not be gratified as well as other people?’ she demanded heatedly. If the Whigs continued to insist that Sunderland must be imposed upon her, ‘It is very plain, in my poor opinion, nothing will satisfy them but having one entirely in their power’. Having forcefully put her case, she concluded by once again imploring Godolphin not to resign.
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Godolphin was plunged into despair to find the Queen ‘leans still towards expedients’ when he had made it plain ‘the thing was not capable of any expedients’. By the time that he received her letter, the Whigs had indeed already rejected the offer of an undefined Cabinet post for Sunderland with utter contempt. Sunderland told his mother-in-law that he and his colleagues were ‘all of the same mind, that for me to hearken to any such offer would be in effect to be both fool and knave’. He warned that everything promised ‘must be done, or we and the Lord Treasurer must have nothing more to do together about business’. This ultimatum drove Godolphin ‘almost distracted’. Aware that the Whigs
would revenge themselves by doing everything possible ‘to vex and ruin’ him and Marlborough, he saw ‘no possibility of supporting himself or anything else in this winter … To make brick without straw is an Egyptian labour’.
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