Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (58 page)

On 25 September the Lord Treasurer once again wrote to the Queen. He reproached her, ‘Your Majesty will have me think you are desirous of my advice and of the continuance of my service and yet you are not pleased to have any regard to it’. In sorrowful tones he reminded her that the coming session of Parliament was ‘like to be the most critical of your whole reign’ because, with no end to the war in sight, it would be necessary to seek huge sums from Parliament. ‘These are not slight things’, he told Anne dolefully. His tone irritated the Queen, who was annoyed by the implication that she had failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation. She wrote back testily, ‘I am as sensible as anybody can be that the particular things you mention are of the greatest consequence’.
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At this point a letter arrived from the Duke of Marlborough, begging the Queen to abandon her resistance. He echoed what the Lord Treasurer had earlier told her, arguing that employing Sunderland would be the only ‘sure way of making [Godolphin] so strong that he may hinder your being forced into a party’. On the other hand, if she did not stand by her Lord Treasurer, ‘all must go to confusion’. Still the Queen refused to bow to Whig demands. On 7/18 October Marlborough wrote to his wife, ‘I did flatter myself … that my representations would have had more weight than I find they have’. Upset at having his advice ignored, he told Sarah if Godolphin resigned ‘I cannot serve in the ministry’.
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On 2 October Anne had gone to Newmarket for the racing but there had been no question of enjoying herself. Not only was she in mental agony over the political crisis but she also fell ill, suffering from ‘gripes’ in the stomach. To add to her woes, she was pursued by the usual letters from the Duchess of Marlborough, who accused Anne of ‘taking a prejudice against any thing’ that came from her. The Queen had delayed replying, being ‘so dispirited for some days that it was uneasy for me to write’, but at length she summoned up the strength to object, ‘I do not deserve such hard thoughts nor never will’.
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Sarah remained on the attack, informing Anne that since Marlborough was on the verge of resignation, she felt compelled to be ‘honest and plain’. ‘I will tell you the greatest truths in the world’, she declaimed, for though doing so ‘seldom succeeds with anybody so well as flattery’, she owed Anne this out of friendship. ‘As one mark of it, I desire you would reflect whether you have never heard that the greatest misfortunes that
ever has happened to any of your family has ever been occasioned by having ill advices and an obstinacy in their tempers that is very unaccountable?’ It seems that she then added some still more offensive comments, for in the surviving copy of the letter some lines have been erased by the Duchess at a later date. Presumably she did this because she realised that what she had written was not fit to be seen by posterity.

Having given the Queen her views on ‘those just misfortunes’ that had assailed earlier Stuarts, Sarah next ridiculed Anne’s reluctance to employ Sunderland, saying she had never put forward any argument ‘that has the least colour of reason in it’. ‘I have some reason to think Mrs Morley will dislike this letter’, Sarah opined correctly, adding that the Queen would probably also be surprised to hear from her, having doubtless been ‘in hopes she had quite got rid of me’. Nevertheless, the Duchess expressed confidence that if Marlborough and Godolphin saw her letter, they would applaud her candour. In a final burst of self-congratulation, she ended, ‘Nothing sits more heavy upon me than to be thought in the wrong to Mrs Morley’ when she had made her ‘the best return … that any mortal ever did, and what I have done has rarely been seen but upon a stage’.
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Anne’s reply showed great forbearance. With dignity she told Sarah, ‘Though I believe we are both of the same opinion in the main, I have the misfortune that I cannot agree exactly in everything, and therefore what I say is not thought to have the least colour of reason’. She assured the Duchess that she was extremely concerned at the possibility that Marlborough and Godolphin might leave her service, and begged her not to encourage them to do so.
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More abusive letters followed. In one Sarah voiced a fear ‘that there is somebody artful that takes pains to mislead Mrs Morley, for otherwise how is it possible that one who I have formerly heard say she was not fond of her own judgement could persist in such a thing?’
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The Duchess of course had always been apt to believe that Anne had no mind of her own, despite much evidence to the contrary. In this instance, however, there was something in what she said, for the Queen was being secretly encouraged to withstand Sunderland’s appointment by Robert Harley.

By the early autumn of 1706 Harley no longer believed that the ministry could survive by relying principally on moderate Tories, but he was opposed to courting the Whig Junto by offering one of their number an important post. Instead he thought the government should build up its strength with the aid of less committed Whigs such as the Duke of Newcastle. Harley was sure the Junto would not be satiated by Sunderland
becoming Secretary, for ‘the more they have the more they crave’.
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He also feared that once the Junto had obtained a toehold on power, he would be ousted from office.

Godolphin did not agree with Harley’s analysis, telling him firmly that unless the Junto were brought on side before Parliament met ‘the majority will be against us upon every occasion of consequence’. Unfortunately for the Lord Treasurer, the Queen remained ‘very far yet from being sensible of her circumstances in that particular’. There can be no doubt that this was partly because whenever Harley was alone with her, he took the opportunity to convey his own views on the subject, as is evident from a set of notes he compiled prior to an interview with Anne. Clearly referring to Sunderland’s appointment, his jottings read: ‘Nothing will satisfy them. If so much pressed now to take him in when most think him unfit, will it be possible to part with him when he appears to be so? All power is given them … If you stop it now it will make you better served and observed by all sides … It will be too late hereafter. Everybody will worship the idol party that is set up’.
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The Queen eagerly drank in these arguments, which chimed exactly with her own beliefs.

While unaware of the precise nature of Harley’s dealings with Anne, by mid October Godolphin had become concerned that the Secretary was engaged in ‘destructive and pernicious’ intrigues. When he alerted Marlborough that Harley was sounding out moderates from both parties with a view to strengthening the ministry without recourse to the Junto, the Duke agreed that the Secretary ‘must not be suffered to go in the project’. On 16 November the general returned to England after his triumphant campaign, and together he and Godolphin set about tackling the Queen and Harley. Despite the fact that Marlborough had written repeatedly from abroad urging her to do the Lord Treasurer’s bidding, Anne appears to have hoped that when she spoke to him in person she would bring him round to her point of view, but it soon emerged there was no question of this. Harley too was forced to come to heel after an ill-tempered meeting between him and the duumvirs took place on 20 November.
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With Harley no longer whispering encouragement, the Queen was forced to agree that Sunderland would become Secretary of State. Her only consolation was that she extracted an undertaking from Marlborough that Sunderland’s tenure would be conditional on good behaviour, and that ‘if he did anything I did not like’, the Duke ‘would bring him to make his leg and to take his leave’.
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Sunderland’s
appointment was announced on 3 December, the very day that Parliament met. Godolphin could tell himself that all his trouble had been worthwhile when the Commons granted unprecedented sums of money for the war, with such promptness that all measures relating to supply went through before the Christmas recess.

Marlborough also had reason to be pleased with the Parliament, for it took further steps to reward him for his services to the nation. The pension of £5,000 a year, which had caused such controversy in 1702, was now confirmed and granted to him and his family in perpetuity. Furthermore, since he had no male heirs, an act was passed permitting his title and estate to be passed to his daughters. Sarah, who had not reappeared at court after her autumn tussles with the Queen, wrote Anne a somewhat grudging formal letter of thanks, sulkily signing it ‘your poor forsaken Freeman’. In fact the Duchess regarded the act as another source of grievance, for its first draft had envisaged that Marlborough’s property would pass on his death directly to his eldest child, making no provision for his widow. The Duke had requested Parliament to insert a clause arranging for the bulk of his estate to go to Sarah as part of her jointure, but the Duchess was offended that the Queen had not corrected matters personally. Three years later, the Duchess remained resentful about what she saw as an oversight, telling Anne, ‘Mrs Morley, notwithstanding all her everlasting vows of friendship … never concerned herself in the settlement, nor enquired whether her dear Mrs Freeman was not to be the better’ for it.
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By this time the Scots Parliament had been sitting for some weeks, after assembling on 3 October 1706. Having been so helpful the previous year, the Duke of Queensberry had been named the Queen’s commissioner, and therefore faced the daunting task of persuading Parliament to ratify the Union treaty. In her letter to the Parliament, Anne was positive of the enormous benefits inherent in ‘entire and perfect Union’, which would not only provide ‘the solid foundation of lasting peace’, but would ‘secure your religion, liberty and property, remove the animosities amongst ourselves and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms’.
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In Scotland it had been widely assumed that Union would take the form of a federation between the two nations. When the treaty articles were published on 12 October there was great dismay when it emerged that what was on offer was an incorporating Union, which would deprive the Scots of their own Parliament. Large numbers of Scots also objected
on religious grounds, for although it was specifically stated the government of the Kirk would be unaffected by Union, Presbyterians were worried by the influence wielded by English bishops who sat in the House of Lords. Preachers ‘roared against the wicked Union from their pulpits’ and supporters of the Pretender, many of whom were themselves Catholic sympathisers, gleefully whipped up such fears. Simple, ingrained Anglophobia also played its part: one observer commented, ‘The multitude were above all against it not so much from any motive of reason, as from hatred’.
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All this ensured that a majority of the populace were ‘obstinately averse’ to Union, at least in the form proposed. Addresses poured in denouncing an incorporating Union, and the articles of the treaty were burnt at Dumfries by protesters, who warned that if Parliament ratified these provisions ‘over the belly of the generality of the nation’, the people would not regard it as binding. In apocalyptic terms, opponents of the measure warned their compatriots that it ‘would reduce this nation to slavery, destroy the little trade they have and make them miserable beyond a possibility [of] remedy’.
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In Edinburgh there were violent protests. The impoverished journalist Daniel Defoe, who had been employed by Robert Harley as a secret agent and sent north with instructions to use underhand methods to predispose Scots’ opinion in favour of Union, became fearful of being lynched after a threatening crowd surged up the High Street shouting ‘No Union! No English dogs!’ The city guard had to rescue the Provost of Edinburgh from a mob battering at his door, and when riots broke out in Glasgow the Provost of that town had to flee, otherwise ‘they had certainly tore him in pieces’. Whenever the Duke of Hamilton, a known opponent of Union, appeared in public he was cheered wildly, whereas Queensberry was ‘pursued with hissings and curses’. There were ‘great stones thrown at his coach’, and anonymous letters were sent, threatening him with ‘pistol, dagger and variety of assassination’. Further alarm was caused by an influx of highlanders to the capital, ‘formidable fellows’ who showed their hostility towards the Union by swaggering down the High Street armed with broadsword and knives, though the martial effect was somewhat undermined by the fact that some were driving a cow before them. Some opponents of the Union actually contemplated armed rebellion. The Jacobite, George Lockhart, claimed that at one point the Duke of Hamilton agreed to support a rising, but just before it was scheduled to take place he sent ‘expresses privately … through the whole country, strictly requiring them to put off their design’.
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The strength of feeling against Union left Queensberry and his colleagues with ‘a very difficult course to steer’ when piloting the measure through Parliament. They were aided, however, by the fact that while few members were enthusiastic for it, ‘all thinking men’ accepted that if relations with England remained in their present state, Scotland would become ‘a scene of bloodshed and confusion’. The Earl of Mar commented grimly, ‘If the Union should fail I see not what possibly we can do to save our country from ruin’.
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When the Scottish Parliament started voting on Union, article by article, on 1 November, the Queen followed matters closely from England, taking careful note of who its supporters and opponents were. The first and most fundamental article, encapsulating the principle of Union itself, secured a majority, despite a tragic speech from Lord Belhaven, prophesying that it would bring desolation in its wake. When the second article was debated, providing that the crown should pass on Anne’s death to the House of Hanover, the Duke of Hamilton stood up to demand a recess to enable the Queen to be informed of the ‘general aversion’ of the nation towards Union, warning there was a danger of civil war if public opinion was ignored. He suggested that in due course Parliament could reconvene and settle the succession, but the commissioner was under instructions not to listen to any such proposals. Hamilton’s offer came ‘too late … which might willingly have been received some time ago’, and though one timorous Scots minister did urge shortly afterwards that the Parliament should be suspended until the threat of public disorder had subsided, Mar and his colleagues ‘were all convinced it would never have met again so favourably disposed to the Union’.
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