Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (65 page)

The Duchess of Marlborough would later maintain that she had been very magnanimous in overlooking the Queen’s disgraceful conduct towards her husband and Lord Godolphin in February 1708. Having
once again absented herself from court, she drew up an anonymous letter, upbraiding the Queen for having fallen into Abigail’s ‘low and mean hands’ and warning that ‘whispering at the backstairs’ had aroused concern in Parliament. However, she not only decided against sending this, but forbore from following the ‘very good advice’ of some of her ‘best friends’ that she demand Mrs Masham’s dismissal.
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It is probable that one of these ‘best friends’ was Sir Arthur Maynwaring, whom Sarah had adopted as her political adviser, and who exerted a malign influence on her. He was, ironically, a former Jacobite, who had thrown off his old allegiances to become a fervent Junto adherent. As well as being an MP and government auditor, he was a political versifier and producer of tracts attacking the Tories. It seems that he entered Sarah’s life in 1707 when he wrote to her denying that he was responsible for pieces hostile to her family. Since then he had made himself indispensable to her, proudly dubbing himself her ‘secretary’. He had a disastrous effect on her character, flattering her outrageously even while praising her detestation of sycophants, and applauding some of her most serious misjudgements. Instead of attempting to rein in her excesses, he incited her to flaunt her scorn for the Queen, allowing her to believe she could indulge in such destructive behaviour without suffering adverse consequences.

While the invasion scare was at its height, Sarah came back to court, and one source noted that people were reassured by her apparent reconciliation with the Queen. In fact, however, relations between the two women were bedevilled by a new quarrel. At the beginning of the reign, Sarah had been allocated a spacious set of lodgings at Kensington, spanning two floors, but she had never slept there, preferring to make use of her apartment at St James’s. Sarah now discovered that part of the lower level had been taken over by some Bedchamber Women, while Abigail had moved into rooms formerly occupied by her colleagues. Bristling with fury, Sarah complained to the Queen that Abigail had appropriated lodgings belonging to her, to which Anne answered, technically correctly, ‘Masham had none of her rooms, she was sure of it’. Refusing to admit defeat, the Duchess contrived to let her cousin know of her feelings, whereupon Abigail sent word that any offence caused had been inadvertent, and that she would vacate her current accommodation at once. However, Sarah claimed that within a few months Abigail had brazenly repossessed her rooms.
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Looking back, even Sarah would admit, ‘it may perhaps seem not so prudent of me to insist so much on my lodgings at Kensington since I
never made use of them’. Nevertheless, at the time, the Queen’s refusal to acknowledge she had been wronged struck her as intolerable. On 31 March, just after Marlborough had left England to resume the fight against France, the Duchess informed her by letter that she presumed Anne would ‘neither be surprised nor displeased to hear’ that, as a result of the ‘very hard and uncommon usage’ she had received, she had decided to resign. She then demanded that the Queen must ‘dispose of my employments according to the solemn assurances you have been pleased to give me’, assuring Anne that, providing she met her obligations, ‘you shall meet with all the submission and acknowledgements imaginable’.
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The Queen still shied away from severing relations completely. Writing back to express sorrow at the Duchess’s ‘unjust expressions’, she declared that accepting Sarah’s resignation was out of the question, for ‘I can never hearken to that as long as you live’. However, she insisted she still regarded herself as bound by her commitment regarding Sarah’s daughters and that, ‘if I should outlive you, your faithful Morley will remember her promise’.
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This failed to appease the Duchess. On 4 April she wrote Anne a letter that ‘touched upon the tender point’ of the Queen’s relationship with Abigail Masham. The letter is now missing, but Maynwaring fully approved of what Sarah had written, noting that she had ‘said in the rightest manner and the best expressions all that could be thought of, either to do good or to move shame’. The Queen replied the next day, obviously trying not to give further offence, for Maynwaring acknowledged to Sarah that Anne had evinced a ‘great unwillingness to say anything that may shock you, and some of the protestations in it are very humble and condescending’. However at one point the Queen declared, ‘You wrong Masham and me’, and this was enough to make Maynwaring and Sarah condemn her missive as a ‘dark letter’. Maynwaring told the Duchess he was not surprised this expression ‘made you sick, for it is very nauseous’, and he compared the phrase to James I’s avowals of affection for his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, which were ‘always laughed at very justly’.
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Maynwaring was not in favour of Sarah resigning, believing rather it was her duty to remain in office and exert influence on behalf of the Whigs. He even argued that it would not be beyond Sarah to regain her sovereign’s affections, for he took the view that Anne would not have reaffirmed her promise to appoint Sarah’s daughters ‘if there had not been an unalterable kindness’. When Sarah objected that she could not
stoop to using ‘art and address’ to revive the Queen’s fond feelings, Maynwaring assured her that one so ‘agreeable and engaging’ would not have to resort to artifice. Even if the Duchess did not manage to win back Anne, her presence near the Queen would neutralise Abigail, who would ‘hardly venture to peep abroad’ while the Duchess was in the vicinity.
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By this time the Duke of Marlborough was starting to think that it might be wiser for Sarah to keep away from her mistress, though he told his wife that he merely wanted to spare her the distress of having rows with the Queen. Despite his misgivings, by 18 April Sarah was back at court, glowering at Abigail. Soon after the Duchess’s return Mrs Masham wrote to Harley that she had just encountered Sarah, ‘and if I have any skill in physiognomy my old mistress is not pleased with me’.
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On 19 February the Earl of Mar had reported on the state of English politics, ‘There’s a strange jumble here just now, for though Harley be out, yet the court is not yet entirely well with the Junto … and they are not yet well pleased … Indeed, things look odd’. The Junto had hoped that the attempted Jacobite invasion would make the Queen better disposed towards them, and there appeared some sign of this when she declared to Parliament on 12 March, ‘I must always place my chief dependence upon those who have given such repeated proofs of the greatest warmth and concern for the support of the Revolution’. However, in the Duchess of Marlborough’s words, ‘as the danger presently blew over … her fears ceased’ and the Queen set herself as firmly as ever against making further concessions to the Junto.
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The Queen had agreed that Harley and St John should be replaced by the moderate Whigs Henry Boyle and Robert Walpole, but when Godolphin proposed that James Montagu should be made Attorney General, she demurred. She was even more appalled at the idea that Lord Pembroke, who currently combined the offices of Lord President of the Council and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, should step down and be replaced by Lord Somers and Lord Wharton respectively. Her reaction was understandable, for Somers was not only ‘the life, the soul and the spirit of his party’, but had taken a leading role in the attacks on the Admiralty in the last session of Parliament. Accordingly the Queen had developed ‘an aversion … that was personal to that lord upon account of his having disobliged the Prince’.
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The Queen blocked the suggestion that Wharton and Somers should be promoted by saying it was unfair to remove Pembroke from office. Unfortunately she found herself in a quandary when on 19 April 1708
the moderate Whig Dukes of Newcastle and Devonshire came to her and proposed that Somers could be given a place in the Cabinet without an official ministerial portfolio, the very arrangement that Anne had put forward for Sunderland two years earlier. This ‘being new to her and unexpected, she was much at a loss what to say’, and could only mutter lamely that the motion was ‘very unusual’ and that she thought the Cabinet full enough already. When she saw Godolphin the next day she told him resentfully ‘she saw there was to be no end of her troubles’, but he enthusiastically embraced the idea.
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The Queen should have listened to his warning that if she spurned this offer, it would make the political situation much worse, for certainly once this opportunity for compromise passed, the Junto grew still more imperious.

The Queen then appealed to Marlborough by letter, saying that, however much Godolphin disagreed, she looked ‘upon it to be utter destruction to me to bring Lord Somers into my service’. No sympathy was forthcoming from her general, however, for since it had appeared that she had been ready to throw him over for Harley, his attitude towards her noticeably hardened. Remarkably, he seems also to have been won over to the view that most Tories were Jacobite sympathisers, and he told Anne bluntly that if she wanted the war to continue, concessions to the Junto were essential. If the Queen resisted these, it would prove ‘to everybody that Lord Treasurer and I have no credit with your Majesty, but that you are guided by the insinuation of Mr Harley’.
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In reply, the Queen insisted she was not in favour of ‘making steps towards a peace … thinking it neither for my honour nor interest’, begging him to accept that ‘no insinuations nor persuasions’ were behind her objections to Somers. During long interviews with Godolphin she likewise emphatically denied that she was in direct or indirect contact with Harley, being adamant that ‘she never speaks with anybody but [Prince George] upon anything of that kind’. She was, however, immovable on the subject of Somers, remaining utterly ‘inflexible on that point’ and resisting ‘all the plainest reasons and arguments’. Godolphin lamented that he found her ‘so perverse and so obstinate … that nothing in the world is … so unaccountable nor more dreadful in the consequences of it’. The Lord Treasurer ascribed her tenacity to the influence of Prince George and his crony George Churchill, who could not forgive the Junto for their attacks upon the navy. Like his wife, however, Marlborough suspected that it was Abigail who was ‘doing all the mischief that is possible’ by enabling the Queen to maintain a ‘fatal correspondence’ with Harley.
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The Queen’s refusal to let the Junto
tighten their hold on power was the more remarkable (or, as some would say, unreasonable) because a general election had been held in April and May 1708, and the Tories had done very badly, losing their majority in the Commons. Anne confessed to Marlborough that the results had put her in a ‘desponding temper’, but she still would not hear of taking on Montagu, let alone Somers and Wharton. On 1 June Godolphin informed Marlborough that he had ‘had of late a great many contests’ with Anne on the matter, of which the most recent had ‘ended with the greatest dissatisfaction possible to both’ himself and her. He added that ‘the battle might have lasted till [evening] if, after the clock had struck three [Prince George] had not thought fit to come and look as if he thought it were dinner time’.
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A diplomat reported in mid May, ‘The Duchess of Marlborough continues to pay her court, but one can see she does so with great repugnance’. Things were indeed so bad that Sarah notified the Queen later that month that she would stop seeing her in private. Somewhat unexpectedly Anne was disturbed by this, which Sarah attributed to her being ‘frightened out of her wits that people should discover the passion she had for Abigail’, but in reality her motive was creditable. She had already done her best to give the impression that all was well between them, for Sarah jeered that despite acting in a reserved and unfriendly manner when they were alone together, before company Anne ‘affected to look upon me as if she had been a lover’.
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The Duchess found this ‘extremely ridiculous’, but she should have been grateful, as the Queen was trying to avoid embarrassing Marlborough, whose prestige on the Continent was bolstered by the belief that his wife was close to her.

The Queen took up the matter with Godolphin at the end of May. She explained in a letter, ‘You know I have often had the misfortune of falling under the Duchess of Marlborough’s displeasure, and now, after several reconciliations, she is again relapsed into her cold, unkind way’. The Queen pointed out that while Sarah appeared to think that no one at court would notice her distant behaviour, the fact that ‘she never comes near me nor looks on me as she used to do’ was unlikely to escape such perceptive observers as the Duchess of Somerset, Lady Fitzharding, or the gossipy Vice Chamberlain, Peregrine Bertie. Anne prophesied that as news of their rift spread everywhere, she and Sarah would find themselves ‘in a little time … the jest of the town. Some people will blame her, others me, and a great many both’. She therefore entreated the Lord Treasurer to persuade Sarah to abandon ‘this strange unreasonable
resolution’, declining to do so herself on the grounds that while Sarah was in ‘this violent humour … all I can say, though never so reasonable, will but inflame her more’. As a final favour, she asked Godolphin not to mention anything of this to Prince George, ‘because I have not told him how unkind Mrs Freeman is to me, nor he shall never know if I can help it’.
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The Queen begged that, whatever Sarah chose to do, ‘I hope you will never forsake Mrs Morley who … can never say enough to express the true sense she has of the true friendship you have showed to her on all occasions, nor how much she values it, yet to her last moment will continue as she is now, with all truth and faithfulness as your humble servant’. By June, however, Godolphin was ‘so tired out of his life’ that he requested Anne ‘either to follow his notions or to dismiss him, and not let him bear the burthen and load of other people’s follies’. To his frustration, his words seemed ‘to make no manner of impression’ on the Queen.
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