Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (81 page)

In a bid to convince Hamilton that Sarah was beyond redemption, the Queen alluded to some of the ‘shocking things’ the Duchess had said to her. She singled out the manner in which Sarah had accused her of consorting with Abigail in the period after Prince George’s death when, in reality, Anne had secluded herself in his closet at St James’s ‘upon melancholy occasions’. Hamilton reported that on learning this, the Duke had been ‘angry … to hear that the Duchess should have spoke so to her Majesty’, at which Anne was ‘extremely pleased’. But though Hamilton succeeded in eliciting from the Queen the odd flash of sympathy for
Marlborough, she remained implacable towards his wife. She denied that she must retain Sarah for Marlborough’s sake, saying it would be ‘no more disgrace to him to have the Duchess out than in’. On being reminded that she had bound herself to the Duchess by oath, she protested that this had been ‘conditional on her behaviour’; when Hamilton again proposed a reconciliation, ‘She said it could not be done’.
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As it began to seem that the Queen would not be diverted from her purpose, Sarah became positively frenzied. ‘There’s nothing like this in Turkey, in Nero’s time or in any history I know!’ she shouted to Hamilton at one point. Once again she hinted at blackmail, declaring ominously, ‘Such things are in my power that if known … might lose a crown’. The Queen remained calm in the face of such threats. She expressed confidence that Marlborough would not resign in solidarity with his wife, ‘for he’s ambitious and won’t go out’. She even appeared scornful at the prospect that the Duke would be reduced to tears if his wife lost her place, saying condescendingly, ‘If my Lord cried a little it would then be over’. Anne was adamant that she was absolved of all commitments to Sarah, reasoning to Hamilton, ‘If the Duchess offered to kill me, must not I put her away? And does she not go about to take away my name and reputation, which is all one?’ She did agree that Hamilton could obtain a bishop’s opinion as to whether it was ethical to violate her promise to Sarah, but the ruling from the prelate did not change her mind.
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Hamilton remained blindly optimistic that a solution was possible, telling the Marlboroughs that a submissive letter from Sarah should do the trick. Accordingly Sarah wrote a somewhat grudging apology, moved to do this, as she explained to Anne, by her fear that ‘my Lord Marlborough … can’t live six months if there is not some end put to his sufferings upon my account’. ‘I am really very sorry that ever I did anything that was uneasy to your Majesty’, she declared, promising never again to touch on subjects Anne found disagreeable. Marlborough carried this letter in person to the Queen on 17 January, and then launched into an impassioned appeal of his own. He warned that if his wife was deprived of her place it ‘would oblige her to be always upon her vindication’, and that Anne’s reputation was bound to suffer. ‘What was desired was so small a favour that it would be barbarous to deny it’, he contended, adding that he had never been able to discover what faults Sarah had committed.
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‘Nothing could sour the Queen’s mind more than the endeavours which he used to keep the Duchess in her places’. She informed Marlborough that ‘for her honour’ she required the gold key of the royal
bedchamber that was the Groom of the Stole’s emblem of office, repeating at intervals, ‘She must have the key’. Having finally accepted that Anne was inexorable, Marlborough went down on his knees to beg for ten days’ grace, but ‘the Queen insisted to have the key brought in three’. On the evening of 18 January the Duke had another meeting with her, intending to discuss the cashiering of the three army officers. Anne interrupted that ‘she thought he would have brought her the gold key, and that she could not speak to him of anything else till she had it’. Marlborough went home and undressed for the night, and in bed described to his wife what had happened. Beside herself with rage, the Duchess demanded that he get up, put on his clothes again and carry her key to the Queen.
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Sarah did not leave office empty-handed. Before handing in her Privy Purse accounts she deducted £18,000, having helped herself to nine years’ worth of the annual payment of £2,000 the Queen had offered in late 1702 after Parliament had refused to make Marlborough’s pension of £5,000 permanent. Since then, of course, that pension had been granted in perpetuity, so there was no excuse for Sarah’s action. She herself later claimed to have suffered qualms of conscience, but possibly she had even more serious cause to reproach herself, for it is unclear whether she repaid the £32,800 she had borrowed from the Privy Purse while in office. Even if this money was returned, the accounts contained other irregularities, which the Queen proved reluctant to sanction. Having instructed Hamilton to deliver her accounts to Anne, Sarah was amused to hear ‘She looked out of countenance and as if she had much rather not have allowed it’.
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However, after a fortnight the Queen did sign off the figures, perhaps in the hope that Sarah would then abandon any idea of publishing her letters.

Despite having cushioned herself financially for her loss of office, the Duchess found it hard to come to terms with the situation. Although she knew that the Elector of Hanover and Prince Eugene had begged Marlborough not to give up his command, she believed that her husband should have stepped down on her account. Lord Cowper was amazed when he visited the Marlboroughs in their London home and ‘found him in bed, with a great deal of company in the chamber, and the Duchess sitting at the bedside, railing in a most extravagant manner against the Queen’. She raged that ‘she had always hated her and despised her, but that fool, her daughter Henrietta (who stood by) had always loved her, and did so still, which she would never forgive her’. The Duke told Cowper, ‘He must not mind what she said, for she was used to talk
at that rate when she was in a passion, which was a thing she was very apt to fall into and there was no way to help it’.
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Understandably Marlborough avoided attending the Queen’s birthday celebrations that year, obtaining permission to visit the works at Blenheim on 6 February. His absence did not detract from the splendour of the occasion for, with mourning for Prince George over at last, the guests looked magnificent. One observer reported, ‘The Duchess of Buckingham and Lady Poulett were scarce able to move under the load of jewels they had on. There has not been so fine nor so full a court since King Charles’s time’.
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Abigail Masham now succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough as Keeper of the Privy Purse, while Lady Hyde became Mistress of the Robes. However, the Queen’s choice of the Duchess of Somerset to take Sarah’s place as Groom of the Stole was unwelcome to Harley. The Duchess had been rising in the Queen’s esteem for some time. Her aristocratic birth, dignified manner, and natural courtesy appealed greatly to Anne, who did not care that her political opinions differed somewhat from her own. Like her husband, the Master of the Horse, the Duchess was a Whig. Fearing that she would turn the Queen against them, the ministers used ‘weak endeavours’ to prevent the appointment. Anne brushed these aside impatiently, observing that ‘if she might not have the liberty to choose her own servants she could not see what advantage she had got by the change of her ministry’.
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It is difficult to assess how much influence the Duchess of Somerset exerted, because after her death her husband destroyed the letters the Queen wrote to her. Sarah wrote that although Anne ‘had a mind to have the world think at last that she had a great kindness for the Duchess of Somerset … in reality there was no such thing’. She maintained that Anne’s ‘favour to the Duchess of Somerset was affected only to cover that to Mrs Masham, as she hoped’, but this belief derived from Sarah’s overriding obsession with Abigail. In reality there can be no doubt that the Queen became deeply attached to the Duchess of Somerset, and some people believed that by the end of the reign Anne preferred her to Abigail. Swift asserted that by dint of ‘a most obsequious behaviour’, the Duchess ‘won so far upon the affections of her Majesty that she had more personal credit than all the Queen’s servants put together’. Since, according to Swift, the Duchess always showed ‘the utmost aversion’ to the current administration, ‘excelling all even of her own sex in every art of insinuation’, the ministers dreaded the damage she could do.
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When Marlborough went overseas to resume his command on 18 February, Harley and the Queen could congratulate themselves on having imposed their authority on him. Harley’s ability to dominate Parliament presented more of a challenge. The Tory party warned him their acceptance of his leadership was conditional on his ‘good behaviour’, and if he failed them he would be ruthlessly discarded. The Tories believed their massive electoral victory entitled them to expect nothing less than a purge of Whigs from every government office, but neither Harley, nor the Queen, were willing to go so far. Anne retained her aversion to permitting one party to monopolise office, and in many ways this accorded with Harley’s own instincts. Harley’s problem was that if he did not gratify the Tories, they were liable to turn on him, but when he suggested alterations that would please them, the Queen proved less than accommodating. She was ‘very absolute’ over the disposal of employments, and Harley ‘could not with any decency press the Queen too much against her nature because it would be like running upon the rock where his predecessors had split’. Swift observed in dismay, ‘They have cautioned the Queen so much against being governed that she observes it too much’.
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Tory restiveness was increased by the knowledge that Anne occasionally consulted with Lords Somers and Cowper, and Harley too kept up discreet contacts with Whigs such as Halifax.

As soon as Parliament met on 25 November 1710, it was apparent that many backbenchers had wild expectations. A large number of the country gentlemen returned as MPs for the first time ‘resolved to proceed in methods of their own. Some impeachments they say they are resolved to have, to begin with Lord Godolphin’. Although Harley was credited with ‘art enough to get that waived’, the situation was troubling. It was partly to appease the fiercer spirits in the Commons that in her speech the Queen had spoken merely of showing indulgence towards dissenters, rather than pledging to uphold the Toleration Act. Harley tried to give satisfaction by permitting an attack on the Whigs’ conduct of the war, and after a parliamentary enquiry it was ruled that in 1707 the ministers’ ill-advised actions had caused the disaster at Almanza. But this official censure of the late ministry’s conduct was not enough for the more hardline Tories. ‘Blinded by the lust of party rule’, they formed themselves into an ‘October Club’, taking their name from the month when the most potent beer was brewed. Fired up by strong ale, they met regularly to discuss how to ‘drive things on to extremes against the Whigs, to call the old ministry to account and get off five or six heads’. In February 1711 it was reported ‘this … country club is a great disturbance to Mr
Harley, who finds they are past his governing. Their number is increased to 150’.
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The government was in acute need of money, but instead of knuckling down to vote supplies for the war, the unruly Tories busied themselves passing legislation in their own sectional interests. For Harley these were unwelcome distractions that exposed the weakness of his grip on the Commons. His position was the more precarious because Secretary of State Henry St John was starting to see himself as the natural leader of the Tories. As ‘the bulldog of the party’, he shared their desire that every Whig should be driven from office, and was fully in sympathy with their other political aspirations.
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Before long, the growing tension between Harley and St John developed into outright hatred.

St John was masterful with the Queen. Whereas Harley was invariably deferential, ‘using the Queen with all duty and respect imaginable’, St John (according to Marlborough) ‘talked more boldly to her Majesty in Cabinet than anyone else’. Yet the Queen was certainly not overawed by him, and in October 1711 he complained that she had been ‘cold to him for some months past’. He attributed this to his reluctance to be too severe on Marlborough, but the main reason was that she abhorred his licentiousness. Much ‘given to the bottle and debauchery’, St John gloried in ‘drinking like a fish and ——— like a stoat’, and saw no reason to modify his behaviour now that he occupied high public office. Even when ill health forced him to abstain from alcohol for a time, he only womanised the more. Although one clergyman thought that no man of the cloth could associate with St John without his reputation suffering, Swift merely shrugged when, as they walked down the Mall together, the Secretary ‘stole away … to pick up some wench’. ‘Tomorrow he will be at the Cabinet with the Queen: so goes the world’ was Swift’s only comment. Anne took a sterner view. Like other people she knew that St John made his wife desperately unhappy, and strongly disapproved.
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By March 1711 the antics of the October Club had left Harley floundering, but an alarming incident soon changed things. The Marquis du Guiscard was a reprobate French exile who had lived in England for some years. Harley had recently annoyed Guiscard by reducing his pension, and so the Marquis had contacted the French offering to spy for them. After his letters were intercepted, he was arrested on 8 March and brought before the Lords of the Committee. While being questioned, he suddenly produced a penknife and stabbed Harley.

St John and others at once drew their swords and attacked the assailant. He later died in custody and his pickled body was put on show for twopence a viewing, until the Queen put a stop to it. Harley, meanwhile, was out of action for some weeks. Although the thick brocade waistcoat he had been wearing in honour of the Queen’s Accession Day had prevented the blade from penetrating too deeply, treatment by his surgeons made a minor wound more serious. His narrow escape ‘much endeared that person to the kingdom who was so near falling a sacrifice’, and consequently his standing with the Tory party improved.
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