In November 1870 a piece of gossip circulated at Balmoral that John Brown had secretly married Miss Ocklee, the personal maid to Princess Beatrice. Certainly at this point in his life Brown was broody and, although still devoted to his growing circle of nieces and nephews, he seems to have been thinking that his chances of marrying and fathering children were receding: in fact he was only forty-four. In the event he did not marry Miss Ocklee, who, if she was enamoured of Brown, wasted no time in fastening her attentions on another and in 1873 she married an estate steward called Lawson. John Brown was to remain a bachelor.21
The parish kirk of Crathie, in which John Brown worshipped man and boy, was the ‘old church’ of 1804. Up to 1878 Crathie and Braemar were a large single parish. Presbyterianism and Sabbatarianism still loomed strongly in the area where the Kirk Elders, imbued with the legacy of severe discipline of the eighteenth-century church, had great influence. Queen Victoria was by no means conventional in her religious beliefs; disliking both Evangelicals and High Church elements in the Anglican communion she followed the ‘simple piety’ of her Lutheran mother. The fact that Prince Albert had found parallels in the church service at Crathie with the Lutheranism of his childhood also influenced the Queen to attend Crathie Church. She did, however, find Presbyterians ‘tiresome’ in their narrow-mindedness and bigotry. Yet although she was head of the Church of England, she had no such status in Calvinist Scotland and was largely free to worship as she pleased in her northern realm. In years to come the Queen’s visits to Crathie Church became fewer as the pews became crammed with visitors bent on seeing the Queen at prayer. Instead she worshipped in a private chapel set up at Balmoral.
John Brown invariably preceded the Queen into the church to shoo away any, including her suite, who might crowd the Queen as she prepared to sit in the royal pew. Those selected to sit with the Queen were often gripped firmly by the elbow, irrespective of their rank, as the Highland Servant directed them to their positions. From her seat in the gallery, which was raised round three sides of the old kirk, the Queen listened to a range of prominent Scots divines, invited to preach by the incumbent from 1840, the Revd Archibald Anderson. Communion was enacted only twice a year at the kirk by the 1870s and it was only after 3 November 1873 that the Queen took the Scots Sacrament.22 From her perch the Queen was able to observe her neighbours. On Communion Sunday, 13 November 1871, she wrote of the scene and mentions various members of John Brown’s family, describing how his uncle, Francis Leys, an Elder, assisted with the communion elements, and how she saw John Brown’s parents – ‘he eighty-one and very much bent, and she seventy-one’ – his father dressed in the ‘large’ plaid of the old-time Highlander.
From late September 1870 Queen Victoria was in a depressed state again. Within seven months she lost several old friends: Countess Blücher, formerly lady-in-waiting to Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, Queen of Prussia; General Charles Grey, Prince Albert’s old secretary; Sir James Clark, her Physician-in-Ordinary, and Baroness Louise Lehzen, her old governess. European events also depressed the Queen. In 1870 France had declared war on Prussia; in Britain the royal family were attacked as a ‘pack of Germans’ by republicans, and in Germany her daughter Vicky, along with the royal family, was denounced in Berlin by the Prusso-German statesman Prince Otto von Bismarck as pro-French. It was all very unsettling. At length, on 2 September 1870, Queen Victoria’s brother-monarch, Napoleon III Emperor of the French, with whom she had enjoyed reciprocal state visits, was captured at the Battle of Sedan. Within days his Second Empire gave way to the Third Republic. Gloom descended on Queen Victoria, not because she supported French activities, but rather because she feared for her own throne. Yet she put forward no protest either to the exile in Britain of Napoleon III’s Empress Eugénie and the French Prince Imperial and their suites, or to them being joined by the Emperor on his release.
All this time the Queen’s health was deteriorating: she had difficulty in swallowing; she had an abscess which was tardy in healing; and she had been suffering for months from painful gout, and all her joints ached: ‘Never . . . have I felt so ill,’ she wrote in her Journal on 22 August 1871. Her illness, news of which was not communicated to her subjects, made her more reclusive and subject to increased attacks in the press for her ‘invisibility’.
Even though she was unwell the Queen did not send for her children. Courtiers like Sir Thomas Biddulph were aware that her children’s presence and opinions irritated the Queen, and like Sir Henry Ponsonby, he noted how much more dependent on Brown she had become. The fact that Brown was a kind of messenger-cum-nursemaid-cum-guardian was bitterly resented by her children. At length the powder keg exploded at Balmoral.
The quarrels between John Brown and various members of the Queen’s family were often extremely complex in origin. The latest one, between John Brown and Prince Alfred, can be explained in this way. The Gillies’ Ball of 1870 had been extremely noisy and bibulous. When the dancing and jollities seemed likely to get out of hand, Prince Alfred ordered the music to stop. Brown was furious, and made his opinions known in no uncertain terms. Brown was reported to have barked at the prince – ‘I’ll not take this [order] from you or from any other man.’ He disliked Prince Alfred, whose head gillie John Grant refused to take orders from Brown, and the Prince now openly started to ignore Brown and deliberately to snub him because of his outburst at the Ball. It is certain that John Brown complained to the Queen when Prince Alfred refused to shake hands with him on his arrival at Balmoral in September 1870. Summoning Ponsonby to her sitting-room, Queen Victoria insisted that the quarrel with Brown be ‘patched up’ immediately and that Ponsonby should arrange it.
Prince Alfred reluctantly deferred to his mother, but insisted that he would resume conversation with Brown but only with Ponsonby as witness. This irritated the Queen further when she was told that the Prince had insisted on a witness. In the Royal Navy, when he was commander of the cruiser HMS Galatea, he explained, he always saw inferior ranks in the presence of an officer witness. ‘This is not a ship, and I won’t have naval discipline introduced here,’ the Queen retorted, on hearing her son’s comment.
Of John Brown
After watching John Brown perform his duties as MC at a Balmoral Gillies’ Ball, Cairns said: ‘What a coarse animal that Brown is . . . of course, the ball couldn’t go on without him . . . Still, I did not conceive it possible that anyone could behave so roughly as he does to the Queen.’
1st Lord Cairns,
Lord Chancellor
In a letter to his wife, Sir Henry Ponsonby recounted the resultant exchange between the Prince and the servant at the subsequent interview:
JOHN BROWN: Am I right, Sir, in thinking that you are annoyed with something I have done in the past? If so, please tell me, for it is most painful that any of Her Maadj-esty’s children should be angry with me.
PRINCE ALFRED: It’s nothing you have done in the past. But I must confess that I was surprised at the extraordinary language you used at the Gillies’ Ball last May.
JOHN BROWN: Her Maa-jd-esty put the whole arrangements for the Ball into my hands . . . At first I did not know that it was Your Royal Highness who had stopped the music, and I was very angry and lost my temper. I cannot think it possible that I used any nasty words, but if Your Royal Highness says so then it must have been so, and I must humbly ask your forgiveness.
PRINCE ALFRED: Thank you, I give you my forgiveness. [To Ponsonby] I am satisfied with the outcome of this meeting.
JOHN BROWN: I’m quite satisfied too.23
As a fragile calm descended once again on Balmoral, Queen Victoria’s tender sensibilities were to be assailed by a more poignant worry. On 9 November 1871 the Prince of Wales returned to Sandringham from a pheasant shoot at Londesborough Lodge, Scarborough, where he and a ‘fast group’ of his cronies from his ‘Marlborough House Set’ had been the guests of William Henry Forester Denison, Earl of Londesborough. While at the insanitary lodge – the drains were in a fearful sta
te of neglect – several of the guests had complained of stomach upsets and had been treated for diarrhoea by the earl’s physician Dr George Dale. As he prepared to host the visit of Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, the Prince of Wales was stricken with typhoid. A week later another of the Londesborough guests, George Philip Stanhope, 7th Earl of Chesterfield, died, as did the Prince’s groom.
As soon as the Prince of Wales’s condition was deemed life-threatening the royal family descended on Sandringham in their usual squabbling mass. Never before had a royal illness stirred up such fear and anguish in the nation. An observer of the age, Joseph Irving, wrote in Annals of Our Time, 1837–91:
Bulletins were posted up in all places of resort; newspapers were eagerly bought up, edition after edition, as they were hourly brought out; and whenever two or three friends met, the condition of the Prince was not only the first but the single topic of discussion . . .
The public anxiety grew as the tenth anniversary of the death of Prince Albert approached. From the Reynolds News (‘an epidemic of typhoid loyalty’) to the Daily Telegraph (‘the dreaded approach of death’), the press stirred up a public panic which brought huge sympathy and increased popularity for the royal family. Slowly the Prince of Wales rallied and the nation rejoiced with a great service of Thanksgiving for his life on 27 February 1872 at St Paul’s Cathedral. Round the corner, though, lurked a greater danger for the Queen.
CHAPTER FIVE
TO KILL THE QUEEN
By the early 1870s John Brown had taken to sleeping with a loaded revolver under his pillow.1 One of his self-imposed duties was to patrol the immediate precincts of wherever the Queen happened to be, as dusk fell, to root out possible assassins. Throughout her reign the safety of the Queen’s person was not considered a very high priority by the succeeding Secretaries of State for the Home Department. At Balmoral the only security measure was a single policeman. From time to time the police monitored the two perceived sources of danger for the Queen as represented by the loosely organised ‘republican movements’ and the Fenians. Surges of republicanism were noted when events abroad stirred up anti-monarchist feelings. The Franco-Prussian War (15 July 1870–10 May 1871), which toppled Napoleon III, was a stimulus to the founding of republican clubs. Queen Victoria was upset and concerned about the ‘disloyalty’ of the movement rather than fearful for her life.2
On 5 November 1871 the left-wing MP for Chelsea, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, stirred up radical republican beliefs with an attack on the monarchy, highlighting what he saw as the Queen’s ‘dereliction of duty’.3 He incited his audience at a public meeting at Newcastle to rise up and establish a republic. The wind was rather taken out of his rhetorical sails by the upsurge of national sympathy over the Prince of Wales’s illness. Republicanism continued to huff and puff, mostly among the Liberal Parliamentarian cadres, until the end of the reign. The most dangerous group conspiring against the Queen was the fanatical Fenians.
The Fenians formed a secret society of Irish-American revolutionaries whose aims in 1866–7 were to bring about the separation of Ireland from ‘English rule’, and establish an Irish Republic. Founded by James Stephens in 1858 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, they had financial and moral support in the United States where many Irish had recently fought in the Civil War.4 Groups of disaffected Irish families in cities such as London, Manchester and Chester caused regular disturbances. They made much of their stated aim to kill a member of the royal family.
On a number of occasions Victoria’s ministers were disturbed by purported Fenian ‘plots’ to assassinate her, and on 14 October 1867 the police uncovered Fenian plans in Manchester to mount a new attack on the Queen. General Charles Grey wanted to surround Balmoral with troops. Security was accordingly stepped up, and the Queen asserted that it was all ‘Too foolish!’5 Extra warships began patrolling the Isle of Wight in sight of Osborne. It was all ‘such a bore’,6 the Queen declared when for the umpteenth time she was warned that out of the lanes near Osborne or the woods near Balmoral Fenians might spring, overpowering the protective John Brown, and carry her off to a dreadful fate. Reluctantly, for a while, she accepted the increased numbers of sentries and outriders.
In all there were seven assassination attempts on the Queen’s life, and John Brown was involved with two of them. The first ever attempt on her took place on 10 June 1840, just a few months after her marriage. As her low phaeton climbed London’s Constitution Hill, a deranged eighteen-year-old called Edward Oxford fired two shots at her. She was unhurt. Oxford was committed to Newgate prison; found ‘guilty, but insane’ he was subsequently detained at Bethlehem Royal Hospital, Moorfields, and latterly at Broadmoor. He eventually went under supervision to Australia where he died. On Sunday 30 May 1842, again while driving on Constitution Hill, Queen Victoria was fired at by twenty-year-old John Francis. Found guilty of the capital offence of treason, the Queen reprieved Francis and the death penalty was commuted to transportation for life to Norfolk Island in the Pacific. A few weeks later, on Sunday 3 July 1842, as she drove to the Chapel Royal, St James, John William Bean made an attempt on her life but was thwarted. Bean was given eighteen months imprisonment, under a new Bill which reduced the charge from ‘high treason’ to ‘high misdemeanour’.7
The fourth attempt on her life was made on 19 May 1849 when the insane Irishman William Hamilton attacked the Queen with an empty gun. He was transported for seven years. On 27 June 1850 the Queen was attacked by Robert Pate, a retired lieutenant in the 10th Hussars, who struck her across the face with a cane. Pate was tried for assault and sentenced to seven years transportation. John Brown was involved with the sixth attempt on Queen Victoria’s life. It occurred two days after the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, and of all the attempts up to that date it was the one which frightened her most.
The attack took place as the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace following a drive through Regent’s Park on 29 February 1872. The would-be assassin was an eighteen-year-old, undersized, scrofulous youth. Arthur O’Connor lived at 4 Church Row, Houndsditch, a district of London that social historian and Punch editor Henry Mayhew described as full of ‘Jewish shopkeepers, warehousemen, manufacturers and inferior jewellers’. O’Connor worked there for an oil and colour manufacturer.
Armed with a flintlock pistol, O’Connor watched Queen Victoria leave Buckingham Palace at 4.30pm in an open landau with her Lady-in-Waiting Jane Churchill, and Princes Arthur and Leopold. On the box sat John Brown, while her two equerries, the Crimean Veteran General Arthur Hardinge and Lord Charles Fitzroy, rode on either side of the carriage. The escort was completed with Charles Tomkins as outrider at the front and mounted postilion John Cannon at the rear. As the Queen completed her drive O’Connor climbed the 10ft high railings at Buckingham Palace, and, unobserved, sprinted across the courtyard and took up position at the Garden Entrance to the palace, intent on intercepting the carriage. In her Journal Queen Victoria took up the story:
It is difficult for me to describe, as my impression was a great fright, and all was over in a minute. How it all happened I knew nothing of. The Equerries had dismounted. Brown had got down to let down the steps, and Jane C[hurchill] was just getting out, when suddenly someone appeared at my side, whom I first imagined was a footman, going to lift off the wrapper. Then I perceived that it was someone unknown, peering above the carriage door, with an uplifted hand and a strange voice, at the same time the boys [Princes Arthur and Leopold] calling out and moving forward. Involuntarily, in a terrible fright, I threw myself over Jane C. calling out, ‘Save me,’ and heard a scuffle and voices! I soon recovered myself sufficiently to stand up and turn round, when I saw Brown holding a young man tightly, who was struggling, Arthur, the Equerries, etc., also near him. They laid the man on the ground and Brown kept hold of him till several of the police came in. All turned and asked if I was hurt, and I said, ‘Not at all.’ Then Lord Charles Fitzroy, General Hardinge, and Arthur came up saying they though
t the man had dropped something. We looked, but could find nothing, when Cannon, the postilion, called out, ‘There it is,’ and looking down I then did see shining on the ground a small pistol! This filled us with horror. All were as white as sheets, Jane C. almost crying, and Leopold looked as if he were going to faint.
It is to good Brown and to his wonderful presence of mind that I greatly owe my safety, for he alone saw the boy rush round and followed him! When I was standing in the hall, General Hardinge came in, bringing an extraordinary document which this boy had intended making me sign! It was in connection with the Fenian prisoners! Sir T[homas] Biddulph came running, greatly horrified. Then the boy was taken away by the police and made no attempt to escape . . .8
During his examination it emerged that O’Connor had endeavoured to deliver a petition to the Queen as she knelt at prayer at the Thanksgiving Service at St Paul’s. This is the document the Queen mentions in her Journal entry. O’Connor had been discovered lurking in a side aisle in the Cathedral the evening before the service and had been removed by the Virgers (the St Paul’s terminology for ‘vergers’). The police examination also revealed that O’Connor was the great-nephew of the Chartist leader Fergus O’Connor, and it became clear that the youth had confused Chartism – a movement of the late 1830s seeking parliamentary reform – with Fenianism. Police records showed that Arthur O’Connor came from a family who had been ‘reduced’ in social circumstances, but that he had been educated at the church school of St-Dunstans-in-the-East, Fleet Street, and that he had obtained indentures as a law stationer. He also had a history of mental derangement. On 26 February he had bought an old and useless flintlock pistol at a pawnshop in Southwark for 4s. Having no ammunition, he had stuffed the barrel with wads of blue paper and leather.
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