Anne herself had a strong sense of identity with Elizabeth. She took as her own Elizabeth’s motto Semper Eadem (‘Always the Same’), and appears to have treasured a book of Elizabeth’s private prayers and meditations. Certainly a copy of this work in Lambeth Palace Library has a handwritten prayer by Anne inserted on the inside cover. At times Anne explicitly claimed to model her conduct on Elizabeth’s. Writing to the States General in January 1713, she declared ‘We will never lose sight of the example and prudent conduct of our predecessor, that great Queen’ who had aided the Dutch in their struggle against their enemies. Sometimes, however, her supposed affinity with Elizabeth could be used to embarrass her, and Lord Halifax exploited this on two occasions. In 1704, when opposing a bill directed against dissenters, he ‘took notice of the Queen’s proposing Queen Elizabeth as her pattern’, claiming, not entirely accurately, that Elizabeth ‘always discountenanced any bearing hard upon the Puritans’. Ten years later he adopted a similar tactic when speaking in the House of Lords against the Schism Bill, remarking that ‘her Majesty made it the glory of her reign to follow the steps of Queen Elizabeth’, whose tolerance towards Huguenot refugees was well known. There was also a possibly apocryphal story that when some High Churchmen decided that Anne had failed to give the Church the support they expected, they set up a weathercock on the roof of an Oxford college, emblazoned ‘with her Majesty’s motto, Semper Eadem’.17
For the country however, it was an identification with motherhood they were hoping for. In his Coronation sermon Archbishop Sharp of York took as his text a quotation from Isaiah: ‘Kings shall be thy nursing fathers and their Queens thy nursing mothers’. He explained that this was apt because Anne could be relied upon to have a mother’s ‘wonderful care and solicitude’ for her people. Later that year the author of Petticoat Government assured his readers ‘She is a nursing mother to all her subjects and governs them with spirit and tenderness’. It was also hoped that Anne would become a mother in the literal sense, preferably to a male heir. In July 1702 the Scottish Earl of Marchmont informed Anne that it was his fervent prayer ‘that your Majesty may soon embrace a son of your own, that would be a healing and composing blessing to this wavering nation’. The collect, read annually on the anniversary of Anne’s succession, likewise begged the Almighty to ‘make the Queen, we pray thee, an happy mother of children who, being educated in thy truth, faith and fear may happily succeed her’. Optimists did not doubt that she was still capable of producing children. Lady Gardiner reported in August 1702 that Anne was currently in good health ‘and I hope may yet bring us an heir to the Crown’. When Sir David Hamilton, whose reputation rested primarily on his skill as an ‘eminent man midwife’, was made a physician-in-ordinary to the Queen, it was assumed he had been called in to see whether she was pregnant.18
In June 1703 the Queen told Sarah she yearned for ‘the inexpressible blessing of another child, for though I do not flatter myself with the thoughts of it, I would leave no reasonable thing undone that might be a means towards it’. When Sarah suggested it would be sensible to bring over a young prince from Hanover so that he could learn more about the kingdom he would one day rule, the Queen, ‘not being very well pleased’ retorted ‘she believed nobody of her age and who might have children would do that’. Sarah considered this ‘a very vain thought’ which in her view ‘proceeded more from her pride … than that she really could expect children, though she was not forty, because she had had before seventeen dead ones’. Others too were inclined to scoff at the Queen for deluding herself she was still fertile. At a meeting of the Whig Kit Cat Club in March 1703, a member read out a cruel poem mocking Anne’s phantom pregnancies, depicting her as knighting her doctor with her bare gouty leg when he assures her that a baby is on the way. However distasteful, their raillery was on target, for Anne never conceived again. She was mother to her people in a purely figurative sense, remaining (in the words of an anonymous pamphlet) their ‘childless parent’.19
Unlike Elizabeth, Anne was a married woman, so in her case there was obviously no question of developing a cult of the virgin Queen. Her marital status created problems of its own, for some people believed that it contravened the divine order that her husband had a rank inferior to hers. This had been an issue when the Revolution Settlement was being devised, not least because William of Orange made it very clear that he would not occupy a subordinate position to his wife. The MP Henry Pollexfen considered this entirely understandable, demanding, ‘does any think the Prince of Orange will come in to be a subject of his own wife in England? This is not possible nor ought to be in nature’. In the Lords, Lord Halifax even contended that the crown was legally William’s alone, because Mary had given him her right to it as part of her marital estate, which belonged to a husband in its entirety. However, this argument was not accepted.20
Anne’s husband was less assertive about his rights than William. ‘Such was the moderation of Prince George … that he was content to continue with the same title and character as before’, retaining his rank as Duke of Cumberland. Immediately on Anne’s accession he announced, ‘I am her Majesty’s subject and have sworn homage to her today. I shall do naught but what she commands me’. Yet because the position was so abhorrent to contemporary assumptions, it was still predicted that Anne would make him King, even though this would require an Act of Parliament and would have serious implications for the succession.21
Ultimately the fact that Prince George was widely regarded as a nonentity helped reconcile people to his anomalous status, and so, almost by accident, George achieved a major advance for feminism. Until the reign of Anne no husband of a Queen regnant had been denied the title of King, even if, as in the case of Mary Tudor’s husband, Philip of Spain, he had not been given executive power and his title expired on her death. But the idea of George’s becoming King did not wither away easily. Before Parliament met in October 1702 the King of Prussia’s envoy in England reported, ‘Some members of the Commons talk of proposing … that the Prince be declared King’. Those in favour of this were described as being ‘not the most affectionate to the House of Hanover’. A tract supporting the proposal was published, deploring the current situation as unsatisfactory. ‘Consider how unprecedented a thing it is in this kingdom to see the husband a subject to his wife’, the anonymous author exhorted his readers, ‘and how contrary to nature’s customs and the apostolical institutions it is’. Somewhat inconsistently the piece then urged ‘that the administration of the regal power may be solely in her Majesty’ during her lifetime, but that, if Anne died childless and was outlived by George, ‘the administration of the government to be in His Royal Highness during his life’. An alarmed diplomat in Hanoverian service was informed ‘It is very likely it will take place if one may believe the whole Tory faction, who are at no pains to conceal it’.22
In Hanover Anne’s heiress presumptive, the Electress Sophia, watched developments keenly. Though in her early seventies, Sophia was remarkably sprightly, being ‘as firm and erect as any young lady’ and having ‘not one wrinkle in her face’. She also had ‘so much vivacity’ that she could be excellent company, with one admirer acclaiming her as ‘the most knowing and the most entertaining woman of the age’. Unfortunately she was apt to overrate her understanding of the English political scene, and this sometimes led her into error. When she read the tract urging Prince George’s claims she was naturally concerned, mistakenly assuming that Anne was behind it. She wrote to the Hanoverian Resident in England, ‘Between ourselves it’s unbelievable that this proposal has been disagreeable to the Queen, or even that it was made without her full approval … I believe the succession to be in a tottering state’. She considered commissioning someone to write a satirical reply, and it was lucky that she did not, because when Parliament met no mention was made of altering George’s status.23
George’s subordination to Anne was not merely a titular inferiority, for it is clear that she sometimes imposed her will on him in matters
of State. In 1702, for example, he reluctantly had to vote for the first Occasional Conformity Bill and three years later he was forced to dismiss his Secretary George Clarke after the latter disobeyed ministry instructions to vote for a particular candidate as Speaker of the House of Commons. Those who felt that such a state of affairs was contrary to the natural order had to console themselves with the reflection that at least in the domestic sphere George was considered master of the household. One tract that praised him for being ‘an extremely kind husband, evidencing his excessive love and yet behaving himself as a submissive subject in paying all due respect to her majesty’, also spoke admiringly of the way ‘his royal spouse, though exalted to the throne … yet demeaned herself with kindness and obedience towards him, the addition of three crowns not impairing her familiar affection or a whit altering her conjugal submission to her lord’s desires’. One of Anne’s chaplains likewise commended her for cancelling a visit to Newmarket ‘to comply with a motion of the Prince’. He remarked approvingly that this ‘gave the ladies a new lesson, that she who governs the nation can govern herself so well as always to oblige her husband’.24
Although George was denied the title of King, great efforts were made to accord him other responsibilities. On 17 April 1702 George was named ‘Generalissimo of all forces at land and sea’. This meant that he was nominally Marlborough’s superior, and Marlborough acknowledged this by always taking care to keep the Prince, as well as the Queen, fully informed of military developments. While in effect the position was honorary, the move was applauded as a gracious gesture on Anne’s part, with one diplomat recording that ‘everyone is delighted that the Queen has accorded this authority to HRH’. It turned out, however, that Anne wanted more than this for her husband, and soon moves were under way to invest George with the military role traditionally assumed by the monarch. As soon as William died, George began to be depicted as a martial hero. On 10 March Lady Gardiner reported to Sir John Verney, ‘’tis now said that the Prince George … did actions very great in war in Denmark, so you see the rising sun gains advantage’. When he set off for Holland on 14 March, Marlborough was instructed to ask the States General to agree that George should be made commander-in-chief of all allied forces in the Netherlands. At home, the Queen herself put this request to the Dutch ambassador, sparking fears that she would pull England out of the war if her wishes were not granted.25
Marlborough did his best. He insisted to the States General that it was ‘absolutely necessary for the good of the whole’ alliance that George was appointed. He wrote to Godolphin that he had told the Dutch ‘very plainly that it is His Royal Highness only that can unite the 40,000 paid by England’, and that it was in ‘their interest to have the Prince for their generalissimo and that it would be very agreeable to all England’. The English could argue that since they were not only supplying large numbers of their own troops, but paying for soldiers supplied by other allied powers, they deserved to have overall command. Marlborough maintained ‘if the prince were their generalissimo, all disputes would be avoided’, but the Dutch were understandably resistant.26 It was not just that, despite the laughable attempts to portray George as a doughty warrior, he was unfit, inexperienced, and widely regarded as incapable. There were numerous other better qualified candidates for the post, including the King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover. The Dutch were also alarmed at the prospect that they would be unable to control George. The States General always sent Field Deputies on campaign with their armies with orders to prevent generals from taking rash actions that might result in the Dutch republic being overrun by the enemy, but it would not be easy for these officials to impose their will on Queen Anne’s husband.
It proved impossible to convince the Dutch to accede to George’s appointment. For the moment, therefore, the Prince’s ambitions for military command had to be shelved, but it was understood that in a few months’ time the Dutch would be approached again on the matter. By the autumn of 1702, however, George’s health had deteriorated so much that even Anne realised that the idea was impractical. Disappointing as the rebuff was for Anne and George, it ultimately worked to Marlborough’s advantage. ‘Purely to oblige the Queen of England’, and much to the anger of their own generals, the Dutch made the relatively inexperienced Marlborough the commander-in-chief of all allied forces operating in the Netherlands.27
The Queen had better luck entrusting George with her navy, and on 21 May 1702 he was appointed Lord High Admiral. It was an immense responsibility, for the navy accounted for nearly half of military expenditure, and although the Cabinet and Secretary of State controlled the strategic direction of affairs at sea, the Prince and his council were in charge of most naval administration. Bishop Burnet claimed that the legality of awarding so much power to George and his council without an Act of Parliament was privately ‘much questioned’, but ‘the respect paid the Queen’ ensured that this remained ‘a secret murmur’. Furthermore, Burnet asserted, the Prince was utterly unfitted to carry out such an important task:
At sea … things were ill designed and worse executed; the making Prince George our Lord High Admiral proved in many instances very unhappy to the nation; men of bad designs imposed on him, he understood those matters very little and they sheltered themselves under his name, to which a great submission was paid; but the complaints rose the higher for that.
It was said that because George was frequently in ill health he delegated too much responsibility to his council, and that one member in particular, Marlborough’s brother George Churchill, exercised his power in a damaging fashion. A heavy drinker and ‘coarse fat man much marked with the smallpox’, Churchill not only, according to his sister-in-law Sarah, had ‘uncommon morals’ – by which she meant homosexual tendencies – but also nourished Jacobite sympathies. It was said that having ‘a great sway in the Prince of Denmark’s affections’ he ‘governed the Admiralty under him’, allegedly only promoting men of similar political principles.28
Undoubtedly there were grounds for criticising the conduct of naval affairs under George. On several occasions fleets were so poorly victualled that sailors died from food poisoning. Merchants complained that the navy failed to provide adequate convoys, so their ships were preyed on by the French. Nevertheless it appears that some of the Whig attacks on George and his council were themselves politically motivated, and that, because they saw it as a useful weapon against George, the Whigs were very hard on naval officers who suffered bad luck at sea. Churchill’s omnipotence in the Prince’s council was exaggerated, and there is no proof he was a Jacobite.
George himself was more active than was allowed. He saw his Admiralty Secretary most days, and took a keen interest in ship design, as well as naval management. On several occasions reports signed by him were read in Cabinet, addressing problems such as payments for seamen’s widows. Letters from him to the Navy Board abound on diverse matters, including the shape of topsails, the quality of canvas and anchors, the strain caused to ships by carrying heavy guns, and the desirability ‘of lifting the channels above the middle tier of ports’.29
Merchant shipping undoubtedly suffered severe losses at French hands, but devising an effective convoy system was very difficult. Operations in the Mediterranean and Caribbean meant that the navy was severely overstretched, and their success against the French in the 1704 Battle of Malaga paradoxically made matters worse, as thenceforth the French navy tended to target commercial vessels rather than attacking warships. When George pointed this out in response to parliamentary complaints about the navy’s performance, there was fury; but there was much in what he said. Furthermore, although fewer merchant ships were captured by the French after George died in 1708, it would be wrong to infer from this that he was incompetent. Not only had pressure on the navy recently been eased by the partial scuttling of the French fleet following an allied attack on Toulon, but George’s death coincided with the British acquiring a Mediterranean base at Port Mahon, making it easier to protect m
erchant shipping. G. M. Trevelyan commented that the establishment of British naval and commercial supremacy lasting more than two hundred years ‘might not unreasonably be regarded as the most important outcome of the reign of Queen Anne’, and George deserves some of the credit for this.30
One source asserted that Prince George did ‘not much meddle with affairs out of his office’, and Jonathan Swift concurred that ‘the Prince, being somewhat infirm and inactive neither affected the grandeur of a crown nor the toils of business’. Yet he was far from being entirely detached from matters of State. Although he was not present when Anne had meetings with ministers such as Godolphin, he invariably attended Cabinet meetings if his health permitted. He did not sit silently there, but ventured opinions when he felt it warranted. In November 1706, for example, the minutes record, ‘R[oyal] H[ighness] moves again about agreeing with the States [General] for their ships and particularly to send their eighteen to Lisbon with all speed’. George had his own ‘Secretary for Foreign Affairs’, and once assured Marlborough that he would do everything possible to persuade his nephew the King of Denmark (who provided a contingent of mercenary troops to the allies) to ‘follow the influence of England in everything’. Although it is sometimes claimed that all court insiders considered him a negligible figure, after his death in 1708, the former chancellor of Scotland, Patrick, Earl of Marchmont, wrote to the Queen describing George as ‘my principal intercessor, upon whom I relied most when I had any suit to Your Majesty’. As one observer put it, George was ‘a prince … with a good, sound understanding, but modest in showing it’.31
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 26
