Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

by Anne Somerset

  In view of Anne’s political sympathies, it was hardly surprising that her first ministry was predominantly Tory. Though neither were ardent party men, Sarah noted that Marlborough and Godolphin themselves ‘would not have had so great a share of her favour and confidence if they had not been reckoned in the number of Tories’. Marlborough advised the Queen to make Godolphin her Lord Treasurer ‘in so positive a manner that he said he could not go beyond sea to command our armies’ unless he was given the post, as only then could he be ‘sure that remittances would be punctually made to him’. For a time Godolphin was reluctant to accept the position, but Marlborough urged him to do so, having the utmost trust in one who – as he wrote to Sarah – was ‘united to us both in friendship and alliance’.33

  As Lord Treasurer, Godolphin effectively had the responsibilities of a modern Prime Minister, a term actually used of him by some contemporaries. Domestic, Scottish, and foreign affairs all were part of his province, as well as Treasury business. He was, however, an acknowledged expert on money matters. One foreign diplomat recorded, ‘everyone agrees that … Godolphin is particularly talented at handling finances, and that he understands them best of anyone in the realm’. Not merely could he deal with the complexities of floating loans and managing the national debt, but he supervised every aspect of public expenditure with the utmost vigilance. Unlike many public servants of the day, he did not use his post for personal enrichment, and acted as ‘the nation’s treasurer and not his own’. He also displayed a ‘wonderful frugality in the public concerns’, setting a limit on pension expenditure that was lower than in King William’s day, and asking the Queen not to exceed it during the war. Even the most minor outgoings did not escape his notice. On one occasion he chided commissioners at the Board of Trade for spending too much on stationery; another time, when issuing a warrant for a new silver trumpet for Marlborough’s bugler, he wanted to know what had ‘become of the old one?’34

  Although Godolphin was indisputably well fitted to be Treasurer, Anne’s uncle the Earl of Rochester had counted on having the post himself. Rochester was a leading Tory, whose passion for the Church was such that he would become incoherent with rage during parliamentary debates on the subject. In some ways it was surprising that he expected to be favoured by his niece. Far from aiding Anne when she was in disgrace with William and Mary he had, in Sarah’s view, fanned the flames, but family loyalty inclined the Queen to overlook this. One foreign diplomat, who was sure that Rochester enjoyed her high regard, reported that while Marlborough was at The Hague during April 1702, his friends became worried that Rochester had ‘very much profited’ from his absence to advance himself further in the Queen’s confidence. Accordingly they were relieved when Marlborough returned home.35

  For a time Rochester had served James II as Lord Treasurer, but there were manifest drawbacks to reinstating him in the post. Apart from his choleric nature, and the fact he was such a militant patron of the Church, he was far from being a convinced supporter of the war. At a Cabinet meeting on 2 May he argued that England should not enter it as a principal. Instead he wanted England to confine herself to naval operations round about her colonies, and to subsidise foreign troops to fight on her behalf in Europe, rather than sending forces of her own. Marlborough was adamant that ‘France could never be reduced within due bounds unless England’ played a full part. He was also able to point out that while abroad he had with some difficulty persuaded the allies to agree to a new war aim, concerning England alone, whereby they had bound themselves to make France agree that the Pretended Prince of Wales had no right to the throne, and to recognise the Protestant succession. According to the diplomat Saunière de l’Hermitage, the Queen came down against Rochester, as she ‘wished to conform with what had been agreed with her allies’. On 4 May war was formally declared, prompting Louis XIV to remark that he must be getting old if ladies were taking up arms against him.36 Two days later Godolphin was named Treasurer.

  Though Marlborough had won that tussle with Rochester, Anne’s uncle remained ominously influential. William III had been on the verge of dismissing him from the post of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but Anne now confirmed him in that office. Marlborough and Godolphin would have been ‘delighted to keep him away from her Majesty and her affairs’ by encouraging him to cross the Irish Sea and exercise his responsibilities in person, but Rochester preferred to remain at court. Before long Rochester was justifying Marlborough’s prediction that he would cause trouble by promoting the interests of the Tory party, rather than considering the war a priority. ‘Proud and imperious’ and wanting ‘everyone to defer to his sentiments’, Rochester (in the view of one allied diplomat) was ‘of a character to push everything to extremity, never retreating from anything he has proposed’. By August Marlborough was convinced not just that Rochester was perpetually ‘endeavouring to give mortifications’ to him and Godolphin, but was actually ‘disturbing underhand the public business’. The only way of resolving the situation, he believed, was to prevail upon the Queen to order her uncle to Ireland.37

  The Earl of Nottingham, another conviction Tory with strong feelings about the Church, was appointed one of the Queen’s two Secretaries of State. The Secretaries had a daunting workload. As well as dividing much domestic business between them, they were responsible for overseeing foreign relations with countries that fell within their designated areas. They communicated regularly with envoys stationed abroad and passed on to the Queen summaries of diplomatic despatches. One of the Secretaries kept the minutes at Cabinet meetings and Nottingham in particular would show a keen interest in naval affairs. Dark and saturnine, with the appearance of a Spanish grandee, Nottingham was known as ‘Dismal’. Wanting the Tories to look on him as their leader, he was alleged by Sarah to do all he could to stir up the Queen’s hostility towards the Whigs. He was more committed to the war than Rochester, but had his own ideas about strategy which made for potential friction with Marlborough. He believed that the key to victory lay in operations in Spain, the Mediterranean, and Caribbean, whereas Flanders was the area ‘where we so fruitlessly spent our blood and treasure in the last war’. Nottingham insisted that another Tory, Sir Charles Hedges, be given the portfolio of Secretary of State for the Northern department. Sarah claimed that Hedges was a useless nonentity who owed his appointment to his subservience towards Nottingham and Rochester, but another observer gave the more positive assessment that Hedges ‘doth not want sense, hath a very good address in business’.38

  The Earl of Jersey, who had been William III’s Lord Chamberlain, as well as serving a term as ambassador to France, was kept on in his post. ‘A weak man but crafty, and well practised in the arts of a court’, Jersey was married to a Catholic and would later show Jacobite sympathies. The post of Lord Privy Seal went to the Marquis of Normanby, somewhat to the dismay of Marlborough. He told an Austrian diplomat he was well aware of Normanby’s ‘bad qualities’, but declined to intervene, perhaps bearing in mind that Normanby’s connection with Anne predated even her friendship with Sarah. Years before, as Earl of Mulgrave, he had landed in trouble for flirting with Princess Anne, and it was commonly supposed that the Queen retained a fondness for him from that time. One of those fierce Tories who, though ‘violent for the High Church … seldom goes to it’, he too was suspected of Jacobite inclinations. This was partly because, during the debates on the Act of Settlement in 1701, he had suggested that Prince George should rule the country if his wife predeceased him. Normanby’s appointment was accordingly viewed with alarm in Hanover, but in 1704 he started corresponding with the Electress Sophia, assuring her he ‘had only been for Prince George to compliment the Queen’.39

  Normanby regarded Anne’s accession as a glorious opportunity to further himself. When he was presented to her, Anne uttered one of the banalities that Sarah claimed was a hallmark of her conversation, remarking that it was a very fine day. ‘Your Majesty must allow me to declare that it is the finest day I ever saw in my life’, Nor
manby returned effusively. Things did indeed look up for him when in March 1703 he was created Duke of Buckingham, but two years later he appeared to have permanently blighted himself in Anne’s eyes by suggesting to Parliament that she might become too senile to exercise power. During the latter years of the reign he nevertheless bounced back, and in 1712 he was described as ‘having the favour of the Queen’s ear very much’.40

  One of the most important figures in government was not officially a member of it. Robert Harley came from a dissenting background in Herefordshire. On entering Parliament in 1689, he had been reckoned a Whig, but after becoming estranged from the Junto peers in office under William, he had led the opposition to their ministry. Gradually he had evolved into a Tory of sorts, though he preferred to think of himself as belonging to no party. In 1701 he had been elected Speaker of the Commons with King William’s blessing, and in that capacity he helped guide the Act of Settlement through the Lower House. When William reverted to a Whig ministry, he hoped that Harley would be voted out of the Speaker’s chair, but in 1702 he was re-elected. In the remaining weeks of William’s life Harley had liaised with Sidney Godolphin to coordinate opposition to the new ministers. By this time he was also known to Anne, having been ‘first introduced to the Princess’ in William’s lifetime.41

  As William lay dying, Marlborough and Godolphin were in regular consultation with Harley. It was he who drafted the speech the Queen made to Parliament on 11 March, and the one she gave when dissolving Parliament in May. Although Harley had no office apart from his Speakership of the Commons, he was soon intimately involved with many aspects of government. He would have policy discussions with Marlborough and Godolphin just before, or immediately after, meetings of the Cabinet, despite not himself belonging to it. He was already involved in intelligence gathering, and alive to the importance of propaganda. In August 1702 he suggested to Godolphin that, to counteract ‘stories raised by ill designing men’, it would be ‘of great service to have some discreet writer of the government’s side, if it were only to state the facts right’.42 The following year he would employ for this purpose Daniel Defoe, an indigent journalist who had been imprisoned by the Earl of Nottingham for writing a pamphlet satirising Tory hostility towards dissenters. In November 1703 Harley arranged for Defoe to be freed and then set him up as Editor of the Review, a new weekly journal whose first edition appeared the following February.

  Even at this stage the relationship between Godolphin and Harley was not without friction. Godolphin, who was a man of few but well-chosen words, was doubtless maddened by Harley’s ‘talent in talking a great deal without discovering his own in anything’. One enemy of Harley’s claimed he was so wedded to an ‘ambiguous and obscure way of speaking that he could hardly ever be understood when he designed it, or be believed when he never so much desired it’. He was often disingenuous for the sake of it, and was not above promising incompatible things to different parties. Inevitably he soon acquired a reputation for insincerity, and for believing ‘no government can be carried on without a trick’.43

  Harley was small and portly, with a rubicund face that betrayed a love of good food and wine at odds with his puritanical upbringing. Outwardly genial, and the most convivial of hosts, he was nevertheless a hard man to fathom. Having grown to detest him, Sarah wrote a devastating pen portrait of this ‘cunning and dark man’. According to her, the ‘mischievous darkness of his soul was … plainly legible in a very odd look, disagreeable to everybody at first sight, which being joined with a constant awkward agitation of his head and body, betrayed a turbulent dishonesty within, even in the midst of all those familiar airs, jocular bowing and smiling, which he always affected’.44

  Harley was unfailingly obsequious towards Marlborough and Godolphin, proclaiming his undying ‘reverence and affection’ for the men ‘by whose indulgence and too kind a recommendation’ he had obtained the Queen’s favour. In 1706 he wrote oleaginously to Godolphin, ‘Far be it from me to espouse any opinion of my own, or to differ from your Lordship’s judgement’, claiming a few months later to be so malleable that ‘if they should say Harrow on the Hill or by Maidenhead were the nearest way to Windsor I would … never dispute it, if that would give content’.45 It subsequently emerged, however, that Harley was less accommodating than he pretended. He had a political vision of his own, and when he discovered that Marlborough and Godolphin did not share it, he would work with steely determination to make his ideas prevail.

  Harley was re-elected Speaker in October 1702, and was happy to remain in a position that allowed him to operate out of sight as a supreme political fixer. For the moment this suited Marlborough and Godolphin, not least because, as they were both in the Lords, they relied on Harley’s expertise in Commons procedure to secure majorities for legislation. Well aware that no one knew ‘better all the tricks of the House’, they ‘depended on him as the fittest man they had to manage the … Commons … It was left chiefly to him as his province’.46

  Godolphin also depended on Harley to oversee details of ecclesiastical preferment, for the Lord Treasurer had little personal interest in such matters. He was therefore happy to delegate to one who had links with both wings of the Church, and who made a point of having ‘a clergyman of each sort at his table on Sunday’. He told Harley gratefully, ‘I shall not move in anything of this kind but as you will guide me’, assuring his colleague in late 1702 that ‘the Queen is full of hopes from … the pains you take in it, that the differences among the clergy may be moderated’. By that time Harley had undertaken several interviews with Anne on this question. In July 1702 he was admitted up the backstairs for discussions with her, and after another audience with her three months later he noted exultantly, ‘She was most graciously pleased to use most gracious expressions towards me, beyond my deserts’.47

  At Anne’s accession one county worthy was confident ‘she will be Queen of all her subjects and would have all the parties and distinctions of former reigns ended in hers’. Marlborough assured the Grand Pensionary of Holland, ‘Her Majesty is firmly resolved not to enter into any party, but to make use of all her subjects’, but one shrewd observer doubted whether Marlborough and Godolphin could prevent power being concentrated in Tory hands. Having observed the influence of Rochester, he commented sagely, ‘Much is said of the moderation the two fore-mentioned Lords will maintain … but when I consider whom they are linked with, I can’t think them at liberty to act but as others will allow them’.48 In the event a bare minimum of Whigs were given places in the court and ministry, leaving them feeling excluded, particularly since key figures, the Lords Somers and Halifax, were removed from the Privy Council. Anne had wanted the Duke of Shrewsbury to be her Master of the Horse, but when he refused to return from Italy to take up the post, it was conferred on the Whig Duke of Somerset. He already had a place in Cabinet, having previously been named as Lord President of the Council, an office that now went to a moderate Tory, the Earl of Pembroke. The Whig Duke of Devonshire remained Lord Steward, and at Godolphin’s request another Whig, Henry Boyle, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Earl of Wharton was deprived of his two Lord Lieutenancies, and dismissed as Comptroller of the royal household. Although at one point the Duke of Devonshire threatened to resign unless Wharton was retained, the ejection of this famous rake who flaunted both his infidelity to his wife and his outspoken views on republicanism, was not entirely surprising. What was controversial, however, was that, despite Marlborough’s efforts to prevent this, Wharton was replaced as Comptroller by Edward Seymour, a fanatical Tory from the West Country. The Prussian Resident in England commented, ‘those who pay attention to the affairs of this country think it ought to have been easy for the Queen to obliterate these odious names of Whig and Tory … but she has let the opportunity escape by giving a white staff … to a hot-headed party leader who leads an irregular life’.49

  The Whigs’ bitterness was enhanced by the activities of Sir Nathan Wright, who was kept on by the Queen as K
eeper of the Great Seal. ‘A faithful tool of the Tories’ with a ‘fat broad face’, Wright promptly started to remodel county Commissions of the Peace in the interests of his party. Whig JPs who could aid their candidates at election times were replaced with violent Tories. Even Lord Somers, ‘believed to be the best Chancellor that ever sat in the chair’, was dismissed from the Commission of the Peace in Gloucestershire.50

  In 1706 Robert Harley would assert, ‘The Queen began her reign upon the foot of no parties’, but the Whigs could be forgiven for questioning this. In her defence, however, the Queen could point out that the lower levels of administration, such as the customs office, were left relatively unscathed by political purges. It was ‘generally believed that the Earl of Rochester and his party were for severe methods and for a more entire change quite through all subaltern employments’, but this was successfully resisted. When finalising the appointments of officials in public service, Godolphin congratulated himself on escaping lightly, telling Sarah, ‘Something is to be said for most of those consented to, which are much fewer than I thought would have been pressed’. Sarah, admittedly, disputed this, for to her eyes everything appeared ‘governed by faction and nonsense’, with jobs going to individuals ‘at the dispose of two or three arbitrary men’.51

  On 25 May 1702 Anne arguably exacerbated matters in her dissolution speech to Parliament. Probably at the suggestion of her uncle, Rochester, she stated, ‘My own principles must always keep me entirely firm to the interest and religion of the Church of England and will incline me to countenance those who have the truest zeal to support it’. Defoe believed that by irresponsibly endorsing the Tories she squandered ‘the fairest opportunity in the world to have united us all’. As it was, the Tories boasted that with the support of ‘a Church of England Queen … the dissenters must all come down’, filling the nonconformists with ‘terrible apprehensions’.52