7
Nothing But Uneasiness
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough’s only surviving son, John, Lord Blandford was studying at Cambridge. He was sixteen years old and considered a promising student, when in February 1703 he caught the dreaded smallpox. His distraught and fearful mother immediately rushed to Cambridge to be at his bedside.
The Queen was naturally appalled to hear that this talented young man had contracted the deadly disease that had killed her daughters fifteen years earlier, and was desperate to do all she could to help. She despatched two of her personal physicians in her own coach to tend the boy and fretted when they were ‘long upon the road’. She also sent medicine that she believed might bring him through the illness, wishing that the messenger carrying it ‘could fly, that nothing may be wanting’.1 Sadly, none of this availed to save Blandford. Having been summoned to Cambridge by Sarah, the Duke arrived there just in time to see his son die on 20 February.
Once it had become clear that there was little hope of Blandford’s survival, Anne had written to his mother ‘Christ Jesus comfort and support you under this terrible affliction, and it is his mercy alone that can do it’. Sarah, however, lacked the reserves of faith that had afforded Anne some vestige of comfort when she had experienced similar losses. When Sarah shut herself away at her house near St Albans, the Queen ached to come and see her, pointing out, ‘I know so well what you feel’ and that ‘the unfortunate ought to come to the unfortunate’. Sarah rejected the offer outright. Such was her agony that Anne’s attempts to console her in her letters only aggravated her pain. Trying not to be hurt, Anne wrote that ‘though what your poor unfortunate faithful Morley says may not suit with your humours’, she hoped that Sarah would recognise that she meant well.2
The Queen saw the bereft parents when Marlborough and his wife came to wait on her on 28 February, four days before the Duke left for the Continent to resume military operations against France. After her husband had sailed, Sarah went back to the country, still enveloped in misery. Later in the month one person reported, ‘We hear the Duchess of Marlborough bears not her affliction like her mistress’. At night she was glimpsed wandering around the cloisters of St Albans Abbey like a ghost, and it was said that Blandford’s death affected ‘not only her heart but her brain’.3 This tragic event would indeed have a permanently corrosive effect on Sarah’s personality.
Far from making her feel a greater affinity with the Queen, on the grounds that they had experienced equally dreadful losses, Sarah’s grief acquired a competitive edge. She came to believe that Anne’s suffering when her children died had not been nearly as intense as hers. Noting that Anne had never given way to the uninhibited weeping fits that overcame her at this time of sorrow, Sarah would even suggest that Anne had not been particularly ‘concerned’ by the Duke of Gloucester’s death. ‘Her nature was very hard, and she was not apt to cry’, the Duchess observed harshly.4
Sarah’s bitterness at the loss of her only son stifled her generosity of spirit. Now, intolerance and inflexibility became her dominant traits. By her own account, she had never derived much emotional satisfaction from her friendship with Anne, but henceforth it was validated in her eyes principally by the belief that she must mould Anne to her will and thus aid not only her husband and Godolphin but also the political party she favoured. Finding in politics an outlet that distracted her from her grief, Sarah devoted herself to it with febrile energy, seeing things in absolute terms that left no room for nuance. It became increasingly hard for her to accommodate any form of disagreement, or to concede that other people’s beliefs had any legitimacy at all. In the case of the Queen, she could not even accept that Anne was capable of forming her own convictions; instead, whenever they differed, she at once assumed that these ideas had been placed in her mind by others.
By late spring, Anne was becoming upset by Sarah’s distant manner. The Duchess rarely came to court, and in her letters addressed the Queen as ‘your Majesty’ rather than ‘Mrs Morley’. Anne begged her friend ‘to let me know if you are angry with me, or take anything ill, that I may justify myself, if you have any hard thoughts of me’. However, when she saw Sarah in London on 5 May, the encounter left the Queen with a ‘very heavy heart’, as the Duchess was ‘formal and cold’ towards her. In consternation Anne implored ‘For Christ Jesus’s sake tell me what’s the matter’, adding that while she did not believe herself at fault, ‘few people know themselves, and I am very sensible I have my failings as well as other people … Have pity on me and hide nothing … but open your dear heart freely, for I can have no ease till everything is set right between us’.5
Anne was understandably perplexed when Sarah maintained that the change was not on her part but on the Queen’s, and implied that she could sense that Anne’s feelings for her were cooling. At the time the Queen fervently denied this, but with hindsight Sarah was confident that her instincts had been correct. The Duchess later came to believe that Anne had already become unhealthily fond of Abigail Hill, the poor cousin whom Sarah had installed as a Woman of the Bedchamber prior to the accession. Although, according to Sarah, Anne ‘could dissemble as well as any lady that I ever saw in my life’, the Duchess could detect that she was withdrawing emotionally from her, even if she had not yet identified the cause.6
In one sense of course, the Duchess was correct in saying that Anne ‘was changed’. Since ascending the throne the Queen’s character had inevitably developed as she acquired a sense of her own authority and a stronger faith in her judgement, and Sarah had difficulty coping with this transformation. Anne longed to preserve her intimacy with her best friend, accounting herself fortunate for having forged such a bond, but perhaps inevitably her devotion had become less obsessive upon her accession.
Only the most hardened cynic could contend that the letter that Anne wrote to Sarah, probably on 22 May 1703, was insincere. Sarah had recently warned the Queen that her husband was feeling seriously demoralised. Apart from being saddened by the death of his son, he was upset because the Dutch were refusing to follow the military strategy he had advocated, and he also knew that some of his ministerial colleagues were criticising his conduct of the war. When he wrote telling Sarah that he would have to retire if things did not improve, she had passed this on to the Queen, who responded with a letter almost lyrical in its intensity. In this moving document Anne passionately reiterated her dependence on the Marlboroughs and Godolphin to sustain her through the challenging tasks that faced her:
It is no wonder at all that people in your posts should be weary of the world, but give me leave to say you should a little consider your faithful friends and poor country, which must be ruined if ever you put your melancholy thoughts in execution. As for your poor unfortunate faithful Morley, she could not bear it; for if ever you should forsake me, I would have nothing more to do with the world, but make another abdication; for what is a crown when the support of it is gone? I never will forsake your dear self, Mr Freeman nor Mr Montgomery but always be your constant and faithful friend, and we four must never part till death mows us down with his impartial hand.7
Marlborough was so heartened by this letter that he shelved any thought of premature retirement, but Sarah’s discontent was not so easily assuaged. Since Anne had urged her to be frank whenever anything troubled her, Sarah began bombarding her with criticisms.
Scotland was one area that aroused the Duchess’s concern, as she made clear to Anne. Sarah mistakenly thought that Anne was both ignorant and misinformed about Scots affairs. This did not make it easy for the two women to discuss the issues calmly.
Sarah believed that the Queen should prioritise bringing Scotland into line with England as regards the succession, so that it was settled in law that on Anne’s death the Hanoverians would inherit the Scottish, as well as the English crown. The Queen, however, wanted more than this, believing that it was preferable to pursue Union between England and Scotland, and fearing that prematurely addressing the question o
f the succession would jeopardise this greater prize. Because of this, when a newly elected Scots Parliament met at Edinburgh in May 1703, the Queen’s letter read by her commissioner (the equivalent of the Queen’s speech at the opening of Westminster Parliaments) merely requested a grant of money, the hope being that once the Scots government had established itself on a more stable footing, it would be possible to introduce another bill for Union in a subsequent session. Unfortunately it soon emerged that the Scots ministry was too weak even to achieve the modest aim of obtaining a revenue. The Queen’s commissioner, the Duke of Queensberry, found their Parliament unmanageable, and when the ministry asked for a grant of taxes, the Marquis of Tweeddale said that before supply was considered, the question of what would happen in the event of the Queen’s death should first be discussed. Although Anne’s ministers had wanted to avoid this contentious subject, they had to agree to a debate.
The Duchess of Marlborough considered it lamentable that the Queen had not shown herself determined to have the Hanoverians established as her Scottish heirs, but Anne would not concede that her approach had been misguided. She wrote that while she was ‘sorry to see things go so ill’ in Scotland, ‘I must beg dear Mrs Freeman’s pardon for differing with her in that matter as to the succession’. She explained that if a Union could ‘ever be compassed there would be no occasion of naming a successor, for then we should be one people’. She continued, ‘The endeavouring to make any settlement now would in my poor opinion put an end to the Union, which everybody that wishes well to their country must own would be a great happiness to both nations’.8
Sarah doubtless felt vindicated when the Scots parliamentary session ended in fiasco. On 13 August the Scots asserted their self-sufficiency from England by passing the Act of Security, stating that if Anne died childless, the Scottish Parliament would choose a successor to the Scots crown, who would be ‘of the royal line of Scotland and of the true Protestant religion’. This would not be the same person who occupied the English throne unless the Scots were satisfied by measures guaranteeing their autonomy, religion, and trading rights.9
While it was some consolation that the Scots had not declared outright that they desired a restoration of James Francis Edward, the prospect that Anne’s death would terminate the Union of crowns – in being since 1603 – was horrific for the English. The Duke of Queensberry advised Godolphin that sentiment in Scotland was so strong that Anne must endorse the measure by permitting the Act of Security to be touched with the sceptre, but the Lord Treasurer believed that the consequences would be too serious. Once it became clear that the royal assent would be withheld, there was fury in Scotland, and their Parliament retaliated by refusing to vote any taxes at all. The chamber rang with angry cries of ‘liberty and no subsidy’, and an English politician heard that ‘Some could hardly forbear threats and laying hands on their swords’. Far from having progressed towards the merger she desired, Anne had to acknowledge that ‘the rent is become wider’.10
If the situation in Scotland was worrying, the war in Europe was not going particularly well either. In May 1703 the allies had in theory been strengthened when the King of Portugal had signed a treaty binding his country to fight alongside them. However, he had done so on condition that the allies commit themselves to placing Emperor Leopold’s younger son, Archduke Charles, on the Spanish throne, widening allied war aims. Although Emperor Leopold grudgingly agreed that he would send Archduke Charles to Spain, he insisted that he could not afford to contribute anything else in terms of money or men. Accordingly, the English were constrained to pay his share, despite feeling overstretched already.11 Notwithstanding these concerns, Archduke Charles was proclaimed Charles III of Spain in Vienna in September 1703.
Over in Flanders, the Duke of Marlborough was feeling frustrated after making limited progress there. During the summer there had been several occasions when circumstances were favourable for a battle, but to his disgust the Dutch had not let him engage the enemy. In Germany the outlook was bleaker still for the allies. In the autumn of 1702 Elector Maximilian of Bavaria had allied himself with Louis XIV, and the following May a French army had liaised with Maximilian’s troops in Germany. This combined force beat an Imperial army at Hochstadt in September 1703, leaving Vienna itself at risk of being taken the following year.
Marlborough was concerned that English Tories would use these disappointments to suggest that the Dutch were disloyal allies, and that the English would do better not to have so many men concentrated in the Low Countries. It was not just backbenchers who were causing trouble, for the Earl of Nottingham tended to be over-critical of the Dutch, and the Duke of Buckingham was being so maddening that Marlborough wished ‘with all my heart the Queen were rid of’ him. As for Sir Edward Seymour, Marlborough went so far as to say that he would look on his death as a boon to mankind.12
The Duke emphasised that he did not believe that matters should be resolved by the Queen moving closer to the Whigs, but Sarah seized on his disenchantment to belabour Anne about her predilection for Tories. She went much further than her husband, for whereas his main concern was simply that party political differences were interfering with the war effort, she now began to maintain that almost all Tories were downright Jacobites. Anne, quite rightly, disputed this, writing on 18 June ‘I am very sorry to find that everybody who are not Whigs must be reckoned Jacobites’. When Sarah passed on to her Marlborough’s complaints about some of his ministerial colleagues, the Queen declared robustly ‘I can see as well as anybody all the faults and follies of others, except that great one you think them guilty of’.13
This provoked such a severe letter from Sarah that Anne wrote back asking forgiveness, while declaring herself confident that ‘time will convince you I’m not in those errors you think me’. Sarah countered by informing the Queen that it was impossible for her to see her while she ignored her advice in this way. In former times this would have prompted a hysterical response from Anne, but now she merely wrote back that she would not attempt a detailed refutation, ‘finding you are so fixed in the good opinion you have of some, and the ill opinion you have of other people that it is to no manner of purpose to argue anything with you’. She added, ‘it is no small mortification to me that difference of opinion should make you cold … and hinder you from coming to me’, but otherwise refused to dwell on these matters, on the grounds that ‘whatever you say I can never take it ill, knowing … you mean it kindly’.14
Although politics had become a growing source of friction, Anne tried hard to propitiate Sarah in other ways. She promised that whenever a vacancy next arose she would give a prestigious household place to the Earl of Bridgewater, who had recently married the Marlboroughs’ third daughter. Anne noted that although Bridgewater was ‘no Solomon … that which weighs with me most is the near relation he has to my dear dear Mrs Freeman’.15 Unfortunately such gestures were not enough to put everything right between them.
The Queen could persuade herself that much of Sarah’s asperity arose from ill health, as well as the fact that she was still mourning her beloved child. Anne begged ‘for God’s sake have a care of your dear self’, and remonstrated when Sarah disregarded her physicians’ advice. ‘I know no doctor can do your mind any good, but certainly they may mend your health’, she told her friend, while not deluding herself that Sarah would pay any attention.16
Anne herself was also indisposed at this time. In May she was said to be suffering from ‘vapours’, a depressive disorder which she seems to have believed was caused by her failure to conceive. She was also once again disabled by ‘gout’. On 20 June she reported to Sarah that although now well in other respects, she could only walk a little with the help of two sticks, and predicted ‘it will be a great while before I shall walk alone’. Because George’s asthma was also giving cause for concern it was decided that he and the Queen would return to Bath at the end of summer in the hope that it would do them both good and aid Anne’s chances of having a child. Sarah was
unwilling to accompany the Queen there and by July had the perfect excuse for not doing so, for she believed herself to be pregnant. Anne reacted with great generosity: evincing not a trace of envy, she wrote, ‘I cannot express how glad I am of the good news you send me of your dear self; upon my word since my great misfortune of losing my dear child, I have not known so much real satisfaction in anything that has happened as this pleasing news has given me, and I shall now be very well contented to leave my dear Mrs Freeman behind me, which otherways would have been an unexpressible mortification to me’.17
From Bath, where Anne arrived on 18 August, the Queen’s letters to ‘dear dear Mrs Freeman’ seemed as fond as ever. ‘You can never imagine how sincerely and tenderly I love you and be assured nothing can ever change me’ she wrote rapturously. However, Sarah later claimed that it was during this trip that other members of the household began to realise just how devoted Anne had become to her dresser, Abigail Hill.
By this time Sarah had realised that she was not pregnant after all, and it was thought that a visit to Bath might act as a tonic. The Queen expressed delight when she heard that Sarah would be joining her, but it seems that things did not go well when the Duchess arrived on 9 September. Certainly Sarah wrote a grumpy letter to her husband a week later, to which he replied that he was sorry ‘that the Bath is so disagreeable to you, for I am afraid it may hinder the waters from doing you good’.18
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 36
