With the Alien Act due to come into force at Christmas 1705, it was to be hoped that the Scots would avert catastrophe by resolving their differences with England. To further a settlement, Anne decided on a change of leadership in her Scots ministry, and in the spring of 1705 she appointed the twenty-six-year-old Duke of Argyll as her Commissioner. Known as ‘Red John’ because of his flaming hair, Argyll was a prickly and demanding young man. He was more concerned about advancing his own career in the English army than in serving the Crown in Scotland, but he nevertheless proved an efficient political operator. Behaving ‘in a manner far above what could be expected from one of his years’ he ‘administered the government with great ability and applause’ while taking ‘no less care of his own interest’.80
Having kissed the Queen’s hand on 27 February, Argyll ‘immediately harangued’ her, telling her there must be extensive changes in the Scottish ministry. Anne was reluctant to dismiss so many of her ministers, but it became more difficult to retain them when the Scottish council failed to prevent the judicial murder of an English sea captain named Green and two of his crew members, on trumped-up piracy charges. The ministers had acquiesced in their execution because hostility to England was at such a peak that they feared being lynched themselves if they had issued a reprieve, but their craven behaviour merely demonstrated the extent to which they had lost the respect of their countrymen. When Argyll threatened to resign unless his wishes were heeded, the Queen gave way, although she objected to the way he had imposed his will on her. She was even more irritated by Argyll’s overruling her suggestion that Lord Forfar should be given a position in the Scottish treasury, and told Godolphin that Argyll must at least give him a comparable position elsewhere. She wrote wrathfully ‘I do expect he should comply with this one desire of mine in return of all the compliances I have made to him. This may displease his Grace’s touchy temper, but I can’t see it can do any prejudice to my service, and in my poor opinion such usage should be resented’.81
The Queen’s indignation heightened when Argyll laid down that the Duke of Queensberry must be brought back into government, despite the fact that Anne proclaimed him ‘more odious to me than ever’ on account of his ‘past tricking behaviour’. Although she initially swore she would never consent, she once again backed down to avoid losing Argyll. To Godolphin the Queen fumed, ‘it grates my soul to take a man into my service that has not only betrayed me, but tricked me several times, one that has been obnoxious to his own countrymen these many years and one that I can never be convinced can be of any use’. However, not wanting it to ‘be said if I had not been obstinate everything would have gone well’ – an admonition with which she was clearly all too familiar – ‘I will do myself the violence these unreasonable Scotsmen desire, and indeed it is an unexpressible one.’82
Anne was pessimistic about the forthcoming session of the Scottish Parliament, telling Godolphin, ‘I am entirely of your opinion that no method will succeed’. It was left open to Argyll either to try once again to settle the succession – possibly in conjunction with limitations to be imposed on the next sovereign – or, instead, to make arrangements to bring in a treaty of Union. As ever, the Queen herself favoured Union, but not many people in England were so keen on the idea. The Whigs, in particular, would have preferred a straightforward resolution of the succession question, fearing that Union would result in an influx of Scots politicians to the Westminster Parliament, which might undermine their own power.83
The Scottish Parliament met on 28 June, and three weeks later the succession option was effectively ruled out when a motion of the Duke of Hamilton’s was accepted, blocking the Parliament from naming a successor unless a treaty with England was negotiated, sorting out commercial matters and other concerns. Almost certainly Hamilton’s action was no more than ‘a pretence to keep matters yet longer in suspense’, and was intended to impede a settlement. Nevertheless, far from being upset by the development, the Queen considered it an opportunity. Godolphin told the Scots Chancellor, Lord Seafield, to press ahead with proposals to bring about a treaty of Union, for ‘such an Act as this … is what the Queen is still willing to flatter herself may be obtained’.84
A measure authorising negotiations was duly introduced in Scotland, but was given such a poor reception in its Parliament that Godolphin commented gloomily on 9 August ‘it looks to me as if that nation desired to bring things to extremity’. Gradually, however, matters assumed a more favourable aspect. The Queen’s sacrifice of her feelings about the Duke of Queensberry proved worthwhile, for he was ‘mighty diligent’ in pushing forward the proposed treaty, and was able to deliver numerous votes in favour of it from his followers. Difficulties arose when some Scots parliamentarians argued that it would be unseemly to negotiate with England while the nation was being held to ransom by the Alien Act.85 The problem was overcome when the ministers undertook that an address would be presented to the Queen, begging that the Act be repealed if the Scots agreed to appoint Union commissioners.
Arrangements were subsequently put in place empowering commissioners to negotiate with England. Crucially, no restrictions were imposed preventing them from concluding an incorporating Union, rather than the looser federal sort. Less satisfactorily from the English point of view, it was originally envisaged that the choice of commissioners would be left to the Scots themselves. This could have ruined everything, for if people hostile to the Union were selected, they could ensure that negotiations failed. On 1 September, the situation was unexpectedly transformed when, in an inexplicable volte-face, the Duke of Hamilton proposed to a thinly attended Parliament that the Queen should nominate the Union commissioners. The motion was approved by eight votes. This ‘sudden turning of the tables made his whole party stare and look aghast’, and the Jacobite George Lockhart noted dolefully, ‘From this day may we vote the commencement of Scotland’s ruin’.86
The Scots Parliament of 1705 had had a surprisingly positive outcome, but elsewhere things were not going so well. In particular, success had eluded Marlborough in his latest campaign. He had been planning to advance into France through the Moselle valley, but had to abandon the idea after the Dutch failed to equip magazines along the invasion route, leaving his army stuck in the Netherlands. Marlborough’s hopes of achieving anything there were repeatedly frustrated when the Dutch Field Deputies accompanying him forbade him from engaging the enemy. Smarting at yet another veto from these officious advisers, in August he asked Godolphin to tell the Queen that, had he been free to fight, ‘I should have had a greater victory than that of Blenheim’.87
The allies had at least made some progress in Spain. In October the allies gained another foothold there when an army led by the Earl of Peterborough took Barcelona. Charles III was proclaimed King in that city, whereupon the Catalan people rose up and joined the allied cause, enticed by an earlier promise from the Queen that she would ‘secure them a confirmation of their rights and liberties’ from their new monarch.88 The capture of Barcelona was unfortunate in the sense that it fortified the allies in the unrealistic belief that victory in Spain was attainable. Peace proposals made by France that year were rejected out of hand. Dismissing the terms on offer as completely unacceptable, Godolphin commented haughtily ‘if England had lost a battle at sea and another at land, I think they would still despise such a peace’.89
Having digested the implications of the elections, Godolphin concluded that he could only be sure of commanding a majority in the new Parliament by doing something to please the Whigs. Marlborough agreed, although he cautioned that ‘all the care imaginable must be taken that the Queen be not in the hands of any party’. The Duke opined that this could be achieved even if concessions were made to the Whigs for, since it was obvious that Anne only desired the ‘good of her kingdoms’, moderates from both sides would support her out of patriotic duty. The Queen herself believed this analysis was over sanguine. In early July she wrote to Marlborough saying she would consult with Godolphin as he w
ished, but that the parties were ‘such bugbears’ that an acceptable political configuration would be hard to bring about.90 As events would show, the Queen was more accurate than others when it came to gauging the creep of party power.
The Queen did not dispute that it was now desirable to dismiss her Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright, who, besides acquiring a reputation for corruption, was a violent Tory who had purged many moderate Whigs from local Commissions of the Peace. She was worried, however, as to who would be put in his place, and on 11 July 1705, considering it ‘best to tell one’s thoughts freely’, she wrote to Godolphin on the matter. Forthrightly she declared, ‘I cannot help saying I wish very much that there may be a moderate Tory found for this employment. For I must own to you I dread the falling into the hands of either party, and the Whigs have had so many favours showed them of late, that I fear a very few more will put me insensibly into their power, which is what I’m sure you would not have happen no more than I’. The Queen continued that while she did not doubt he was being pressured to place a leading Whig in the office, she trusted that he would decline to do something ‘that would be an unexpressible uneasiness and mortification to me’. Assuring him that he enjoyed her complete confidence, she concluded that she relied on him to ‘do all you can to keep me out of the power of the merciless men of both parties’.91
Contrary to Anne’s hopes, Godolphin had now decided that the Great Seal should be offered to William Cowper, a successful lawyer who had already distinguished himself by impressive oratory in the House of Commons. Though not himself a member of the Junto, Cowper was closely affiliated to them, and was ‘a very acceptable man to the Whig party’ as a whole. Unfortunately, for that very reason, the Queen flatly refused to allow him the post. Marlborough wrote in August to commiserate with the Lord Treasurer, but saying he was sure the Queen would be won over before too long.92 In fact, Anne would keep up the fight for weeks to come.
The part played by Sarah in the struggle to appoint Cowper is not entirely clear. Certainly she later gave herself full credit for prevailing on the Queen to oust Sir Nathan Wright. As for Cowper, she stated ‘I continually laboured with the Queen to make him Keeper … and at last, by a great deal of drudgery, I succeeded’.93
The Queen’s recollection was different, for years later, discussing the matter with her physician Sir David Hamilton, she claimed ‘the Duchess … never spoke but once to her of it’. It seems indeed that the Queen’s principal fear at the time was not that she herself would be browbeaten by Sarah, but that the Duchess would have better success encouraging Godolphin to form closer links to the Whigs. Anne had alluded to this in her letter to the Lord Treasurer of 11 July when she remarked, ‘I know my dear unkind friend has so good an opinion of all that party that … she will use all her endeavour to get you to prevail with me to put one of them into this great post’.94
In August 1705 Sarah accompanied her mistress on a summer progress to Winchester. During this holiday the two women got on better, and Marlborough wrote congratulating his wife for being on ‘easier’ terms with Anne. He told her, ‘I think for the good of everything you should make it your business to have it so’ as he knew that Godolphin would find it ‘of great use to him’.95 Yet by the end of the summer Anne was still resisting Cowper’s appointment, and it took an eloquent letter from Marlborough himself to overcome her obstinacy.
The Queen had earlier written to her general, appealing for his backing on the issue. On 18/29 September Marlborough penned a graceful reply, expressing sympathy, but making it plain that he believed she must give way. He pointed out that it was Tory intransigence that was responsible for her predicament, and that Nottingham’s refusal to serve on anything other than his own terms had narrowed her options alarmingly. Were he in England, ‘I should beg on my knees that you would lose no time in knowing of my Lord Treasurer what is fit to be done, that you might be in a condition of carrying on the war and opposing the extravagances of these mad people’. The only alternative, in his view, was to entrust the government to Nottingham and Rochester, which would almost certainly result in the war being abandoned. Gratified by his ‘kind concern’, the Queen wrote back on 27 September to say that ‘as for those two persons you mention, they have made it wholly impossible to employ them, if I had never so much inclination to do it’.96 For a fortnight longer she refused to accept the logic of the situation, but at length, on 11 October, the Great Seal was conferred on Cowper.
The Queen was gracious in defeat, telling Cowper when he came to see her at Kensington that ‘she was very well satisfied of my fitness for the office … and was pleased to give it me’. Her only stipulation was that he cut off his flowing hair and wear a periwig, for otherwise people would say she had entrusted the Great Seal to a boy. She also made clear her view that the Whigs were now under an obligation to support the government, commenting that having done what she could ‘to please them in some particulars’ she hoped they would be helpful in Parliament. But while it remained to be seen whether the Whigs accepted that they owed the Queen some gratitude, what was not in doubt was that the Tories would be incensed at Cowper’s appointment. Despite her capitulation, the Queen still had grounds for ‘fearing … some disagreeable things’ lay in store for her.97
8
Entire and Perfect Union
England’s newly elected Parliament met on 25 October 1705, and two days later Anne addressed its members. Having expressed indignation about the ‘very malicious’ attacks made on her and her ministers during the past few months, she observed that since ‘not one of my subjects can really entertain a doubt of my affection to the Church’, those who insinuated it was not ‘my chief care … must be mine and the kingdom’s enemies’. If she had counted on subduing her Tory critics with these stern words, it soon became clear that she had failed. Cowper, the recently appointed Lord Keeper, was shocked when at a dinner party he heard the Tory Lord Mayor of London say ‘in a jeering manner’ that he was no longer worried about the condition of the Church, ‘for the Queen had promised to take care of it’.1
Tories in the Lords soon took steps calculated to cause the Queen maximum distress and embarrassment. It was now well known that the Queen was horrified at the prospect of Electress Sophia residing in England during Anne’s lifetime. The Duchess of Marlborough claimed this was because Anne disliked being reminded of her own mortality, so that even mentioning the possibility of a visit from one of her heirs was ‘interpreted as … presenting the Sovereign with a death’s head’. Yet the Queen could put forward many perfectly rational objections to Sophia’s presence in England. The Earl of Nottingham may have exaggerated when he allegedly told Anne, early in the reign, that ‘whoever proposed bringing over her successor in her lifetime did it with a design to depose her’, but the sovereign’s authority might well be undermined if those out of favour could look to the heir presumptive for approval. Anne’s fear that ‘she herself would be so eclipsed by it, that she would be much in the successor’s power, and reign only at her or his courtesy’ was thus far from fanciful. Sarah claimed that Anne felt so strongly that ‘she would have parted with the Crown sooner than have consented to it’.2
Anne had imagined that only the Whigs really wanted Sophia in England, yet it was the Tories who now raised the issue, motivated, in the view of Archbishop Sharp, by nothing more than a desire to ‘pique her majesty’. Sophia welcomed this development for, despite her advanced age, she believed that a change of scene would prove stimulating. However, in Anne’s opinion, Sophia’s presence in her kingdom could only be disruptive. Not only would a rival court set up by the famously vivacious Sophia be likely to outshine hers, but it was also unlikely that Sophia would resist meddling in politics.3
Schutz, the envoy in England of Sophia’s son, the Elector George Ludwig, was uneasy at her attitude, knowing how much the Queen dreaded Sophia descending on her. But Sophia herself employed another diplomat named Pierre de Falaiseau as her unofficial representative in England and in Ju
ly 1705 he wrote airily that displeasing the Queen was the ‘very last thing to be afraid of’. All that mattered, in his view, was for Sophia to be on good terms with Anne’s favourites. Once that was taken care of, he said, the Queen would not object to anything Sophia did.4
To make her feelings absolutely clear, the Queen sent a diplomat named Howe to Hanover. When he arrived in October 1705, Sophia assured Howe that she would not dream of ‘going to England unless the Queen really wants it’, to which the envoy replied that ‘this was the most agreeable thing he could possibly tell the Queen’. In fact, Sophia – still smarting at not being given a pension or the title of Hereditary Princess – had already decided that if Parliament passed a resolution asking her to come to England, she would not turn down the invitation. She told Schutz that such a move would be in the best interests of the dynasty, ‘and I have no desire to rebuff my own friends and those of my family’.5
Considered purely as party political manoeuvre, proposing an invitation to Sophia had much to commend it from the Tory point of view. It would free them from the taint of being unenthusiastic about the Protestant succession, and ensure that once Sophia ascended the throne, she would be well disposed towards them. If the Whigs supported the motion, the Queen would be infuriated; but if they opposed it out of regard for her, they would lose credit in Hanover. Above all, however, such a move would punish Anne for dispensing with the services of leading Tories, and refusing to conform to their political programme. The fact that, as a Lutheran, Sophia herself was hardly likely to support an Occasional Conformity Bill illustrates the cynicism of their thinking.
It was towards the end of October 1705 that the Queen gained an inkling of what the Tories had in mind. In great agitation she spoke to Archbishop Sharp, asking him to persuade his friends in Parliament ‘not to come into that motion’. For a time, however, her ministers discounted the danger, having been taken in by Sophia’s assurances to Howe.6 It was only after Parliament had assembled that Godolphin realised that Tories in the Lords were genuinely intent on moving an address to the Queen, requesting that she invite Sophia to England.
Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion Page 40
