Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

by Anne Somerset

  Could there have been any truth in Sarah’s allegations? Maynwaring’s tract, The Rival Dutchess, portrayed lesbianism, or ‘that female vice … which is the most detestable in nature’ as being on the rise in Britain. It was popularly supposed to be rampant in France ‘where … young ladies are that way debauched in their nunnery education’, but in this piece Abigail assures Madame de Maintenon, ‘We are arrived to as great perfection in sinking that way as you can pretend to’. Sarah suggested to the Queen that such passages proved that she was not alone in thinking there was something amiss with Anne’s relationship with Abigail, but rather showed ‘that notion is universally spread among all sorts of people’. In fact, printed aspersions of this kind were only made in works ascribed to Maynwaring, and reflected his and Sarah’s particular fixations.53

  The Duchess’s allegations might carry more weight if she had been content to let it be thought that Anne’s earlier feelings towards her had a sexual component, but she did not acknowledge the possibility. To her, lesbianism was a disgusting vice, with which she had never been tainted. Far from allowing that Anne had ever physically desired her, she represented Anne’s affection for herself as being inspired purely by an admiration for her intellect and forthright character. Since Abigail lacked such attributes, it followed that Anne had been attracted to her for different reasons, and that Mrs Masham had established her hold over the Queen by indulging her baser appetites.

  If Sarah’s beliefs had been founded on personal observation of the way Anne treated Abigail, one might perhaps accept that she had interpreted the situation correctly. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Duchess very rarely saw Anne and Abigail together. She seems to have progressed with remarkable speed from being unaware that Abigail and the Queen were friends, to being convinced that the two women were bound together by an abnormal passion. Yet there is nothing to suggest that the Queen’s affection for Abigail came close to the besotted love she had evinced for Sarah in earlier years. Clearly Anne enjoyed Abigail’s company, and valued the way she cared for her, but she was not emotionally dependent on her in the way she had been with Sarah. Far from wanting to inaugurate a system whereby Abigail could converse with her as an equal, the Queen was happy to preserve the gap in rank between them, and to the end of her life addressed Abigail by her surname, in the gruff manner of a lady talking to a female servant.

  Sarah’s allegation that Anne had ‘no inclination for any but of [her] own sex’ simply brushed aside Anne’s loving bond with her husband. Not only was Anne a famously devoted spouse, but Abigail too was a married woman. In September 1708 she would present her husband with their first child, and thereafter she produced babies annually. It is true that in The Rival Dutchess Abigail (as conjured up by Maynwaring) remarks that her marriage had caused great surprise, because she was known to be ‘rather addicted to another sort of passion … having too great a regard for my own sex’. However, the author could not resist suggesting that she was also heterosexually promiscuous and that, prior to marrying Masham, she had a liaison with a ‘pretty fellow’ much younger than her, who she deluded herself would make her his wife.54

  Sarah liked to make out that Anne was conscious of something shameful in her relationship with Abigail, and for that reason disliked it being the focus of attention. The Duchess recorded that the Queen was always ‘very apt to blush upon the subject of Mrs Hill’, as if she suffered from a guilty conscience. In fact, it does not appear to have been true that Anne attempted to conceal her fondness for Abigail from others, for in April 1708 Archbishop Sharp’s diary contains the entry, ‘Talking with the Queen, I had some talk about Mrs Masham, whom I find she hath a true kindness for’.55

  It would have been difficult for Abigail and the Queen to commit ‘dark deeds at night’ during Prince George’s lifetime, as the Queen shared a room with her husband and ‘in all his illness, which lasted some years, she would never leave his bed’. At one point Sarah seems to hint that it was in the afternoons, when George was napping, that opportunities arose for Anne and Abigail to have amorous encounters.56 The whole idea, however, is hard to credit. Anne was worn out by childbearing and in dreadful pain for much of the time, and in view of her manifold infirmities it requires a strong effort of the imagination to conceive of her being brought by Mrs Masham into a state of sensual arousal. Her famed prudery, and her strong sense of Christian morality makes it all the more unlikely her relationship with Abigail had a carnal element. This was a time when the very concept of lesbianism barely featured in people’s consciousness but, insofar as its existence was acknowledged, it was viewed as an esoteric perversion. It is hardly surprising that Anne could never forgive her former friend for believing her capable of not only betraying her husband but indulging in practices that, according to the prevailing ethos, were so depraved and sinful.

  The Queen refrained from answering Sarah’s letter of 27 July, but this did not make the Duchess think that she too should lay down her pen. A fortnight later, her husband wrote to tell her he feared having to retire even from his army command, because the Queen was ‘noways governed by anything I can say or do. God knows who it is that influences, but as I love her and my country I dread the consequences’. The Duchess forwarded his letter to the Queen, accompanying it with a vitriolic commentary of her own. Having railed at Anne for reducing the Duke to such an extremity, Sarah wrote that she agreed with him on every point, except ‘when he comes to say that God knows who influences you … for who else can it be but one that I am ashamed to name?’ Remorselessly she continued, ‘Here I can’t help reflecting what a sad appearance it will make in the world when it shall come to be known’ that the mighty Duke of Marlborough found himself pitted against ‘one that is but just worthy to touch your limbs’.57

  A few days after Sarah wrote this letter, she was required, in her capacity of Mistress of the Robes, to accompany the Queen to a thanksgiving held on 19 August to celebrate the victory of Oudenarde. As the two ladies sat in the coach on their way to St Paul’s, the atmosphere, not surprisingly, was sulphurous. The Duchess noticed that Anne was not wearing the jewels she had laid out for her and leapt to the conclusion that Abigail had persuaded the Queen to adorn herself less splendidly, so that people would conclude that Marlborough’s achievement meant little to her. Voluble as ever, the Duchess berated the Queen, saying that it was no wonder that Marlborough believed he had lost all credit with her. They were still wrangling as they mounted the cathedral steps, but when Anne ventured a remark in her own defence, the Duchess hissed at her to be quiet, lest they were overheard. Once the service was over, the Duchess resumed the argument by letter, reflecting that her husband would be distressed that ‘when I had taken so much pains to put your jewels in a way that I thought you would like, Abigail could make you refuse to wear them in so shocking a manner’. Imperiously she told the Queen that, considering that they were supposedly honouring Marlborough’s triumph, ‘You chose a very wrong day to mortify me’.58

  Anne, however, had taken serious umbrage at Sarah’s peremptory silencing of her in church. In a freezing rejoinder she informed the Duchess that, ‘after the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving day of not answering you’, she had decided to make no further comment. This failed to subdue Sarah, who then suggested that Anne’s real reason for not giving her a more lengthy response was that the points raised by her were unanswerable.59

  Finding this exchange of letters unsatisfying, Sarah returned to court, and on 9 September ‘terrible battles’ took place at Windsor. Sarah launched into a furious diatribe, mainly directed against Abigail and Harley. Among other things she observed that Harley ‘never had a good reputation in the world’ but now, thanks to his attempt to ‘betray and ruin’ Marlborough and Godolphin, ‘nobody alive can … be more odious than he is’. Having finished her onslaught, the Duchess ‘came out from her in great heat, and when the Queen was seen afterwards her eyes were red, and it was plain she had been crying very much’.60

  A
ggrieved at what she considered to be Anne’s appalling conduct, Sarah ceased contact with the Queen. Marlborough applauded her decision as ‘certainly right’, for it was finally dawning on him that his wife’s interventions were potentially damaging to him. He suggested that ‘by endeavouring to hurt, we do good offices to [Abigail], so that in my opinion we ought to be careful of our own actions’. Marlborough was evidently somewhat shocked by the manner in which Sarah condemned the Queen, as he wrote guardedly that he could not ‘entirely agree with your opinion’ because he still had a lingering ‘tenderness’ for Anne.61

  The Queen might reasonably have hoped that Sarah’s anger with her would be somewhat mitigated by the fact that she had recently conferred on the Duchess a sizeable plot of Crown land adjacent to St James’s Palace, on which Sarah planned to erect a substantial house. Yet far from feeling beholden, the Duchess gave out ‘she would not have condescended to ask the last grant from the Queen, but that it was promised her long before the quarrel with Mrs Masham’.62 As Sarah busied herself commissioning Sir Christopher Wren to design a suitably imposing residence, her husband warned her that such construction projects always cost a great deal more than anticipated. This soon proved to be the case, and it was probably to help her pay for these London building works that Sarah took to abstracting large sums from the Queen’s Privy Purse.

  The Duchess had always had a rather casual attitude to the money entrusted to her care as Keeper of the Privy Purse. When submitting her accounts for the Queen’s approval in late 1707 or early 1708, Sarah had only then notified Anne that in 1705 she had seen fit to withdraw £1,000 from the Privy Purse in order to subscribe to a loan being raised for the Emperor. She said that because the money was not earning interest, she had felt free to do this, ‘knowing it could be no prejudice to your Majesty’, and she had repaid it by taking only half the salary due to her as Keeper of the Privy Purse in June 1707. Perhaps emboldened by this arrangement being approved, in March 1708 Sarah removed the far greater amount of £12,000 from the Privy Purse. However when that year’s accounts were presented to the Queen, an alternative set was compiled containing no record of the transaction, for Sarah simply restored the money without mentioning that she had temporarily diverted it. She took out additional unauthorised loans totalling £21,800 between August 1708 and January 1710, all of which were correctly itemised in the accounts as ‘being borrowed’, but whether these sums were later repaid remains unclear.63

  As summer drew to a close, the Junto meditated on ways to punish Anne for her refusal to award their members office. It became clear that unless they were satisfied before Parliament met, they would revive their attack on the management of the navy. In late August Marlborough wrote to his brother George Churchill urging him to resign so as to avoid the inevitable humiliation of being censured in Parliament, but, with the encouragement of Prince George, Churchill clung grimly to his place. In their fury the Junto threatened to mobilise their followers to vote against the court’s candidate in the election of a new Speaker, even though the ministry’s nominee was a moderate Whig who should have been acceptable to them. Still the Queen held out, refusing to admit that the situation had become untenable. On 27 August she wrote indignantly to Marlborough, expressing annoyance that he was ‘in such a splenetic way as to talk of retiring, it being a thing I can never consent to’. She represented his and Godolphin’s threats to resign as dereliction of duty, saying that if they carried out their intentions they would be blamed for harming ‘me and your country … Is there no consideration to be had for either?’ Arguing that the Junto’s plans to oppose her choice of Speaker conclusively proved ‘they will have none in any employment that does not entirely depend upon them’, she demanded shrilly, ‘Now how is it possible … ever to take these people into my bosom?’ She ended, with a final flash of defiance, ‘To be short, I think things are come to whether I shall submit to the five tyrannising lords or they to me’.64

  For Marlborough, currently engaged on the bloody and debilitating siege of Lille, these continued political difficulties were an unwelcome distraction. Nevertheless, he composed a letter based on drafts supplied by Sarah and Godolphin, saying that he failed to see how she could still incline to the Tories when they had given ‘a thousand proofs that they will take the crown from you’. He expressed incredulity that she had been ready to listen to Haversham, whose erratic behaviour in the past made him unworthy of her confidence. ‘Your Majesty may think this is too warm’, he conceded, but contended that his anger was understandable considering that ‘your Majesty, by your own conduct and inclinations is resolved to make it impossible for me to serve you’.65

  None of this made any impact on the Queen. As the opening of Parliament drew nearer, Godolphin came close to nervous collapse. In mid October he went to Newmarket to try and reach a deal with the Junto, only to find them more overbearing than ever. Acting in a manner that went some way to justifying Anne’s belief that it was impossible to do business with them, they now indicated that it was not sufficient for the Queen to appoint Somers and Wharton to the Cabinet; in addition there must be a commitment to a full programme of Whig reform. Declaring it ‘absolutely necessary that the change should be more general and that it should appear to be a thorough Whig scheme’, Lord Halifax insisted that government bodies such as the commissions of excise must be filled with Junto supporters. To cap it all, their demands relating to the navy escalated alarmingly, for they announced ‘that nothing will please but the Prince’s quitting’ as Lord High Admiral. In desperation Godolphin proposed that Prince George should remain titular head of the Admiralty, but that he should have a new council who would exercise all power, but the Junto contemptuously rejected the idea as ‘absurd, ridiculous and ineffectual’.66

  With the Junto seeking to dictate ever more harsh terms, and the Queen refusing to accommodate even their most basic demands, agreement of any sort seemed unattainable. Even when Anne yielded an inch on 19 October by agreeing to make James Montagu Attorney General, Godolphin still felt utterly beleaguered. He commented, ‘Such condescensions … (if done in time) would have … eased most of our difficulties’, but matters had gone too far to be redressed by this belated concession.67

  It was at this point that Robert Harley resurfaced, hoping to strengthen the Queen’s determination to resist Junto encroachments. Having ‘not heard a tittle’ from Mrs Masham since July, he took advantage of the fact that Abigail had recently been safely delivered of her first child to resume contact. On 10 October he sent her a letter, supplementing his congratulations with vicious criticisms of the duumvirs.

  Harley wrote sorrowfully that he understood that Godolphin acknowledged that the Junto was currently putting forward unacceptable demands, and yet the Lord Treasurer was still pursuing negotiations on the pretext that ‘my aunt’s business cannot be done without it’. This however was nonsense, for the Queen had only been left with no other recourse but the Junto because Godolphin ‘will let her have no other friends, and I do not know what he means by my aunt’s business but indeed his own projects’. A few days later Harley claimed that Godolphin actively desired an alliance with the Junto, and that, ‘whatever he pretends to the contrary, he has been long contriving that which he now would cover under the colour that he is necessitated to it’. He suggested that Godolphin had found himself politically isolated because he had mishandled the national finances, and this had made him reluctant to bring into government ‘anyone … who should by their management reproach his conduct’. ‘You may depend upon it that [Godolphin] has lost his credit with everyone, nobody will believe one word he says’, he informed Abigail authoritatively. ‘While he had a fat purse and money coming freely, there was no difficulty to manage; it now appears that he hath taken such destructive methods as to make it almost impossible to get any more money but by grievous ways as must be insupportable to every one governed’.

  Harley intimated that these financial difficulties had arisen partly because Godolphin and Ma
rlborough had arrogantly rejected peace overtures from France. With Marlborough’s army bogged down in operations outside Lille, Harley – who in the past had been the first to offer the Duke fulsome praise for his exploits – claimed that it was now apparent that Marlborough’s earlier success in battle did not reflect true military skill. ‘Now it is come to pass that my cousin Nat Stephens [Marlborough] hast lost his reputation’ because ‘he does not understand his business’, Harley asserted. In the past ‘Cousin Nat’ had won renown through ‘two or three lucky accidents but he has not a genius to carry on or manage the business he is in’. Yet Marlborough was not interested in peace, motivated largely by ‘his sordid avarice, which, as it is the root of all evil, so it renders useless all the good qualities my cousin is master of’.68

  Harley thought it ‘very necessary’ these things ‘should be communicated to my aunt if you think it proper’ for unless she was ‘truly informed of her condition’, matters would only ‘grow worse and worse’. We do not know if Abigail passed on to Anne everything he wrote to her, but even if it was only a small proportion, it cannot have failed to have an insidious effect. Only six months before, the Queen had assured Godolphin how much she valued his friendship, and whatever the strain caused by their political disagreements, she had no reason to doubt that he had always strived to serve her loyally, and had acted in what he believed to be the national interest. While it may perhaps have been legitimate for Harley to express concern at the way the Lord Treasurer had gravitated towards the Junto, his suggestion that Godolphin was doing so out of personal ambition was nothing short of monstrous. The manner in which he impugned Godolphin and Marlborough’s competence and integrity was utterly pernicious, and the Queen should have refused to listen to his distilled malevolence. Her belief that she was in danger of being crushed under the heel of the Junto and her anger at Sarah’s atrocious conduct may have made her desperate, but Anne should not have stooped to countenancing personal attacks on men who deserved much better from her.