Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

by Anne Somerset

  On 23 January 1714 Lady Masham confided to Oxford that she feared the Queen was once again ‘far from well’, though she tried to hide her concerns from Anne. ‘Our business must be to hearten her, for she is too apprehensive already of her ill state of health’, she told the Lord Treasurer. By the following day, when a Danish friend of her late husband’s named Christian von Plessen visited the Queen, there could be no doubt that something was seriously wrong. She struck him as ‘half dead’, shocking him with her leaden complexion, swollen face and difficulty in speaking owing to shortness of breath. By the evening she had a high fever, stomach pains, and other symptoms identical to those experienced in December. The attack coincided with rumours that the French were massing a fleet at Brest, in order, it was said, to mount an invasion on behalf of the Pretender. This caused such alarm that there was a run on the Bank of England, but on 1 February the Queen was able to restore calm by writing to the Lord Mayor of London that she was over her ‘aguish indisposition’. She resumed attending Cabinet and signing papers, and on 6 February held a reception for her birthday at Windsor.21

  On 13 February Bolingbroke wrote buoyantly ‘Our mistress has recovered to a miracle and is I think now at least as well as she was before her late sickness’. He was indignant at the Whigs’ continued insistence that ‘her Majesty is still in a very dangerous condition’, but others who saw her at this time concurred that there was cause for concern. The Hanoverian envoy, Georg von Schutz, reported that she looked unhealthily bloated, despite not having regained her appetite following her illness. Her skin also had an alarming greenish tinge. Indeed, according to one source, her Christmas illness ‘so altered her Majesty’s complexion that she did not look like the same person as before; and therefore ’twas expedient from henceforward to use paint to disguise the discolourings; but this was kept so secret that it never was as much as whispered in her lifetime’.22

  The ministers might not want to face the fact, but it seemed obvious that Anne was unlikely to survive into old age. In her exile on the Continent the Duchess of Marlborough took pleasure in the thought that ‘that thing’ (as she now termed the Queen) had a limited life expectancy. As for Bolingbroke, while he insisted that Anne was currently perfectly well, he had to concede that ‘still she has but one life and whenever that drops, if the Church interest is … [left] without concert, … without confidence, without order, we are of all men the most miserable’.23

  This being so, both Oxford and Bolingbroke had to plan for the future. During the last year of Anne’s reign each separately cultivated links with the Pretender, although it does not necessarily follow they were actively working towards his enthronement. Divining what Oxford’s intentions were towards James Francis Edward is particularly difficult, not least because his thinking showed such a lack of clarity. Almost certainly, he never felt genuinely committed to the Pretender’s cause, for he was above all an improviser, rather than an ideologue.24 Knowing that his peace policy had incurred the Elector of Hanover’s disapproval would have inclined him to look with more favour on the idea that the Pretender should succeed Anne, but his feelings on the matter remained at best ambivalent. It must be stressed that almost every advance Oxford made towards the Pretender was accompanied by suggestions that were far from helpful to the young man. It may be, therefore, that Oxford’s sole aim was to lull the Pretender into dealing with him, ensuring that James did not pursue other initiatives that might endanger the kingdom. Oxford also wanted his ministry to keep receiving support from Jacobites in Parliament, and for this he needed the Pretender to believe he was his friend.

  When Oxford had declared in March 1713 that he was anxious to help the Pretender, his overtures had been received with delight at the exiled Jacobite court, and James himself remarked that now there was ‘everything to hope’ from him. With Oxford’s aid he envisaged being reinstated as Anne’s successor without recourse to the legislature, calculating that if he arrived in England during a parliamentary recess, ‘my friends, animated by my presence, and the others being disconcerted’, would fulfil his every wish. James’s half brother, the Duke of Berwick, was thinking along similar lines, although he admitted his ideas might appear ‘rather chimerical’. He urged that James should travel secretly to England to see his sister, who could then take him before Parliament. Berwick imagined she would declare, ‘Gentlemen, here he is! … I … require of you instantly to repeal all the acts passed against him and acknowledge him immediately as my heir and your future sovereign’. Berwick was confident that such a proceeding, which did not entail distasteful ‘cringing’ to Parliament, would be received without ‘the least opposition’.25

  Despite these fanciful expectations, over the next nine months Oxford did nothing to aid the Pretender. He had promised he would send an agent to discuss matters with James, but the emissary never materialised, and the Lord Treasurer did not reply to the letters James and the Duke of Berwick sent him. Far from inviting the Pretender to England, Oxford periodically suggested that James should move farther from his homeland by leaving Lorraine. He also repeated his earlier demands that the Pretender dismiss his Secretary Lord Middleton. When Abbé Gaultier returned to England in September 1713 after spending some months in France, he found Oxford evasive on the subject of the Pretender. The Duke of Berwick had to acknowledge, ‘The long silence … would look like a put off, were it not that [Oxford’s] interest is certainly tied’ with James’s.26

  The fact was, even if Oxford did desire to reinstate the Pretender in the succession, he was well aware of the difficulties involved. Despite the Duke of Berwick’s blithe assumption that Parliament was ‘well disposed’ to James, the Lord Treasurer knew otherwise. One knowledgeable contemporary believed that ‘in either House of Parliament scarce one in twenty was at bottom for altering the present settlement’. Recent estimates of Jacobite numbers in Parliament have accepted that there were only in the region of fifty MPs, and perhaps twenty peers, a lower figure than once thought. Against these men were ranged not only the Whigs but a significant number of Hanoverian Tories, who, as Bolingbroke later observed, would never accept the Pretender as their king even if he became Protestant.27

  Lord Berkeley was sure that the Whigs overstated the danger of the Pretender securing the crown. While he conceded the position might be different in Scotland, it was his belief that ‘there is such an aversion to popery that … the generality thinks of nothing after the Queen but the House of Hanover’. Perhaps the Pretender’s best hope lay not in active support but in the reluctance of many men to fight in defence of the Act of Settlement. One moderate Tory, who was himself loyal to the Hanover succession and who believed that ‘a majority in Parliament are not enemies to the constitution’, was nevertheless dismayed to hear many members of his party ‘talk of the P[retender] coming as a matter that if it could be effected without blood might be well enough acquiesced in … while at the same time they … talk slightingly of the H[anover] family’. Yet even if Lord Guilford was right in thinking that if the Pretender was brought over ‘most of us … would submit with good grace’, there was still a sizeable contingent who would have been prepared to plunge the country into civil war.28

  Oxford would also have been acutely aware that the Queen would not countenance adopting James Francis Edward as her heir. Bolingbroke would later say that he knew better than to mention the Pretender to her because she ‘did never like to hear of a successor’, and there is no reason to suppose that Oxford ever dared broach the subject with her.29 The Pretender himself may have blindly believed that his sister was sympathetic towards him, but he deluded himself on this score.

  The fact that many of the Elector of Hanover’s advisers were also convinced that Anne was scheming to disinherit him and his mother should not be taken as proof that this was so. When Georg von Schutz arrived in England as Hanoverian Resident in the autumn of 1713, he swiftly concluded that Anne was still haunted by guilt over the Revolution. ‘It is certain she attributes the loss of her chi
ldren to the dethroning of her father’, he pronounced confidently, declaring her ‘totally prejudiced against us’. ‘She will endeavour to leave the crown to the greatest stranger rather than … the Electoral family’, he prophesied, adding that ‘She is confirmed in these sentiments by those who are continually with her and possess her favour’.30

  Schutz derived his information from the Whigs, who consistently misrepresented Anne’s views, and he also mistook the Queen’s aversion to the presence of one of her Hanoverian cousins as signifying hostility to the Protestant succession itself. Anne herself was at a loss to understand how her intentions could be so misconstrued. When the Duke of Argyll told her he feared the Pretender represented a genuine threat, ‘and that he suspected even some persons about her Majesty’ of encouraging him, she replied in bewilderment, ‘How can anyone entertain such thoughts?’31

  In September 1713 Abbé Gaultier was heartened when Oxford assured him ‘that as long as he lived he would never consent that England was governed by a German’. Oxford knew, however, that if the Jacobite court were not to lose all faith in him, he would have to do more than this. In December James finally bowed to pressure from England and dismissed Middleton, making it more difficult still for Oxford to continue to prevaricate. Soon afterwards Louis XIV’s foreign minister, Torcy, warned Gaultier that the Pretender’s situation demanded ‘precise answers’, for some of his advisers were urging him to come to England without Oxford’s consent. On 18 January/1 February 1714, James himself told Gaultier that unless he heard something definite from Oxford within two months, he would ask his supporters to take action on his behalf.32

  On 26 January Oxford arranged for Gaultier to forward to James a ‘Declaration’ the Lord Treasurer had penned on the Pretender’s behalf. The Pretender was supposed to sign and return this, although Oxford did not explain what use he would then make of the document. The paper announced that James was renouncing his religion, supposedly without any regard for worldly ambition. It also declared he would never press his right to the throne unless his people called him to it.

  It cannot be ruled out that Oxford genuinely hoped that James would embrace this opportunity, enabling him to secure the young man’s succession to the throne. Almost certainly, however, Oxford calculated that the Pretender would be most unlikely to convert, although he probably hoped James would temporise rather than return an outright refusal. If so, Oxford could continue spinning out his dealings with the Jacobites without doing anything effectual. It must be stressed that if the Pretender did sign the Declaration, it committed Oxford to nothing. Even Gaultier, who, despite being a priest, begged James to give up his faith, or at least to pretend to do so, admitted it would be ‘a step which perhaps would avail him nothing and would certainly render him ridiculous in the eyes of the world’. On 18 February Oxford did ask Gaultier to relay to James that if he became a Protestant, steps would be taken ‘next year’ in Parliament to repeal the Act of Settlement, but the proposed delay before implementing such measures hardly suggests much commitment on Oxford’s part.33

  At exactly the same time that Oxford made his approach to the Pretender, Bolingbroke took a similar step. He communicated with James through Iberville, a French envoy-extraordinary who had arrived in England in late 1713. Bolingbroke was as emphatic as Oxford that the Pretender had no hope of mounting the throne unless he became a member of the Church of England, arguing that James could remain ‘Catholic in his soul but Protestant on the outside’. Yet though Bolingbroke demanded this sacrifice of James, he offered in return even less than Oxford, for he suggested that the Pretender should not be concerned if on Anne’s death the Elector of Hanover ascended the throne. He predicted that George Ludwig’s reign would last less than a year, as it would be impossible for a man ‘brought up in German ways’ to handle the English political scene. He and the Whigs would soon fall out, whereupon both parties would unite to overturn him.34 Provided that James was a Protestant, he could then reclaim his crown. These wild projections of Bolingbroke’s hardly provided the Pretender with much of an incentive to imperil his immortal soul.

  In Lorraine, James was appalled by what was being asked of him. He told Torcy that he regarded Bolingbroke’s messages as naive. As for Oxford’s ‘puerile’ Declaration, he confessed himself bemused by it. James ridiculed the idea that he should pretend he was renouncing his religion ‘without any worldly view’, which everyone would recognise as a ‘glaring falsehood’. It seemed to him that Oxford’s proposals were merely a trap, for if he rejected them he gave the Lord Treasurer ‘a pretext to break with me, but in accepting them I make myself unworthy to live, and still more of reigning’. While declaring his intention to keep pressing his claim to the throne, he insisted defiantly, ‘I will keep my religion until my dying breath’.35

  The Duke of Berwick advised his half brother to ignore the whole question of religion when replying to Oxford and Bolingbroke, but James was worried this would give rise to false hopes. Accordingly his answers left little room to think that there was any likelihood of his conversion. On 20 February/3 March 1714 he wrote to Oxford that he was willing for his sister ‘to remain in quiet possession during her life provided she secure to me the succession after her death’. He guaranteed his subjects’ religion, liberty and property, but cautioned that ‘I heartily abhor all double dealings and dissimulation … All that can be expected from a man of principle and true honour I am ready to comply with, and you have, I know, too much of both to require more of me’. A similar letter was sent to Bolingbroke.36

  James also wrote to his sister, for, as he remarked to one supporter, his greatest hope now lay in her friendship, ‘in which he could hardly doubt’. Making no mention of his Catholicism, he informed her she could not expect her kingdom to be stable ‘as long as the true heir is excluded and a foreigner named successor’. ‘Your own good nature, the memory of the King our dearest father … your own honour and the preservation of our family … do I know sufficiently induce you to do what all good men expect from you … I know your sentiments towards me are such as I could wish’.37

  When James’s letters arrived in England, both Oxford and Bolingbroke made plain their displeasure. Iberville reported that Bolingbroke’s attitude towards James was now that of ‘a scorned lover towards an unkind mistress’, and the Secretary told him that if the Pretender remained a Catholic, the Grand Turk would have more chance of becoming King. Oxford likewise informed Gaultier that James was making it impossible for him to help him. He agreed to try and find the right moment to hand James’s letter to the Queen, though he said she would not receive it favourably as it did not contain a promise to convert.38 In the event he did not give it to her, having probably never had any intention of doing so.

  The Pretender himself began to think that all along Oxford’s only intention had been ‘to amuse me’, and the Duke of Berwick advocated sounding out the Duke of Ormonde to see if he would be more helpful. When approached by Jacobite agents, Ormonde did prove friendly but, as Berwick lamented, ‘he enters not into any particulars how he will render … service’. The fact was that the Jacobite court had relied far too much on Oxford, and were now at a loss as to how to proceed. As one former adviser of James remarked bitterly in June 1714, they had ‘flattered themselves that this Treasurer … had designs to serve the King, that his sister loved him … and the King my master neglected all other methods … And here we are, lost without resource!’39

  Although Bolingbroke was aware that it was unrealistic to think in terms of making James the Queen’s heir, he was determined to obtain the support of the Jacobite wing of the Tory party, and therefore posed to them as the Pretender’s champion. ‘In his private cabals’ with them he ‘gave hints and innuendoes that the King’s restoration was much at his heart … frequently diverting himself and others with jests and comical stories concerning the Elector of Hanover and his family’. When Jacobite sympathisers in the Commons warned him they could not go on supporting the administration u
nless there was ‘something to purpose … quickly done’, Bolingbroke replied that ‘the whole blame lay upon my Lord Oxford’.40

  Bolingbroke also sought to weaken Whig dominance of the army, and to this end he secured Cabinet agreement on 14 March that the Duke of Argyll and Lord Stair should be forced to sell their regiments. Since it was thought a more intensive purge was planned, there was alarm not just in Whig circles but among Hanoverian Tories that the intention was to fill the army with Jacobites, paving the way for the Pretender’s return. Probably, however, all Bolingbroke aimed for was to place the Tories in such a strong position that it would be impossible for George Ludwig to govern without their support when he came to the throne. As the Secretary explained to Oxford, he wanted ‘effectual measures taken to put those of our friends who may outlive the Queen beyond the reach of Whig resentment’, ensuring that the party became ‘too considerable not to make our terms in all events which might happen’.41

  The Queen agreed to Argyll and Stair’s dismissal, possibly because she had been angered to hear of Whig army officers’ unconcealed delight when she had fallen ill at Christmas. Oxford, however, was far from happy about the developments. Having lamented to Swift that ‘he found his credit wholly at an end’, Oxford once again contemplated ‘quitting the stage’, so as to ‘make the residue of his life easier to himself’.42