Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (64 page)

On the evening of 9 February Anne informed Marlborough that she would remove Harley. ‘She shed tears in private, as some at court then affirmed’, and when she received the Secretary’s seals, two days later, it was with a manifestly ‘heavy heart’. On 12 February the outlook for her became grimmer still, for though Marlborough and Godolphin had wanted ‘to cut Harley singly’ from the government, some of his Tory associates followed him voluntarily into the wilderness. They included the Secretary at War, Henry St John, and Attorney General Harcourt, who gave out that they could not remain in a ministry whose complexion was bound to be different from what they had been led to expect. Thus, far from bringing more Tories into power as she had hoped, the Queen had lost several formerly in office, and it now looked all too likely that Marlborough and Godolphin would press her ‘to join entirely with
the Whigs’. Her dream of forming a moderate coalition government was left in tatters, and although Harley and those who went with him promised that ‘a time will come to deliver the poor Queen, as they style her, out of bondage’, for the moment her freedom of action appeared more circumscribed than ever.
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Anne had been forced to submit, ‘and yet matters were not made easy at court’. ‘The Queen seemed to carry a deep resentment of [Marlborough’s] and the Lord Godolphin’s behaviour; and though they went on with her business, they found they had not her confidence’. For Anne the episode had resulted in humiliation as her lack of judgement was cruelly exposed. The previous September, Sarah had warned her that Harley had ‘not reputation enough to carry on your business for two months’, but this had turned out to be excessively generous, as he had not been able to sustain himself for two days. Congratulating the Duchess on ‘the late victory’, the Whig Mrs Burnet remarked that ‘the Queen’s character … cannot but suffer in this preposterous struggle’, while in an anonymous letter to Anne (probably never sent) Sarah would allege, ‘Scarce was a company in town that could keep their tongues within the bounds of duty’. In coming months the Duchess lost no opportunity to remind Anne of the criticism she had brought upon herself, telling her in July 1708 ‘the wound that this gave … will never be eased … nor will the reflections cease that are still made upon it … and many there are that do it every day’. ‘Never anybody was so much exposed as you were in all that proceeding’, Sarah informed her on another occasion. The Duchess was not alone in claiming that people were so disillusioned by the Queen’s behaviour that it became ‘the common sentiment and saying of many honest men of both parties’ that Salic Law, prohibiting women from wearing the crown, should be introduced. To add to the Queen’s woes, the part played by Mrs Masham in the imbroglio was the subject of ‘common talk’, so that her very presence in the royal household began to be considered controversial. Suffering so badly from the gout that on 13 February she had to grant a commission under the Great Seal, authorising the royal assent to parliamentary bills to be given in her absence, the Queen was indeed in a lamentable state.
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10

Passions Between Women

Days after Harley’s dismissal, events occurred that made these domestic upheavals seem as immaterial as if they had ‘happened in Queen Elizabeth’s day’. On 17 February 1708 intelligence arrived indicating that the French were making warlike preparations at Dunkirk. Admiral Sir George Byng was immediately ordered to blockade the port. Things looked more ominous when news came that Anne’s half brother had arrived at Dunkirk, and on 2 March Joseph Addison reported, ‘We no longer doubt of a design upon Scotland and the Pretender being at the head of it’.
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The British had a few days’ respite when the French embarkation was delayed because James Francis Edward had caught measles but, worryingly, adverse winds prevented Byng from keeping up his blockade. This meant that once the Pretender had recovered, a French fleet with 5,000 troops on board was able to slip out of harbour unnoticed on 6 March and make for Scotland. It was not until 11 March that the Queen came to Parliament to announce that the Pretender was on his way. He had already issued a proclamation declaring that he intended to dethrone the usurper currently wearing the crown, and had given out that he was coming in response to an invitation issued from Scotland.

There was some truth in this last claim. In the spring of 1707 the French agent Nathaniel Hooke had again visited Scotland to sound out Jacobite opinion. He had returned to France bearing a memorial signed by the Earl of Erroll and ten others, stating that if the Pretender came to Scotland accompanied by French troops, they would join with him and invade England, where they would rally an army of 30,000. Other Scots peers sent separate letters indicating their approval, persuading Louis XIV to believe that an expedition sent to Scotland would yield good results. He calculated that at the very least, the British war effort on the Continent would suffer from having to divert troops to deal with the invasion, but ideally he hoped for nothing less than James’s restoration. When the young man had taken his leave before going to Dunkirk, the Grand Monarch had informed him, ‘I hope never to see you again’.
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The situation was certainly dangerous, for the Union was so unpopular in Scotland that a landing by James was likely to attract widespread support. How the Scots would have fared if they had subsequently invaded England is open to question, as no evidence survives to suggest they had established links with Jacobites in the south. This did not prevent the Whigs from putting about baseless charges that Harley was in league with France, and that he had deliberately attempted to cripple the government to prevent it from resisting the invasion.
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The Whigs also took care to discredit the Tories by making much of their supposed sympathy for Jacobitism. Although no Tory was ever proved to have had foreknowledge of the invasion, their standing in the country plummeted.

Having been alerted before dawn on 11 March, Marlborough and Godolphin had rushed to Kensington Palace at five in the morning, and a Cabinet meeting had been immediately convened, the first of several presided over by the Queen that day. A few hours later Lady Hervey reported, ‘The whole town is in an uproar’, and to John Vanbrugh’s eyes, ‘People seemed a good deal disordered’. In the City there was something close to panic: Lady Hervey quavered, ‘they are all mightily cast down there and all the funds and stocks mightily fallen, and the goldsmiths already refuse to pay gold’. A run on the Bank was only averted after Marlborough, Godolphin, and the Queen herself deposited large sums to inspire confidence.
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According to Bishop Burnet ‘the Queen seemed much alarmed’ while the danger lasted. The recent political turmoil had already caused her great distress, and coping with this new and unexpected crisis meant she ‘could scarcely take any rest’. On 12 March she held a Drawing Room as usual, but the strain on her was visible. Lady Hervey confided to a relative, ‘I … thought her Majesty looked a good deal out of humour; however she was very gracious to me’.
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The government did what it could to repel the threat. On 6 March the Queen had issued a proclamation denouncing the Pretender and his supporters as rebels and traitors. Arrangements were made to transport troops from Ostend to Scotland, and soldiers in England were ordered to march north. However, they only set out on 15 March, and so, if things had gone differently, they would not have arrived in time to prevent the French gaining a foothold. In Scotland itself there was an army of only 1,500 men, and their loyalty was uncertain. Their commander Lord Leven lamented he had ‘not one farthing of money to provide provision’, and that, since he had ‘few troops, and those almost naked’, he would have to retire across the border to Berwick if the French landed.
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It was fortunate for the English that the ill luck that started with the Pretender’s attack of measles continued to dog the Jacobites. The Comte de Forbin had been given command of the French fleet, but from the start he was unenthusiastic about the venture. He was so ill disposed towards the Jacobites accompanying the Pretender that when they were seasick on encountering stormy weather, Forbin noted ‘it pleased me to see them so unwell’.
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A navigational error led the French to overshoot the Firth of Forth, and in this way Forbin squandered the head start he had initially gained over Byng’s pursuing fleet. It was 12 March before his ships entered the Firth, and when they made signals in the hope of being welcomed by Jacobite forces awaiting their arrival, they received no response. Possibly this was because James’s Scottish supporters had expected the French to try and land on the opposite bank. At this point Byng’s fleet sailed into the mouth of the Firth, and since his own ships were outnumbered, Forbin decided not to risk being trapped there by the enemy. Ignoring the Pretender’s pleas to be set ashore, he managed to sail out of the Firth under cover of darkness and then headed north.

Byng’s fleet chased after the French and managed to capture one of their ships, taking prisoner an elderly British Jacobite, Lord Griffin, and two sons of James’s adviser, Lord Middleton. At one point it was thought that one of the young men was the Pretender himself, and if this had proved true Anne would have faced an agonising dilemma. Fortunately it soon emerged she would not have to decide how to proceed against her brother. The remaining vessels in the invasion fleet eluded their pursuers, whereupon the French ‘went sneakingly home’, having done ‘much harm’ to James’s cause.
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It was not until 16 March that word reached London that Byng had sighted his enemy in the Firth, and John Vanbrugh observed that these tidings ‘gave very sudden change to people’s faces. I’m sure the news of the Battle of Blenheim was not received with more joy’. Public stocks promptly went up, after falling ‘very considerably’, but the suspense continued for some time. On 18 March it was reported ‘We expect every moment to know whether we beat or are beaten … We seem to be a little in pain’. Within ten days, however, it was clear that the emergency was over.
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Despite the severity of the scare, the retribution enacted was extraordinarily mild. When the prisoners taken on the captured French ship were brought to London, ‘the people were with much ado restrained from outraging them as they passed the streets’ to the Tower, but once lodged safely there, no harm came to them. Lord Middleton’s sons were
not even tried, and although Lord Griffin was sentenced to death, in the end he too was spared. Convinced that sentence would be carried out, Griffin’s family purchased a particularly sharp axe with which the headsman could practise decapitating animals, but their precautions proved unnecessary. The day before Griffin was scheduled to die, his fate was debated at a Cabinet meeting that went on until one in the morning and, by a majority of just two votes, he was reprieved. Marlborough was informed ‘The Queen cannot bring herself to let him suffer, whom she says she has known so long’. Next morning the crowd that had gathered on Tower Hill to watch the execution ‘murmured loudly’ on hearing they were to be cheated of the spectacle, and Lord Sunderland too was enraged at the Queen’s clemency, but Griffin remained a prisoner until he died of natural causes in the Tower.
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Several Scots peers, including the Duke of Hamilton, were also put in the Tower on suspicion of having encouraged the invasion. However, nothing was proved against them, and all were freed within weeks. In Scotland, a few gentlemen who had gathered together under arms in readiness for the Pretender’s arrival were tried for treason, but escaped unpunished after verdicts of Not Proven were returned. Frustrated that the Scottish legal system had made it impossible to secure convictions, the government would subsequently modify Scotland’s treason law, thereby making the Scots resent the Union still more.

The attempted invasion had undoubtedly given the Queen a great shock. Bishop Burnet claimed she now ‘saw with what falsehoods she had been abused by those who pretended to assure her there was not a Jacobite in the nation’, and in her speech dissolving Parliament on 1 April, she acknowledged the existence of an internal threat. She stated that she did not doubt that some of her subjects had given the French ‘false representations of the true inclinations and interests of my people … since without something of that nature’ it was unlikely the enemy would have risked ‘so vain and ill grounded an undertaking’. Having been disabused of the cosy notion that her brother would refrain from staking his claim to the throne in her lifetime, Anne also referred to him in much harsher terms than ever before, describing him as ‘a Popish Pretender, bred up in the principles of the most arbitrary government’.
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