Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (71 page)

Abigail was diligent about conveying Harley’s sentiments to the Queen, even though she had to proceed with care, as Anne clearly had qualms about encouraging these confidences. In August 1709 Abigail told Harley that she intended to read a recent letter of his to the Queen, who was in need of ‘such good instructions’. She nevertheless cautioned him that when he next wrote he must be wary of dwelling on a certain topic, as the Queen would be nervous ‘of being examined about it, so I dare answer she would much rather know nothing of the matter’. The following month another communication arrived from Harley, and Abigail passed on its contents to Anne. She received it in silence, so that Abigail had to admit, ‘I can’t tell you what use my friend has made of the advice was given her in your letter but she heard it over and over’. Nevertheless, although it was somewhat disappointing that Anne ‘keeps
me in ignorance and is very reserved, does not care to tell me anything’, Abigail could console herself that she had at least managed to deliver her message. There were times, however, when she chose the wrong moment to try and engage the Queen’s attention. On one occasion, late at night she sought to discuss ‘the main point in hand’ with Anne, only to be cut short. She subsequently regretfully reported to Harley, ‘Whenever I said anything relating to business she answered, “Pray go, for if you begin to talk I shall not get to bed in any time”’.
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By putting forward his misconceived request, Marlborough had opened himself to the charge that he nurtured sinister ambitions. Meanwhile, his wife was behaving in a fashion guaranteed to make the Queen yet more disenchanted with her. Her disrespectful attitude towards the Queen was now becoming public knowledge, not least because Sarah scarcely troubled to conceal it. In the autumn of 1709 the Queen would write to Sarah complaining that she looked on her with ‘disdain’, an accusation that the Duchess dismissed as ‘ridiculous’ on the grounds that ‘I never looked upon her at all, but talked always to other people when I waited upon her in public places’. As people became aware that a rift had developed between them, even observers like the envoy in England of the Dutch republic, Saunière de l’Hermitage, who had previously regarded Sarah with approval, grew critical. In September he informed the Grand Pensionary of Holland, ‘The Duchess of Marlborough is still conducting herself in a very extraordinary manner towards the Queen’.
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Sarah was absenting herself from court for long periods, without even bothering to inform the Queen of when she could expect to see her again. In July 1709 l’Hermitage heard that the Queen had recently unburdened herself to a confidante – probably the Duchess of Somerset, one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber – complaining that Sarah was planning to spend a fortnight in the country without having cleared this beforehand with her. The Queen had indicated that Sarah had already given her ample grounds to dismiss her, but she intended to ignore her provocations. Within a month Godolphin had grown concerned at the recent rise in favour of the Duke and Duchess of Somerset, who he feared were capitalising on the effects of Sarah’s behaviour towards the Queen. He warned her that the Duchess of Somerset and ‘her noble prince’ harboured ‘deep designs’, and ‘seldom fail … to set a weight upon’ Sarah’s absences from court. The pair were themselves in constant attendance that summer at Windsor, and the Duke visibly preened himself on ‘being mighty useful and important about the Queen’s person’.
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Although Sarah was somewhat erratic in the performance of her duties, she jealously guarded the privileges that came with her court offices. Earlier in the year, she and the Queen had had a disagreement over a trivial matter to which Sarah had attached absurd significance. At the beginning of the reign, in her capacity of Groom of the Stole, Sarah had appointed Elizabeth Abrahal to be the Queen’s laundress and starcher. Since that time Mrs Abrahal had become friendly with Abigail, and, as Sarah put it, ‘served Mrs Masham when she lay in [to have babies] and could not attend the Queen herself to bring messages to her Majesty and help to carry on her own intrigues’. Mrs Abrahal’s salary had originally been set at £100 a year, but in the spring of 1709 the Queen had raised this by a trifling amount at Abigail’s request. Sarah believed that out of deference for her position, the Queen should have consulted her beforehand, but in fact Anne had not even informed her of her decision. As soon as Sarah learned what had happened she went to the Queen and snarled that ‘Mrs Masham … might better have intermeddled in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s affairs … than in mine’. She insisted Mrs Abrahal’s wage increase contravened court regulations, to which Anne answered she ‘did not think it a wrong thing, nor improper, for Masham to ask or for [her] to grant’.
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Months later, Sarah was still brooding on this, when the Queen affronted her further by making another change in the household. On 27 July Anne wrote to her that, since ‘I would not take anybody into my family in a station under you without first acquainting you with my intentions’, she wanted her to know that she had decided to take on Bella Danvers, the daughter of her long serving dresser Beata Danvers, as an additional Woman of the Bedchamber. She asked that Sarah return to court so that the young woman could be formally presented to kiss the Queen’s hand, although, if Sarah wished to stay away for longer, she would arrange for another Bedchamber Lady to preside at the ceremony. Sarah was infuriated, for while she could not complain that the Queen had failed to notify her, she considered that it was her prerogative to award posts in the Bedchamber. She wrote the Queen a sarcastic letter in which, as well as taking a passing swipe at Abigail’s ‘falseness and ingratitude’ she expressed surprise that Anne had done her the courtesy of informing her, ‘considering how great a mortification I had lately received in a stronger instance of that kind’. Nevertheless she promised to come to court the following Sunday for Bella Danvers’s presentation.
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On the appointed day the Queen did her best to make things pleasant, and ‘put on a great smile’ when Sarah entered, convincing others in
attendance that she was genuinely pleased to see her. The Duchess, however, was not prepared to pass over the insult to her position in silence. When they were alone together she complained to Anne that she was ‘not used as others are of my rank’, and protested at the Queen’s failure to seek her recommendation before taking on another Bedchamber Woman. The Queen found it easier to address her complaints in a letter that Sarah complained was written in so harsh a style that ‘if I had not been so well acquainted with the hand I should not have believed it possible to have come from you’. To her astonishment Sarah read that in the Queen’s opinion, ‘Nobody thinks me ill used but myself’, and that Anne had resolved from henceforth to treat her ‘no otherwise than as Groom of [the] Stole and the Duke of Marlborough’s wife’.
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As one contemporary put it, ‘the more averse the Queen grew to the Duchess of Marlborough, so much the more desirous she was … to put an end to the war’. While this was somewhat simplistic, the failure of peace negotiations that had started in the spring of 1709 not only came as a great disappointment to the Queen, but served to lower the Duke of Marlborough in her estimation. Seven years of fighting had left the nation profoundly war-weary. It would later be claimed that the Queen’s mindfulness of the human cost of war made her ‘melancholy in the midst of triumphs’ and that ‘the lists of the slain and wounded were seldom laid before her but her eyes swum with tears’. With the army needing additional men every year, recruitment was posing more of a problem. As early as 1706 there had been riots in Abergavenny sparked by the activities of recruitment officers, and a desperate Gloucestershire man ‘rather than serve his Queen and country, … cut the great sinews of his legs above the heels’.
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Even a Parliament so well disposed to the war as that elected in 1708 was not prepared to pass the more stringent recruiting act that Marlborough had wanted in 1709; the one currently in force, permitting anyone unemployed to be drafted into the army, was unpopular enough.

The economic cost of war was also prohibitive. In 1709 additional finance was raised when Parliament extended the Bank of England’s charter and allowed it to double its capital by raising money by public subscription. The Bank then circulated £250,000 in exchequer bills (effectively, banknotes) but though in this way liquidity was maintained, paying for the war looked increasingly problematic.

The early months of 1709 had been notable for freezing weather, and this had caused domestic hardship. The temperatures in France had
been even colder, leaving much of the populace famished, but though England had not been so badly affected, the price of corn still rose sharply. In times of scarcity, the government’s policy of permitting needy Protestant refugees from the Palatinate to settle in England was deeply unpopular, as they had to be supported by charity and were feared as carriers of disease. All this contributed to the sense that the nation was grievously overburdened, and that it could not sustain the war much longer.
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There was a strong feeling among country gentlemen that although soldiers and financiers had done well out of the war, ‘the burthen of this charge has lain upon the landed interest during the whole time’, impoverishing those who ‘neither served in the fleets nor armies, nor meddled in the public funds’. Swift would later exhort his readers, ‘Let any man observe the equipages [horse-drawn coaches] in this town: he shall find the greater number of those who make a figure to be … either generals and colonels or [those] whose whole fortunes lie in funds and stocks’. Since the Whigs had forged strong links with ‘the monied men [that] are so fond of war’, and the majority of army officers were Whig supporters, it could be argued that they were ‘the party that is founded upon war’. Not only had it brought them prosperity, but they had reaped political dividends, and the Tories suspected that because their opponents feared they would lose power during the ‘slippery state of peace’, they had little interest in ending the war.
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It also did not escape hard-pressed Tories that it was the Marlborough family who had been most enriched by years of conflict.

For the French the burden of war had become so oppressive that by early 1709 they were ready to discuss peace. Louis XIV hoped that the allies could be prevailed upon to agree that his grandson Philip would be given Naples and Sicily in return for renouncing the throne of Spain, but in March the British Parliament passed a resolution reiterating that the Bourbons must not be permitted to retain any Spanish territory. It also stipulated that the French must acknowledge Anne as Queen, recognise the Protestant succession and expel the Pretender from France. Marlborough and the Whig Lord Townshend were sent to The Hague to draw up preliminary articles of peace that the French would have to accept in their entirety.

The terms presented to France were very harsh in many respects, but the greatest difficulty arose when Philip V indicated that he would not give up his crown at his grandfather’s behest. This meant that the allies would have to expel him from his kingdom by force, and they were
reluctant to let France enjoy the benefits of peace while they remained at war with Spain. The French were therefore informed that they must send an army to Spain to help the allies evict Philip V from his kingdom. Failure to do this would lead to France itself being invaded by the allies.

In Britain some people felt it was a ‘cruel hardship … on the French king, to force him into such an unnatural war’. However, when the proposals were discussed in Cabinet, only Lord Cowper expressed scepticism, and Godolphin ‘perfectly chid’ him for it. The Duke of Marlborough acknowledged that the terms were tough but told his wife ‘I do verily believe the condition of France is such that they must submit’. This was the prevailing view in Britain, where ‘all people looked upon the peace to be as good as made’.
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But though the French were willing to recognise Anne, and undertook to ask the Pretender to leave their country as if of his own volition, article 37, committing the country to war with Spain, remained a sticking point.

Marlborough was anxious that a solution be found, but did not insist on this forcefully enough to convince his Cabinet colleagues that compromise was desirable. Godolphin read the Queen a letter from the Duke in which he wrote that it was not in the power of Louis XIV to force his grandson and his Spanish subjects to accept the preliminary articles but, once again, Marlborough failed to press this to the logical conclusion. When the Junto ministers sent ‘positive orders’ to Townshend not to deviate from his original instructions, Marlborough was aware this amounted to ‘declaring the continuation of the war’, but accepted it in fatalistic spirit.
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In August the peace negotiations with France completely broke down, but the Whigs were unperturbed, saying cheerfully that now it would be possible to defeat the French completely and force them to accept still more stringent peace terms. They then pursued the policy of signing a treaty with Holland that bound it closer to Great Britain for the duration of the war. To achieve this they not only agreed that the Dutch should be protected by a very extensive fortress barrier when peace came, but renounced trading advantages with Spain that the government had earlier secretly secured from Charles III. Holland did promise to provide armed support in the event of the Hanoverian succession coming under threat from Jacobites, but although the Whigs placed a great premium on this, the guarantee was dearly bought. Realising that the agreement represented a very bad bargain for Britain, Marlborough obtained permission not to sign it himself. The Whigs themselves were conscious it would not be well received in Britain, and therefore, when the so-called
Barrier Treaty with Holland was formally concluded in October 1709, not only were its clauses not publicised, but its very existence was kept secret.