Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (74 page)

The real reason why Marlborough reacted so violently was his detestation of the Hill family, but he justified his stance by arguing that unless
he retained complete control of army patronage, it would undermine his authority as a commander. Yet when he informed the Queen that he would regard it as an intolerable affront if Hill was given the regiment, she merely told him coldly, ‘He would do well to advise with his friends’. Marlborough stormed from her presence ‘with tears in his eyes’.
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Over the next few days Godolphin begged the Queen to relent, but when he met with an equal lack of success, Marlborough resolved to take a firm stand. He was supposed to attend a Cabinet meeting on the evening of Sunday 15 January, but earlier that day he withdrew with Sarah to the Ranger’s Lodge at Windsor, without having taken leave of the Queen. Instead of showing dismay, Anne presided over the Cabinet meeting as though nothing was wrong, and ‘did not ask where [Marlborough] was nor so much as take the least notice of his absence’.
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When she saw Godolphin the following day she likewise made no mention of the Duke.

Marlborough counted on his ministerial colleagues rallying to him as they had in February 1708, and initially it seemed they would not disappoint him. They held a meeting on 16 January and, according to Arthur Maynwaring, ‘unanimously agreed they would support [Marlborough] to the utmost’. However, divisions soon appeared in this united front. Later that day Lord Cowper and Lord Somers had separate audiences to warn the Queen that they understood why Marlborough was so concerned, only to be told that his fears were groundless. Alluding to Abigail, Anne assured Cowper that ‘the person she perceived was meant’ by Marlborough when he complained of undue influence, ‘did really and truly meddle with no business’. This was not strictly true, but Cowper was sufficiently impressed to urge Marlborough to return to London. When Somers represented to her that Marlborough’s main worry was that the Queen listened to ‘persons who endeavour to do him ill offices with your Majesty’, Anne was adamant that no one would dare attempt such a thing, ‘because if they did their malice would recoil on themselves’.
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Godolphin too believed that Marlborough should come back to town, but at Windsor the Duke was busy drawing up an ultimatum. He drafted a letter to Anne stating that Mrs Masham’s ‘pretensions to prefer the officers in the army … will make it impossible to have success the next campaign. Her behaviour to me and mine has been such … that I hope your Majesty will be pleased to dismiss her or myself’. He sent copies to Godolphin and Cowper, but they did not pass it on to their colleagues or offer their approval. On 19 January the Lord Treasurer did try once more to show the Queen the ‘ruinous consequences’ of upsetting
Marlborough but she merely made him a silent bow, convincing him that all parties were set on ‘coming to extremities’.
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As it became clear that the ministers would not offer him their unqualified support, Marlborough wavered. Although his wife and son-in-law, Sunderland, were urging him to stand firm, on 20 January he slightly toned down his letter to the Queen, so that it no longer explicitly demanded Abigail’s dismissal. Instead, after expressing bitterness that ‘all I have done … has not been able to protect me against the malice of a Bedchamber Woman’, he asked Anne’s permission to retire.
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On the same day Marlborough wrote this latest letter, the Queen had received another visit from Godolphin. She told him that as a result of her conversation with Somers, she had decided against giving the late Lord Essex’s regiment to Jack Hill. She asked him to inform Marlborough, and when he suggested it would be more appropriate for her to convey the news herself by letter, she declined to do so, saying that she would discuss the matter with Marlborough once he came to see her.

The following morning Anne again met with the Lord Treasurer, having by now received Marlborough’s letter. She showed it to Godolphin, who implored her to respond as soon as possible. She remained reluctant, thinking it preferable to wait and see how Marlborough reacted to her change of heart about the regiment, but Godolphin finally prevailed on her to write. When forwarding this letter to the Duke, Godolphin told him that while its opening was ‘a little dry … the latter part makes it impossible for you to resist coming to town without giving your enemies the greatest advantage imaginable against you’.
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Even after hearing from the Queen, Marlborough remained unwilling to leave his self-imposed exile. Sarah was desperate for him to stay where he was, believing it would be ‘the most ridiculous thing’ for him to return unless Abigail was dismissed, and that her husband would ‘make a strange figure’.
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Nevertheless, after most of Marlborough’s ministerial colleagues joined together on 22 January and urged his return, the Duke finally agreed to come back to London.

However, he had not yet abandoned hope of pressuring the Queen into removing Abigail. Lord Somers now alerted the Queen that it was being proposed that a parliamentary address should be presented to her, demanding that she dismiss Mrs Masham. How far this had been encouraged by Marlborough is difficult to assess. He himself later protested to Anne that ‘it never entered into his thoughts to stir up Parliament to prescribe to her what servants she should keep about her person’, and Sarah – somewhat disingenuously – also swore to her that
‘neither Lord Marlborough nor I ever desired any such thing’. Yet when Maynwaring had told Sarah on Marlborough’s leaving London that he looked forward to the matter being raised in Parliament, she had not appeared against the idea, and nor did she voice dismay on learning that Sunderland was ‘for pushing this matter’. It may be that Marlborough only abandoned the idea after sounding out his colleagues, and discovering that many of them were vehemently opposed.
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The Marlboroughs had better reason than anybody to know that nothing was guaranteed to make the Queen more savage than such a proceeding. They should have remembered that Anne’s fury when William and Mary had sought to force her to dismiss Lady Marlborough in 1692 had been inspired not just by her love for Sarah, but by her determination to order her own household affairs. The Queen had reaffirmed this principle in October 1702 after she had dismissed the Bishop of Worcester as her almoner because he had engaged in aggressive electioneering on behalf of the Whigs. When some Whig Lords had lodged a protest, she declared firmly that ‘she ‘looked upon it as her undoubted right to continue or displace any servant attending upon her own person when she should think it proper’.
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Now the Queen sprang into action to protect her privileges. Having sent Vice Chamberlain Coke ‘to tell all her friends in the House of Commons … that any such address would be very disagreeable to her’, she followed this up by summoning numerous members of both Houses to individual audiences. ‘Speaking personally … with tears in her eyes’, she ‘earnestly pressed them one by one in her closet’, begging them not to ‘consent to a motion to deprive her of the liberty allowed to the meanest housekeeper in her dominions, viz, that of choosing her own domestic servants’. When she ‘declared with great spirit and courage … that she should take it as an indignity to herself’, almost all of them hastened to ‘assure her of their detesting any such proceeding’ for, as one MP remarked, it was ‘impossible for any man of sense, honour or honesty to come into an address to remove a dresser from the Queen … only to gratify my Lady Marlborough’s passions’.
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Whig peers such as Somers and Cowper were among those who promised that she could count on them, and the Duke of Somerset assured her personally that ‘he would stand by her with his life and fortune, even against her insolent general’. But the Queen was also touched by the support offered by Tories, for once her predicament became known ‘the backstairs were very crowded for two or three days’ with people from whom she had long been distant. ‘The Queen took it
extremely kind’ when her uncle, the Earl of Rochester, declared his abhorrence of the proposed address. Other ‘known enemies of the Revolution’ (as Sarah put it) such as the Dukes of Buckingham and Leeds – ‘even such idiots as the Duke of Beaufort’ – proved equally keen to affirm their loyalty. According to Sarah, ‘This gave such a life to the Jacobite interest that many who had never come to court in some years did now run about with very busy faces’. Certainly the Queen felt a lasting sense of obligation to those who came to her rescue at this time, and four months later remained mindful of being ‘engaged in promises to several people upon that occasion’.
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Had Anne not succeeded in blocking the address, and a majority in both Houses had voted for it, she had no intention of submitting tamely. The States General’s envoy to Britain heard that if the address about Abigail had been presented, she had resolved to answer ‘that she would always very willingly comply with Parliament in all matters that concerned the public welfare, but that she would not let them prescribe anything regarding her domestic affairs’. Four months later the same source stated that the Queen felt so strongly about her right to retain Mrs Masham that she would ‘rather hazard her crown than dismiss her’. Fortunately it did not come to that. The address was due to have been moved in Parliament on 23 January, but in the event nothing was heard of it. The diplomat l’Hermitage heard that it was dropped because the Duke of Marlborough ‘wrote to his friends to stand in its way’ but, if so, many people believed the matter was not pursued only because ‘’twas not thought a proper time to move what they were not sure of carrying’.
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Marlborough was received by the Queen on the morning of 24 January, having come back to town the previous evening. Sarah related that Anne ‘made him great expressions of kindness, more than she had ever done before’, undertaking to ‘show him that it was in nobody’s power to make impressions … to his disadvantage’. The Duke lamented that the notion of him bearing any responsibility for the address proposal was ‘a fresh instance of his enemies imposing falsities on her’, and the Queen let it be understood that she attached no blame to him. In reality, however, she could not truly forgive those who had subjected her to this unpleasant experience. As one courtier sagely observed, ‘People may say … that all is made up and well again, but such breaches between great people are seldom or never so’. The episode had not only made the Queen resentful towards the Marlboroughs, but had opened up a breach in Whig ranks, exposing the ministry’s lack of cohesion.
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The Duke was eager to escape from the scene of his humiliation and so, when news came that Louis XIV wanted to renew peace talks, he took the opportunity to go abroad earlier in the year than usual. Declaring that his presence on the Continent was necessary both to formulate peace terms and to prepare for next year’s campaign, Parliament requested the Queen to authorise his departure. Godolphin drew up on her behalf a most effusive response, in which Anne praised Marlborough as ‘God Almighty’s chief instrument of my glory and my people’s happiness’. However, the Queen demanded that the wording was modified. Godolphin ‘argued it with her and … so far got the better … as to have the speech tolerable and to do no hurt’, with the result that on 20 February the Queen delivered the tepid announcement to the House of Lords that she was ‘very glad … you concur with me in a just sense of the Duke of Marlborough’s eminent services’.
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Before leaving London, Marlborough discussed Sarah’s position with the Queen. By then it was public knowledge that the Queen was on appalling terms with her Mistress of the Robes, having reportedly declared to more than one person ‘she has been so slighted by the Duchess of Marlborough that she can’t endure the sight of her’. Sarah herself would have been happy to retire provided that her places were bestowed on her daughters, but her husband knew that he ‘must … make ’em think abroad all was well again between him and the Queen’, and if Sarah left office ‘it would be a great contradiction to all that’. He therefore explained to Anne that he wanted Sarah to retain her posts for the time being, but that he hoped the Queen would permit her to remain in the country rather than performing her duties. Anne readily agreed that Sarah ‘might be where she herself pleased’ and ‘the Duke came from her well satisfied’. The Queen too felt the encounter had gone well, for she understood that Marlborough had absolved her of her promise to confer Sarah’s offices upon her daughters when the Duchess did resign. It soon emerged, however, that Sarah still expected the Queen to honour her undertaking, as became clear when the Duchess saw Anne on 18 February. Sarah remarked that she was glad that her daughters would succeed to her places before too long, ‘to which the Queen answered very roughly that she thought she should have been troubled no more about that’. The Duchess then reminded her that Anne had already agreed that her daughters could succeed her, and was aghast to gather that the Queen ‘looked upon her promise as nothing’.
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On 27 February 1710 the trial of Dr Sacheverell began. In the weeks before his impeachment public feeling had become dangerously inflamed, for the decision to prosecute had ‘revived those disputes which had laid buried for fifteen years and upward’. A foreign diplomat reported that ‘the fermentation is so great’ that the legitimacy of the Revolution was now regularly debated, causing such bitterness that at Christmas 1709 ‘all freedom of conversation was banished and instead of it disputes and quarrels … succeeded, amongst the most intimate acquaintance and nearest relations’. Although Sacheverell had been given bail on 14 January, his supporters still depicted him as a martyr, and his case so polarised political opinion that one young lady commented in disgust, ‘This damned priest has made all people declare themselves of some party’.
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