Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (83 page)

When the Dutch were informed of France’s overtures, they were unenthusiastic. They pointed out that the offers were ‘very dark and general’, and needed clarification.
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Undeterred, Harley resolved to take matters further without reference to Holland.

In late April Harley returned to work to address the nation’s finances. He had already raised sums through lotteries and had come to an arrangement with the Bank of England regarding the cashing of exchequer bills, but the country remained in dire financial straits. Swift had remarked in March, ‘This kingdom is certainly ruined as much as was ever any bankrupt merchant. We must have peace’.
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On 2 May Harley introduced in the Commons the South Sea Bill, intended to deal with the problem of
unfunded debt, amounting to well over £9 million. The measure provided that State creditors would exchange their debts for shares in the newly created South Sea Company, set up to trade with Spanish America. The government set aside sufficient sums to pay shareholders a guaranteed interest rate of 6 per cent until 1716, after which time it was assumed that the riches from South Sea trade would bring handsome dividends. To achieve such profits, however, it would be necessary to secure the company the monopoly of supplying slaves to South America. This could only be done by negotiating a peace agreement with France and Spain that awarded particular advantages to Britain at Holland’s expense.

The passage of the South Sea Act staved off an immediate debt crisis, but could not solve the underlying problem that the nation was massively overstretched. Cashflow remained so precarious that Harley had difficulty finding the money to pay the Queen’s employees. The salaries of royal servants such as Anne’s racing manager, Governor Frampton, Sir David Hamilton and the maids of honour fell into arrears, causing the Queen considerable vexation.

The Queen’s uncle the Earl of Rochester died suddenly on 2 May. Towards the end of his life, his character had become milder, and he had helped Harley by reining in the October Club’s excesses. In recent months he was known to be ‘more in the Queen’s confidence than he had ever been’ and she was described as ‘very upset at his death’. Harley may have flirted with the thought of pleasing the High Tories by making the Earl of Nottingham Lord President in Rochester’s place but, since Nottingham remained ‘disagreeable personally to the Queen’, this was impossible.
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Instead the Duke of Buckingham succeeded Rochester as Lord President.

On 23 May the Queen honoured Robert Harley with the title Earl of Oxford, and six days later he was named Lord Treasurer. Yet, as St John remarked with distinct satisfaction, he remained ‘on slippery ground’. In some ways his removal from the Lower House weakened him, for whereas his Commons management skills were fabled, he was ignorant of Lords procedure. Furthermore, although the Tories had been willing to make allowances after the stabbing, they were unwilling to wait much longer for what they wanted. Swift recalled that the party ‘commonly understood and expected that when the session [of Parliament] ended, a general removal would be made, but it happened otherwise, for few or none were turned out’. According to Swift, the new Earl of Oxford gallantly protected Anne from blame, thinking ‘it became him to take the
burthen of reproach upon himself rather than lay it upon the Queen his mistress’. Just how obstinate she could be upon such matters is shown by a letter she sent Oxford in October. Curiously enough, it was prompted by a complaint from Abigail Masham that her father-in-law, a moderate Whig, was ‘grieved’ that a friend of his was about to be sacked from the victualling department. Declaring it ‘very hard if a man who is honest and harmless’ should be removed ‘to gratify other people’ Anne declared firmly, ‘I will have Mr Bear continue in the same office, let there be never so much fault found with it’.
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In October 1710 Harley informed Anne, ‘There is one weak place where the [Whig] enemy may attack and that is the affair of the House of Hanover; but that must be left to the Queen’s great wisdom to consider how to prevent it’. In hopes of soothing fears that she had any Jacobite leanings, when Parliament adjourned on 12 June the Queen declared in her speech ‘It is needless for me to repeat the assurances of my earnest concern for the succession in the House of Hanover’. Not everyone was reassured. In late 1710, Defoe had reported in alarm that Jacobites in Scotland were announcing that Anne intended to restore her half brother, which partly explains why Bishop Burnet had felt impelled to tackle her the following March on ‘the growth of the Pretender’s interest’. To the Queen, such worries were inexplicable, and she was apt to dismiss them with some impatience. On being told by Hamilton in November 1711 that ‘the great fear of people was the Prince of Wales, she said “There was none”’. When the Marquis of Carmarthen was denounced by his paramour Mrs Crisp for having declared in pillow talk that he planned ‘to go to bring over the Prince of Wales’, the Queen saw no cause for alarm, pointing out briskly, ‘It was spoke when he was drunk and in the night to his mistress’.
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At Saint-Germain it was an article of faith that Anne was sympathetic to their cause, without there being much reason to think so. Obviously the messages sent to France by Lord Jersey encouraged such beliefs. The exiles’ hopes were raised further when a Jacobite supporter named Charles Leslie travelled to France in April 1711 and reported, ‘It is generally thought that the Princess of Denmark is favourably inclined towards the King her brother’. He was sure ‘she would choose rather to have him for her successor than the Prince of Hanover’ but the only evidence he advanced was that when the Duke of Leeds had ‘endeavoured to sound her’ on the possibility of her brother succeeding her, the Queen had ignored him. ‘Though she never chose to explain herself
upon this point she says nothing against him [the Pretender]’ Leslie ended lamely.
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There is in fact no reason to think Anne had abandoned the view – expressed to Sarah earlier in the reign – ‘that she was not sure the Prince of Wales was her brother and that it was not practicable for him to come here without ruin to the religion and country’. Swift heard that James Francis Edward’s ‘person and concerns’ aroused nothing but contempt in her, and that ‘at her toilet among her women, when mention happened to be made of the Chevalier, she would frequently let fall’ disparaging remarks.
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Unfortunately the impression that Anne had Jacobite yearnings was encouraged by small acts of unfriendliness towards Hanover. In November 1709 she had accepted an invitation to stand as godmother to the Electoral Prince and Princess’s baby daughter. More than a year later, an English lady living in Hanover was embarrassed to hear from Sophia that the couple were upset at ‘not having received the smallest token from her Majesty’. Having insisted that, at the time, ‘the matter had seemed to give the Queen great pleasure’, the lady had written to Harley urging that a diamond necklace should be sent at once. In fact, almost another year went by before Anne presented the child with a miniature of herself in a diamond-studded frame. To Sophia’s mind the gift was insultingly meagre, the sort of thing one would give an ambassador as a leaving present. She commented ‘It seems to me … despite all the compliments they pay me, that the Queen is more for her brother than for us, which I find very natural’.
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Certainly the gift compared unfavourably with the endowment Anne had conferred in June 1711 on another godchild, Mrs Masham’s two-year-old daughter, who had been made Ranger of St James’s Park, a sinecure worth £800 a year.

Further ill feeling was caused by an incident that occurred in Scotland that summer. At the end of June 1711 the Duchess of Gordon presented the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh with a medal calling for the Pretender’s restoration. It was received gratefully, with one of those present, a lawyer named Dundas, arguing that the Queen would be affronted if they rejected it. At first it seemed that the government would take a grave view of the matter. It was the main topic of discussion at the Cabinet meeting held at Windsor on 30 July, when it was decided that those responsible should be prosecuted. A few days later the issue was re-examined, and deemed less serious. On Sophia’s instructions the Hanoverian Resident Kreienberg then demanded that action was taken. On 14 October, Lord Dartmouth was ordered to write to Scotland that
‘the Queen would have Dundas prosecuted immediately and the Duchess of Gordon as soon’ as evidence could be gathered. Yet nothing happened, and a few days later the Duchess of Gordon was observed enjoying herself in London. Kreienberg assumed she was deliberately ‘mocking the proceedings with which she was threatened’.
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The Pretender decided in May 1711 that the signals coming from England were so encouraging that it was time to ‘break through all reserve’ and contact his half sister. He wrote her a letter saying they must no longer allow the ‘violence and ambition’ of ill-disposed people to keep them apart, telling Anne, ‘The natural affection I bear you, and that the King our father had for you till his last breath’ impelled him to seek ‘perfect union’ with her. He explained that though he could never abandon ‘my own just right … yet I am most desirous rather to owe to you, than to any living, the recovery of it’. The young man continued, ‘The voice of God and nature calls you to it; the promises you made to the King our father enjoin it’. He therefore did not doubt that if ‘guided by your own inclinations you will … prefer your own brother … to the Duchess of Hanover, the remotest relation we have’.
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James sent this draft to Torcy for approval. After making some minor amendments, the French foreign minister sent it to Gaultier in England, with instructions that Oxford should present it to the Queen. Then, suddenly, an urgent message was delivered from Gaultier that his ministerial contacts in London were adamant that, for the present, James must not think of writing to the Queen, as this would upset everything. Despite this rebuff James Francis Edward let himself hope that Oxford was merely waiting for the right moment to help him. Some reward was considered in order, so in November 1711 Jacobite MPs in England were given instructions by Saint-Germain to vote for the ministry whenever their support was required.
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Those who believed that Anne wanted to reach an understanding with her brother would have been surprised to know of a struggle that took place between her and Oxford in the summer of 1711. Hoping that Jersey’s dealings with France would go better if he had an official position, Oxford tried to persuade the Queen to give the Earl a place in the Cabinet, but Anne proved reluctant because of Jersey’s reputation as a Jacobite. The previous autumn she had already refused to put Jersey in charge of the Admiralty, and she now proved equally unwilling to accede to Oxford’s request that the Earl should be made Lord Privy Seal. The Lord Treasurer employed Mrs Masham as a ‘female solicitrix’ on Jersey’s behalf, but Anne could not be budged. Oxford then wrote the Queen an imploring letter,
warning that unless she gave way, ‘This great affair now upon the anvil may languish … Your ministry will crumble all to pieces’. Knowing how strongly she objected to being pressured to appoint men of whom she disapproved (not least because in the past he had inflamed her feelings about this) he told her that if she conceded this point she would be acting not by ‘importunity but for the good of the service … If I could find any expedient in this case I would not trouble your Majesty upon this head’.
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Still Anne held out, until Jersey produced what Oxford called his ‘vindication from Jacobitism’, and begged Oxford to arrange a private meeting with the Queen so he could justify himself.
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It is unclear whether this meeting took place but, after another three weeks had passed Anne finally relented. Jersey’s appointment as Lord Privy Seal was due to be announced on 26 August, only for the Earl to die of a stroke that very day.

Before Jersey’s death further steps had been taken to advance peace. In early July 1711 the poet and diplomatist Matthew Prior had accompanied Abbé Gaultier to France for secret meetings with Torcy. He took with him a memorial drawn up by Oxford, itemising the demands Britain expected to be met. To prepare him for his talks with Prior, Torcy first saw Gaultier, who relayed an encouraging message from Lord Jersey. According to him, France would be called upon to recognise Anne and ‘her heirs’, a vague form of wording that would have left open the possibility that James Francis Edward would succeed her. Jersey maintained that this was not ‘inserted by chance and that it was intended to work in the King of England’s interests’.
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In fact, when Torcy examined Oxford’s memorial, he found the position to be very different, for France was required to acknowledge the succession ‘as it is now settled in Great Britain’. In addition the demolition was demanded of Dunkirk, a ‘nest of pirates’, which facilitated French attacks on British shipping. Newfoundland (currently held by the British) and ‘all things in America should continue in possession of those they should be found to be in at the conclusion of the peace’. Spain must cede Gibraltar and Port Mahon to Britain, and grant Britain the Asiento contract, conferring the sole right to supply slaves to Spain’s dominions in South America. ‘Positive assurance’ must be given that the crowns of France and Spain would never be united and Britain’s allies had to be satisfied regarding both their trade and frontier barriers.
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After Prior had met with Torcy three times it was agreed that the French would send the trade expert Nicholas Mesnager to England to
take matters further. Prior was granted a farewell audience by Louis XIV and then travelled home in early August with Mesnager and Gaultier. Unfortunately on arriving at Deal they were briefly detained by a customs officer whose suspicions were aroused by their passports in false names. Although he was soon obliged to free them, he informed Sunderland of the incident, alerting the Whigs that the peace process was under way.