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retardation caused by an insufficiency of the placenta. This in turn could have been the consequence of Anne being afflicted by Hughes syndrome, also known as antiphospholipid syndrome, or ‘sticky blood’. This condition, only recently discovered by Dr Graham Hughes, is now thought to be responsible for one in five miscarriages. The mother’s blood, often as a result of genetic factors, is loaded with antibodies which overstimulate the immune system, increasing blood clotting. The thickened blood cannot pass through the small blood vessels in the placenta, depriving the foetus of nutrients and often causing miscarriage in late pregnancy. Today pregnant women with the condition are sometimes successfully treated by taking a single aspirin daily. Even in Anne’s time, herbal preparations containing willow bark (the active component of aspirin) were available, and might have had a good effect, but of course no one then was aware of this.⁶⁸

      What makes this diagnosis more compelling is that there is a strong link between Hughes syndrome and disseminated lupus erythematosus. While it is possible to have Hughes syndrome without ever manifesting symptoms of lupus, it has been estimated that one fifth of those affected by Hughes syndrome subsequently develop this auto-immune disease, which is found particularly in young women. Its most notable symptoms include polyarthritis and facial eruption, both of which severely afflicted Anne in coming years.

      The loss of another child, coming only months after Anne’s miscarriage at the start of the year and the deaths of her two daughters, was profoundly distressing for the Princess. Once again her father and stepmother were ‘deeply afflicted’ for her, but their sympathy afforded Anne scant consolation. Mary Beatrice’s sufferings as a mother had in many ways been similar to Anne’s, but the Princess was very far from feeling a sense of solidarity with her. Instead the possibility that Mary Beatrice might be blessed with offspring while she remained childless was almost intolerable. This, however, was the prospect that now faced the Princess. On the same day that Barrillon informed Louis XIV that Anne had lost her baby, he reported, ‘there is a slight suspicion that the Queen of England is pregnant’. He cautioned that this was as yet considered ‘highly doubtful’, but the news turned out to be true.⁶⁹

      Mary Beatrice had last been pregnant in 1684, and English Protestants had optimistically assumed that her childbearing days were over. Recently, however, her health had much improved. In August 1687 she went to drink and bathe in the warm spa waters at Bath, which were renowned for promoting fertility. The King joined her there between 18–21 August, and then set off on his progress. He returned briefly to Bath on 6 September and – even though it was recommended that ladies should not sleep with their husbands while taking the waters – it was during this short visit that his son was conceived. However, it took longer than usual for this to become apparent. As Mary Beatrice herself later confided to her stepdaughter Mary, ‘I had libels [her period] after I was with child, which I never had before’.⁷⁰ It was only in late October that she and the King began to entertain hopes as to her condition, and once these were confirmed the baby’s expected date of arrival was calculated on the assumption that the Queen had conceived immediately after returning to London on 6 October.

      For Anne this was a devastating development, both personally and politically. She was still in mourning for her two daughters, and suffering two miscarriages within a year had taken a terrible emotional toll. The implications were shattering: if the child was a boy – and as early as 3 November the French ambassador noted that Catholics at court were talking as if this was a foregone conclusion – he would supersede his sisters in the succession. James’s son would be brought up as a Catholic, and so James’s achievements would outlast his life. If the King died while his son was a minor, Mary Beatrice would become regent, and power would rest in the hands of a woman Anne saw as a fanatical enemy of the true Church. With her hopes for the future in shreds, Anne’s chagrin and dismay were painfully apparent. The Tuscan envoy noted in December, ‘No words can express the rage of the Princess of Denmark at the Queen’s condition; she can dissimulate it to no one’.⁷¹

      Exactly when Anne persuaded herself that her stepmother was only pretending to be pregnant is unclear, but her sister Mary had some doubts on the subject from the outset. When her father wrote to her in late November confirming that the Queen was pregnant, it struck her as odd that he should be ‘talking in such an assured way … at a time when no woman could be certain’. It was enough to instil in her ‘the slightest suspicion’.⁷²

      Mary insisted that the thought of being denied the crown left her ‘indifferent on her own account’, but concerned for ‘the interest of the Protestant religion’. She was also upset that her husband’s worldly prospects would be blighted if she did not ascend the throne. For Anne too, of course, the welfare of the Church was paramount, but whether she could have truthfully claimed that her fury at being ousted from the succession owed nothing to personal ambition is questionable. Despite being of a retiring disposition Anne had a strong sense of her entitlement to rule, and would not readily relinquish what she regarded as her rightful inheritance. In her case it would have stretched credibility to claim that she wanted to become Queen merely to enhance the power and prestige of her husband.

      The news that Mary Beatrice was expecting a child was so unwelcome that many people elected not to believe it, and the French ambassador reported on 3 November that Londoners were scoffing at rumours that the Queen was pregnant. On 1 January 1688 the news was officially announced, but this did not diminish public scepticism. Already there were people who ‘impudently declare it a fiction’, and satires started appearing suggesting that Mary Beatrice was faking her pregnancy. The Earl of Clarendon noted on 15 January, ‘it is strange to see how the Queen’s great belly is everywhere ridiculed, as if scarce anybody believed it to be true. Good God help us!’.⁷³

      Since the dissolution of July 1687, the King had dismissed several Lord Lieutenants he considered unreliable, and in autumn 1688 he ordered those still in office to put three questions to all men of substance in the counties. The questionnaire was designed to establish whether these individuals would vote to repeal the Test Act in the coming Parliament or, if they were not standing for election themselves, whether they would support candidates known to favour repeal. In the counties the answers served mainly to demonstrate the strength of opinion against royal policy, but in the municipal boroughs, where it was easier to meddle with the franchise, James’s electoral agents were optimistic that by remodelling corporations and filling the Commission of the Peace with dissenters and Catholics they could pack the House of Commons with men willing to do the King’s bidding.

      Other provocative acts on James’s part demonstrated the King’s determination to press on with a Catholicising agenda. In November 1687 all the remaining Fellows of Magdalen College Oxford were dismissed. At least six of the men who replaced them were Catholics. A month later James’s Jesuit Clerk of the Closet, Father Petre, – who was regarded as the most extreme of the King’s Catholic advisers – was made a Privy Councillor.

      When the Earl of Scarsdale, who was Prince George’s Groom of the Stool, was deprived of his Lord Lieutenancy after refusing to put the three questions to local gentlemen, the King was pleased when Anne asked whether Scarsdale should also be removed from his place in George’s household. Assuming that Anne and George would recognise the impropriety of employing a disgraced man, James left it to their discretion, but in the absence of explicit orders the Prince and Princess decided that it was permissible to retain Scarsdale. James then commanded that the Earl should be dismissed. This was duly done, but Anne made it clear she was acting under coercion.⁷⁴

      In late 1687 Lord and Lady Churchill used the excuse of Sarah being pregnant again to withdraw to their house in the country. The French ambassador assumed this was because they did not want to be blamed for Anne’s conduct, but though Churchill had still not made it clear that he was opposed to a repeal of the Test Acts, his position was growing steadily more precarious.⁷⁵ All concerned were aware that if Churchill opposed the King in the House of Lords, he would inevitably lose his places at court and in the army.

      Fortunately the outlook for Anne was not unremittingly bleak, for by 8 March 1688 it had been announced that she was expecting another baby. However, far from reconciling her to Mary Beatrice’s pregnancy, the renewed hope of motherhood only made the Princess more determined to protect

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