LITMIR.BIZ

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      It soon turned out that these measures were too lax. Anne’s stepmother had assumed she was already asleep, for she had been ‘in her ordinary way laid abed’ at the usual time. Yet once all her other servants had left Anne, Sarah and Mrs Berkeley ‘came privately to her’. Anne dressed hastily, and at one in the morning the three women made a stealthy exit through a little room where Anne usually sat on her close stool. This led to some ‘backstairs by which the necessary woman uses to go in and out for the cleaning’. Anne herself had never gone down this way before, and even at this moment of extreme tension could not help noticing that the walls were very shabby. One of the first things she did on reaching safety was to send directions to Sir Benjamin Bathurst that they should be repainted.¹²⁶

      Once the little party reached the street, they found Bishop Compton waiting for them in a coach. Watched by a dozy sentry, who did not think to challenge them, they climbed aboard and were driven to the house of Compton’s nephew Lord Dorset in Aldersgate Street. Even there, however, Anne did not feel safe. Still in a panic about her father’s imminent return, she was desperate to leave London, but realised that if she tried to reach William and her husband in the west she ran the risk of being intercepted by royal troops. Accordingly it was decided that she should go north, where Compton had a good network of contacts. On the morning of 26 November the Bishop and the three ladies set off by coach, stopping that night at Dorset’s country seat, Copt Hall in Essex. At Hitchin in Hertfordshire they sat ‘taking some refreshment’ in a brewery cart while their horses were changed, and Sarah was heard joking that they were fortunate that they were not being driven in it to execution. Having resolved to head for Nottingham, where William’s supporter Lord Devonshire had seized control a week earlier, they continued on their journey via Castle Ashby, Market Harborough, and Leicester. At Nottingham, where Anne’s arrival was eagerly awaited, the citizens were alarmed by a false report ‘that two thousand of the King’s dragoons were in close pursuit to bring her back prisoner to London’. On 2 December they sallied forth to rescue her, but had not advanced far when they met the Princess sitting unharmed in her coach with Sarah and Mrs Berkeley. Anne was then ‘conducted into Nottingham through the acclamations of the people’.¹²⁷

      That night Lord Devonshire gave a banquet for the Princess. ‘All the noblemen and the other persons of distinction then in arms had the honour to sup at her royal highness’s table’. Anne was ‘very well pleased’ with her reception, and ‘seemed wonderful pleasant and cheerful’.¹²⁸

      Hearing that Anne was in town, large numbers of local gentry and nobility arrived there, often bringing armed men with them. However, when Anne tried to enlist their support for the movement against James, she sometimes encountered difficulties. For example, the Earl of Chesterfield turned down her request that he subscribe to the ‘Association’, a document whose signatories pledged to exact retribution on all Catholics if William came to any harm. Since James himself theoretically could fall victim to such vengeance, Chesterfield refused, to Anne’s visible displeasure. The Earl noted wryly, ‘I have made my court very ill; but I have the satisfaction of having acted according to my conscience’.¹²⁹

      On 8 December Bishop Compton received orders from William, instructing him to bring the Princess to meet him and her husband at Oxford. Accompanied by about 1,500 horsemen and two companies of foot soldiers, Anne set off the following day. One young man in her train recalled, ‘Through every town we passed the people came out … with such rural and rusty weapons as they had, to meet us in acclamations of welcome and good wishes’. The Princess spent two nights at Leicester before passing through Coventry, Warwick, and Banbury. At Warwick on 12 December she heard the momentous news that her father had fled the country and that his army had been disbanded. Her uncle Clarendon was pained to hear that ‘she seemed not at all moved, but called for cards and was as merry as she used to be’. Once she was back in London, Clarendon took her to task for this, but his niece told him sulkily that she had seen no reason to disrupt her usual routine as ‘she never loved to do anything that looked like an affected constraint’. The Princess was fortunate that Clarendon made no rejoinder, for he had recently become aware that Anne had known herself not to be pregnant when she had told her father that she could not attend the council meeting on 22 October. The discovery had profoundly shocked him, prompting him to declare ‘Good God! Nothing but lying and dissimulation in the world!’ Now he could, with justice, have retorted that Anne was scarcely entitled to maintain that she despised all forms of pretence.¹³⁰

      The Princess was still in high spirits when she ‘made a splendid entry’ into Oxford on 15 December. The Bishop of London featured prominently in her impressive cavalcade, ‘riding in a purple cloak, martial habit, pistols before him and his sword drawn’, a ‘strange appearance’ that one observer considered ‘not conformable to … a Christian bishop’. George had already been in Oxford for a day or two, and Anne was reunited with him in Christchurch quadrangle. The couple greeted each other ‘with all possible demonstrations of love and affection’ and that evening they were ‘entertained by the university at a cost of £1,000 at the least’.¹³¹

      After resting for a couple of days Anne and George moved on towards London. By the time they re-entered the capital on 19 December, Anne perhaps realised she had another cause to congratulate herself. Her earlier pretence that she was pregnant had been a cynical ploy. However, she had actually conceived around the end of October, and despite the stress and exertion of her flight, had not miscarried.

      Anne had been away from London for less than a month, but much had happened during that time. On the morning of 26 November it had emerged that she was missing when her woman of the bedchamber Mrs Danvers went to wake her at eight o’clock. ‘Receiving no answer to her call, she opened the bed [curtains] and found the Princess gone’. Pandemonium ensued: her ladies assumed she had been abducted, and some even began shrieking ‘the Princess was murdered by the priests’. When the news was carried to the Queen, she too ‘screamed out as if she had been mad’.¹³² The truth only started to appear when the sentry on night duty was questioned and revealed the mysterious goings on he had seen outside the palace, but it was some time before Anne’s whereabouts could be established.

      Anne’s escape caused a sensation. According to one observer ‘The Papists reckon the loss of the Princess as great as that of the army’. For the King, who arrived back in London that afternoon, it was a crushing personal blow. He was already emotionally shattered at being abandoned by men he had trusted, but this was ‘nothing in comparison of the Princess’s withdrawing herself’. The shock was the greater because, even though Prince George had already left him, he had been confident his daughter would not budge from Whitehall for fear of jeopardising her pregnancy. The news exacerbated ‘those most dreadful anguishes of spirit’ which already burdened him. Bursting into tears, he uttered the piteous cry, ‘God help me! My own children have forsaken me!’ One court lady formed the impression that James was ‘so … afflicted after the Princess Anne went away, that it disordered his understanding’, and others too talked of the King looking physically ill and appearing almost deranged over the next few days.¹³³

      Two days after Anne’s flight a letter from her to the Queen was published in the London Gazette. In this deeply insincere document, Anne explained that when ‘the surprising news of the Prince’s being gone’ had arrived, she had spontaneously decided to absent herself ‘to avoid the King’s displeasures, which I am not able to bear’. ‘Never was anyone in such an unhappy condition, so divided between duty and affection to a father and a husband’, she lamented, before blaming ‘the violent counsels of the priests’ for having caused such trouble. She declared that she would not return until she heard ‘the happy news of a reconcilement’, but expressed confidence that a settlement satisfactory to all could be reached. ‘I am fully persuaded that the Prince of Orange designs the King’s safety and preservation and hope all things may be composed without more bloodshed by the calling a Parliament’. She concluded, ‘God grant a happy end to these troubles, that the King’s reign may be prosperous, and that I may shortly meet you in perfect peace and safety; till when, let me beg of you to continue the same favourable opinion that you have hitherto had of your most obedient daughter and servant’.¹³⁴

      On

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