Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion - Anne Somerset

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glad to see her’. It was assumed that the two women’s recent secret communications had fostered ‘a greater intimacy yet’ between them, but it would not be long before their relationship became strained.154

      The following day William and Mary were proclaimed King and Queen at a formal ceremony in the Banqueting House, Whitehall. The Declaration of Rights, condemning James for his illegal abuses, was read out, and then everyone present went to church. As Anne sat on William’s left, listening to the Bishop of London preach, she had many reasons to feel relieved. Her beloved Church had been protected against Catholic assault. There had been a massive invasion, but civil war had been averted and in England, at least, very little blood had been spilt. Her father had escaped to France, when he could have been imprisoned, killed in battle or even executed. The monarchy remained in being, with its powers scarcely diminished. Although she had agreed to defer her own accession to the throne, she was still in line to succeed, and her pregnancy afforded hopes of motherhood and of carrying on the dynasty.

      It would be very odd if Anne had not experienced some private qualms at what had happened. Her sister Mary certainly felt an inner anguish about her father’s misfortunes, and though Anne gave no sign of it, she may have felt similarly troubled. She could of course console herself that her disloyalty as both a subject and a daughter was justified on principled grounds. As one sympathiser put it: ‘Notwithstanding the great duty she owed to the King her father [she] could not think it could come in competition with … the religion and liberty of her country, both which had been most monstrously invaded’.155 On the other hand, the mechanics of treachery are rarely attractive, and despite her references to her ‘sincere mind’ one cannot but be struck by the guile and duplicity that Anne had at her command throughout the crisis. She had condoned rebellion on the specious grounds that James and Mary Beatrice’s son was an imposter. Plainly motivated not just by a disinterested concern for the good of her country, but also by ambition, she had been reluctant to relinquish any part of her own hereditary rights, while trampling on those of her half brother. James had undeniably brought calamity on himself but, even so, the part played by Anne in the revolution was far from wholly creditable.

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      Sure Never Anybody Was Used So

      At the outset of William and Mary’s reign, the outlook for Anne appeared good. She assumed that the new King and Queen would feel grateful for the risks she and George had taken on their behalf, and also for the way Anne had agreed, after a bit of prodding, that William could mount the throne. So sure was she of receiving favourable treatment that in January 1689 she spoke airily of having an acquaintance raised to the peerage, expressing confidence that ‘such a thing would not be denied to the Prince and her’.1

      Initially all seemed well. George not only remained a member of the Privy Council, but in early April he was naturalised as an English subject and created Earl of Cumberland and Duke of Kendal. Although he continued to be styled Prince George of Denmark, he was now entitled to sit in the House of Lords and ranked as England’s foremost nobleman. Anne’s great friends, the Churchills, also looked set to prosper. In the April coronation honours Lord Churchill was raised in the peerage, taking the title Earl of Marlborough. Court observers tipped him to ‘be a great favourite’, and after being ‘extremely caressed’ by Mary upon the latter’s arrival, Sarah too flattered herself that ‘I was as like to make as great progress in the Queen’s favour as any in the court’.2

      On 7 May 1689 England declared war on Louis XIV who, besides trying to extend French power within Europe, was championing the cause of the exiled James II. In March James had landed in Ireland, accompanied by a French army, with the ultimate aim of launching an invasion of England or Scotland. Army officers such as the Earl of Marlborough welcomed the outbreak of war, while Prince George likewise looked forward to proving himself in an important naval or military post.

      As the summer advanced, some people became worried about the state of Anne’s pregnancy. By July she had become ‘monstrous swollen’ and, since it had never been made clear that the Princess had not really been pregnant in September 1688, it was naturally thought that the birth was worryingly overdue. Lady Rachel Russell fretted that ‘the Princess … goes very long for one so big’, while John Evelyn suspected that she was not with child at all, and that her abdomen was merely inflated by gas. However, Anne proved him wrong. At five in the morning of 24 July 1689 Anne was delivered of a son in Hampton Court Palace. To prevent allegations of trickery, Queen Mary was present for the entire labour, which lasted about three hours, ‘and the King with most of the persons of quality about the court came into her royal highness’s bedchamber’ for the birth itself.3

      The boy was named William after the King, who stood as godfather when the baby was christened on 27 July. It was also announced that the child would be given the title of Duke of Gloucester. Anne took some time to recover from the birth, but Mary looked after her attentively. The Queen recalled that over the next fortnight she was ‘continually in [Anne’s] bedchamber, or that of the child’, and a contemporary praised the way she cared for them both ‘with the tenderness of a mother’.4

      Although an optimist hailed the little duke as a ‘brave, lively-like boy’, one of Anne’s household servants described him as ‘a very weakly child’ who was not expected to live long. The first wet nurse chosen for him had nipples too big for him to fasten on to, but after a suitable replacement had been found he began to feed, and his prospects of survival improved. Then at six weeks ‘he was taken with convulsion fits, which followed so quick one after another that the physicians from London despaired of his life’. When they suggested that another change of milk might help, an urgent appeal was put out, and for days ‘nurses with young children came many at a time … from town and the adjacent villages’. It was specified that applicants must have only recently given birth themselves, and one woman who initially was taken on was sent away after a vigilant lady-in-waiting inspected the parish registers and discovered that she was lying about her child’s age. The position remained vacant until George caught sight of a woman named Mrs Pack, whose ugliness made her ‘fitter to go to a pigsty than to a Prince’s bed’, but nevertheless looked sturdy enough to do the job well. Sure enough, when she offered her breast, the child latched on, and within hours his condition visibly improved. Revered as the Prince’s saviour, Mrs Pack was accorded high status within the household, and ‘the whole time she suckled the Duke there were positive orders given that nobody should contradict her’.5

      In fact, the child’s recovery may have owed little to the health-giving properties of Mrs Pack’s milk. His convulsions had probably been caused by an illness such as meningitis or a middle ear infection, and the passing of the crisis merely happened to coincide with Mrs Pack’s appearance on the scene. Furthermore, his recovery was not complete. An infection of this kind can interfere with the absorption of the cerebro-spinal fluid, causing arrested hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. It seems that this is what happened in this case.6

      By 7 October the child was well enough for the Princess to move back to London. Motherhood now offered her a chance of personal fulfilment, but relations with the King and Queen were proving difficult. Once the excitement of their reunion had faded, Mary’s initial friendliness towards her sister had abated. Sarah, now Countess of Marlborough, attributed this to the two women having incompatible temperaments, as the Queen, who was naturally talkative, found her uncommunicative sister dreary company. As for William, he soon developed a strong antipathy for his sister-in-law. Judging that Anne and George ‘had been of more use to him than they were ever like to be again’ (as Sarah acerbically put it), the King saw no need to make much of the couple. He regarded George as unattractive and stupid, telling an English politician he was simply ‘an encumbrance’. In 1688 he had dismissed the Prince as incapable of weighty affairs, and he despised him for not being more assertive with his wife.7

      William’s contempt for George was transparent. Always ‘apt to be peevish’, the King had ‘a dry morose way with him’, and he rarely took

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