LITMIR.BIZ

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deserted. The Jacobite Lord Ailesbury and a few ladies with similar sympathies came to Berkeley House ‘because … all of that interest rejoiced much at the quarrel’; otherwise only the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was currently out of office, ventured there to play whist. His presence could not disguise the fact that the Princess was ‘as much alone as can be imagined’, living ‘under so great a neglect’ that, were it not for her ‘inflexible stiffness of humour, it would be very uneasy to her’. Anne professed to have no regrets. In February 1693 she wrote defiantly to Sarah ‘You cannot expect any news from Berkeley House, but as dull and despicable as some people may think it, I am so far from … repenting … that, were the year to run over again, I would tread the same steps’.⁸⁷

      Still smarting over his arrest the previous year, the Earl of Marlborough allied himself with the political opposition. At the end of 1692 he had voted for the Place Bill, which sought to prevent any Member of Parliament accepting government office. It was a measure which one observer believed ‘sapped the foundations of monarchy and tended to a republic’, but Marlborough prevailed upon Prince George to give it his support as well. After it was narrowly defeated in the Lords, a foreign diplomat was astonished when George was amongst those who registered a formal protest at its rejection.⁸⁸

      In January 1693 Prince George’s brother, Christian V of Denmark, wrote urging him to make up with the King and Queen, but Anne would not hear of it. She believed that King Christian had probably intervened at William’s request, ‘by which ’tis very plain Mr Caliban has some inclinations towards a reconciliation, but if ever I make the least step, may I be as great a slave as he would make me if it were in his power. Mr Morley is of that same mind and I trust in heaven we shall never be better friends [with William] than we are now, unless we chance to meet there’. George undertook to write ‘to desire his brother would not engage himself in this business’, while the Princess reiterated to Sarah that ‘her faithful Morley … will never part with you till she is fast locked in her coffin’.⁸⁹

      The little Duke of Gloucester provided the only remaining link between Anne and her sister and brother-in-law. Both Mary and the King (who, surprisingly, got on well with children) were very fond of the little boy. Anne would have liked to have restricted his visits to them, but was told, probably by Marlborough and Godolphin, that this would be unwise. Once, after arranging for her son to see his aunt, the Princess told Sarah ‘it goes extremely against the grain, yet since so much better judgements than mine think it necessary, he shall go’. William and Mary were at pains to publicise the fact that Gloucester was not comprehended in the family quarrel. As Sarah waspishly put it, the Queen ‘made a great show of kindness to him and gave him rattles and several playthings which were constantly put down in the Gazette’. When the child was ill the Queen would always send a Bedchamber Woman to his home to gain an accurate report on his health, although this was done in a manner contrived to be deliberately insulting to Anne. ‘Without taking more notice of [the Princess] than if she were a rocker’, the royal emissary would address all questions to Gloucester’s nurse.⁹⁰

      Such incidents occurred all too frequently, for Gloucester’s health gave constant cause for concern. To try and minimise the symptoms of hydrocephalus which had afflicted him from an early age he had an ‘issue in his poll [head] that had been kept running ever since his sickness at Hampton Court’. It was hoped that by permanently keeping open a small incision in the scalp, harmful humours would have an outlet through which they could escape, but hardly surprisingly the treatment proved ineffectual. Fluid continued to accumulate within the child’s cranium, with the result that his head became abnormally large. By 1694 ‘his hat was big enough for most men’ and when the time came to measure him for a wig, it was difficult to find one that fitted him. Consequently he had a strange appearance, as even Anne acknowledged. Writing to tell Sarah in 1692 that her son currently looked ‘better I think than ever he did in his life’, she qualified this, ‘I mean more healthy, for though I love him very well, I can’t brag of his beauty’.⁹¹

      Although Gloucester was ‘active and lively’, the hydrocephalus affected his balance. ‘He tottered as he walked and could not go up or down stairs without holding the rails’. When he fell over, as often happened, he could not raise himself unaided. Instead of being recognised as a symptom of his illness, his debility was attributed to ‘the overcare of the ladies’ in charge of him. An attendant recalled, ‘the Prince of Denmark, who was a very good-natured pleasant man, would often rally them about it’.⁹²

      Presumably because he was worried about toppling over, when aged four or five Gloucester refused to move unless adults held his hand on either side. Until then, most unusually for a child of his age, he had never been whipped, for ‘the Princess, who was the tenderest of mothers, would not let him be roughly handled’. However, this refusal to walk on his own was considered a dangerous whim which could not be indulged. First Prince George took the child to task for it, showing him the birch as Anne looked on. As this had no effect, Gloucester was beaten, with the punishment being repeated when he persisted in his ‘very unaccountable fancy’. After that his will was broken.⁹³

      To modern sensibilities this is a horrific story, an almost unbearable tale of brutish treatment meted out to a child who was struggling with a challenging physical disability. Before condemning Anne and George, one should, however, place it in context, for corporal punishment for the young was virtually universal at the time. It must be borne in mind that even John Locke, the very embodiment of the early English enlightenment, argued that small children were animals controllable only by pain and that it was appropriate to inflict physical punishment in moderation before they had developed powers of reasoning.⁹⁴

      In other ways Anne was the most solicitous parent. Such was her concern for her son’s welfare that she admitted ‘’tis impossible to help being alarmed at every little thing’. One of Gloucester’s servants recorded, ‘If he tottered whenever he walked in her presence, it threw her into a violent perspiration through fear’, and this was far from being her only worry, as the child was delicate in other ways. He suffered from severe fevers in 1693, 1694, and 1695, and on each occasion was subjected to a variety of unpleasant medical treatments. In 1693 his back was blistered by doctors who believed this would lower his temperature, causing the poor child such pain that he begged his servants to rescue him from his tormentors. He was also dosed with ‘Jesuits’ powder’, made from cinchona bark, an effective treatment for fever but potentially dangerous in large quantities. When Gloucester had a recurring bout of fever the following spring, despite being desperate for a cure – for ‘methinks ’tis an ugly thing for such a distemper to hang so long upon one of his age’ – Anne hoped that Dr Radcliffe would be able to prescribe a different remedy. After initially taking his medicine ‘most manfully’, the little boy had grown ‘so very averse to the powder … it would be almost impossible to force it down’. It also constipated him severely, so instead he was given a mixture of brandy, saffron, and other ingredients, reputed to cure every kind of ague. At first the only result was to make the child vomit, but after that he began to recover.⁹⁵

      Her worries about Gloucester’s health meant that by 1693 the Princess invariably referred to her son as ‘my poor boy’, rather than just ‘my boy’, as in the past. However, although his hydrocephalus affected his physical stability, in other ways he developed well. He hated dancing, condemning it as girlish, but was reportedly ‘very quick in learning any manly exercise’. Soldiering obsessed him and he had his own troop of boys that he drilled in Kensington gardens, glowing with pride when the King and Queen came to see them. As he grew older he rode twice daily and during summer holidays at Windsor developed ‘a passion for the chase’. Despite doing lessons on his own, he was not cut off from other children, and hero-worshipped Sarah’s son, John Churchill, who was a year or so older. He also liked playing with the male children of other members of the household, calling them his Horse Guards. One of his servants recalled ‘He was apt in finding excuses for his boys or for us, when we were blamed for letting him do what he should not do, or for speaking words that did not become him’. Being affectionate by nature, the only person of whom he was not particularly fond was his former wet nurse, Mrs Pack. When she died unexpectedly in 1694, Queen Mary asked if he was sad, to which he answered firmly ‘No, Madam’.⁹⁶

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