The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

In 1667 the Princess Mary was married to William, Prince of Orange; and in 1679 her father was driven into exile, and the Princess Anne and her step-mother were permitted by Charles II. to reside with the exiled Duke of York for some months in Brussels.

Previously to this time the friendship between the Princess Anne and Sarah Jennings had been formed, which in after-years exerted so important an influence upon the destinies of both lives, and even became a remarkable factor in determining the results of various portentious political changes in Europe.

The elder sister of Sarah Jennings had been a maid of honor to the first Duchess of York, the mother of Anne; and when that princess was about nine years of age, Sarah, who was then twelve years old, became the constant companion of the young princess. Even in childhood Sarah Jennings manifested many of the strong characteristics of mind and will which gave her the overpowering ascendency over the weak and good-natured Anne which she maintained with such remarkable influence after Anne became queen of England, and Sarah the Duchess of Marlborough.

In 1678 Sarah Jennings married Colonel Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, a gentleman attached to the service of the Duke of York; and when Duke James was sent into exile the Churchills accompanied his family, and thus Anne was still permitted to enjoy the presence of her favorite friend.

When James was recalled to England, his daughter Anne and Sarah Churchill returned to their native land; and upon the marriage of the Princess Anne to Prince George of Denmark, in 1683, King Charles of England settled upon his niece and her husband the sum of £20,000 a year, and gave to her as a residence the Cockpit, a capacious building which had formerly been the theatre of Whitehall Palace. Prince George Louis of Hanover, afterwards George I. of England, had been a former suitor for the hand of the Princess Anne, but on account of mutual aversion, when the royal couple met for the first time, the match was broken off, and the Prince of Denmark became the successful suitor. The Prince of Denmark was poor and was possessed of little influence, but he was a Protestant, and that was esteemed a sufficient merit in his favor. He is described as a “fair, good-natured, heavy-looking young man, who spoke bad French, loved good wine, and was rather awkward and bashful in his manners. He succeeded, however, in pleasing the ‘gentle Lady Anne’; and as they were both endued with good dispositions and equal tempers, and neither of them very capable of discovering each other’s deficiencies, this marriage proved extremely happy, and they lived together in uninterrupted harmony”; though, like most royal marriages, the princess and her future husband were allowed a very short time to make each other’s acquaintance; for the marriage took place nine days after the Prince of Denmark had been welcomed to London by the king and queen of England and the parents of his future bride. The nuptial ceremony was celebrated with great pomp, in the Royal Chapel at Saint James’s, by the Bishop of London, at ten o’clock at night.

“The bride was given away by her merry uncle, Charles II., who delighted in being present at marriages and christenings. The chapel was brilliantly lighted; and as the king, the queen, the Duke and Duchess of York, and the leading nobility then in London were present, the scene was magnificent, dazzling, and joyous. The citizens of London also took their part in the nocturnal festivity. Throughout the metropolis the bells rang all night, bonfires blazed at every door, the conduits ran with wine, and showers of fireworks and other popular sports and pastimes were provided for the amusement of the people.”

“The Lady Anne, although not a peerless beauty, possessed considerable personal attractions. She was of middle size, but not so majestic as her sister Mary; and her hair was a deep chestnut-brown; her complexion ruddy. Her face was round, but rather comely than handsome; her features were strong and regular; the only blemish in her face was that of a defluxion, which had affected her eyes when young, and left a contraction in her upper lids and given a cloudiness to her countenance. Her bones were small, her hands beautiful. She had an excellent ear for music, was a good performer on the guitar; and her voice being strong, clear, flexible, and melodious, she took pleasure in the practice of vocal harmony.”

When Anne’s establishment was appointed by her uncle, King Charles, after her marriage, Sarah Churchill was permitted to become one of her ladies.

The death of Charles II. in 1685, which placed her father upon the English throne, as James II., caused very little immediate change in the household of the Princess Anne. She became one of the central figures at her father’s court, but possessed no particular influence, and occupied herself with court gossip and card-playing, in the society of her favorite, Lady Churchill, when not engaged with the cares of her nursery. The Princess Anne was a good wife and devoted mother; and although all her children but one died in early infancy, it was not through neglect on her part. But Anne was poorly fitted by tastes or nature to play the brilliant part in history which fortune afterwards decreed to her lot. She was simply a good-natured, commonplace, and very weak-minded woman, led by the stronger minds of her favorites, and swayed by every political breeze around her. Her favorites, to her credit be it said, however, were women, and not men admirers. So that although her character was undeniably weak and petty, her life as a wife and mother was blameless, and her heart was kindly. And yet such were the circumstances which environed her after-years, that the name of this simple-minded queen, whose narrow understanding might have been compassed by the circumference of her thimble, and “who put on her crown as she would have put on her cap” – the name of this unaspiring, unqueenly woman, who would have been more at home as a fish-wife than as a sovereign, was pronounced with awe from one end of Europe to the other; and even the Grand Monarque himself, “hitherto the insolent arbiter of the world,” the magnificent, the matchlessly imperial Louis Quatorze, trembled on his throne before Queen Anne and her victorious general, the Duke of Marlborough.

The French general, the Duke of Vendôme, who replaced the defeated Marshal Villeroi, wrote concerning Anne’s illustrious military leader: —

“Every one here is ready to take off his hat at the very mention of Marlborough’s name.”

When, in after-years, the daring generalship of Marlborough had been replaced by the daring ambition of Bolingbroke, whose marvellous and impassioned eloquence caused even Mr. Pitt in later years to exclaim, when asked what treasures he would especially like to snatch from out of the shadows of the past, “I would choose one of the lost Decades of Livy and a speech of Bolingbroke’s!” – no wonder that with such generals and such orators, the name of Queen Anne was reflected to the world in shining glory.

And what was the woman herself doing in the midst of such stirring times and brilliant opportunities? Quarrelling with the haughty, arrogant-willed Duchess of Marlborough; bickering over some contested point of favoritism; or becoming a puppet in the hands of an ignorant bedchamber-woman, who ruled the queen because this politic but petty Mrs. Masham knew enough to hold her tongue when her royal mistress desired to rave against her overbearing Duchess of Marlborough; and because Mrs. Masham was smart enough to use her little stock of brains in scheming to entrap the favor of the wily politicians who courted her smiles because her ignorant but keen cunning had gained the friendship of the queen.

Observing such a state of things, it is little wonder that the quick-witted Addison flashed the scintillating sparks of his keen humor all over the pages of his famous “Spectator papers,” which appeared at that time.

Great Britain had been for some time divided into two strong parties, known as the Whigs and Tories. The Tories held that the rights of kings were divine, while the Whigs contended a king ruled for the good of his subjects, and that by illegal or oppressive acts he forfeited his right to reign, and could be justifiably dethroned by his people. The Tories upheld the English Protestant church, but detested the Presbyterians and Dissenters, while they feared the Roman Catholics; while the Whigs maintained that the Reformed religion being the religion of the state, a Roman Catholic could not lawfully be placed at its head. There was also a third party, called the Jacobites, who were more violent Tories, being partisans of the deposed James II., who, on account of his Roman Catholic principles, which caused him to entertain certain designs against the religion and liberty of the state, had been obliged to fly from England upon the appearance of his Protestant son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, who had invaded England at the head of an army, and been placed by the English people upon the throne in conjunction with his wife Mary, the eldest daughter of James II., who had been educated a Protestant.

Notwithstanding the benefit to the country arising from the accession of the Protestant William and Mary to the throne in place of the Catholic James II., the unfilial plottings and intrigues of the princesses Mary and Anne, abetted by their husbands, William, Prince of Orange, and George, Duke of Denmark, against the indulgent and kind-hearted James II., their father, was outrageous and dastardly. Looking at the kingdom, it was well that James II. was dethroned, and that his Catholic son, called the “Pretender,” the half-brother of Mary and Anne, was forever debarred from gaining his ancestral rights of succession; but looking at the side of the treatment which King James received at the hands of his daughters, upon whom he had lavished every indulgent kindness, the treacherous scheming, which in the course of events resulted in vast benefits to England and to Europe, have at the same time forever covered the names of the children of James II. with the stigma of most contemptible and unfeeling and wicked ingratitude.

James II. having been deposed, William and Mary of Orange ascended the throne of England, and William is to be commended for several wise measures, and England was much the gainer by her change of masters; but his usurpation, which is called in history the “Revolution,” is somewhat to be questioned upon the grounds of justice. That it was highly beneficial no Protestant can for a moment doubt; that the change of government caused by the celebrated act of Parliament called the “Bill of Rights,” which raised William and Mary to the throne, to be succeeded by the Princess Anne, and in case Anne died without heirs, that the right should then descend to the Electress of Hanover, which succession afterwards brought in the Protestant Georges of Hanover in place of the Catholic House of Stuarts, – that a revolution which caused this change of government was beneficial to England and the world, is not to be underestimated. This extraordinary but bloodless revolution occurred in 1688, just one hundred years before the bloody and terrible French Revolution of 1789. But leaving political questions and turning to the personal history of the Princess Anne, we find her engaged in an ignoble squabble with her sister, the Queen Mary, over the allowance which shall be allotted to the maintenance of the household of the Princess Anne. The princess had schemed with her sister Mary and the Prince of Orange to dethrone their father; and now that Mary is queen, Anne finds her allowance given by her indulgent father cut off, and in being treacherous to her father she has only worsted her own condition. So disgraceful was this sisterly quarrel, augmented by the haughty Lady Churchill (now the Countess of Marlborough), who fomented the disputes between the sisters, that at last the king and queen were forced to make a compromise with Anne, and allow the princess £50,000 a year. As Lord and Lady Marlborough were known to be enthusiastic partisans of Anne, they fell under the displeasure of King William and Queen Mary, who demanded that Anne should banish them from her household, and the Earl of Marlborough was deprived of his offices. But this opposition only increased the power of Lord and Lady Marlborough over the princess, and she strenuously refused to part with her overbearing favorite.

The lord chamberlain having been sent to Lady Marlborough with the royal order to remove from Whitehall, Anne immediately left Whitehall herself, declaring that she “would live on bread and water, between four walls, with her dear Mrs. Freeman, rather than that her friend should ever be separated from her faithful Mrs. Morley.” These assumed names of Freeman and Morley had been chosen by the Princess Anne and Lady Marlborough that they might converse and write to each other with greater freedom from conventional restraints; and their respective husbands were also called by them, the Lord Marlborough, Mr. Freeman, and the Duke of Denmark, Mr. Morley; and many were the political intrigues, as well as friendly secrets, which they disclosed to each other under these false names. These confidential letters became a powerful weapon in the hands of the proud Lady Marlborough in after-years, for when she found her influence over Queen Anne was waning, and another was usurping her place as royal favorite, the arrogant Lady Marlborough threatened to publish these secret epistles, which would reveal all of Anne’s treachery against her father and various other political intrigues. The fear of this exposure made Anne a puppet in the hands of the self-willed but brilliant duchess long after Anne’s intense liking had turned to intense detestation.

The death of Queen Mary in 1694 somewhat changed Anne’s position. When Anne heard of her sister’s dangerous illness, she sent a request that she might be allowed to come and see her; but their quarrels had never been forgotten, and though Mary refused to see Anne, she sent a message of forgiveness.

Anne now succeeded in becoming reconciled to King William, and she received the greater part of her sister’s jewels, in token of his friendliness.

Of many children Anne had only one son remaining. He was a very bright and interesting boy of eleven years of age. He had been treated with great kindness by King William and Queen Mary, even throughout the disgraceful family quarrels. But this beautiful boy, around whom so many fond hopes clustered, died suddenly with scarlet fever in 1700, having just celebrated his eleventh birthday. The loss of this only child, the last of six, was a terrible blow to the fond heart of the Princess Anne. But she was soon called from private griefs to public duties.

In 1702 King William died, and Anne was immediately proclaimed queen.

“In the commencement of the reign of Anne, the Earl of Marlborough was a Tory; but his wife became a Whig, and, as a natural consequence, Marlborough was soon drawn over to that party. Admiral Churchill, his brother, was a violent Tory; Lord Sunderland, his son-in-law, was a violent Whig; Lady Tyrconnel, the sister of Lady Marlborough, was an enthusiastic Jacobite, and was at this time one of the court of the exiled king. This one instance will give some idea of the manner in which not only the nation but private families were divided by the spirit of faction.

“A continued series of disputes and intrigues agitated the country; and among several minor events was the trial of Dr. Sacheverel for preaching a seditious sermon, a circumstance unimportant in itself, but which was made to serve the purposes of a faction, and to inflame the populace almost to frenzy. Never, perhaps, did party spirit rage in a manner at once so disgraceful, so vicious, and so ludicrous. It was not the strife of principles; it was not, like the civil wars of the preceding century, a grand struggle between liberty and despotism, – it was a vile spirit of faction, which had filled the nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguished the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity; which had affected at once the morals and the common sense of the people; and even interfered with the administration of justice.

“The women, instead of tempering the animosities of the time, blew up the flame of discord. Addison, in some of the most elegant papers of the ‘Spectator,’ attempted to mitigate this evil spirit. He attacked the men with grave humor and graver argument; he endeavored to bring back the women to the decorum and reserve of their sex by the most exquisite raillery, that delicate mixture of satire and compliment in which he excelled; he reminded these petticoat politicians and viragoes of the tea-table that party spirit was in its nature a male vice, made up of many angry passions, which were altogether repugnant to the softness, modesty, and other endearing qualities proper to their sex.

“He assured them there was nothing so injurious to a pretty face as party zeal; that he had never known a party woman who kept her beauty for a twelve-month; and he conjured them, as they valued their complexions, to abstain from all disputes of this nature. Every one will recollect the admirable description of the Whig ladies and the Tory ladies drawn up in battle array at the opera, and patched, by way of distinction, on opposite sides of the face; the perplexity of the Whig beauty, who had a mole on the Tory side of her forehead, which exposed her to the imputation of having gone over to the enemy; and the despair of the Tory partisan, whom an unlucky pimple had reduced to the necessity of applying a patch to the wrong side of her face.

“But it was all in vain; a transient smile might have been excited at such palpable absurdity; some partial good was perhaps effected; but fashion and faction were far too strong to be acted upon by wit, or argument, or eloquence, or satire. At a time when a low-bred, artful, ignorant bedchamber-woman, with no more sense than would have sufficed to smooth a crumpled ribbon or comb a lapdog, possessed supreme power, and Swift, Arbuthnot, Harley, and Bolingbroke were dancing attendance in her anteroom, it was in vain to preach to women the forbearance and reserve proper to their sex, to point out the confined sphere of their duties, or to remind them of the advice of Pericles to the Athenian women, ‘not to make themselves talked of one way or another.’ Mrs. Masham ruled the queen, but she was herself the contemptible tool of a set of designing men. In the end she and her tutor Harley triumphed; the Tories prevailed; the Whigs were all turned out; Marlborough was not only disgraced at court, but, by a sudden turn of feeling produced in the popular mind by the calumnies and contrivance of his enemies, he became an object of contempt and hatred; and he whose victories had been hailed with such national pride and exultation, found himself ‘baited with the rabble’s curse.’ This might have been contemned, for mere popular clamor dies away, and leaves no trace on the dispassionate page of history; but when Swift, the political gladiator of that time, collected all his terrible powers of invective and satire, and sarcasm, and fell upon the devoted general, branding, stabbing, and slashing at every stroke, he left the duke standing like a column scathed by the thunderbolt, and the lapse of a century has hardly enabled us to distinguish the truth from falsehood of his rancorous libels.”

The brilliant victories of the Duke of Marlborough, in alliance with the German princes under Prince Eugene, had filled all Europe with wonder. In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was achieved, and notwithstanding Marshal Villars’ heroism at the battle of Malplaquet, in 1709, the victory was gained by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, though so great was the loss of the allies, that Villars wrote to Louis XIV.: “If God permits us to lose such another battle, your Majesty can count on your enemies being destroyed.”

Marlborough had joined the Whigs because they were in favor of war; but now the Tories were gaining the ascendency in England; and with their coming into power peace was declared, and the Marlboroughs were deposed from their high places.

Wearied of the ill-temper of the haughty duchess, which broke out in most violent language even in the presence of the queen, Anne at last determined to rid herself of her overbearing companion, whose strong will had for so long a time awed her into submission; while the necessary military generalship of the illustrious duke had long kept the queen from daring to dismiss the insolent duchess, who at length forgot even her politic behavior in her fits of anger, and endeavored to scold back the favor of the queen which had been lost to her by her own impolitic arrogance, and through the wily cunning of her own relation, Mrs. Masham, whom she had herself recommended to the queen for the position of bedchamber-woman, never imagining that this poor ignorant relative would usurp her own place as royal favorite.

Before Anne had ascended the throne, a little incident occurred which eventually led to the downfall of the duchess. The Princess Anne was one day alone in her private drawing-room at St. James. The Duchess of Marlborough entered the anteroom where the princess’ waiting-woman, afterwards Mrs. Masham, was in attendance. Observing a pair of gloves upon the table, the duchess, thinking they were her own, drew them upon her hands. Whereupon the attendant remarked that the gloves belonged to the princess, who had sent her to get them, as her mistress was about to enter her carriage. “What! have I touched anything that has been upon the hands of that odious woman!” exclaimed the duchess in a fury of ill-temper; and tearing them from her fingers she threw them on the floor and retired, little thinking that the insulting words had been overheard by the princess in the adjoining room. From that moment the ultimate disgrace of the imperious duchess was determined upon, although, owing to her husband’s victories and her own threats of publishing the confidential letters of her “loving Mrs. Morley,” her downfall was long delayed.

Queen Anne had not ceased to be a loving wife, when she became a sovereign; and the death of her husband in 1708 was a terrible blow to her. As the queen sat by her dead, though she was the monarch of a vast realm, she was the slave of court etiquette; and as the Duchess of Marlborough still held her office as mistress of the robes, this tyrannical etiquette required that the hated duchess should invade even the sanctuary of Anne’s beloved dead, and lead the queen from the funereal chamber.

But the days of the ascendency of the brilliant but terrible virago were nearly numbered. In 1710, the Whig ministry was deposed, and the Tories came into power.

“Anne could not cope with her discarded favorite in eloquence and violence, but she could resist and dissemble; above all, she could hold her tongue.” Influenced by the Tories, who gained the ear of the queen through the connivance of Mrs. Masham, it was secretly arranged that the Whig ministry should be forced to retire; that the Marlboroughs should be disgraced, and that peace should be negotiated with Louis XIV. The proud duchess had not yet been publicly informed of her impending downfall, but rumors had reached her of the queen’s animosity. Hastening to Kensington, she forced herself into the presence of the queen, and demanded with the air of a sovereign rather than a subject, of what she was accused. The queen, aware that her only weapon against the sarcastic and voluble tongue of the duchess was silence, remarked with cutting composure: “I shall make no answer to anything you say.” This was more than the enraged duchess could bear, and she launched forth into such a terrible tongue-lashing of violent vituperation, that the incensed queen turned to leave the room; whereupon the duchess exclaimed, “I am confident you will suffer in this world or the next for so much inhumanity.”

“That is my business,” retorted the queen, as she lifted the portière and retired, leaving the discomfited duchess to weep in a fury of rage and humiliation.

They never met again. When the Duke of Marlborough returned from his campaign, not all his condescension in begging on his knees that the golden key, – his wife’s badge of office, – might be retained by her for a few weeks sufficed to appease the queen. “I will have it in two days,” exclaimed the angry Anne; and upon reporting his failure to his indignant wife, she also hurled upon his poor head her invectives of wrath, and throwing the golden keys upon the floor, the haughty virago, who had lost all power over her queen, but still maintained her ascendency in her husband’s heart in spite of all her outbursts of temper, sullenly retired, leaving her humiliated spouse to pick up her tardily relinquished badge of office and meekly bear it back in shame and sorrow to her offended sovereign. Hard fate for a man to fall into the snare of playing the go-between of two angry women, especially when one is his wife and the other his sovereign.