Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

It would be wrong to focus too much attention on the adolescent fantasies of teenage girls. Of the two sisters, Mary appears to have been the more strongly emotionally involved with Frances Apsley. Yet after she went to Holland in 1677, Mary never formed a comparable relationship with a member of her own sex.81 In Anne’s case, her youthful affection for Frances Apsley foreshadowed deeper attachments to women in her mature years.

In the autumn of 1677 the princesses’ girlish existence, hitherto dominated by petty dramas and private obsessions, was altered forever. Fifteen-year-old Mary had been of marriageable age for three years, and the King now decided it was time to provide her with a husband. He was concerned that the monarchy was losing popularity because his heir apparent was a Catholic and he himself was justly suspected of having Catholic sympathies. In hopes of proclaiming his Protestant credentials, he began to think of matching his niece to his Dutch nephew, Prince William of Orange, son of the late Princess Royal. Such a union would delight Parliament because it would distance Charles II from the French, who were still at war with Holland. At the outset of the war, Charles had allied himself with Louis XIV, but in 1674 had signed peace terms with Holland. The conflict between France and Holland had continued, with the Dutch putting up a heroic resistance under the leadership of their hereditary stadholder and commander-in-chief, Prince William of Orange. By bestowing Mary on his nephew, Charles would indicate that he no longer wanted the French to win the struggle.

The match had obvious advantages for William. For the moment, Mary remained second in line to the English throne. Admittedly, there was a possibility that she could be displaced, for the Duchess of York, who had produced a daughter named Isabella in July 1676, was currently expecting another child. As things stood, however, Mary had a good chance of inheriting the crown. If she died childless, in theory it then passed to Anne, and it was only if she too died without heirs that it descended to William, whose claim came through his late mother. William nevertheless calculated that marrying Mary would bring him ‘a great step to one degree nearer the crown, and to all appearance the next [in line]’.82

William visited England in October 1677, and having insisted on having a brief preliminary meeting with Mary, he asked the King for her hand. Charles agreed, and the Duke of York, who had formerly cherished unrealistic hopes that Mary could be betrothed to the French Dauphin, was prevailed upon to give his consent. After dining at Whitehall on 21 October, James returned to St James’s and took Mary into his closet to tell her that her wedding had been arranged, and that she would be going to live with Prince William in Holland. Shattered to learn that she was to be married to a stranger and wrenched from her homeland, Mary ‘wept all that afternoon and the following day’.83

There was public rapture at the news that ‘the eldest daughter of the crown should sleep in Protestant arms’. However, when the marriage took place at St James’s on 4 November, the atmosphere in the palace could hardly have been less festive. Mary was still in a state of great distress, and the heavily pregnant Mary Beatrice was also ‘much grieved’ at the prospect of being separated from a stepdaughter she held ‘in much affection’. As for Anne, she was already sickening with what turned out to be smallpox. The atmosphere was not lightened by Charles’s excruciating jokes, and his urging Bishop Compton, who was performing the marriage, to ‘make haste lest his sister[-in-law] should be delivered of a son, and the marriage be disappointed’.84

Things did not improve over the next few days. When Mary appeared with William at her side, she gave the impression of being ‘a very coy bride’, and the Prince was soon being criticised for ‘sullenness and clownishness’ and for taking ‘no notice of his princess at the play and ball’. According to the French ambassador, his mood darkened further when the Duchess of York gave birth to a boy on 7 November.85 Three days after this Anne, who had been ill since 5 November, was confirmed as suffering from smallpox.

Smallpox was a dreaded scourge and a virulent epidemic was sweeping through the court. A few days after Anne was diagnosed, Lady Frances caught the disease, which in her case proved fatal. Anne’s life was also feared for, and many at court believed that her soul too was imperilled. To avoid spreading infection her chaplain Dr Edward Lake had been ordered not to read prayers in her bedchamber, but he worried this would leave her vulnerable to the blandishments of her nurse, ‘a very busy, zealous Roman Catholic’. He alerted Bishop Compton to the danger, and the latter promptly ordered him ‘to wait constantly on her highness and do all the offices ministerial which were incumbent’. Quarantine precautions meant that after being with Anne, Lake could have no further contact with Mary. On going to take his leave of her, he found her ‘very disconsolate, not only for her sister’s illness’, but because she was worried that Anne was in need of her guidance. Lake did his best to reassure her, but Mary remained so haunted by the possibility that Anne would be converted that on her own deathbed, seventeen years later, she was tormented by visions of a Papist nurse lurking in the shadows.86

Initially it had seemed that Anne’s attack of smallpox would be relatively mild. On 12 November, however, the disease grew much worse. She became covered with spots, and Lake found ‘her highness somewhat giddy and very much disordered’. Alarmed for her own safety, she begged Lake not to leave her. She remained ‘very ill’ for some days.87 As more and more people at court were stricken with smallpox, William grew desperate to take his wife home to Holland. Utterly distraught at her impending departure, Mary was also still bothered by fears for her sister’s physical and spiritual well-being. She was unable to say goodbye herself, but charged the Duchess of Monmouth to take care of Anne and to accompany her often to chapel, and she left behind her two letters to be given to Anne when she was better. Mary bade farewell to the rest of her family at Gravesend. An onlooker reported ‘there was a very sad parting between the Princess and her father, but especially the Duchess and her, who wept both with that excess of sorrow’ that everyone present was moved.88 However, within a fortnight of arriving in the Netherlands Mary had recovered from her homesickness and fallen deeply in love with her dour and uncommunicative husband.

During Anne’s illness, her father showed a touching solicitude for her. He ‘visited her every day … and commanded that her sister’s departure should be concealed from her; wherefore there was a feigned message sent every morning from the Princess to her Highness to know how she did’. Only on 4 December was she told that Mary had long since left the country, ‘which she appeared to bear very patiently’. In due course Anne made a full recovery, although there were fears her complexion would be permanently pitted. On 3 December she was allowed to visit her stepmother, who was still resting in her bedchamber after her confinement. Nine days later her little brother, who had been ‘sprightly and like to live’ at birth, died. It is often stated that Anne had unwittingly infected him with smallpox when she saw him for the first time, but this is questionable. It is not even certain that the child would have been present when she went to see Mary Beatrice; all the contemporary reports of his death blame negligence on the part of his nurses. Whatever the cause of his demise, the loss of the little male heir left the Duke and Duchess of York emotionally shattered. ‘The Duke was never known to grieve so much at the death of any of his other children’, while his wife was ‘inconsolable’.89

With the death of Lady Frances, Anne needed a new governess. Lady Henrietta Hyde, wife of Anne’s uncle Laurence Hyde, was chosen. Known as a ‘great adversary of the Catholics’, she was well qualified to protect Anne against Popish influences but her appointment was not popular with other members of the household. On learning who was to replace Lady Frances, Anne’s chaplain Dr Lake commented glumly, ‘Seldom comes a better’. In one respect, however, Anne’s life now improved, for she took over the lodgings at St James’s Palace which Mary had vacated.90

On Easter Sunday 1678, Anne took communion for the first time. Much to the annoyance of her father, she had been confirmed some time before with her sister. Knowing that the Duke of York still felt aggrieved about this, Anne’s chaplain Dr Lake was mortified when she drained the contents of the chalice on receiving the sacrament. In great embarrassment he recorded in his diary, ‘Her Highness was not (through negligence) instructed how much of the wine to drink, but drank of it twice or thrice, whereat I was much concerned, lest the Duke should have notice of it’.91

In the autumn of 1678 Anne had a chance to see her sister again. Having already lost a baby in April 1678, Mary was believed to be pregnant once more, but was ill and feeling low. In hopes that a sisterly visit would cheer her up, James gave permission for his wife and younger daughter to travel to Holland while he and the King were at Newmarket. The Duchess of York reported delightedly that she understood that Mary was ‘very anxious to see me and her sister; we have as great a wish to see her’.92

On 1 October they set out accompanied by a ‘little company’ of high ranking ladies and courtiers, including the Duchesses of Monmouth, Richmond, and Buckingham, and Anne’s new governess Lady Henrietta Hyde. When informing William that they were on their way, the Duke of York had stressed that they did not want a tremendous fuss to be made of them, as the ‘incognito ladies … desire to be very incognito’. Despite this Prince William of Orange, who was not by nature the most open-handed of men, made a great effort to be hospitable. A member of the his staff was surprised when William spent ‘a pretty penny’ making Noordeinde Palace comfortable for his guests. By 17 October the party was back in England, and in his letter thanking William for his ‘kind usage’ of his womenfolk James reported that the Duchess was ‘so satisfied with her journey and with you as I never saw anybody’. For Anne too, the outing had been a success. She was much impressed by the immaculate cleanliness of the streets in Dutch towns, and observers commented on the affectionate reception she received from her sister. The visit also afforded her the first real opportunity of becoming acquainted with her brother-in-law. In later years there was a strong mutual antipathy between them, and William is supposed to have ‘often said, if he had married her, he should have been the miserablest man upon earth’. However, since he was noted to be in the gayest possible humour throughout her stay in Holland, one can perhaps conclude that he did not take against her instantly.93

Anne and Mary Beatrice returned from this pleasant excursion to find England in the grip of wild panic. A charlatan named Titus Oates had alleged that he had uncovered a Jesuit plot to kill the King and overturn the government. When the magistrate who had recorded Oates’s depositions was found murdered on 17 October, this prompted an outbreak of anti-Catholic hysteria. On 1 November the Earl of Shaftesbury declared in Parliament that a ‘damnable plot’ had been uncovered, and in the ensuing frenzy Catholic peers were disabled from sitting in the House of Lords. The Duke of York was at least exempted from the bill’s provisions, but he was aware that he was ‘far from being secure by having gained that point’.94 In December Catholic priests supposedly guilty of conspiracy were tried and executed, as was James’s former secretary, Edward Coleman, who was discovered to have been in treasonable correspondence with Louis XIV’s confessor.

Fear of Popery now reached such a peak that a sizeable section of the political nation was no longer prepared to tolerate the prospect of a Catholic king. In January 1679 Charles II dissolved Parliament, but a new one was summoned for the spring, and it was clear that when it met, the King would face calls to disinherit his brother. The country became so polarised that political parties emerged, with allegiances divided between those who favoured excluding James from the throne, and those who wished to preserve intact the hereditary succession. The two groupings soon acquired names, originally intended as insults. Those hostile to the Duke of York were known as ‘Whigs’, short for ‘Whiggamore’, a term formerly applied to extremist Presbyterian rebels in Scotland. Their more traditionalist opponents were dubbed ‘Tories’, after the lawless Catholic bandits who rampaged in Ireland. The labels would outlast the Exclusion Crisis, and bitter divisions along these lines would become so entrenched a feature of political life that when Anne came to the throne the two parties became her declared ‘bugbears’.

Because the situation in England was so fraught, the King decided that his brother must be sent out of the country prior to the meeting of the new Parliament in March 1679. Permission was initially granted for James to take Anne abroad with him, but this was rescinded after concerns were expressed that her religion would be endangered if she accompanied her father. On 3 March 1679 James and Mary Beatrice bid an emotional farewell to friends and family, upsetting Anne so much that she ‘cried as much as the rest to part company’. After briefly visiting his daughter and son-in-law at The Hague, James settled in Brussels, capital of the Spanish Netherlands. He ignored the advice of those who cautioned him that it would look bad if he based himself in a Popish country, curtly pointing out that ‘I cannot be more a Catholic than I am’.95

When the English Parliament assembled, James’s absence did not appear to have made them more tractable. The King indicated that he was willing ‘to pare the nails’ of a Popish successor by giving Parliament the right to approve appointments to the Privy Council and to name judges if the monarch was a Catholic. However he insisted he would never allow them ‘to impeach the right of succession’ or interfere with ‘the descent of the crown in the true line’.96 These concessions were rejected and an Exclusion Bill was introduced which passed its second reading in the Commons on 21 May. Six days later the King once again dissolved Parliament.

Charles believed that as yet it would be unwise to permit his brother to return to England, but in August he agreed to James’s request that his daughters Anne and Isabella could visit, ‘to help me bear my banishment with somewhat more patience’. Every precaution was taken to ensure that the two girls were not seduced into Popery while abroad. They were forbidden to visit Catholic churches and monasteries, and two Anglican chaplains who travelled with them read daily prayers in a chapel set aside for their use. Even the most limited contact with the outward manifestations of Catholicism filled Anne with distaste, and she professed herself shocked by glimpsing ‘images … in every shop and corner of the street. The more I see of those fooleries, and the more I hear of that religion, the more I dislike it’.97

Anne and Isabella set out for Brussels on 20 August, but their father was not there to greet them. Two days after their departure Charles II had fallen seriously ill, and James had rushed back to England to be at his brother’s bedside. Anne and her younger sister remained in Brussels with the Duchess, and the letters Anne sent to Frances Apsley and her mother show that she was worried about her father’s difficulties. When Lady Apsley suggested that all the family would soon be permitted to return, she wrote ‘I wish it were so indeed’ but dismissed it as unlikely because now that the King was better, James was being sent back to Brussels. However, she refused to be discouraged, ‘for I have a good heart, thank God, or else it would have been down long ago’. She admitted too, that she was quite enjoying some aspects of life abroad. She was pleased with her accommodation in the Hotel des Hornes, which was ‘better than I expected, and so is all this place’. Brussels was ‘a great and fine town’ and ‘all the people here are very civil, and except you be otherways to them, they will be so to you … Though the streets are not so clean as they are in Holland, yet they are not so dirty as ours … They only have odd kinds of smells’. She had also been impressed when taken to ‘see a ball at the court incognito, which I liked very well’. The fireworks, dancing, and celebrations in honour of the King of Spain’s marriage to her cousin Marie Louise d’Orléans – with whom Anne had shared a nursery in France – ‘far surpassed my expectations’, and the ‘lemonade, cinnamon water and chocolate sweetmeats, all very good’, also met with her approval.98

James was back in Brussels by the end of September. Since Anne and Isabella were scheduled to return to England after paying a brief visit to William and Mary, he decided to accompany them to The Hague, for ‘I would be glad to be with them as long as I could’. While he and the Duchess were there, a message arrived from Charles agreeing that James could now base himself in Scotland. On 8 October 1679 the Duke and Duchess of York left Holland with Anne and Isabella, fortunately unaware that they would never see William and Mary again. Having dropped off their two daughters in London, they travelled overland to Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh on 24 November. Three months later, they were permitted to return to England, but when Parliament met again in the autumn of 1680, the King decided that James must leave the country once more. On 20 October the Duke and Duchess were forced to set out for Scotland, this time by sea.

Parliament opened on 21 October and at once the Commons drafted a new Exclusion Bill, providing for James to be barred from the throne and perpetually banished. The implications were serious for Mary and Anne: as James put it, if the measure became law it ‘would not only affect himself, but his children too’ since those who had voted for it ‘would never think themselves secure under the government of those whose father they have excluded’. Some of the Whigs, possibly including their leader the Earl of Shaftesbury, would have liked Charles’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, to become king after his father. Whereas the first Exclusion Bill had expressly stated that on Charles’s death the crown should devolve upon the ‘next lawful heir’ who was Protestant – meaning Mary – the bill now introduced left the matter vague. After being modified in committee it once again specified that after James had been bypassed, the line of succession would carry on unaltered, but from Mary and Anne’s point of view the earlier ambiguity on this point was an ominous development.99 As it was, the bill did not become law, for after passing the House of Commons without a division, it was thrown out by the Lords. In January the King dissolved Parliament and announced that a new one would meet in Oxford in the spring.

While the Duke of York was in Scotland, a suitor appeared on the scene for the Lady Anne. This was Prince George Ludwig of Hanover, who like Anne was a great grandchild of King James I. He was the son of the Duke of Hanover and his wife Sophia, the youngest daughter of Charles I’s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia. By the spring of 1680 he was already being ‘much talked of for a husband for Lady Anne’, and in many ways he seemed an ideal choice, as he was ‘a Protestant, very young, gallant and handsome and indifferent rich’. One English diplomat described it as the ‘more fit match for her of any prince I know in Christendom’.100

Sophia’s brother, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, lived in England, and in January 1680 he had set things in motion by writing to tell his sister that he had been approached about a marriage between George and Anne. ‘All the realm would like it, so think about it’, he urged her. Sophia and her husband were slightly sceptical that the ‘fine things’ her brother promised of the marriage would actually materialise, but they were ready to give it serious consideration. Later that year Prince George went on a European tour, and arrived in England on 6 December. The King was very welcoming, providing him with apartments at Whitehall. The next day Prince George was introduced to Anne, and ‘saluted her by kissing her with the consent of the King’. Since the Prince did not leave the country until 11 March 1681, he almost certainly saw Anne on other occasions, but with James absent and the monarchy in crisis there could be no question of concluding anything. Even after George Ludwig’s departure, however, the idea of a union was by no means abandoned, and an Italian diplomat stationed in England believed that Anne had fallen in love with the Prince.101

On 21 March 1681 Parliament met at Oxford. To avoid a complete rupture, the King offered a series of ‘expedients’ designed to safeguard the kingdom if his brother inherited the crown. James would become King in name, but would be declared unfit to rule. A regency would be set up to govern the country, with William and Mary installed as joint protectors of the realm. Despite bearing the title of King, James would be banished from his own dominions during his lifetime. Even these far-reaching proposals failed to satisfy the Commons. Instead they introduced another Bill of Exclusion, and disquietingly it once again failed to name a successor.102 Charles was not prepared to accept this, and without warning dissolved Parliament a week after it had opened. The failure to reach a settlement, thought by some to presage disaster, marked the start of a royal recovery.

Bolstered by skilful financial management and payments from Louis XIV, with whom he had negotiated a secret agreement, Charles was able to survive without summoning another Parliament. By late May a royal adviser reported that ‘his majesty’s position has improved considerably since the dissolution’,103 but the King did not yet feel sufficiently confident to bring his brother back to England. Instead he agreed that Anne could join her father. In March, her little sister Isabella had died, leaving both her parents desolate. Being reunited with Anne would, it was hoped, afford some consolation.

Anne went by sea, arriving at Edinburgh on 17 July, accompanied by a sizeable suite. At Holyrood Palace her father and stepmother kept ‘almost as great a court as at Whitehall’, shocking some Scots by giving balls and masquerades at which, allegedly, ‘promiscuous dancing’ took place. Riding, playing cards, and being ‘often with the Duchess’ left Anne with little time to write letters to friends such as Frances Apsley. Theatrical entertainments also kept her busy. After seeing his daughter and four of the maids of honour who had accompanied her give a performance of Mithridates to celebrate Mary Beatrice’s birthday in November, James reported proudly that all ‘did their parts very well, and they were very well dressed, so that they made a very fine show, and such a one as had not been seen in this country before’.104

Despite the ‘gaiety and brilliancy of the court of Holyrood House’, they still felt homesick. In a letter to Frances Apsley, Anne said she hoped she would be reunited with her before too long, ‘though God and the King only knows when’. In the meantime, she asked Frances to ‘write me all the news you know, send me the Gazette and other printed papers that are good’.105

In March 1682 James was allowed back to England for what was meant to be a short visit, but once there he was able to persuade the King that he should bring his wife and daughter home. James set sail on 3 May and only narrowly avoided drowning after his ship was wrecked with great loss of life, but he survived and was able to collect Anne and Mary Beatrice. They all sailed back to England in the aptly named Happy Return, reaching London on 27 May. James declared cheerfully that from now on ‘We will fix ourselves in this country, as we have travelled quite enough during the last three years’.106

The outlook for the monarchy became so much better that within a few months James triumphantly informed Prince William of Orange ‘That seditious and turbulent party now lose ground every day’.107 Charles had struck at his opponents in various ways, such as cancelling town charters, purging the judiciary and magistracy, and interfering with the urban electoral franchise. A combination of subsidies from France and increased customs revenue meant that the King could avoid summoning Parliaments, denying his enemies an arena in which to voice opposition. Having successfully resolved the political crisis, Charles now felt able to turn his attention to arranging a marriage for his niece Anne.