Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion (5 page)

That bustled here and made a little world?

Revolted all.

For James these lines would prove all too apposite.
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The Duchess of Marlborough, who would be the recipient of a vast amount of correspondence from Anne, declared ‘Her letters were very indifferent, both in sense and spelling’.
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The accusation of poor spelling was unfair given the standards of the day. Anne spelt better than many aristocratic ladies at the Stuart court and, for that matter, than Sarah’s husband, the Duke of Marlborough.

According to an early historian of Anne’s reign, ‘it was an unhappiness to this Queen that she was not much acquainted with our English history and the reigns and actions of her predecessors’. Despite ‘beginning to apply herself to it’ shortly before her accession, it proved too late to fill up all the gaps in her knowledge. She had nevertheless managed to learn enough about the Tudors to identify parallels between herself and Queen Elizabeth I. Some of the events of the recent Civil War were also familiar to her, although inevitably she viewed these from a royalist standpoint. The executed Charles I was now revered as a martyr who had died defending the Church of England. The anniversary of his death was observed by a ‘day of fast and humiliation’, and on that date Anne and her sister wore black. Church services were held to commemorate his murder, during which the congregation was reminded that ‘upon no pretext whatever, subjects might resist their lawful princes’. There was little recognition that Parliament had had some legitimate grievances, and that this had contributed to the outbreak of civil war.
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The sufferings of the Church of England in the decade after the royalist cause collapsed were also much emphasised. Under the Commonwealth, the
Book of Common Prayer
had been outlawed, episcopacy had been abolished, and hundreds of Anglican clergymen had been deprived of their livings. At the Restoration of the monarchy, the reinstated bishops took revenge on their former oppressors. All those Protestants who could not comply with every tenet of the newly resurgent Church were penalised, and ‘rigid prelates … made it a matter of conscience to give … the least indulgence’ to dissenters.
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By the terms of the Conventicle Act, those who worshipped in a manner not authorised by the state were liable to savage fines and imprisonment.

For much of Charles II’s reign, the tribulations of nonconformists far exceeded those imposed on Anglicans during the Interregnum, but Anne was brought up to have little sympathy for this sizeable minority. She accepted that dissenters posed a serious threat to the well-being of the Church of England, and the fact that nonconformity was associated in the mind of the court with political radicalism further predisposed her
against them. Her upbringing helped shape her conservative outlook: Sarah Marlborough would claim Anne ‘sucked in with her milk’ a distaste for those who upheld the liberties of the subject, while the Roundheads who had executed her grandfather were viewed as little short of demonic.
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There can be no doubt that had Anne been a boy she would have been taught very differently. The rigorous scholastic programme designed for her son William, Duke of Gloucester at the end of the seventeenth century shows what then comprised a princely education. Whether such a training, with its heavy emphasis on classical languages, would have made Anne a better ruler remains conjectural. As it was, she ascended the throne in what the Duchess of Marlborough scoffingly called ‘a state of helpless ignorance’.
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Nevertheless, she never seems to have doubted her ability to take on the responsibilities of sovereignty.

Great care was at least taken over Anne’s religious education. When she returned to England from France in 1670, her father was already gravitating towards Catholicism. Fully aware it would cause political meltdown if Anne and Mary did likewise, Charles II saw to it that both his nieces were brought up as Protestants. James resented this, recalling bitterly ‘it was much against his will that his daughters went to church and were bred Protestants’, but it was made clear to him that if he ‘endeavoured to have them instructed in his own religion … they would have immediately been quite taken from him’.
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James was particularly irked by the choice of Henry Compton to be his daughters’ spiritual preceptor. Compton came from an aristocratic family and had not been ordained until after the Restoration, when he was already in his thirties. Before that he had seen active service in the royalist army, and he still had such a soldierly manner that James complained he spoke ‘more like a colonel than a bishop’. He was militant in other ways, for he was a known ‘enemy to the Papists’,
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and as Compton’s influence at court grew, James had many clashes with him. He could not prevent him becoming a Privy Councillor in January 1676, but a year later the Duke did succeed in blocking the then Bishop of London’s appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Compton was not just intolerant towards Catholics, for he was also ‘very severe upon the dissenting Protestants’. This hostility helped Anne form the idea that nonconformists were fanatical and untrustworthy. ‘As she was bred up in High Church principles, they were believed to be always predominant in her’, and all her life she was of the view that the Anglican Church needed protection against the dissenters.
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Compton, known for his low, gruff voice, was not a particularly inspiring teacher, but his advocacy of unquestioning faith in preference to intellectual rigour was an approach that suited Anne. After marrying and going to live in Holland, her sister Mary came to feel that her spiritual education had been defective, and she set about compensating for this by intensive study. When her father later sought to convert her by sending her Catholic tracts, he was astounded by the learned way she marshalled arguments against him. Had Anne been called upon to do so, it is unlikely that she could have acquitted herself so competently. In 1687 she did commend to her sister some of the religious works currently being published in England, declaring ‘a great many of our side … are very well writ’, but in general she ‘never pursued any study in those points with much application’.
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If complex theological debate was beyond Anne, her Anglican faith was firm and undeviating. ‘In all respects a true daughter of the Church of England’, she was a ‘devout worshipper’ who was ‘steadfast and regular in her devotions’. As well as setting aside time for private prayer, she assiduously attended church services and took the sacrament whenever appropriate. At the height of their friendship, almost the only thing that prompted her to criticise Sarah Churchill was Sarah’s infrequent church attendance.
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Anne’s religion consoled and sustained her when she endured tragedies and bereavements that might have caused others to lose their trust in God.

When Anne’s faith was called in question, she reaffirmed it in simple and positive terms which not only left no doubt as to the strength of her convictions but also made clear the extent to which she had absorbed the anti-Catholic sentiments of Bishop Compton. She told Mary in 1686:

I abhor the principles of the Church of Rome as much as it is possible for any to do, and I as much value the doctrine of the Church of England. And certainly there is the greatest reason in the world to do so, for the doctrine of the Church of Rome is wicked and dangerous and directly contrary to the scriptures, and their ceremonies – most of them – plain downright idolatry. But God be thanked, we were not bred up in that communion, but are of a Church that is pious and sincere, and conformable in all its principles to the scriptures. Our Church teaches no doctrine but what is just, holy and good, or what is profitable to salvation; and the Church of England is, without all doubt, the only true Church.
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A Venetian diplomat recorded that ‘The Duchess of York was not buried when negotiations were begun for a fresh one’. James’s eagerness to acquire a new spouse was partly because he wanted sons and heirs. It took him some time to find a bride, not least because he was adamant that candidates must be ‘young and beautiful’.
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At length he decided to propose to an Italian princess, fifteen-year-old Mary Beatrice of Modena, who fulfilled both requirements. Negotiations dragged on because the girl had wanted to be a nun and it required the intervention of the Pope to persuade her that marriage to James represented a higher vocation. In September 1673 Mary Beatrice was wedded to James by proxy at a ceremony in Modena, but when news arrived in England that James had chosen a Catholic princess as his wife it was very ill received. After Parliament met on 20 October, a motion was passed urging that Mary Beatrice should be sent straight home on reaching England. Rather than heed these demands, Charles II prorogued Parliament before her arrival in November.

‘The offspring of this marriage will probably inherit the crown’, the Venetian ambassador noted, but there is no evidence that the likelihood of being superseded in the succession by Mary Beatrice’s sons upset Mary and Anne at this stage. Certainly their father assumed they would welcome their young stepmother, jovially telling eleven-year-old Mary ‘he had provided a playfellow for her’.
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Once she had recovered from her homesickness and her initial distaste for her middle-aged husband, Mary Beatrice’s youthful high spirits manifested themselves. There had been fears that someone of her ‘Italian breeding’ would have very pronounced ideas about etiquette, but here too her informality came as a pleasant surprise as she enjoyed games of blind man’s buff and snowball fights. Lady Tuke said she would never have expected her to be ‘such a romp as she proves’.
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Initially the signs were that Mary Beatrice had established an excellent relationship with her stepdaughters. In 1675 an observer reported she ‘diverts herself … with the princesses, whose conversation is much to her taste and satisfaction’. Three years later she would say of Mary, ‘I love her as if she was my own daughter’, and she gave every indication of being equally fond of Anne. When the Duchess of York accompanied her husband to Scotland in 1680 she complained not just about having to leave behind her own daughter Isabella, but also at being parted from Anne. The following year Mary Beatrice expressed delight when her stepdaughter was permitted to join her at Edinburgh, declaring herself ‘much pleased to have the Lady Anne with me’.
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Anne was assumed to
reciprocate these warm feelings, and in the early years it is indeed probable that they were genuinely on good terms. In time, however, Anne would come to detest Mary Beatrice.

The fact that Mary and Anne were being brought up in a Catholic household was a cause of concern to the public. When Parliament met in February 1674 the House of Lords attempted to pass a resolution that called for ‘the removal of the Duke of York’s daughters from his charge because the Duchess is a Catholic’.
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Once again the King staved off trouble by proroguing Parliament before the measure was put to the vote.

Considering she was not even allowed to bring up her own children as Catholics, Mary Beatrice’s chances of converting her stepdaughters were surely slim. Having given birth in January 1675 to a baby girl (dismissed as ‘but a daughter’ by the disappointed father) she was appalled when her husband explained that ‘their children were the property of the nation’, and would be removed from their parents’ care unless raised as Protestants. Accordingly the child (who died that October) was christened according to Anglican rites, and her elder sisters stood as godmothers.
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Mary and Anne’s energies at this time were absorbed elsewhere with an acting project. In the autumn of 1674 the King had commissioned Thomas Crowne to write a masque to be staged at Whitehall, entitled
Calisto, or The Chaste Nymph
. Intended to rival the ballets and entertainments put on by Louis XIV in France, it was hoped that the masque would serve as an extravagant showpiece, in which ‘the splendour of the English monarchy will be seen’. The seven speaking roles were all taken by young ladies of the court. Anne’s sister Mary was given the role of the eponymous nymph, Calisto, while Anne played Calisto’s younger sister Nyphe. Even in this supporting role there were quite a lot of lines for a nine-year-old to master, but fortunately Anne had an excellent memory. Like other members of the cast, she was coached by Mrs Betterton, wife of the actor-manager Thomas Betterton. When Anne was a bit older the training she received at this point would be supplemented by lessons from another celebrated actress, Elizabeth Barry, who was credited with much improving her pupil’s diction.
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On 22 February 1675 the masque was staged ‘in all its bravery and pomp’ in the presence of the King and Queen, foreign ministers and anyone else who had been able to secure seats. It was a lavish production, in which the elaborately costumed female performers appeared ‘all covered with jewels’. Basking in the audience’s ‘great applause’, the
delighted author enthused that the success of the play owed much to the ‘graceful action, incomparable beauty and rich and splendid habits of the princesses’.
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Crowne had based his plot on a story from Ovid, relating how the nymph Calisto, servitor of the Goddess Diana, had been raped by Jupiter after the latter gained access to her by impersonating Diana. For decency’s sake, Crowne toned down the story so that Calisto successfully fends off Jupiter’s advances, but the script still contained much sexual innuendo. In particular the scenes in which Jupiter, masquerading as Diana, tries to force himself upon the unwilling nymph have an erotic subtext. Calisto is overcome with shame and confusion at finding herself an object of sexual attention from a woman, and even expresses dread that, like Diana, she might become infected by a ‘strange uncommon’ malady that will prompt her to commit ‘some horrid act’.
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It is curious that Anne, whose reputation would later be compromised by allegations of lesbianism, should have appeared as a child in an entertainment which touched obliquely on such matters.