Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/470

 the whigs as systematically traducing the queen and making her at one time ‘the common subject of the tittle-tattle of every coffee-house and drawing-room.’, i. 444). Hereupon the high tory leaders on 15 Nov. brought forward a proposal that Anne should invite to England the heir presumptive to the throne, the Electress Sophia. The proposal was moved by Lord Haversham, and the queen was present at the debate. (Her first attendance at a debate seems to have been 29 Nov. of the previous year, when Lord Haversham had introduced a discussion on the affairs of Scotland. , 166.) Burnet's suggestion, or the suggestion reported by him, that this motion was brought forward with the mischievous purpose of creating a misunderstanding between queen and nation, may be beyond the mark; but the demand was doubtless prompted by extreme factiousness, and the queen bitterly resented the speeches of the tory leaders, among whom Buckingham was personally insolent to herself, and more especially she ‘could never overcome’ the unpleasing impression she on this occasion received of Nottingham. (See note to, v. 233.) Nor should it be overlooked that the whigs, friends though they were to the Hanoverian succession, strongly opposed the motion, knowing ‘it was disagreable to the queen’ (, ii. 65). She wrote to the duchess accordingly, that she believed Mrs. Freeman and she would not disagree as they had formerly done; ‘for I am sensible of the services those people have done me that you have a good opinion of, and will countenance them, and am thoroughly convinced of the malice and insolence of them that you have always been speaking against’ (Conduct, 159). At the same time the debate had suggested the expediency of taking practicable measures for safeguarding the protestant succession; and in April 1706 the queen could transmit to the elector by Lord Halifax several acts favourable to the interests of his family. They included the Regency Act, which was afterwards carried into execution after Anne's death, and of which a clause obliged the privy council to proclaim the successor appointed by law with all convenient speed, as well as an act naturalising the Electress Sophia and her issue. Queen Anne, who had been in friendly correspondence with the court of Hanover during the past year (Original Papers, i. 705 seqq.), and who had recently received from the electress the expression of her belief ‘that it would be for the good of England and all Europe that the queen should live for a hundred years’ (ib. ii. 31), took the occasion of sending the garter to her cousin, the electoral prince. In September the electoral house was still further gratified by his being made a peer of England under the title of Duke of Cambridge (ib. ii. 64. The patent does not, however, appear to have been sent to him till the spring of 1708. See his letter to the queen in, 2nd series, iv. 247).

The ebullitions of something not unlike disloyalty which the queen had found to be compatible with tory and high-church opinions in both clergy and laity were insufficient to change either her principles or her prejudices, and would probably have exercised a still slighter influence upon her conduct than they actually did, had not the strength of Marlborough's position still remained the same. The military glories of the year 1705 had indeed fallen to the genius of Peterborough. But 1706 was a year of victories on every side: in Italy, where later in the year Prince Eugene's victory at Turin secured the north for the grand alliance, and severed the south for ever from the monarchy of Spain; in Spain itself, where Peterborough raised the siege of Barcelona, and Galway for a few weeks occupied Madrid; and in Flanders, where Marlborough's victory at Ramillies placed the Spanish Netherlands in the hands of the allies.

Queen Anne's fidelity to the policy recommended to her by her predecessor was as yet unshaken. Not only had she publicly testified to this by appointing and attending a thanksgiving-service at St. Paul's on 23 Aug. 1705, though there was less reason for rejoicing than in the following year when she twice, on 27 June and 31 Dec., attended similar ceremonies. She also showed great liberality towards her army, as when in January 1706 she presented 30,000l. to the officers and soldiers who had lost their horses in the last campaign for ‘recruiting’ them (, vi. 2); and in March of the same year Marlborough describes her efforts to meet the expenses of the war as ‘extraordinary’ (Marlborough Despatches, ii. 447). But the policy of the war was in her mind personally identified with no other statesmen than Marlborough and Godolphin; nor could she yet understand the necessity of submitting to the advice—which meant the control—of the whigs. In the autumn of 1706 they were still only tolerated by her. They had resolved upon bringing into the ministry a member of their party who was most repugnant to the queen. The duchess returned to the charge again and again, and finally, with the aid of a misread word, contrived to give serious, though apparently only passing, offence to the queen. (‘I beg of God Almighty,