Despite the fact that James had actually made no effort to intimidate Anne into abandoning her faith, it was widely feared that he was harassing her relentlessly. In the spring of 1686, a worried Mary of Orange started writing to her sister, urging her to remain true to her beliefs. Anne replied ‘I hope you don’t doubt but that I will be ever firm to my religion whatever happens … I do count it a very great blessing that I am of the Church of England, and as great a misfortune that the King is not’. This did not assuage Mary’s doubts, and a few months later Anne wrote again, promising ‘I will rather beg my bread than ever change’ religion. In the spring of 1687 she gave a fresh undertaking that ‘neither threatenings nor promises’ could alter her resolve.21
It was wounding for Anne that her sister believed her to be so weak. She could not take comfort in the fact that her father was being so considerate to her, for Mary suggested that this was just to lull her into a false sense of security, and upbraided Anne for being ‘too much at ease’. Denying that she was complacent, Anne agreed her father was more likely to ‘use fair means rather than force’. She told her sister that she remained in ‘great expectation of being tormented’ but ‘you may assure yourself that I will always be on my guard’. In late summer 1687 she told a court lady that James had ‘never in his life, no indeed, never in his life’ confronted her about religion, only to add, ‘But I expect he will’.22
On 12 May 1686 Anne gave birth to another daughter at Windsor. Everyone was taken by surprise, for the baby – named Anne Sophia – had not been expected till mid June. The King and Queen at once went down to Windsor to see the new arrival. James reported cheerfully ‘I found both the mother and the girl very well, God be thanked, and though the child be not a big one yet most are of opinion it is not come before its time’. Unfortunately the sight of her father was far from agreeable to the Princess, for she feared he would consider this a propitious moment to raise the religious issue. It had indeed been rumoured that she had ‘agreed to [convert] after lying in’, and when, just before the baby’s christening, James appeared in his daughter’s chamber accompanied by a priest, Anne at once ‘fell a crying’. ‘The King seeing it, told her he came only on a fatherly visit and sent the priest away’. James dismissed his daughter’s tearfulness as being caused by ‘vapours, which sometimes trouble women in her condition’ and was relieved that Anne was once again ‘in a very good way’.23
The delightful distractions of motherhood could not disguise the fact that the political situation was growing steadily more ominous. Events in France were providing a worrying example of what Protestants could expect from a Catholic monarch. In 1685 Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had afforded a degree of freedom to his Huguenot subjects. They were now required to convert, and were not even permitted to leave the country in order to continue practising their religion. Thousands of Huguenot refugees did in fact manage to emigrate, ensuring that their sufferings were well documented, but those who could not escape were subjected to what one outraged Englishman called ‘unheard of cruelties … such as hardly any age has done the like’.24
Just as the persecution in France was stoking up fears of Popery, James took steps to strengthen the position of Catholics in England. He was understandably determined to repeal the penal laws dating from Elizabethan times which, though rarely enforced, theoretically rendered all Catholics liable to heavy punishments. In addition, however, he wanted to overturn the Test Acts passed in his brother’s reign, which barred Catholics from holding military or administrative office. Protestant objections to the repeal of the acts were not irrational, for James himself believed that the consequences would be far reaching. In May 1686 he told the Pope’s representative at his court that once Romanists were freed from their legal disabilities, England would become Catholic in two years.25
Only Parliament could repeal laws, but as a preliminary James set about ensuring that the Test Act’s provisions ceased to be enforced. Having purged the judiciary, in June 1686 he arranged for a test case to be brought before the Court of King’s Bench, hinging on whether he could issue dispensations freeing individuals from their legal obligation to swear an oath repudiating transubstantiation before accepting office. The Court pronounced in the King’s favour, and James was swift to take advantage of the decision, appointing four Catholics to the Privy Council in July 1686.
As yet there were not many Catholics in the English army, but James caused alarm by enlarging it, arousing fears that he intended to enforce his will by military means. In August 1686 Anne was present ‘in tremendous dust and melting heat’ when James reviewed a sizeable body of troops encamped on Hounslow Heath. It was an alarming spectacle, for these forces were well placed to overawe the capital, and yet the King ‘had no enemies save the laws of the land’.26
The King had also adopted a more aggressive stance towards Anne’s beloved Church of England. In March 1686 he had issued instructions forbidding clergymen from making controversial sermons. Soon afterwards he had been infuriated when John Sharp had attacked Catholics from his London pulpit. He became angrier still when his old adversary Henry Compton, Bishop of London, declined to suspend Sharp from preaching. Determined to bring the clergy under firmer control, in July 1686 James established an Ecclesiastical Commission, presided over by three bishops and three secular members. It was empowered to carry out James’s visitorial powers under the Act of Supremacy, but since prerogative courts had been abolished in 1641 it was at best of doubtful legality. Compton was summoned before the Commission and on 6 September was suspended from the function and execution of his ecclesiastical office.
Anne was concerned by these developments, but blamed her father’s priests and advisers for encouraging him to act in this undesirable fashion. She was not, however, prepared to make similar allowances for her stepmother, believing rather that Mary Beatrice’s fanatical Catholicism was responsible for James’s worst excesses. Anne was not alone in thinking this. Gilbert Burnet noted that Mary Beatrice had become ‘so bigoted and fierce in matters of religion that she is as much hated since she was Queen as she was beloved whilst she was Duchess’. Furthermore, although the King had refrained from tackling Anne about their religious differences, in September 1687 Barrillon reported that Mary Beatrice had raised the matter with her stepdaughter. Far from persuading the Princess to contemplate conversion, her stepmother’s intervention ‘only served to embitter her spirit’.27
Anne’s dislike for Mary Beatrice had manifested itself long before this point. In July 1685 she told Sarah that the Queen had recently presented her with a watch adorned by a picture of herself set with diamonds, an offering that her stepdaughter found insultingly meagre. Anne wrote sarcastically that she would ‘return her most thankful acknowledgements, but among friends I think one may say without being vain that the goddess might have showered down her favours on her poor vassals with more liberality’. By May 1686 Anne’s antipathy towards her stepmother had attracted the attention of the French envoy Bonrepos, who reported in a despatch home that the Princess ‘hates the Queen of England and denigrates her when with her confidantes’.28
If Anne was now estranged from Mary Beatrice, she was drawing ever closer to Sarah. To the Princess’s ‘sensible joy’, Lady Clarendon had retired from her service in September 1685. As a result Anne was able to install Sarah as her Groom of the Stole and First Lady of the Bedchamber, doubling her salary to £400. In May 1686 she signalled her affection by making Sarah a godmother to the baby Anne Sophia, and within a few months the strength of her devotion for her friend began attracting comment. In early March 1687 Barrillon alluded to Sarah being Anne’s ‘favourite’, and two months later his colleague, Bonrepos, wrote of the Princess’s ‘inordinate