It was assumed that Sarah and her husband bore a significant responsibility for Anne’s gradual estrangement from the court, but their letters provide little evidence of this. The only letter from Anne to Sarah that touches on politics during this period relates to the appointment of the four Catholic Privy Councillors in July 1686, which Anne said gave affairs ‘a very dismal prospect’. As yet, however, such concerns were of secondary importance to her. She blithely concluded, ‘Whatever changes there are in the world I hope you will never forsake me and I shall be happy’.30
It is very clear that Sarah had a great influence when it came to ordering the Princess’s household. Sarah was given final say on the choice of a new Lady of the Bedchamber. Initially, the Queen suggested the Countess of Huntingdon, but the Princess rejected her because the Countess’s frequent pregnancies would interfere with her duties. When Lady Thanet’s name was mentioned, Anne scoffed to Sarah ‘I hope you know me too well to believe I would be so great a fool to accept of her’. The King then proposed some other candidates, whereupon Anne asked Sarah to choose between Lady Arabella Mercarty and Lady Frescheville: ‘I should be glad to know which you like best … for I desire in all things to please you’. It then emerged that Sarah favoured Lady Westmorland, and Anne at once concurred, enthusing, ‘I really believe her to be a pretty kind of a woman and, besides, my dear Lady Churchill desires it’.31
Just when the matter looked settled, things shifted again, and in October Lady Anne Spencer, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Sunderland, was given the place. It caused some surprise, for it was unusual for unmarried girls to become Ladies of the Bedchamber. The French ambassador interpreted the appointment purely as ‘a mark of favour for Milord Sunderland’, who was the King’s Secretary of State. Burnet assumed that the King and Queen had imposed Anne Spencer on the Princess, claiming that throughout her father’s reign Anne was ‘beset with spies’ in her household.32 In fact, the main reason for taking on Lady Anne Spencer had been to please Sarah.
Anne’s readiness to do this was curious in view of the fact that she had already expressed jealousy of Sarah’s relationship with the girl’s mother, the Countess of Sunderland. In September 1685, Anne had observed petulantly that whereas she had not received prompt replies to her recent letters, ‘I can’t help saying that you were not too hot to write to Lady Sunderland’. Anne acknowledged she was perhaps ‘too apt to complain’ about such things, particularly since Sarah had assured her she ‘had no reason to be jealous’, but stressed ‘I have been a little troubled at it’. Within a few days she was irked to hear that Sarah had met with the Countess while she was still bereft of her company. ‘I cannot help envying Lady Sunderland’, Anne wrote plaintively, ‘I am sure she cannot love you half so well as I do, though I know she has the art of saying a great deal’.33
Anne would hardly have been reassured if she had known that Lady Sunderland had been working on Sarah, in the hope that her daughter could be appointed the Princess’s Lady of the Bedchamber. Anne’s welfare was not uppermost in Lady Sunderland’s mind; rather she wanted this because it would enable her to see more of Sarah. ‘Whenever the Princess went [on] any journeys, I would go too, by which I should be almost always where you were’ Lady Sunderland explained.34 Not long afterwards, Lady Anne Spencer’s appointment was announced.
Ironically, within a few months Anne Spencer’s role in the Princess’s household had caused a coolness between Lady Churchill and the Countess of Sunderland. Sarah was not fitted by nature to be a lady-in-waiting. Royal service could be exceptionally arduous, entailing ‘more toil and trouble than content’. By the standards of the time, Sarah had good cause to be grateful to Anne, who was on the whole a considerate employer. She was mindful of Sarah’s obligations to her husband, telling her on one occasion ‘My dear Lady Churchill cannot think me so unreasonable as to be uneasy at anything you do on your Lord’s account. All I desire is to have as much of your company as I can without any inconvenience to your self’. Anne was also aware that Sarah would want to be with her young children as much as possible, making such generous allowances for this that Sarah was able to spend a good part of James II’s reign at her house at St Albans. Yet Sarah still found the demands of her position irksome. One reason why she had been so keen on appointing Anne Spencer was because her mother had assured Sarah that the girl ‘would gladly wait whenever you would have her’, enabling Sarah to ‘live easily’. Unfortunately the young lady then fell ill, and when Sarah had to take over her duties, she became ‘extremely out of humour’ to find herself ‘a slave’. Blaming Lady Sunderland for her daughter’s delinquency, she complained to her about being required ‘sick or well to wait, and be weary of my life’.35
Sarah’s belief that she was overworked also gave rise to friction between her and Anne, and after a sharp exchange the Princess apologised for being too demanding. ‘I now see my error and don’t expect anything from you but what one friend may from another’, she wrote contritely. To solve the problem in April 1686 she undertook to go to the expense of having a Third Lady of the Bedchamber, ‘that you may have more ease and have no just cause to grow weary of me’.36 True to her word, the Princess subsequently took Lady Frescheville of Staveley into her household.
Anne was able to justify her resentment of Lady Sunderland on political grounds, as her husband was the King’s Secretary of State, and was doing everything possible to help James achieve objectives damaging to the Church of England. She believed, wrongly, that everything Sunderland did had his wife’s approval.
The Princess vented her hatred of the whole Sunderland family when corresponding with her sister Mary. In August 1686 Mary had written to enquire whether she found it ‘troublesome’ to have Anne Spencer in her household. Anne replied that so far the young woman had given her no cause for complaint but, ‘knowing from whence she comes’, she was always very guarded about what she said in her presence. She continued, ‘To give everybody their due, I must needs say she has not been very impertinent nor I ever heard she has yet done anybody any injury; but I am very much of opinion that she will not degenerate from her noble parents’.37
In the summer of 1686 Anne went back to Tunbridge Wells for another course of waters, but to her sorrow Sarah did not accompany her. George stayed there with her for some of the time but after his departure Anne wrote dejectedly she was leading ‘a very melancholy life’. Once again she begged Sarah to keep her informed about how her children were faring; when Sarah suggested that the Queen and Mrs Berkeley were better placed to keep the Princess up to date, Anne was adamant that only Sarah’s reports would suffice.38
A few days later the Queen sent word to Anne that her eldest daughter had recently been ‘peevish’, and this worried the Princess. ‘I wish it may be her teeth, but I can’t help being in some pain for her since she has relapsed so often’, she told Sarah in distress. The Princess then began to contemplate bringing little Mary to join her in Tunbridge, wondering if Sarah agreed that ‘change of air might not do her good’. She had conceived the idea after seeing Lady Poultney’s sickly grandson develop into a ‘lusty child’ on spending a short time at the spa. However, the Princess was diffident about the proposal, begging Sarah to ‘tell me what you think and not speak of this to anybody, for ’tis a fancy that came into my head today, and maybe others that have not so much kindness for me as you have will laugh at me’.39 Whether or not Sarah gave her approval, in the end the scheme came to nothing.
The baby Anne Sophia was healthier than her sister, and Anne was delighted to learn she ‘thrives so well’. However, after a time worrying reports arrived about her as well. As a result of some unspecified problem, Mrs Berkeley suggested the child should be weaned, despite the fact that she was barely seven weeks old. Although it was surely a disastrous idea, the royal physician Dr Waldegrave agreed with her. In great concern the Princess entreated Sarah to ‘ask some skilful people