In late April Anne abandoned her earlier caution and had an interview with Dykvelt. She also continued to write regularly to Mary. For the sake of appearances she still occasionally sent letters using the official postal service, but because of the danger of interception these were trifling in content. One such communication was full of inane information about court etiquette and Anne’s routine at Richmond. After apologising for her untidy writing, which she attributed to being distracted by ‘a very pretty talking child’ of Lady Churchill’s, the Princess added unctuously, ‘Tomorrow the King and Queen does me the honour to dine here’.59
The letters Anne sent secretly to Holland ‘by sure hands’ were very different in tone. As well as making plain her views on political matters, the Princess took this opportunity to express violent animosity towards the Sunderlands. The pen portrait Anne drew of the Countess was devastating in its malice, describing her as ‘a flattering, dissembling, false woman … [who] cares not at what rate she lives, but never pays anybody. She will cheat, though it be for a little’. Anne continued, ‘To hear her talk you would think she was a very good Protestant’, when in fact ‘she has no religion’. The Princess was sure Lady Sunderland took lovers, despite making ‘such a clatter with her devotions that it really turns one’s stomach’.60
Next, Anne targeted her venom on Queen Mary Beatrice. Giving full rein to the virulence of her descriptive powers, she proved remarkably successful in poisoning her sister’s mind against their stepmother. In May 1687 she wrote,
The Queen, you must know, is of a very proud, haughty humour … though she pretends to hate all form and ceremony … She declares always that she loves sincerity and hates flattery, but when the grossest flattery in the world is said to her face, she seems extremely well pleased with it. It really is enough to turn one’s stomach.
Anne insisted that her views were widely shared, and that Mary Beatrice ‘is the most hated in the world of all sorts of people; for everybody believes that she pressed the King to be more violent than he would be of himself … for she is a very great bigot in her way’. Continuing with her remorseless character assassination, Anne declared ‘one may see … she hates all Protestants’, and that it was ‘a sad and very uneasy thing to be forced to live civilly and as it were freely with a woman that one knows hates one’. She went on, ‘She pretends to have a great deal of kindness to me, but I doubt it is not real, for I never see proofs of it’. Then, having lambasted Mary Beatrice for her lack of sincerity, she proclaimed that she herself would take great care to dissemble her feelings for her stepmother. ‘I am resolved always to … make my court very much to her, that she may not have any just cause against me’ she told Mary, apparently unaware of any contradiction. Though Anne’s hatred for her stepmother was so fierce, she still made excuses for her father, whom she depicted as led astray by malevolent influences.61
Anne prevailed upon George’s brother, King Christian V of Denmark, to submit a formal request to King James, asking that she might accompany her husband when he visited Denmark in the summer. However, by the time this arrived, in mid April 1687, Anne was pregnant again, and a long sea voyage was inadvisable. George did not cancel his trip, and Anne was apprehensive that her father would see this as a good opportunity to proselytise. She shared her concerns with Mary: ‘When he is away I fancy the King will speak to me about my religion, for then he will find me more alone than yet he has done’. Some considered it negligent of Prince George to abandon his wife at such a time. One London citizen noted in his journal ‘Very many wonder what can induce him … to leave … the Princess here to be exposed to all temptation’.62
George sailed for Denmark on 17 June and was away for six weeks. For much of that time Anne withdrew to Hampton Court, using the excuse of her pregnancy to live quietly there. She could not avoid giving an audience on 10 July to the Papal nuncio, Count d’Adda, as a ‘mark of submission and respect to the King her father’, but the French ambassador was being fanciful when he opined that ‘this docility … must give hope of her conversion’. By this time Anne herself was starting to feel cautiously optimistic that she would be spared a paternal attempt to convert her, having told Mary on 22 June, ‘The King has not yet said anything to me about religion, and if he does not before the Prince comes back again, I shall begin to hope that he will not do it at all’.63
Anne’s fear of Catholics nevertheless remained strong. Believing them capable of almost any wicked act that would advance their purposes, in March 1687 she had warned Mary against visiting England. ‘It would be better … not to do it’, she cautioned her sister, ‘for though I dare swear the K[ing] could have no thought against either of you, yet … one cannot help being afraid … Really, if you or the Prince should come, I should be frightened out of my wits for fear any harm should happen to either of you’. Now she became concerned that Catholics might menace the safety of the child she was carrying. In the past Anne had used a midwife recommended by her stepmother, but because the woman was a Catholic, Mary had urged her to make different arrangements. Anne agreed that this would be desirable, but did not dare to tell the Queen outright. Instead she proposed to employ ‘some sort of invention to bring it about, to give as little offence or obstruction in the thing as could be’. She even talked of ‘keeping her labour to herself as long as she could’ so that a more suitable accoucheur could be called in at the last minute. Alarmed by this proposal, Mary warned Anne of the risk that ‘out of too much precaution she might prejudice herself’.64
The King dissolved Parliament on 2 July 1687, having become convinced that the current assembly would never vote to repeal the Test Acts. He set about ensuring that when another Parliament was elected, it would be more compliant. In late summer James set out on a progress through western England but though Prince George had returned home in mid August, Anne’s pregnancy gave the couple the perfect excuse not to accompany the King. Even when James returned from his travels and went to Windsor, they used George’s bad chest as a reason to avoid joining him there. Maintaining that the climate at Windsor was ‘too cold and piercing’, in early September they settled instead at Hampton Court, where conditions were allegedly more favourable. The Danish envoy in England, who was displeased that the Prince and Princess were deliberately distancing themselves from the court, sarcastically declared himself ‘surprised that a Dane could not live in the air of Windsor’.65
Ten days after returning to London, Anne suffered another crushing blow. In the eighth month of her pregnancy she went into premature labour and on 22 October was delivered of a dead son. The fact that ‘the child was full grown and thought to have been alive in or near the princess’s travail’ only made the loss more agonising.66 Her two previous miscarriages had not been considered especially significant but this one (which technically was not a miscarriage at all as it took place when she was more than twenty-eight weeks into pregnancy) was more worrying as it could not be attributed to an external cause. Tragically for Anne, this was far from the last time when she would have to endure such heartbreak.
Multiple miscarriages are sometimes caused by rhesus incompatibility. This occurs when the mother’s blood is rhesus negative, and the father’s rhesus positive. When they conceive a child together, its blood is rhesus positive. The mother responds to the presence of the child’s rhesus factor by forming antibodies, which then fatally interact with the child’s blood. However, such a diagnosis does not fit with the pattern of Anne’s pregnancies. Rhesus incompatibility does not usually affect a first pregnancy, but tends to manifest itself in second or third pregnancies. After that, all pregnancies are liable to end in failure, with miscarriage occurring earlier each time. As we have seen, Anne’s second and third pregnancies went to term and she produced two live children. This was followed by three miscarriages in close succession, but in 1689 she did succeed in having another child, which in a case of rhesus incompatibility would be an unlikely outcome. After that none of her children survived, but many of her pregnancies only terminated at a late stage.67
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