Anne was able to justify this by persuading herself that the Queen was engaged in a wicked conspiracy to impose an imposter on the nation. Until the spring of 1688 she had been wary of committing her thoughts on the subject to paper, but she now made up for her former caution by writing Mary a series of devastating letters. Even if she could not substantiate her statements, the virulence of her hatred of Mary Beatrice, and her certainty that Catholics were utterly unscrupulous, invested her arguments with a spurious persuasive power. Certainly Mary found them convincing, giving her ‘good reason to suspect trickery’.77 This meant that when William of Orange decided to invade England, his wife could square her conscience with supporting the venture.
For Anne it was axiomatic that Catholics would not shrink from perpetrating such a gross deception, ‘the principles of that religion being such that they will stick at nothing, be it never so wicked, if it will promote their interest’. She claimed on 20 March that she now had ‘much reason to believe it is a false belly’, although the evidence she adduced was almost laughably meagre. She told Mary that her stepmother had grown very large, ‘but she looks better than ever she did, which is not usual … Besides, it is very odd that the Bath, that all the best doctors thought would do her a great deal of harm, should have had so very good effect so soon’. She contended that her stepmother was acting in a strangely furtive manner when, considering there had ‘been so many stories and jests made about it, she should, to convince the world, make either me or some of my friends feel her belly; but quite contrary, whenever one talks of her being with child, she looks as if she were afraid one should touch her. And whenever I happen to be in the room as she has been undressing, she has always gone into the next room to put on her smock.’
Mary Beatrice’s reluctance to expose herself to her stepdaughter’s inspection gave rise in Anne’s mind to ‘so much just cause for suspicion that I believe when she is brought to bed, nobody will be convinced it is her child, except it prove a daughter. For my part I declare I shall not, except I see the child and she parted’.78
There was later some dispute as to whether Mary Beatrice had truly been so coy about undressing in front of other women. In the Life of James II, compiled posthumously by an authorised biographer using James’s Memoirs, it was stated that Anne saw Mary Beatrice’s belly regularly during the earlier stages of pregnancy when she attended the Queen ‘at her toilet, and put on her shift as usually’. Burnet, on the other hand, claimed that Prince George himself had told him that Mary Beatrice had deliberately frustrated Anne’s attempts to watch her dressing. According to him, the Princess ‘had sometimes stayed by her even indecently long in mornings, to see her rise, and to give her her shift, but she never did either’. However, much of Burnet’s evidence relating to the birth of the Prince of Wales is highly tendentious, so accepting this without reservation would be unwise. The Queen’s Woman of the Bedchamber Mrs Margaret Dawson was adamant that her mistress did not try to hide her body from her ladies at any time during her pregnancy. Mrs Dawson testified that ‘the Queen did shift her linen and expose her great belly every day to all the ladies that had the privilege of the dressing room … and she did never go into a closet or behind a bed to do it’. When Anne herself was pressed to be more precise about the Queen’s habits, she dredged up a lame report that Mary Beatrice had been angry when the Countess of Arran had unexpectedly entered her room, ‘because she did not care to be seen when she was shifting’.79
Anne also made much of the claim that the only ladies Mary Beatrice permitted to touch her stomach so as to feel the child kicking were the Catholic Madam Mazarin and the Countess of Sunderland ‘who are people that nobody will give credit to’. There is evidence, however, that the Princess was wrong about this. The Protestant Isabella Wentworth later declared that in May 1688 the Queen had invited her to lay her hand on her belly, and she then ‘felt the child stir very strongly, as strongly … as ever I felt any of my own’. Anne later allegedly told Bishop Lloyd that during her stepmother’s previous pregnancies Mary Beatrice ‘would put the princess’s hand upon her belly and ask her if she felt how her brother kicks her, but she was never admitted to this … freedom at the time of this breeding’. Once again, however, Mrs Margaret Dawson had a different recollection, for she stated, ‘I am very sure that the Princess did not use to feel the Queen’s belly neither of this child nor of any other’. A few weeks after the birth of the Prince of Wales, Anne’s uncle the Earl of Clarendon challenged her on this very point. When Anne put it to him that it was ‘strange … that the Queen should never (as often as I am with her, mornings and evenings) speak to me to feel her belly’, Clarendon asked ‘if the Queen had at other times of her being with child bid her do it?’ Anne was obliged now to admit that she had not, to which Clarendon rejoined, ‘Why then, Madame … should you wonder she did not bid you do it this time?’80
The King and Queen were certainly aware of the rumours but took the view that such slanders were best ignored. As far as James was concerned, in court circles ‘the report of her having a counterfeit big belly … was looked upon as a jest, and the talk of a cushion was the daily subject of mirth to those who attended upon them’. Anne herself agreed that her father made light of the matter and that when ‘sitting by me in my own chamber he would speak of the idle stories … of the Queen’s not being with child, laughing at them’. When questioned by Clarendon, she had to admit that she had given her father no clue that she found the stories anything other than risible.81
The Princess told her sister in March 1688 that her stepmother’s ‘being so positive it will be a son’ provided additional grounds to fear a deception was being planned. Not everyone, however, gained the impression that Mary Beatrice was confident of producing a male child. A spy stationed in England informed a close associate of William of Orange that the Queen had become so upset at being constantly told by the Jesuits that she must have a boy that she burst into tears. Margaret Dawson testified that Mary Beatrice professed not to mind about the sex of the child she was carrying. At one point ‘some of her servants told her they hoped to see a Prince of Wales born. She answered she would compound for a little girl with all her heart’.82
Another view was that the Queen resorted to subterfuge only after suffering a miscarriage some months into her pregnancy. Burnet believed that this took place on Easter Monday, 16 April 1688, but some favoured 11 May as another possible date. On that day Mary Beatrice had fainted after being wrongly informed that her brother had died, but she soon revived and insisted that she had suffered no harm. According to the Life of James II, Anne ‘failed not to be there too’ when Mary Beatrice’s ladies flocked to tend their mistress. After appearing ‘so easy and kind that nothing could equal it’, she ‘talked of the Queen’s condition with mighty concern and was wanting in no manner of respect and care’.83 If this account was accurate, Anne was remarkably accomplished at dissimulating her true feelings.
While we can dismiss the theory that Mary Beatrice had a miscarriage, Anne was less fortunate. On 10 April Clarendon visited his niece at the Cockpit because her health was giving cause for concern. He found her ‘very cheerful and [she] said she was pretty well, but the women were apprehensive she would miscarry’. There was a debate among her doctors as to how she should be treated. Dr Richard Lower, who was Anne’s favourite physician at the time, advocated ‘a steel diet’. Sir Charles Scarborough, who like Lower had been called in by her father to treat Anne after her first unsuccessful pregnancy, was ‘positively against it, but Lower’s prescription prevailed’. After briefly appearing to be better, Anne became so seriously unwell that her life was feared for during the nights of 12 and 13 April. At four in the morning on 16 April she miscarried.84
Within a few hours Anne was strong enough to receive another visit from Clarendon, who found the King already by her side. The Princess told her uncle ‘she was as well as could be expected’, but her hopes had now been dashed so repeatedly that some despaired of her ability to reproduce. To make matters worse, some of the Princess’s attendants suggested that she had ‘had