Although it was not uncommon for leading men in England to make secret approaches to Saint-Germain, Marlborough went further than most of his contemporaries. Besides writing twice to James in 1691, he had informed a Jacobite agent in England that regret for his part in James’s deposition had left him unable to ‘sleep or eat, in continual anguish’. James sent word back that since Marlborough ‘was the greatest of criminals, where he had the greatest obligations’, he could only hope to receive pardon by doing James some ‘extraordinary service’. In the autumn of 1691 Marlborough was in fact causing trouble for King William in Parliament, but this was not enough to earn James’s gratitude.48 Marlborough therefore had to find some other means of commending himself to his former master, and prevailing on Anne to send a penitent letter to her father provided a way of doing this.
On 1 December 1691 Anne wrote to tell James that she had long desired to make a humble submission to him, but had had to wait for a suitable opportunity. She entreated her father to believe ‘that I am both truly concerned for the misfortune of your condition and sensible, as I ought to be, of my own unhappiness … If wishes could recall what is past, I had long since redeemed my fault’. She averred that it would have given her great relief to have informed him of her ‘repentant thoughts’ before now, but hoped that James would accept that this belated avowal was sincere.49
It is not easy to assess why Anne had decided to write this letter. Four months later, after hearing a rumour that the Princess had corresponded with Saint-Germain, a foreign diplomat stationed in England remarked that he found it ‘hard to conceive of this commerce between King James and the Princess, whose interests are so different’.50 His puzzlement was very natural, for it is difficult to argue that Anne genuinely wanted her father to regain his throne. There is no indication that her own desire to succeed to the crown had diminished, and she desperately wanted her son to inherit it in due course.
It has been argued that her letter to her father was nothing other than a cynical stratagem aimed at strengthening her own position. According to this theory, what she dreaded above all was that William would betray her by making a peace with France which provided for the crown to revert to James’s son once William and Mary were dead. Certainly there were people in England who believed that William was contemplating a settlement on these lines, and such rumours could have convinced Anne that she must prevent an understanding developing between William and her father by distracting James with overtures of her own.51
It seems likely, however, that her thinking was slightly different. The need to insure the safety of herself, her husband and son obviously provided a powerful imperative in itself, and her desire of safeguarding the Marlboroughs would have been an additional incentive. She had convinced herself that William and Mary had behaved so monstrously to her that she was absolved of her loyalty, and felt under no obligation to be dragged down with them in the all too likely eventuality of her father’s restoration. Yet in seeking these advantages, she stopped short of committing actual treason. It was not yet illegal to correspond with the exiled King, and she did not offer to work for his restoration, or to overthrow the current monarchs. Her letter afforded her the solace of expressing remorse without committing her to undoing what she had helped to bring about.
Anne could hope that whereas Mary had put herself beyond redemption in her father’s eyes, James would be more inclined to forgive her transgressions. Not long before this, so it was said, James had been complaining of the conduct of his eldest daughter, but had broken off to speak ‘with tenderness of the Princess Anne’. Admittedly this had been too much for his supporter David Lloyd, who was heard to mutter ‘Both bitches by God!’ Anne may even have cherished a faint hope that if her father did recover his throne, she would not automatically be disinherited. It is notable that her letter contained no reference to her half brother, or apology for having cast doubt on his birth. There is no indication she had abandoned her belief that he was an imposter, and she could have deluded herself that James would one day acknowledge this to be the case. This was of course a ridiculous notion, but in Anne’s defence it should be noted that even some of James’s supporters in England remained sufficiently uneasy about the Prince to feel that James would be well advised ‘to satisfy the nation’ by letting it be known that Anne would succeed him. Since James was likely to die long before Mary, it would mean that Anne would ascend the throne much sooner than would otherwise have been the case.52
Marlborough entrusted Anne’s letter to the reliable hands of the Jacobite agent David Lloyd, ironically the very man who had spoken so disparagingly of the Princess in her father’s presence. However, adverse winds and fears of capture prevented him from crossing the Channel for some weeks, and the letter had yet to be delivered when a dramatic development occurred. On 20 January 1692, King William abruptly dismissed the Earl of Marlborough from all his positions at court and in the army.
The King did not publicly explain his decision, but he believed that he had ample reason to act. Besides his conviction that Marlborough and his wife had deliberately inflamed Anne by feeding her ‘inventions and falsehoods’, William had a shrewd idea that Marlborough was in correspondence with Saint-Germain, and that he was encouraging Anne to follow suit. Much worse than this, in William’s eyes, was Marlborough’s campaign to promote disaffection in Parliament and the army by stirring up anti-Dutch sentiment.53
The King and Queen feared that Anne was privy to all of Marlborough’s intrigues for, as Mary put it, ‘I heard much from all hands of my sister’. The night before Marlborough was dismissed, Mary confronted the Princess. Taking the view that Mary wished simply ‘to pick quarrels’, Anne angrily denied that he had done anything wrong. After reflecting on the matter, the Queen was ‘apt to believe’ that her sister was in fact ignorant of what Marlborough had in mind, but she did not feel more secure on that account. On the contrary, she concluded that although Marlborough had as yet avoided acquainting Anne and George with his plans, he was ‘so sure of the Prince and she’ that he was confident of bringing them in when he judged the time appropriate.54 William and Mary assumed that Marlborough’s dismissal would automatically prise Anne from his and the Countess’s pernicious clutches, for the Princess would realise there could be no question of retaining the wife of a disgraced man in her service.
A few days after Marlborough’s dismissal, Anne received an anonymous letter, cautioning her that his misfortunes had been caused by spies within her own household. In particular her mysterious source begged her to ‘have a care of what you say before Lady Fitzharding’, who allegedly leaked much damaging information. Anne’s correspondent warned that her enemies at court were ‘not ignorant of what is said and done in your lodging’, entreating her to persuade ‘poor deluded Lady Marlborough’ to be less trusting.55
Anne was only too ready to comply, for it greatly bothered her that Sarah was currently ‘as much bewitched … as ever’ by Lady Fitzharding. She accordingly implored ‘dear Mrs Freeman to have a care of Mrs Hill for I doubt [fear] she is a jade, and though one can’t be sure … there is too much reason to believe she has not been so sincere as she ought’. The Princess added bitterly ‘I am sure she hates your faithful Morley’, but as yet she could not prevail on Sarah to sever the friendship.56
The King and Queen had meanwhile been waiting impatiently to hear that the Countess had been dismissed from the Princess’s household, but Anne made no such move. Then, to Mary’s astonishment and outrage, on 4 February Anne took Sarah with her when she attended the Queen’s Drawing Room at Kensington Palace. Not wanting to risk an upsetting scene in public, Mary made no comment at the time, but neither she nor William were prepared to let the matter drop. The following day Mary penned a blistering letter to her younger sister, explaining that since she knew that what she had to say would ‘not be very pleasing’, she thought it best to communicate in writing. She then declared that while the Earl of Marlborough was not welcome at court, it was ‘very unfit Lady Marlborough should stay with you, and … I have all the reason imaginable