Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion. Anne Somerset

Mary and put the Princess at risk of miscarrying, Anne was undeterred. Accordingly Lady Fitzharding went to Kensington Palace on her behalf, and forced her way in to the Queen’s bedchamber to present her mistress’s request directly. According to Sarah the ‘Queen returned no answer but a cold thanks’, but William took the trouble to write to the Princess assuring her that as soon as the Queen was well enough to see her, she would be welcome. The Countess of Marlborough, however, was sure that ‘the deferring the Princess’s coming was only to leave room to continue the quarrel if the Queen lived’.¹⁰⁷

      On 28 December Mary died. At the end she declared ‘that she had nothing in her heart against her sister and that she greatly loved the Duke of Gloucester’, but the chance of a personal reunion had now vanished forever. It is charitable to accept that Anne was genuinely distressed at losing her sister, but her letter of condolence sent to William that same day might appear calculated. Having expressed her ‘sincere and hearty sorrow’ for Mary’s loss, she assured him ‘I am as sensibly touched with this sad misfortune as if I had never been so unhappy as to have fallen into her displeasure’, asking permission to commiserate with him in person. In doing so she took the statesmanlike advice of her male advisers, who in their turn were guided by the Earl of Sunderland. He had convinced Marlborough and Godolphin that prolonging the estrangement further would damage both parties, and had undertaken that the King would be receptive. The Countess of Marlborough was infuriated by this conciliatory approach, and later grumbled that the Princess’s letter was ‘full of expressions that the politicians made nothing of, but it was a great trouble to me to have her write’. She continued resentfully that ‘After such usage … nobody upon earth could have made me have done it, but I was never the councillor upon such great occasions’.¹⁰⁸