Plaidy, Jean - Royal Sisters - The Story of the Daughters of James II

Young Gloucester sat at the head of the banqueting table and welcomed his guests. All his soldiers were present and taking advantage of the good things to eat, for they needed refreshment after their exertions.

Dancing followed. Gloucester danced tolerably well although he told his mother he could not abide Old Dog—his name for Mr. Gorey who had been dancing master to Anne and her sister Mary when they were Gloucester’s age—and he felt that dancing was not for soldiers.

He was very tired when the banquet was over and not sorry to retire to his apartments where he told John Churchill that birthdays were better to be planned for, than to have, and he would rather one big battle any day.

In their apartments Anne and George sat together reminding each other of how he had danced, how he had reviewed his soldiers, what he had said.

“I can never thank you enough for giving me such a son,” said Anne.

“Nay my dear, it is I who should thank you.”

And they went on to talk of him. They laughed and rejoiced in him.

“We cannot say we have been unfortunate while we have our boy,” said Anne.

The next morning when Gloucester’s attendants went to awaken him they found him feeling sick. He said he had a sore throat and did not want to get up.

This news brought his mother to his bedside immediately, and when she saw his flushed face she was terrified.

“Send for the physicians!” she cried. They came; but they did not know what ailed the boy. They bled him, but his condition did not improve. Before the day was out he was in a high fever and delirious.

“Dr. Radcliffe must come,” said Anne. “Go and bring him.”

“Your Highness, you have dismissed him.”

“Go and bring him. Tell him I order him to come.”

Dr. Radcliffe arrived at Windsor in due course but he clearly came reluctantly.

“Your Highness,” he said, “I am no longer one of your physicians, and I cannot understand why you should summon me here.”

Anne’s face was pale with fear; he had never seen her so frightened for herself as she was for her son.

“My boy is ill,” she said. “If anyone can save him, it is you.”

Radcliffe went and examined the boy.

“He has scarlet fever,” he said. “Good God, who bled him?”

The doctor who had done so admitted that he had.

“Then,” said Radcliffe, “you may well have finished him. I can do nothing. You have destroyed him.”

Anne listened as though in a trance. She let Radcliffe go and made no attempt to detain him.

She only muttered: “He is the best doctor in England and he says my boy is destroyed.”

A future without this boy was something she could not face. She was numb with terror, yet bemused. Only a day or so ago he had stood before her bowing in his beautiful blue suit. It was not possible that he could be so ill.

She would nurse him. Dr. Radcliffe might say that they had destroyed him with the wrong treatment, but she would give him all that a mother could—perhaps what only a mother could.

She forgot her own maladies; there was only one thing that mattered to her. Her boy must live. She herself waited on him, nursed him, prepared the food which he could not eat. As she moved about the sick room, her lips moved in prayer.

“Oh, God, leave me my boy. You have taken all the others and this I accept. But this one is my own, my joy, my life. For eleven years I have cherished him, loved him, feared for him. You have taken the others; leave me this one.”

He must improve. Such loving care must make him well.

“My boy … my boy …” she whispered as she looked at the hot little face that seemed so vulnerable without that white periwig, so childish and yet at times like that of an old man. “Do not leave me. I will give anything … anything in the world to keep you. My hopes of the crown … anything.…”

A fearful thought had struck her. Why did she suffer constant miscarriages? Why was she in danger of losing her best beloved boy?

Had her father once loved her and Mary as she loved this boy? Had he suffered through his children as she had been made to suffer through hers? Death and treachery … which was the harder to bear?

She shut out such thoughts. She called to her boy and to her God.

“Have pity on me. Have pity on this suffering mother.”

But there was to be no pity. Five days after his birthday, William, Duke of Gloucester was dead.

THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK VELVET

he Princess Anne remained in her apartments . She spoke to no one and no one could comfort her. She did not wish to see Mrs. Freeman, not that Sarah cared. She herself had suffered the loss of a son and she did not want to be reminded of that tragic time.

As Sarah said to Marlborough: “The death of Gloucester changes the position of Anne. That poor lump of woman … how long will she last? And without an heir she is scarcely of any importance. You see how wise I was to link us with Godolphin, and it will be Sunderland before long.”

Anne had not thought of her changed status. There was only her loss.

George came to her; they held hands and tried to speak of their lost child and then could not bear to.

They sat in silence crying quietly.

Anne said at length: “I keep seeing him, George, reviewing his soldiers, regarding us in his grave way. Do you remember his greeting to us? He wished us peace, unity, and concord. Peace … how shall we ever know that again without him? I cannot believe it, George. Our little one. Never to see him again.”

“Est-il possible?” murmured George brokenheartedly.

Anne wrote to her father. She wanted him to forgive her. She had been a wicked daughter to him and now she suffered a bitter penitence. Her great sorrow, she believed, was a punishment from heaven. Her heart was broken, but if he would forgive her she believed she could go on living.

When she had sent off that letter she felt a little happier; and when James replied forgiving her, asking her to use her utmost power to restore her brother to the throne if ever she came to it, and to accept it only in trust for him; she wept and said that her father’s letter had comforted her as nothing else would.

William was growing weaker and Anne was the heir to the throne who could not shut herself away forever.

Sarah had become a little more insolent than before. She was determined to stress Anne’s less powerful position even if Anne was unaware of it. She had succeeded in marrying her daughter Anne to Charles, Lord Spencer, and that little project had been carried through victoriously.

Sunderland, Godolphin, Marlborough. What a combination! In certain circumstances unbeatable. All that would be necessary for them to rule would be for Sarah to keep the flaccid Queen in leading strings; and that she could adequately do.

The death of one small boy had turned thousands of eyes toward the throne. The Whigs and the Tories were drawn closer together. The Tories wanted the old regime—a King such as they had been accustomed to; the Whigs preferred the Sovereigns they had made of William and Mary, whose power was governed by the Parliament. But they stood together on one point and passed the Act of Settlement which stipulated that the sovereign must be a member of the Anglican Church, must not leave the country without the consent of Parliament and must be advised by the entire Privy Council and not by counsellors who were secret.