Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/450

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residence, Somerset House, which was rechristened Denmark House early in that year (Birch's Letters in Court and Times of James I, i. 461). Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that Bacon and others should have contrasted the economy of Queen Elizabeth's reign with the expenditure that ensued under her successor; and that Queen Anne, notwithstanding the income which she enjoyed, and the grants and gifts which supplemented it, should have lived and died in debt. In 1605 Salisbury noted her total expenditure at more than 50,000l.; and though in 1610 she held an annuity of 13,000l., besides a charge upon the sugar-duties afterwards estimated as worth 3,000l. a year to her, yet in the year following she is found owing her jeweller 9,000l., and nearly 8,000l. more to Sir John Spilman. In the same year (1611) the delightful estate of Oatlands in Surrey had been granted her; Greenwich House was added in 1614, and the honour of Pontefract in 1616. But she was never clear of difficulties. In 1614 she asks for (apparently without obtaining) a patent of the grant of coast-fishing licenses to foreigners; in 1615 she is unable to go to Bath for want of money, and has to negotiate a loan on some of her jewels with Sir John Spilman. In 1616 her debts are estimated by an auditor at very nearly 10,000l., and a plan is devised by Coke of limiting her annual expenditure to 16,000l. and having her accounts made up regularly once a year. Shortly afterwards the expenses of her household and the officers of her revenue are reckoned at rather over 4,000l. a year; and in 1617 it is resolved to increase her jointure on the death of the king to 20,000l. Finally, late in 1618, quite towards the close of her life, she obtained an ‘imposition upon white cloths,’ variously reckoned as worth 8,000l. and as worth nearly 10,000l. a year, and doubtless not the less welcome to her because it formed part of Somerset's forfeited allowance. A few months before she died she told Coke that she wished her debts paid out of her own revenues, without troubling the king, and her jewels, &c. annexed to the crown. The king appears to have wished these latter to be bequeathed to Prince Charles. Though a large number of them had been sold, yet, according to Howell, she ‘left a world of brave jewels behind.’ Chamberlain states that her jewels were ‘valuably rated at 400,000l., her plate at 90,000l., her ready coin 80,000 jacobus pieces; 124 whole pieces of cloth of gold and silver, besides other silks and linen for quantity and quality beyond any prince in Europe; and so for all kinds of hanging, bedding, and furniture answerable.’ He reckoned that by her demise the king saved in the expenses of her court 60,000l. a year, besides the grants on sugars and cloths, and ‘24,000l. that was her jointure and allowed her own purse.’ It may be added here that of her jewels a large number were said to have been embezzled after her death by her ‘Frenchman’ Pierro and, according to one account, by her Danish maid Anna; the ‘ready’ money was likewise said to be not forthcoming, and a troublesome inquiry took place which deeply exercised the gossips of the day. The queen's debts seem to have been gradually paid, although the pensions promised by her to her servants were said not to have been ratified by the king. (Most of the above details on Queen Anne's income and expenditure, with many others, will be found in the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic, 1603–1619; a few are taken from Birch's Letters in Court and Times of James I).

If Queen Anne inspired, or at least employed, artists and craftsmen of various kinds, her influence was less direct and in general less potent upon affairs of state and church in England. In 1605 it is said of her that ‘she carrieth no sway in state matters, and præter rem uxoriam hath no great reach in other affairs.’ But res uxoria is an elastic term, more especially in the case of a husband such as King James I. There can be no reasonable doubt as to the affection which subsisted between the king and the queen, notwithstanding the sneers of Sir Anthony Welldon and the foul slanders of Sir Edward Peyton. A curious letter from James I to Salisbury in August 1608, of which the original is in the British Museum, certainly suggests that the king was not without his jealous moments, for which the gaiety of the queen's disposition, very clearly recognisable in some of her letters, may have given him some superficial reason (see Introduction to Maitland Club Letters, p. xlix, and compare the facsimile letters 4, 5, 6 in the collection). But, as these letters likewise show, she was really attached to her husband, and Arthur Wilson, who had derived his information from Lord Essex, agrees with Bishop Goodman that they were on good terms together, defending her reputation as warmly as the courtly prelate defends that of her husband. The bishop, indeed, adds that in their later years they mostly lived apart. But she humoured the king's fondness for field-sports, and even, as the well-known anecdote of the dog Jewel's untimely end shows, tried on occasion to enter into them herself. In the last years of her life they were in some measure estranged by her dallyings with Rome; but the affection between