It was in the August following Madame’s aforesaid visit to England that the Duchess of York wrote the paper setting forth the reasons for her change of faith which has been previously given, but already it appears that her health was declining. She had never really recovered from the birth of her son Edgar,[[273]] as far back as 1667, and she gradually became the victim of a complication of disorders. Probably the unwieldy size of which her contemporaries speak was merely one symptom of failing health, as she was only thirty-three. But the malady to which she finally succumbed was the terrible scourge of cancer, which strangely enough was destined many years later to carry off her successor, Mary of Modena.[[274]]
[273]. “Lives of Queens of England,” Agnes Strickland. “Royalty Restored,” J. F. Molloy. “She was ill for fifteen months.”
[274]. Burnet’s “History of My Own Time,” edit. 1766. “A long decay of health came to a quicker crisis. All on a sudden she fell in agony of death.” Some time during this year James himself was seriously ill.
All through the autumn months of 1670 and the succeeding winter she was ailing, often seriously, but her indomitable will upheld her to the very end. She was, there is no doubt, brave and resolute, and through her “long decay of nature” she contained herself with silent courage, for she was never given to confide in those about her.
Early in the winter a general suspicion of her new religious opinions began to be circulated. She rejected the services of her chaplains[[275]] without, however, giving any explanation of this conduct, further than the state of her health “and business,” and it was in the month of December, some months, therefore, after her actual reception into the Roman communion, that the King spoke, as we have seen, on this subject to the Duke of York.
[275]. “Life of James II.,” Rev. J. S. Clarke, from original Stuart MSS. in Carlton House, 1816. “During all her indisposition of which she dyed she had not prayers said to her by any of the chaplains.”
Burnet says that the latter had by this time himself seceded, though not formally, from the Anglican Church,[[276]] before his wife did so, and that she had “entered into discourse with his priests.” But who these could be is not apparent, and the story is improbable on that account.
[276]. Burnet’s “History of My Own Time.” (Supplement.) “He [the Duke of York] was bred to believe a mysterious sort of Real Presence in the Sacrament so that he thought he made no great step when he believed Transubstantiation, and there was infused in him very early a great reverence for the Church and a great submission to it; this was done on design to possess him with prejudice against Presbytery.”
And so we come to the last act of a brief drama, when the curtain was to ring down for good. Much had been woven into that fabric, the warp of sorrow and the woof of joy, but the gilded strands were parting asunder now, and there would be no knitting together of them any more.
The autumn after Madame’s untimely death passed over, and in the midst of the growing rumours that the Duchess of York was tending towards Rome, there arose another whisper to the effect that her bodily state was daily growing more and more precarious. Margaret Blagge, as we know, waited on her with tender and unswerving devotion, sorrowfully recognising the lonely and forlorn condition of the proud princess who had achieved so much—and so little.[[277]] Still, to their chagrin, the chaplains were held at arm’s length by Morley’s once docile and obedient pupil, and the Court wondered and discussed the question with growing relish and excitement.[[278]] Christmas came and went, but for one at least there could have been little question of the revelry belonging to the season. The month of March drew on to its close, and Anne must have been feeling at any rate somewhat better, for on the 30th we find her dining at Lord Burlington’s house in Piccadilly and enjoying the good cheer there provided for her (poor Anne!), for she “dined heartily,” but after her return home she was taken suddenly and alarmingly ill. It is possible, from the contemporary evidence, that the immediate attack was some form of internal inflammation, but at any rate the gravity of the situation was at once realised.[[279]] She had spent, as was her custom, some three-quarters of an hour “att her own accustomed devotions,” but in this extremity it seems that she did call for her chaplain, Dr Turner. After a night of agony her director, Blandford, Bishop of Worcester, to whose spiritual care Morley on his own retirement had committed her, was also sent for, but of what really took place during the next few hours the accounts given present many discrepancies. Over from Whitehall came Queen Catherine, timid, gentle and compassionate, and Burnet declares that as she arrived before the bishop, and would not leave the sick room, the latter lacked sufficient courage and presence of mind to begin prayers, and only “spoke little and fearfully.”