Anne Stuart, Queen of England

  General Notes:

Anne, 1665-1714, queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1702-7), later queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1707-14), daughter of James II and Anne Hyde; successor to William III. Reared as a Protestant and married (1683) to Prince George of Denmark (d. 1708), she was not close to her Catholic father and acquiesced in the Glorious Revolution (1688) which put William III and her sister, Mary II, on the throne. With them she was soon on bad terms because of private animosities, partially caused by Anne’s favorite. This woman was her attendant and intimate friend from girlhood, Sarah Jennings, who had married John Churchill (later 1st duke of Marlborough) and who was to exercise great influence in Anne’s private and public life. They addressed each other as Mrs. Morley (Anne) and Mrs. Freeman (Sarah) to avoid obligations of rank. Of Anne’s many children the only one to live much beyond babyhood - the duke of Gloucester - died at the age of 11 in 1700. Since neither she nor William had surviving children and support for her exiled Catholic half brother rose and fell in Great Britain, the question of succession continued vexed after the Act of Settlement (1701) and after Anne’s accession. The last Stuart ruler, she was the first to rule over Great Britain, which was created when the Act of Union joined Scotland and England in 1707. Her reign, like that of William III, was one of transition to parliamentary government; Anne was, for example, the last English monarch to exercise (1707) the royal veto. Domestic and foreign affairs alike were dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession, called Queen Anne’s War in America. On the continent the duke of Marlborough won glory for English arms. At home the costs of the fighting were an issue between the Tories, who were cool to the war, and the Whigs, who favored it. Party lines were slowly hardening, but party government and ministerial responsibility were not yet established; intrigues and the favor of the queen still made and unmade cabinets, though public opinion and elections did have increasing influence. Thus it was at least partly through the pressure of the Marlboroughs that Anne was induced, despite her Tory sympathies, to oust Tory ministers in favor of Whigs. The Marlboroughs forced the dismissal of Robert Harley in 1708, though the scolding duchess had already lost much of her power to Anne’s new favorite, the quiet Abigail Masham, kinswoman and friend of Harley. When the unpopularity of the war and the furor over the prosecution of Henry Sacheverell showed the power of the Tories (who won the elections of 1710) and made the move feasible, Anne recalled Harley to power, and the Marlboroughs were dismissed. Harley, created earl of Oxford, was political leader until 1714, when he was replaced by his Tory colleague and rival, Viscount Bolingbroke. Soon afterward thte queen died, and, Jacobite plans having failed, she was succeeded by George I of the house of Hanover. Queen Anne was a dull, stubborn, but conscientious woman devoted to the Church of England and within it to the High Church party. She supported the act (1711) against "occasional conformity" and the Schism Act (1714), both directed against dissenters and both repealed in 1718. She also created a trust fund called Queen Anne’s Bounty for poor clerical livings. Her reign also saw developments in the intellectual awakening that produced such thinkers as George Berkeley and Sir Isaac Newton and such scholars and writers as Richard Bentley, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele and Defoe. The British press grew rapidly as a political instrument. Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh were at the same time setting in stone and brick the rich elegance that was perhaps the most attractive aspect of life and society under Queen Anne. See biography by M. R. Hopkinson (1934); G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (3 vols., 1930-34); G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts (1934). [The Illustrated Columbia Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., 1969]

  Noted events in her life were:

• Title: Queen of England, 1702-1714.

• Title: Lord High Admiral, 1708.

Anne married Prince George of Denmark on 28 Jul 1683 in St. James' Palace, London, England.⁷⁷³ (Prince George of Denmark was born on 2 Apr 1653 in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark ⁷⁷³ and died on 28 Oct 1708 ⁷⁷³.)