Anne

I

Introduction

Anne (1665-1714), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1702-1714). During Anne’s reign, England and Scotland were united, and Great Britain became one of the world’s leading political powers.

II

Early Career

Anne was born in London on February 6, 1665, the second daughter of James, Duke of York, and his first wife, Anne Hyde (died 1671). Anne was a sickly child, suffering from poor eyesight, and in 1668 she stayed for two years with relatives at the court of Louis XIV of France, in a futile attempt to find a cure. Anne became highly proficient in French, but the rest of her education, apart from being tutored in the tenets of the Church of England, was scanty. It was during this period that Anne met Sarah Churchill, who, for the next quarter of a century, became Anne’s closest confidante. In 1683, Anne was married to Prince George of Denmark. It appears to have been a successful match, and a number of, albeit short-lived, children were soon born of it. George was amiable, unambitious, and a moderately pious Protestant, and when he died in 1708, Anne was devastated.

On the death of Anne’s uncle, Charles II, in 1685, her father became King James II of England (VII of Scotland), and Anne’s position changed accordingly. Relations between Anne and her father were tense owing to his Roman Catholicism and her firm commitment to the Church of England. Indeed, Anne made great play of the fact that she was the only Protestant member of the dynasty living in Britain. But, since James had no heirs except for Anne and her elder sister, Mary (whose marriage to William of Orange was childless), Anne and her children appeared to be the dynastic future of the house of Stuart, both in James’s eyes and those of the nation. All this changed in 1688, when James’s Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena, became pregnant. From the start, Anne voiced her concerns to her sister as to whether the pregnancy was genuine, and she was careful to distance herself from the court when the queen gave birth to a son who thus took precedence over Mary and Anne in the line of succession. On William of Orange’s arrival in Britain from the Netherlands, ostensibly to investigate the legitimacy of the new prince and establish a free parliament, Anne abandoned her father and fled to Nottingham with Sarah Churchill to join William of Orange’s northern supporters. She accepted the terms of the Revolutionary Settlement of 1689, which established William and Mary on the throne as William III and Mary II, and which ensured that Anne was next in line of succession (see Glorious Revolution). Anne’s dynastic claims were bolstered by the birth of her much adored son, William, Duke of Gloucester, in the July of that year.

However, Anne’s relations with her sister and brother-in-law quickly soured, over money and especially when Anne became the focal point for those who disliked William’s regime. Matters came to a head when Sarah Churchill’s husband, John Churchill, fell from William’s favour, and in protest, Anne withdrew from court; she was only reconciled with William after Mary’s death in 1694. In the 1690s Anne had numerous pregnancies but still no surviving children, and the death of the Duke of Gloucester in 1700 left Anne childless after at least 17 births, stillbirths, and miscarriages.

III

Reign

In 1702, William III died and Anne succeeded him to the throne. In keeping with William III’s foreign policy, war was declared against France (see War of the Spanish Succession). Under the command of John Churchill, now 1st Duke of Marlborough, the British armies smote Louis XIV with a series of striking victories, most notably at the battles of Blenheim (1704) and Ramillies (1706). Later successes, however, were more muted. Anne, reputedly tired of bloodshed and alert to the commercial advantages of a cessation in hostilities, espoused peace with France, concluded in 1713. By this time, her enthusiasm for Marlborough had paled, in part brought about by a number of emotionally devastating arguments between the queen and Sarah.

Anne, while abiding by the Revolutionary Settlement of 1689, was fierce in her attempts to defend the prerogatives of the Crown and to ensure that it remained above party political faction. Highly alert to the importance of ceremony in establishing the grandeur of monarchy, she revived the ancient royal practice of touching for scrofula, which stressed the quasi-divine powers of the monarch, and made efforts to promote her court as the centre of the nation’s political and social life. But if Anne attempted to place herself above party conflict, she could not prevent herself from being drawn in one particular direction. With her strong Anglican sympathies, which led to her setting aside Crown income to provide financial support for poorly paid clergymen (Queen Anne’s Bounty), Anne was, in outlook, more Tory than Whig. Nevertheless, there is little evidence to suggest that she favoured the cause of her Catholic half-brother, the son of James II, who some Tories had supported as king. The passing in her reign of the Act of Union of 1707, which united England and Scotland, was designed to ensure the continuation of the Protestant Succession after Anne’s death to her distant, but Protestant, cousins in Hanover, in Germany. Throughout much of her reign, and indeed long before, Anne had been in poor health, her constitution being badly damaged by frequent pregnancies. She died after a short illness on August 1, 1714, and was succeeded by her Hanoverian cousin, George I.

IV

Assessment

Anne’s attempts to keep the Crown above party faction largely failed. In a period that saw regular parliaments, frequent elections, a burgeoning press, and a number of highly controversial political issues, Anne was fighting a losing battle. This situation was exacerbated by the Crown’s inadequate financial resources, Anne’s ill health, which limited her own political participation, and contemporary anxieties concerning female rule. Nevertheless, during her reign Anne enjoyed widespread popularity and her successes against France were seen by contemporaries as restoring England’s national greatness.