Anne (queen)

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Anne (1665–1714), queen of England, Scotland (Great Britain from 1707), and Ireland (1702–14). The conventional picture of Queen Anne as a weak‐willed and ineffectual monarch has been subjected to substantial revision. Re‐examination has revealed a much less insipid personality. She was the younger daughter of James, duke of York, and his first wife Anne Hyde. The doctrines of the Church of England in which she was educated provided an important political and emotional prop for the rest of her life. In 1683, aged 18, she married Prince George of Denmark, a distant cousin, and their relationship quickly blossomed into one of lasting devotion. Anne deserted her father at the revolution in 1688 and joined William of Orange and his wife, her elder sister Mary. Before long, however, relations with them became strained with bitterness, especially after Anne succeeded where they had failed and produced a healthy son, the duke of Gloucester, in 1689. Anne's hatred of the king deepened as William persistently excluded Prince George from any share in government. Her particular intimates were the Marlboroughs and Lord Godolphin. In Sarah Marlborough, especially, she found the feminine support she needed as she endured one failed pregnancy after another. By 1700, when her seventeenth and last pregnancy ended in miscarriage, she was, at 35, practically an invalid. That same year her one surviving child, William of Gloucester, succumbed to illness and died.

Anne became queen on William III's death in March 1702. She had patiently waited for what she had said would be her ‘sunshine day’. In the early years of her reign she gave fresh impetus to court life and ceremonial in a conscious effort to elevate her regal image. Wherever she travelled she was received with acclamation. Away from royal panoply, Anne industriously fulfilled the position she occupied at the centre of government. She presided once or twice weekly at cabinet meetings, conferred with individual ministers, regularly attended debates in the Lords, and gave active encouragement to major national ventures, such as the war with France, the union with Scotland (1707), and after 1710 the drive for peace.

Until 1710 her administrations were headed by the ‘duumvirs’, her old friends Godolphin, at the treasury, and Marlborough, in command of the army. Neither of them were party men in the conventional sense, but acted primarily as ‘political managers’. Like her predecessor, Anne was anxious to avoid becoming the captive of ‘party’. In 1702 the high Tory grandees, mindful of Anne's affinity with Toryism, expected the lion's share of governmental appointments, but she resisted their demands for a purge of Whigs. After 1705 Godolphin's efforts to persuade her to placate the powerful and well‐organized Junto Whig faction placed a growing strain on their association, but she reluctantly yielded to a series of Whig appointments. Sarah Marlborough's less tactful bullying on behalf of the Junto was a major source of irritation, but Anne could ill afford to dismiss her, fearing that she would use her influence with Marlborough and Godolphin to induce them to resign.

The queen's third ‘manager’, Robert Harley, gradually gained her confidence with his notion of a ‘moderate’ ministry of both parties, a venture in which he was assisted by his cousin Abigail Masham, who had replaced Sarah as Anne's closest friend and confidante. However, in 1708 Harley's attempt to implement this plan with the queen's co‐operation backfired when the ‘duumvirs’ forced Anne to dismiss him from his post of secretary of state.

By 1710 Anne was willing to sacrifice Godolphin for Harley (later Lord Oxford), though the Tories' huge electoral success in the summer ruled out her favoured objective of ‘moderation’ and forced her to accept an exclusively Tory government under Harley's lead. As her health became more precarious in 1714, Lord Bolingbroke seemed increasingly likely to succeed Oxford, although the queen remained non‐committal. Two days after dismissing Oxford on 27 July, Anne fell mortally ill, but her acceptance of the politically neutral duke of Shrewsbury as next lord treasurer on the 30th was crucial in ensuring that after her death on 1 August the transition to the Hanoverian dynasty occurred without the political turmoil which many had feared.

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.

Early Life

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. She was soon on bad terms with them, however, partly because they objected to her favorite, Sarah Jennings (later Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough ), who was to exercise great influence in Anne's private and public life.

Of Anne's many children the only one to live much beyond infancy—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 (see Stuart, James Francis Edward ; Jacobites ), the question of succession continued after the Act of Settlement (1701) and after Anne's accession.

Reign

The last Stuart ruler, Anne was the first to rule over Great Britain, which was created when the Act of Union joined Scotland to England and Wales 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 , known in America as Queen Anne's War (see French and Indian Wars ). In the actual fighting on the Continent, Sarah Churchill's husband, the duke of Marlborough , won a series of spectacular victories. 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 the influence of public opinion, shaped by an increasingly powerful press and elections, was growing. 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 were even able to force 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 (see St. John, Henry ). Soon afterward the queen died, and Jacobite hopes were dashed by the succession of George I of the house of Hanover.

Character and Period

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, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, for poor clerical benefices. During Anne's reign such thinkers as George Berkeley and Sir Isaac Newton and such scholars and writers as Richard Bentley, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, and Defoe were at work, while Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh were at the same time setting in stone and brick the rich elegance of the period.

Bibliography

See biographies by M. R. Hopkinson (1934), D. Green (1970), and E. Gregg (1984); G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (3 vol., 1930–34); G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts (2d ed. 1955).

Anne (1665–1714) Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1702–14). The second daughter of James II, Anne succeeded William III (of Orange) as the last Stuart sovereign and, after the Act of Union (1707), the first monarch of the United Kingdom of England and Scotland. Brought up a Protestant, she married Prince George of Denmark (1683). Despite 18 pregnancies, no child survived her. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) dominated her reign, and is often called Queen Anne's War. Anne was the last English monarch to exercise the royal veto over legislation (1707), but the rise of parliamentary government was inexorable. The military success of the Duke of Marlborough increased the influence that his wife, Sarah Churchill, had over domestic policy. Tories, sceptical of military involvement, were removed from high office. Tory victory in the elections of 1710 led to the dismissal of the Marlboroughs, and Abigail Masham and Robert Harley emerged as the Queen's new favourites. The Jacobite cause was crushed when Anne was succeeded by George I. The most lasting aspect of her reign was the strength of contemporary arts and culture.

Anne (1665–1714) Queen of England and Scotland (known as Great Britain from 1707) and Ireland 1702–14. The last of the Stuart monarchs, daughter of the Catholic James II (but herself a Protestant), she succeeded her brother-in-law William III to the throne, there presiding over the Act of Union, which completed the unification of Scotland and England. None of her five children born alive survived childhood, and by the Act of Settlement (1701) the throne passed to the House of Hanover on her death.

Anne (1665–1714), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702. The second daughter of James II, she continued to be brought up as an Anglican after her father had become a RC. She created ‘Queen Anne's Bounty’ for the clergy (1704). By exercising her right to nominate bishops, she introduced a High Church and Tory element to the Bench and she supported the Occasional Conformity Bill (introduced 1702; passed 1711).