AKA Anne Stuart

Born: 6-Feb-1665
Birthplace: London, England [1]
Died: 1-Aug-1714
Location of death: London, England [2]
Cause of death: Stroke
Remains: Buried, Westminster Abbey, London, England

Gender: Female
Religion: Anglican/Episcopalian
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Royalty

Nationality: England
Executive summary: Queen of England, 1702-14

Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, second daughter of James, duke of York, afterwards James II, and of Anne Hyde, daughter of the 1st earl of Clarendon, was born on the 6th of February 1665. She suffered as a child from an affliction of the eyes, and was sent to France for medical treatment, residing with her grandmother, Henrietta Maria, and on the latter's death with her aunt, the duchess of Orleans, and returning to England in 1670. She was brought up, together with her sister Mary, by the direction of Charles II, as a strict Protestant, and as a child she made the friendship of Sarah Jennings (afterwards duchess of Marlborough), thus beginning life under the two influences which were to prove the most powerful in her future career. In 1678 she accompanied Mary of Modena to Holland, and in 1679 joined her parents abroad and afterwards in Scotland. On the 28th of July 1683 she married Prince George of Denmark, brother of King Christian V, an unpopular union because of the French proclivities of the bridegroom's country, but one of great domestic happiness, the prince and princess being conformable in temper and both preferring retirement and quiet to life in the great world. Sarah Churchill became Anne's lady of the bedchamber, and, by the latter's desire to mark their mutual intimacy and affection, all deference due to her rank was abandoned and the two ladies called each other Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman.

On the 6th of February 1685 James became king of England. In 1687 a project of settling the crown on the princess, to the exclusion of Mary, on the condition of Anne's embracing Roman Catholicism, was rendered futile by her pronounced attachment to the Church of England, and beyond sending her books and papers James appears to have made no attempt to coerce his daughter into a change of faith, and to have treated her with kindness, while the birth of his son on the 10th of June 1688 made the religion of his daughters a matter of less political importance. Anne was not present on the occasion, having gone to Bath, and this gave rise to a belief that the child was spurious; but it is most probable that James's desire to exclude all Protestants from affairs of state was the real cause. "I shall never now be satisfied", Anne wrote to Mary, "whether the child be true or false. It may be it is our brother, but God only knows... one cannot help having a thousand fears and melancholy thoughts, but whatever changes may happen you shall ever find me firm to my religion and faithfully yours." In later years, however, she had no doubt that the Old Pretender was her brother. During the events immediately preceding the Revolution Anne kept in seclusion. Her ultimate conduct was probably influenced by the Churchills; and though forbidden by James to pay Mary a projected visit in the spring of 1688, she corresponded with her; and was no doubt aware of William's plans. Her position was now a very critical and painful one. She refused to show any sympathy with the king after William had landed in November, and wrote, with the advice of the Churchills, to the prince, declaring her approval of his action. Churchill abandoned the king on the 24th, Prince George on the 25th, and when James returned to London on the 26th he found that Anne and her lady-in-waiting had during the previous night followed their husbands' examples. Escaping from Whitehall by a back staircase they put themselves under the care of the bishop of London, spent one night in his house, and subsequently arrived on the 1st of December at Nottingham, where the princess first made herself known and appointed a council. Then she passed through Leicester, Coventry and Warwick, finally entering Oxford, where she met Prince George, in triumph, escorted by a large company. Like Mary, she was reproached for showing no concern at the news of the king's flight, but her justification was that "she never loved to do anything that looked like an affected constraint." She returned to London on the 19th of December, when she was at once visited by William. Subsequently the Declaration of Rights settled the succession of the crown upon her after William and Mary and their children.

Meanwhile Anne had suffered a series of maternal disappointments. Between 1684 and 1688 she had miscarried four times and given birth to two children who died infants. On the 24th of July 1689, however, the birth of a son, William, created duke of Gloucester, who survived his infancy, gave hopes that heirs to the throne under the Bill of Rights might be forthcoming. But Anne's happiness was soon troubled by quarrels with the king and queen. According to the duchess of Marlborough the two sisters, who had lived hitherto while apart on extremely affectionate terms, found no enjoyment in each other's society. Mary talked too much for Anne's comfort, and Anne too little for Mary's satisfaction. But money appears to have been the first and real cause of ill-feeling. The granting away by William of the private estate of James, amounting to �22,000 a year, to which Anne had some claim, was made a grievance, and a factious motion brought forward in the House to increase her civil list pension of �30,000, which she enjoyed in addition to �20,000 under her marriage settlement, greatly displeased William and Mary, who regarded it as a plot to make Anne independent and the chief of a separate interest in the state, while their resentment was increased by the refusal of Anne to restrain the action of her friends, and by its success. The Marlboroughs had been active in the affair and had benefited by it, the countess (as she then was) receiving a pension of �1000, and their conduct was noticed at court. The promised Garter was withheld from Marlborough, and the incensed "Mrs. Morley" in her letters to "Mrs. Freeman" styled the king "Caliban" or the "Dutch Monster." At the close of 1691 Anne had declared her approval of the naval expedition in favor of her father, and expressed grief at its failure. According to the doubtful Life of James, she wrote to him on the 1st of December a "most penitential and dutiful" letter, and henceforward kept up with him a "fair correspondence." The same year the breach between the royal sisters was made final by the dismissal of Marlborough, justly suspected of Jacobite intrigues, from all his appointments. Anne took the part of her favorites with great zeal against the court, though in all probability unaware of Marlborough's treason; and on the dismissal of the countess from her household by the king and queen she refused to part with her, and retired with Lady Marlborough to the duke of Somerset's residence at Sion House. Anne was now in disgrace. She was deprived of her guard of honor, and Prince George, on entering Kensington Palace, received no salute, though the drums beat loudly on his departure. Instructions were given that the court expected no one to pay his respects, and no attention in the provinces was to be shown to their rank. In May, Marlborough was arrested on a charge of high treason which subsequently broke down, and Anne persisted in regarding his disgrace as a personal injury to herself. In August 1693. however, the two sisters were temporarily reconciled, and on the occasion of Mary's last illness and death Anne showed an affectionate consideration.

The death of Mary weakened William's position and made it necessary to cultivate good relations with the princess. She was now treated with every honor and civility, and finally established with her own court at St. James's Palace. At the same time William kept her in the background and refrained from appointing her regent during his absence. In March 1695 Marlborough was allowed to kiss the king's hands, and subsequently was made the duke of Gloucester's governor and restored to his employments. In return Anne gave her support to William's government, though about this time, in 1696 -- according to James, in consequence of the near prospect of the throne -- she wrote to her father asking for his leave to wear the crown at William's death, and promising its restoration at a convenient opportunity. The unfounded rumor that William contemplated settling the succession after his death on James's son, provided he were educated a Protestant in England, may possibly have alarmed her. Meanwhile, since the birth of the duke of Gloucester, the princess had experienced six more miscarriages, and had given birth to two children who only survived a few hours, and the last maternal hope flickered out on the death of the young prince on the 29th of July 1700. Henceforth Anne signs herself in her letters to Lady Marlborough as "your poor unfortunate" as well as "faithful Morley." In default of her own issue, Anne's personal choice would probably have inclined at this time to her own family at St. Germains, but the necessity of maintaining the Protestant succession caused the enactment of the Act of Settlement in 1701, and the substitution of the Hanoverian branch. She wore mourning for her father in 1701, and before his death James is said to have written to his daughter asking for her protection for his family; but the recognition of his son by Louis XIV as king of England effectually prevented any good offices to which her feelings might have inclined her.

On the 8th of March 1702 Anne became, by King William's death, queen of Great Britain, being crowned on the 23rd of April. Her reign was destined to be one of the most brilliant in the annals of England. Splendid military triumphs crushed the hereditary national foe. The Act of Union with Scotland constituted one of the strongest foundations of the future empire. Art and literature found a fresh renascence.

In her first speech to parliament, like George III afterwards, Anne declared her "heart to be entirely English", words which were resented by some as a reflection on the late king. A ministry, mostly Tory, with Godolphin at its head, was established. She obtained a grant of �700,000 a year, and hastened to bestow a pension of �100,000 on her husband, whom she created generalissimo of her forces and lord high admiral, while Marlborough obtained the Garter; with the captain-generalship and other prizes, including a dukedom, and the duchess was made mistress of the robes with the control of the privy purse. The queen showed from the first a strong interest in church matters, and declared her intention to keep church appointments in her own hands. She detested equally Roman Catholics and dissenters, showed a strong leaning towards the high-church party, and gave zealous support to the bill forbidding occasional conformity. In 1704 she announced to the Commons her intention of granting to the church the crown revenues, amounting to about �16,000 or �17,000 a year, from tenths and first-fruits (paid originally by the clergy to the pope, but appropriated by the crown in 1534), for the increase of poor livings; her gift, under the name of "Queen Anne's Bounty", still remaining as a testimony of her piety. This devotion to the church, the strongest of all motives in Anne's conduct, dictated her hesitating attitude towards the two great parties in the state. The Tories had for this reason her personal preference, while the Whigs, who included her powerful favorites the Marlboroughs, identified their interests with the war and its glorious successes, the queen slowly and unwillingly, but inevitably, gravitating towards the latter.

In December, the archduke Charles visited Anne at Windsor and was welcomed as the king of Spain. In 1704 Anne acquiesced in the resignation of Lord Nottingham, the leader of the high Tory party. In the same year the great victory of Blenheim further consolidated the power of the Whigs and increased the influence of Marlborough, upon whom Anne now conferred the manor of Woodstock. Nevertheless, she declared in November to the duchess that whenever things leaned towards the Whigs, "I shall think the church is beginning to be in danger." Next year she supported the election of the Whig speaker, John Smith, but long resisted the influence and claims of the Junto, as the Whig leaders, Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland, were named. In October she was obliged to appoint Cowper, a Whig, lord chancellor, with all the ecclesiastical patronage belonging to the office. Marlborough's successive victories, and especially the factious conduct of the Tories, who in November 1705 moved in parliament that the electress Sophia should be invited to England, drove Anne farther to the side of the Whigs. But she opposed for some time the inclusion in the government of Sunderland, whom she especially disliked, only consenting at Marlborough's intercession in December 1706, when various other offices and rewards were bestowed upon Whigs, and Nottingham with other Tories was removed from the council. She yielded, after a struggle, also to the appointment of Whigs to bishoprics, the most mortifying submission of all. In 1708 she was forced to dismiss Harley, who, with the aid of Mrs. Masham, had been intriguing against the government and projecting the creation of a third party. Abigail Hill, Mrs. Masham, a cousin of the duchess of Marlborough, had been introduced by the latter as a poor relation into Anne's service, while still princess of Denmark. The queen found relief in the quiet and respectful demeanor of her attendant, and gradually came to prefer her society to that of the termagant and tempestuous duchess. Abigail, however, soon ventured to talk "business", and in the summer of 1707 the duchess discovered to her indignation that her prot�g�e had already undermined her influence with the queen and had become the medium of Harley's intrigue. The strength of the Whigs at this time and the necessities of the war caused the retirement of Harley, but he remained Anne's secret adviser and supporter against the faction, urging upon her "the dangers to the crown as well as to the church and monarchy itself from their counsels and actions", while the duchess never regained her former influence. The inclusion in the cabinet of Somers, whom she especially disliked as the hostile critic of Prince George's admiralty administration, was the subject of another prolonged struggle, ending again in the queen's submission after a futile appeal to Marlborough in October 1708, to which she brought herself only to avoid a motion from the Whigs for the removal of the prince, then actually on his deathbed. His death on the 28th of October was felt deeply by the queen, and opened the way for the inclusion of more Whigs. But no reconciliation with the duchess took place, and in 1709 a further dispute led to an angry correspondence, the queen finally informing the duchess of the termination of their friendship, and the latter drawing up a long narrative of her services, which she forwarded to Anne together with suitable passages on the subject of friendship and charity transcribed from the Prayer Book, the Whole Duty of Man and from Jeremy Taylor. Next year Anne's desire to give a regiment to Hill, Mrs. Masham's brother, led to another ineffectual attempt in retaliation to displace the new favorite, and the queen showed her antagonism to the Whig administration on the occasion of the prosecution of Sacheverell. She was present at his trial and was publicly acclaimed by the mob as his supporter, while the Tory divine was consoled immediately on the expiration of his sentence with the living of St. Andrew's, Holborn. Subsequently the duchess, in a final interview which she had forced upon the queen, found her tears and reproaches unavailing. In her anger she had told the queen she wished for no answer, and she was now met by a stony and exasperating silence, broken only by the words constantly repeated, "You desired no answer and you shall have none."

The fall of the Whigs, now no longer necessary on account of the successful issue of the war, to accomplish which Harley had long been preparing and intriguing, followed; and their attempt to prolong hostilities from party motives failed. A friend of Harley, the duke of Shrewsbury, was first appointed to office, and subsequently the great body of the Whigs were displaced by Tories, Harley being made chancellor of the exchequer and Henry St. John secretary of state. The queen was rejoiced at being freed from what she called a long captivity, and the new parliament was returned with a Tory majority. On the 17th of January 1711, in spite of Marlborough's efforts to ward off the blow, the duchess was compelled to give up her key of office. The queen was now able once more to indulge in her favorite patronage of the church, and by her influence an act was passed in 1712 for building fifty new churches in London. Later, in 1714, she approved of the Schism Bill. She gave strong support to Harley, now earl of Oxford and lord treasurer, in the intrigues and negotiations for peace. Owing to the alliance between the Tory Lord Nottingham and the Whigs, on the condition of the support by the latter of the bill against occasional conformity passed in December 1711, the defeated Whigs maintained a majority in the Lords, who declared against any peace which left Spain to the Bourbons. To break down this opposition Marlborough was dismissed on the 31st from all his employments, while the House of Lords was "swamped" by Anne's creation of twelve peers, including Mrs. Masham's husband. The queen's conduct was generally approved, for the nation was now violently adverse to the Whigs and war party; and the peace of Utrecht was finally signed on the 31st of March 1713, and proclaimed on the 5th of May in London.

As the queen's reign drew to its close, rumors were rife on the great subject of the succession to the throne. Various Jacobite appointments excited suspicion. Both Oxford and Bolingbroke were in communication with the Pretender's party, and on the 27th of July Oxford, who had gradually lost influence and quarreled with Bolingbroke, resigned, leaving the supreme power in the hands of the latter. Anne herself had a natural feeling for her brother, and had shown great solicitude concerning his treatment when a price had been set on his head at the time of the Scottish expedition in 1708. On the 3rd of March 1714 James wrote to Anne, Oxford and Bolingbroke, urging the necessity of taking steps to secure his succession, and promising, on the condition of his recognition, to make no further attempts against the queen's government; and in April a report was circulated in Holland that Anne had secretly determined to associate James with her in the government. The wish expressed by the Whigs, that a member of the electoral family should be invited to England, had already aroused the queen's indignation in 1708; and now, in 1714, a writ of summons for the electoral prince as duke of Cambridge having been obtained, Anne forbade the Hanoverian envoy, Baron Sch�tz, her presence, and declared all who supported the project her enemies; while to a memorial on the same subject from the electress Sophia and her grandson in May, Anne replied in an angry letter, which is said to have caused the death of the electress on the 8th of June, requesting them not to trouble the peace of her realm or diminish her authority.

These demonstrations, however, were the outcome not of any returning partiality for her own family, but of her intense dislike, in which she resembled Queen Elizabeth I, of any "successor", "it being a thing I cannot bear to have any successor here though but for a week"; and in spite of some appearances to the contrary, it is certain that religion and political wisdom kept Anne firm to the Protestant succession. She had maintained a friendly correspondence with the court of Hanover since 1705, and in 1706 had bestowed the Garter on the electoral prince and created him duke of Cambridge; while the Regency Act provided for the declaration of the legal heir to the crown by the council immediately on the queen's death, and a further enactment naturalized the electress and her issue. In 1708, on the occasion of the Scottish expedition, notwithstanding her solicitude for his safety, she had styled James in her speech closing the session of parliament as "a popish pretender bred up in the principles of the most arbitrary government." The duchess of Marlborough stated in 1713 that all the time she had known "that thing" (as she now called the queen), "she had never heard her speak a favorable word of him." No answer appears to have been sent to James's letter in 1714; on the contrary, a proclamation was issued (June 23) for his apprehension in case of his arrival in England. On the 27th of April Anne gave a solemn assurance of her fidelity to the Hanoverian succession to Sir William Dawes, archbishop of York; in June she sent Lord Clarendon to Hanover to satisfy the elector.

The sudden illness and death of the queen now frustrated any schemes which Bolingbroke, or others might have been contemplating. On the 27th, the day of Oxford's resignation, the discussions concerning his successor detained the council sitting in the queen's presence until two o'clock in the morning, and on retiring Anne was instantly seized with fatal illness. Her adherence to William in 1688 had been a principal cause of the success of the Revolution, and now the final act of her life was to secure the Revolution settlement and the Protestant succession. During a last moment of returning consciousness, and by the advice of the whole council, who had been joined on their own initiative by the Whig dukes Argyll and Somerset, she placed the lord treasurer's staff in the hands of the Whig duke of Shrewsbury, and measures were immediately taken for assuring the succession of the elector. Her death took place on the 1st of August, and the security felt by the public, and perhaps the sense of perils escaped by the termination of the queen's life, were shown by a considerable rise in the national stocks. She was buried on the south side of Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey, in the same tomb as her husband and children. The elector of Hanover, George Louis, son of the electress Sophia (daughter of Elizabeth, daughter of James I), peacefully succeeded to the throne as George I.

According to her physician John Arbuthnot, Anne's life was shortened by the "scene of contention among her servants. I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her." By character and temperament unfitted to stand alone, her life had been unhappy and tragical from its isolation. Separated in early years from her parents and sister, her one great friendship had proved only baneful and ensnaring. Marriage had only brought a mournful series of infant funerals. Constant ill-health and suffering had darkened her career. The claims of family attachment, of religion, of duty, of patriotism and of interest, had dragged her in opposite directions, and her whole life had been a prey to jealousies and factions which closed around her at her accession to the throne, and surged to their height when she lay on her deathbed. The modern theory of the relations between the sovereign and the parties, by which the former identifies himself with the faction for the time in power while maintaining his detachment from all, had not then been invented; and Anne, like her Hanoverian successors, maintained the struggle, though without success, to rule independently, finding support in Harley. During the first year of her reign she made known that she was "resolved not to follow the example of her predecessor in making use of a few of her subjects to oppress the rest. She will be queen of all her subjects, and would have all the parties and distinctions of former reigns ended and buried in hers." Her motive for getting rid of the Whigs was not any real dislike of their administration, but the wish to escape from the domination of the party, and on the advent to power of the Tories she carefully left some Whigs in their employments, with the aim of breaking up the party system and acting upon what was called "a moderate scheme." She attended debates in the Lords and endeavored to influence votes. Her struggles to free herself from the influence of factions only involved her deeper; she was always under the domination of some person or some party, and she could not rise above them and show herself the leader of the nation like Elizabeth.

Anne was a women of small ability, of dull mind, and of that kind of obstinacy which accompanies weakness of character. According to the duchess she had "a certain knack of sticking to what had been dictated to her to a degree often very disagreeable, and without the least sign of understanding or judgment." "I desire you would not have so ill an opinion of me", Anne writes to Oxford, "as to think when I have determined anything in my mind I will alter it." Burnet considered that "she laid down the splendor of a court too much", which was "as it were abandoned." She dined alone after her husband's death, but it was reported by no means abstemiously, the royal family being characterized in the lines:

King William thinks all,
Queen Mary talks all,
Prince George drinks all,
And Princess Anne eats all.

She took no interest in the art, the drama or the literature of her day. But she possessed the homely virtues; she was deeply religious, attached to the Church of England and concerned for the efficiency of the ministry. One of the first acts of her reign was a proclamation against vice, and Lord Chesterfield regretted the strict morality of her court. Instances abound of her kindness and consideration for others. Her moderation towards the Jacobites in Scotland, after the Pretender's expedition in 1708, was much praised by Saint Simon. She showed great forbearance and generosity towards the duchess of Marlborough in the face of unexampled provocation, and her character was unduly disparaged by the latter, who with her violent and coarse nature could not understand the queen's self-restraint in sorrow, and describes her as "very hard" and as "not apt to cry." According to her small ability she served the state well, and was zealous and conscientious in the fulfillment of public duties, in which may be included touching for the king's evil, which she revived. Marlborough testifies to her energy in finding money for the war. She surrendered �10,000 a year for public purposes, and in 1706 she presented �30,000 to the officers and soldiers who had lost their horses. Her contemporaries almost unanimously record her excellence and womanly virtues; and by Dean Swift, no mild critic, she is invariably spoken of with respect, and named in his will as of "ever glorious, immortal and truly pious memory, the real nursing-mother of her kingdoms." She deserves her appellation of "Good Queen Anne", and notwithstanding her failings must be included among the chief authors and upholders of the great Revolution settlement. Her person was described by Spanheim, the Prussian ambassador, as handsome though inclining to stoutness, with black hair, blue eyes and good features, and of grave aspect.

Anne's husband, Prince George, was the second son of Frederick III, king of Denmark. Before marrying Anne he had been a candidate for the throne of Poland, He was created earl of Kendal and duke of Cumberland in 1689. Some censure, which was directed against the prince in his capacity as lord high admiral, was terminated by his death. In religion George remained a Lutheran, and in general his qualities tended to make him a good husband rather than a soldier or a statesman.

[2] Kensington Palace, London, England.

Father: King James II (d. 1701)
Mother: Lady Anne Hyde
Sister: Queen Mary II (d. 1694, smallpox)
Husband: Prince George of Denmark (b. 1653, m. 28-Jul-1683, d. 1708)
Daughter: Mary (b. 2-Jun-1685, d. 8-Feb-1687)
Daughter: Anne Sophia (b. 12-May-1686, d. 2-Feb-1687)
Son: William, Duke of Gloucester (b. 24-Jul-1689, d. 29-Jul-1700)
Daughter: Mary (b. 14-Oct-1690, d. 14-Oct-1690)
Son: George (b. 17-Apr-1692, d. 17-Apr-1692)

    UK Monarch 8-Mar-1702 to 1-Aug-1714
    Died Intestate failed to sign her will
    Risk Factors: Gout

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