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Queen Anne Biography

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ANNE, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND (1665-1714). The last British sovereign of the house of Stuart. She was born at St. James's Palace, London, Feb. 6, 1665, and was the second daughter of the Duke of York, afterward James II, by his first wife, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. When she was about seven years of age, her mother died, and her father soon after professed himself a member of the Church of Rome; but he permitted his daughters to be educated in the principles of the Church of England, for which Anne always retained an ardent if not a very enlightened attachment. To advance his own popularity, her father gave her in marriage, in 1683, to Prince George of Denmark, brother of Christian V, an indolent and good-natured man, who concerned himself little about public affairs and was endowed with no capacity for taking part in them. Anne's own weakness of character and that of her husband gave opportunity to Lady Churchill, afterward Duchess of Marlborough, her early playfellow, to acquire an influence over her which during many years was almost supreme. During the reign of her father Anne lived in retirement, taking no part in politics. On the landing of the Prince of Orange she seems at first to have hesitated, and even to have been inclined to adhere to the cause of her father, whose favorite daughter she was; but Churchill had made up his mind to an opposite course, and his wife induced the Princess to adopt it. She consented to the act by which the throne was secured to the Prince of Orange in the event of his surviving her sister Mary; but quarreled with the King and Queen over money matters. Although she had borne 17 children, only one, the Duke of Gloucester, survived infancy, to die in 1700, in his eleventh year; and Anne was without a direct heir when she ascended the throne on March 19, 1702. The influence of Marlborough and his wife was powerfully felt in all public affairs during the greater part of her reign. The strife of parties was violent, and political complications were increased by the Queen's anxiety to secure the succession to her brother. In so far as she had any political principles, they were opposed to that constitutional liberty of which her own occupancy of the throne was a sort of symbol, and were favorable to absolute government and the assertion of royal prerogative according to the traditions of her family. These principles, and her family attachment, tended to alienate her from the Marlboroughs, whose policy, from the time of her accession, had become adverse to Jacobitism, and who now, along with Godolphin, were at the head of the Whig party. The Duchess also offended the Queen by presuming too boldly and haughtily upon the power which she had so long possessed.

Anne found a new favorite in Mrs. Masham, a relative of the Duchess, who had introduced her into the royal household. To Mrs. Masham's influence the change of government in 1710 was in a great measure owing, when the Whigs were cast out, and the Tories came into office, Harley (afterward Earl of Oxford) and St. John (Lord Bolingbroke) becoming the leaders of the ministry. But although they concurred more or less in the Queen's design to secure the succession of the throne to her brother, the new ministers had quarrels among themselves which prevented its successful prosecution; their plans and intrigues became sufficiently known to alarm the nation and to alienate many political supporters of the government party. A dispute between Oxford and Mrs. Masham, carried on for hours in the Queen's presence and terminating in her demand for his instant resignation, seems to have brought on the attack of apoplexy of which she died, Aug. 1, 1714. The Elector of Hanover succeeded her as George I. The principal event of her reign was the union of England and Scotland, in 1707, and she was the last sovereign who ruled over these as separate kingdoms, and the first sovereign styled "of Great Britain." Another important event was the War of the Spanish Succession, in which the Duke of Marlborough won brilliant victories over the armies of Louis XIV of France. Queen Anne was of middle size and comely, though not beautiful.. She was virtuous, conscientious, and affectionate, more worthy of esteem as a woman than of admiration as a queen. Her reign is often mentioned as a period rendered illustrious by some of the greatest names, both in literature and science, which her country has ever produced; but literature and science owed little to her active encouragement.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. I (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 670-671.