Anne

Anne, Queen of England, second daughter of James II. by his first wife, Ann Hyde, daughter of Clarendon, the historian, born in 1664. Both she and her elder sister Mary were brought up as Protestants. In 1683 she married Prince George of Denmark, a mere nonentity, but a well-meaning, inoffensive person. About the same period she came under the influence of Sarah Jennings and her husband. Lord Churchill, afterwards the famous Duke of Marlborough. By them she was induced to desert her father and to consent to the settlement of the crown upon William of Orange and her sister Mary, with a "contingent remainder" to herself. She now lived for several years in retirement, hating William and not being very fond of her sister. In 1700 she lost her only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester (she had borne sixteen others, all of whom had died in infancy), and looking upon this as a judgment, wrote a most penitent letter to her exiled father. In 1702 she ascended the throne, and her reign has justly been regarded as one of the most glorious periods of English history, though personally she contributed but little to this grand result. Marlborough by his splendid victories on the Continent crushed the power of France, and, in spite of the Tories, brought the Wars of the Succession to a satisfactory termination; the Union with Scotland was effected on a firm and lasting basis; under the fostering patronage of statesmen a new literary era dawned, and the lines of that party government which has been fraught with many benefits to the country were distinctly laid down. Upon one public question alone does Anne appear to have felt strongly. She inherited enough of her father's nature to sympathise strongly with advanced High Church principles, and her zeal for the Establishment was so great that she alienated part of her income to establish "Queen Anne's Bounty" for increasing the value of small livings. With less wisdom she allowed Harley and Bolingbroke to drag her into the Sacheverell controversy and to use this absurd Jacobite reaction as a means for frustrating the great task that Marlborough had in hand. She was the last sovereign who "touched for the King's Evil" (q.v.), and Johnson has left it on record that he himself was so touched when a child. After the death of her husband in 1708 Anne shook off the personal influence of the Churchills, and yielded more and more to the advice of Mrs. Masham, once a dependent of the duchess, but now bedchamber woman to the Queen, and a tool of Harley. In 1710 the Tories, profiting by their intrigues, were put into office, overtures, for peace were made to France, and the treaty of Utrecht followed in 1713. Negotiations were secretly begun with a view to a Jacobite restoration, but in July, 1714, Anne's health broke down through an attack of dropsy complicated with apoplectic symptoms. She died on August 1, but the Duke of Shrewsbury adroitly stepped in, got from his dying mistress the appointment of Lord Treasurer, and was thus enabled to save the Protestant succession. The reign of Anne was remarkable for the number of illustrious literary men who flourished then, Addison, Steele, Pope, Johnson, and many others, all belonging to this period.