Queen Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714) was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 8 March 1702 to 1 May 1707 (succeeding William III) and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 May 1707 to 1 August 1714 (preceding George I).
Biography[]
Princess Anne in 1679
Anne Stuart was born in St. James's Palace, Westminster, England in 1665, the fourth child and second daughter of James, Duke of York and his wife Anne Hyde. She was the niece of King Charles II of England, the maternal granddaughter of Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, and the younger sister of Mary II of England. Anne was raised in Richmond, Surrey, and she remained a Protestant despite her father's conversion to Catholicism. She befriended Sarah Jennings in 1671, and her friend married John Churchill in 1678. The sickly Anne married Prince George of Denmark in 1683 and settled at Whitehall in London, but she suffered 17 miscarriages and deaths of her children in infancy; her son Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, born in 1689, died of scarlet fever in 1700 at the age of 11. In 1688, Mary and her husband William III of Orange overthrew King James II in the "Glorious Revolution", and disagreements over Anne's finances, status, and choice of acquaintances led to a deterioration in her relations with Mary.
Anne at her coronation
On the deaths of Mary in 1694 and William in 1702, Anne became Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland. She favored moderate Tory politicians, whose country gentleman were more likely to share her Anglican religious views than their opponents, the mercantile and dissenting Whigs. In 1702, she supported a bill that would disqualify Protestant Dissenters from public office, but the Whigs blocked it from passing. The Whigs became increasingly popular due to their support for the War of the Spanish Succession and John Churchill's battlefield victories; the Whigs secured the removal of pro-peace "High Tories" from office. Sarah Churchill, Anne's favorite, badgered her to appoint more Whigs and decrase the power of the Tories, causing Anne to become discontented with her. In 1708, a Jacobite invasion scare led to the Whigs securing a majority in that year's general election. At the same time, however, Anne found a new favorite in Lady of the Bedchamber Abigail Hill, who served as an intermediary between Queen Anne and the Tory leader Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.
In 1708, Prince George died, and Sarah Churchill and the Whigs' increased militancy ultimately led Queen Anne to snap and break off her friendship with Sarah in 1710. Ultimately, the growing expenses of the war with France caused the Whig administration to decline in popularity, and the impeachment of Tory clergyman Henry Sacheverell by the Whigs led to Tory riots in London. The Queen removed the Junto Whigs from power in 1710, and, in 1711, Harley secured a large Tory majority in Parliament with the help of government patronage. In 1712, Queen Anne created twelve new peers, nicknamed "Harley's Dozen", to give the Tories a majority in the House of Lords and enable them to see through the Treaty of Utrecht; Abigail Masham's husband Samuel Masham, 1st Baron Masham was made a baron. The peace treaty was ratified and Britain left the war, and King Louis XIV of France recognized the House of Hanover's right to succeed to the British throne on the death of the childless Queen Anne. Anne died of complications from a stroke in 1714.