The reign of Queen Anne (1702-14): some highlights

Queen Anne and her husband,
Prince George of Denmark
by Charles Boit
Royal Collection, Public Domain

There are many books on this important reign. The best recent coverage of Anne's personal life, which also deals very well with the politics of the period, is found in Anne Somerset's Queen Anne. The Politics of Passion (HarperPress 2012).

Anne: birth and education

Anne was born in 1665, the second surviving daughter of James, Duke of York and Anne Hyde. With the exception of a period of two years when she was in France, she was educated with her sister at Richmond Palace by Lady Frances Villiers. No-one believed she would ever be queen and there was no official programme of study.  Both girls learned French and domestic accomplishments such as needlework. When she became queen, Anne spoke better French than her ministers and could converse easily with foreign ambassadors. In other respects her education was neglected. But under her tutor, Henry Compton, Bishop of London, she learned strong Protestant and Anglican principles that remained with her throughout her life.

Marriage

On 28 July 1683 Anne married Prince George of Denmark, the brother of King Christian V.  As Denmark was at that time an ally of France, Louis XIV approved, seeing it as a counter-balance to the Orange marriage. George was shy, stolid and inert, but Anne loved him, but the one great cloud in their marriage was Anne’s unhappy history of miscarriages and early infant deaths. There has been much speculation about this tragic story, the latest explanation being a diagnosis of Hughes syndrome.

Enter Sarah

Anne now had the power to appoint her own household and she showed her independence by making Sarah, Lady Churchill (née Jenyns), her Second  Lady of the Bedchamber. Sarah’s husband, John, created Baron Churchill in 1682, was the Duke of York’s protégé.

The reign of William III

Anne played a major role in the Glorious Revolution: first by convincing her sister that her stepmother’s pregnancy was fraudulent, and then by deserting her father in November 1688 when she escaped with Sarah and Bishop Compton to Nottingham.


In February 1689 she very reluctantly waived her right to the succession until after William’s death. On 24 July 1689 she gave birth to a son, William, at Hampton Court Palace. He was soon given the title of Duke of Gloucester. Supporters of the Revolution hailed this as a providential event, but he was not a healthy child and seems to have suffered from hydrocephalus. 

Relations between Anne and her sister and brother-in-law cooled. Anne hated William, resenting the fact that he had usurped her place in the succession; in her letters to Sarah she described him as ‘Caliban’ and ‘the Dutch abortion’. She believed they were treating her husband with disdain by refusing him a significant military role. They quarrelled over money. Parliament granted Anne £50,000 per annum, a sum both William and Mary thought far too generous. 

Alienated from her sister, she turned increasingly to Sarah, now Countess of Marlborough, and in 1691 they agreed to address each other in their letters as Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman. Sarah later wrote:

My frank, open temper naturally led me to pitch upon Freeman, and so the Princess took the other and from this time Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman began to converse as equals, made so by affection and friendship.  

Anne’s court became a rival to the official court. She engaged in secret correspondence with her father and refused Mary’s demands that she dismiss Sarah after William dismissed her husband in January 1692.  

The death of Queen Mary

Mary II died from smallpox at Kensington Palace on 28 December 1694, at the age of 32, leaving William distraught, and on 5 March she was given an elaborate state funeral at Westminster Abbey at a cost of £100,000. Her legacy was ambiguous. To the Jacobites, she was the daughter who had sinned against her father. To the supporters of the Glorious Revolution, she was providentially chosen to save the nation from popish tyranny. After her death, William and Anne patched up their quarrel.

The Nine Years' War ended with the Treaty of Ryswick in September 1697. Louis XIV accepted William as king and for a while this put an end to Jacobite hopes.

Four more deaths

At the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, four deaths dramatically changed the political landscape at home and abroad.

(a) On 30 July 1700 Anne’s only surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester (from a fever - possibly a bacterial infection). The result was the Act of Settlement of June 1701, which settled the crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover, the Protestant granddaughter of James I, and her heirs. 
(b) Carlos II of Spain, 21 October 1700.
(c) James II, 6 September 1701: Louis XIV immediately recognised his son as James III and VIII. In effect, this was a declaration of war.
(d) William III, 23 February 1702. He was thrown from his horse when it stumbled on a molehill in Richmond Park. He caught a fever and died on 8 March, and Anne became queen.

Sophia, widowed Electress of Hanover
Protestant heir to the throne after 1701
Public domain

The accession of Queen Anne

Anne's reign saw a major war and five general elections: 1702; 1705; 1708; 1710; 1713.

Her accession was greeted with enthusiasm. A staunch supporter of the Church of England (shown in her setting up of Queen Anne’s Bounty in 1704), she took great pains to stress the fact that she was the granddaughter of the martyr, Charles I and she revived the ceremony of the royal touch which had lapsed under William. Her dynastic legitimacy initially took much of the wind out of the sails of English Jacobitism. Those who could not support her claim pinned their hopes on her brother’s succession after her death.

In contrast to William, Anne was a relatively uncontroversial character and, though she identified instinctively with the Tories, she did her best to stand above party. She addressed her first parliament as a patriot queen:

‘As I know my own heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you that there is not one thing you can expect or desire of me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness or prosperity of England.’

She modelled herself on Elizabeth I, using her motto of Semper Eadem ('always the same'). This made it difficult to mount a personal attack on the monarchy or the court. The common belief that she was a weak queen is the result of the duchess of Marlborough’s hostile comments. In reality, until her health collapsed at the end of her reign, she was a hard-working and interventionist monarch with strong views.

Politics, politicians and the press

At the start of her reign Anne had close relationships with John Churchill, whom she created Duke of Marlborough and his wife, Sarah, calling them Mr and Mrs Freeman, and Sidney Godolphin (‘Mr Montgomery’) her Lord Treasurer. (Anne called herself 'Mrs Morley'.) For most of her reign, Marlborough and Godolphin (the ‘duumvirs’) were the dominant politicians.

Party politics was now a persistent feature of government. Alignments were sometimes blurred, yet the divisions were real. Under Anne the Whigs were staunch supporters of the Hanoverian succession. The Tories were more ambivalent and some were Jacobite.

Smart London society polarized into separate Whig and Tory social circles. A group of elite Whigs formed the Kit-Kat Club (formed in 1696). Tories frequented the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House (founded 1698).

Party strife was intensified because, thanks to the Triennial Act of 1694, general elections were held every three years. The electorate was growing in numbers and in independence. By the reign of William III it numbered at least 200,000 and by 1722 at least 330,000 (out of a population of c. 5m). This meant 4.3 per cent of the population had a vote. The numbers were growing and the voters were becoming better informed.

Periodicals stood out as new and powerful vehicles of political ideology. In 1695 Parliament failed to renew the Licensing Act and in doing so dramatically transformed the nature of the reading public. Some restrictions remained but there was sufficient liberty for a vigorous political press to emerge. Most of the writers of the day were also journalists - Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Daniel Defoe.

Foreigners commented on the proliferation of journals and newspapers and linked it to political liberty. By 1709 there were eighteen privately sponsored newspapers in London. The Post Boy (Tory) sold 300-400 copies per issue between 1704 and 1712. It may have been read by 50,000 readers. The Examiner, which sold 1,600 copies was for more sophisticated Tory readers. The Whigs had The Observator and The Post Man. Addison and Steele’s Spectator (published daily in 1711-12 and 1714), which sold 2,000 copies each set out the ideal of polite society in which party strife was banished in favour of civilized conversation. By 1712 an estimated 67,000 copies of all newspapers were sold each week. Pamphlets could sell 10,000 copies. Journalism was becoming a career.

The War of the Spanish Succession

When Anne became queen, she inherited an undeclared war caused by the resistance of Britain, the Empire and the United Provinces to the ambitions of Louis XIV.

In his will Carlos II had left his empire to his great-nephew, Louis XIV's grandson the Duke of Anjou. Louis decided to uphold the will and in February 1701 he moved French troops into fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands. This brought Europe to the edge of war. In August 1701 William concluded a further Grand Alliance with the Emperor and the Dutch Republic. In September Louis added a further provocation when he recognized ‘James III and VIII’. In May 1702 Anne declared war on France.

The War of the Spanish Succession was even more costly than the Nine Years’ War because the theatre of war encompassed the Iberian peninsula as well as the Spanish Netherlands and the Empire. In August 1704 Allied forces captured Gibraltar. The most stunning victories were under Marlborough. In the spring of 1704 the French general Tallard marched towards Vienna. Marlborough led 19,000 troops (of whom three quarters were British) on an epic six-week 400 mile march from the Netherlands to Bavaria. This was a breathtaking achievement. Here he linked up with 30,000 the imperial forces under Prince Eugene of Savoy and together they defeated the French at Blenheim on 2 August (13 August NS).

John Churchill, duke of Marlborough
victor of Blenheim
by Adriaen van der Werff
Public domain

Marlborough’s further victories were in the Low Countries: Ramillies (1706) and Oudenarde (1708). Oudenarde confirmed Marlborough’s reputation as one of the greatest generals of the age. 

The union of Parliaments

From the early eighteenth century, the Scots came under intense pressure to begin negotiations for a union with England in order to guarantee that the Hanoverian succession was accepted in both kingdoms.

Negotiations began in April 1706 and a draft treaty was agreed in July. In January 1707 the 25 articles of the treaty were ratified by the Scots Parliament.The Westminster Parliament ratified the articles in March.The two national parliaments were to be replaced by a single Parliament at Westminster. The Commons and Lords were now to include 45 MPs from Scottish constituencies and 16 elected Scottish peers.A British free trade area was to be established. The Treaty of Union came into effect on 1 May 1707 and ‘Great Britain’ was born. There is a good account on the History of Parliament website.

The fall of the Marlboroughs

The Duchess of Marlborough (right)
and Lady Fitzharding
By Sir Godfrey Kneller (1702)
Public domain

Whigs and Tories were increasingly divided about the war. Tories argued for a ‘blue-water [naval] strategy’ rather than the large-scale continental operations to which Marlborough was committed. For a while the queen’s belief in the need for a firm prosecution of the war made her more dependent on the Whigs. 

From 1708, however, her friendship with the duchess of Marlborough was cooling. Increasingly resentful of Sarah's dominating ways, she came under the sway of her bedchamber woman Sarah’s cousin Abigail Masham (née Hill), who in 1707 provided a conduit for her distant relative the Tory politician, Robert Harley. Sarah’s resentment at her loss of influence was shown dramatically when she publicly insulted the queen at the Oudenarde thanksgiving service at St Paul’s.

On 31 August (11 September NS) 1709 Marlborough won another victory at Malplaquet. The cost in casualties was probably the highest for the entire eighteenth century. No exact figures are known, but it is estimated that about 24,000 allies were killed and wounded, and about 15,000 killed and wounded among the French. The experience shook the allies and led to a great loss of confidence.

As war-weariness spread throughout the country, Marlborough’s stock waned and his Tory opponents grew more confident, accusing him of avarice and commenting on the enormous costs of building Blenheim. 

Blenheim Palace, the nation's gift to Marlborough.
By 1710 the nation was experiencing buyer's remorse.

On 6 April 1710 Sarah had her last interview with the queen. On 8 August Anne dismissed Godolphin telling him to break his white staff of office rather than hand it to her personally. A Tory administration was formed under Robert Harley (who became Earl of Oxford in 1711). In September Anne dissolved Parliament (a year early), and the Whigs were routed in the general election of October 1710 (the Tories had a majority of 150). The new ministry was committed to securing a reasonable peace.

In January 1711 Sarah Marlborough was dismissed from her offices. By now Harley (Oxford) had reached his political apogee.

The end of the war

In 1711 the movement for peace gained momentum. In order to forestall Marlborough’s objections to a peace,  a concerted propaganda campaign was launched against him, most notably in Swift's Conduct of the Allies. On 31 December he was dismissed as Captain General and on 24 January the Commons voted by 265 to 155 that his conduct was ‘unwarranted and illegal’.

Between December and January Anne created twelve new (Tory) peers, including Abigail's husband, Samuel Masham, to ensure the passage of the peace treaty through the Lords. This was an unprecedented step, though not unconstitutional. The Marlboroughs soon afterwards went into voluntary exile.

In her eagerness for peace Britain made an agreement with France without consulting the Allies - and earned the name ‘perfidious Albion’. 

In 1713 the Treaties of Utrecht were finally agreed (March and July).

1. The Spanish Netherlands became the Austrian Netherlands
2. The Empire gained Milan and Naples.
3. Louis's grandson was recognised as Philip V, King of Spain (but Spain was seriously reduced as a great power).
4. The Dutch frontier was secured by a series of barrier fortresses.
5. France gave up Ypres, Menin, and Tournai and had to dismantle Dunkirk’s defences. It returned to the Empire all lands on the east of the Rhine but kept Alsace and Strasbourg
6. Britain received Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, and St Kitts from France and Gibraltar, Minorca and the asiento (slave-trading concession) from Spain. The French retained Cape Breton Island.
7. France pledged itself to the Hanoverian succession and agreed to expel the Pretender

Because Britain had not succeeded in her fundamental war aim (to prevent Louis's grandson becoming king), the peace could be interpreted as a failure. However she was now both a great European power and an imperial power – at the cost of £72m, paid for by an unprecedented mobilization of national resources. The substantive losers at Utrecht were France and Spain.

In September the Tories were rewarded for the peace by a general election victory. But as the issue of the succession became more dominant, they divided among themselves between Hanover Tories and Pretender’s Tories. But the Pretender’s refusal to convert to Anglicanism made the situation very difficult for the Jacobite Tories.

The death of Anne and the end of the Stuarts

On 23 May 1714 Sophia died aged 84. On 30 July Anne fell seriously ill. Her Privy Council saw to it that the ports were closed; the arms and horses of Catholics were ordered to be seized; troops moved towards London; messages were sent to Hanover requesting the Elector to come quickly, and a naval escort was despatched for his safe conduct. 

 On 1 August Anne died. George I was immediately proclaimed.

The Stuart dynasty was over.