ANNE (1665-1714), 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 Feb. 6 1665. As a child she resided in France with her grandmother, Henrietta Maria, and, on her death, with her aunt, the duchess of Orleans, and returned to England in 167o. 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 Marl borough). On July 28 1683 she married prince George of Den mark, brother of King Christian V., an unpopular union politi cally, 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 intimate friend. All deference due to the princess's rank was abandoned and the two ladies called each other Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman.
On Feb. 6, 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 failed, 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. In any case the birth of his son, June io 1688, made the religion of his daughters a matter of less importance. Anne was not present on the occasion, having gone to Bath. "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 faith fully yours." In later years, however, she had no doubt that the Old Pretender was her brother.
During the events immediately preceding the revolution Anne remained in seclusion. 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. 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 escaped from Whitehall. They arrived on Dec. i at Nottingham, where the princess first made herself known and appointed a council. She returned to London on Dec. 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 disappoint ments. Between 1684 and 1688 she had miscarried four times and given birth to two children who died infants. On July 24 1 689, 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 satis faction. But money appears to have been the first cause of ill feeling. The granting away by William of the private estate of James, amounting to f 2 2,00o a year, to which Anne had some claim, was a grievance, and a motion brought forward in the House to increase her civil list pension of f 30,000, which she enjoyed in addition to f 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. The Marlboroughs had been active in the affair and had benefited by it, the countess (as she then was) receiving a pension of f 1,000. At the close of 1691 Anne had declared her approval of the naval expedition in favour of her father, and expressed grief at its failure. 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 favourites with great zeal against the court, though in all probability unaware of Marlborough's trea son ; she refused to part with the duchess, and retired with Lady Marlborough to the duke of Somerset's residence at Sion House. Anne was now in disgrace. 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 Aug. 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 honour and civility, and finally established with her own court at St. James's Palace. At the same time Wil liam kept her in the background and refrained from appointing her regent during his absence. In March 1695 after the reinstatement of Marlborough at court Anne gave her support to William's government. Meanwhile, since the birth of the duke of Glouces ter, 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 July 29 I 700. In default of her own issue, Anne's per sonal choice would probably have inclined at this time to her own family at St. Germains, but she acquiesced in the act of Settle ment in 1701 and the substitution of the Hanoverian branch.
On March 8 1702, Anne became, by King William's death, queen of Great Britain, being crowned on April 23. Her reign was destined to be one of the most brilliant in the annals of England.
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 min istry, mostly Tory, with Godolphin at its head, was established. She obtained a grant of f 700,000 a year, and hastened to bestow a pension of f i oo,000 on her husband, whom she created general issimo 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 i 704 she announced to the Commons her intention of granting to the church the Crown revenues, amounting to about f 16,000 or f 17,00o a year, from tenths and first-fruits (paid originally by the clergy to the Pope, but appropriated by the Crown in 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 power ful favourites the Marlboroughs, identified their interests with the war and its glorious successes, the queen slowly and unwill ingly, but inevitably, gravitating towards the latter.
In I704 Anne acquiesced in the resignation of Lord Notting ham, 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, but she long resisted the influence and claims of the Junta, as the Whig leaders, Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland, were named. Marlborough's successive victories, and the factious conduct of the Tories, who in Nov. 1705 moved in Parliament that the Electress Sophia should be invited to England, drove Anne far ther to the side of the Whigs. But she opposed for some time the inclusion in the government of Sunderland, yielded, after a strug gle, and only to the appointment of Whigs to bishoprics. In 1708 she was forced to dismiss Harley, who, with the aid of Mrs. Masham, had been intriguing against the government and pro jecting 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 demeanour of her attendant, and gradually came to prefer her society to that of the termagant and tempestuous duchess. In the summer of 1707 the duchess discovered to her indignation that her protegee had already undermined her influence with the queen, and had become the instrument of Harley's intrigue.
Even after his retirement, Harley remained Anne's secret adviser and supporter against the faction and 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 submis sion after a futile appeal to Marlborough in Oct. 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. He died Oct. 28. But no reconciliation with the duchess took place. The queen showed her antagonism to the Whig administration on the occasion of the prosecution of Sacheverell. She was present at his trial, and gave him, immediately on the expiration of his sen tence, 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. The fall of the Whigs followed.
The queen rejoiced at being freed from what she called a long captivity, and the new Parliament was returned with a Tory majority. On Jan. 17 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 favourite patronage of the church, and by her influence an act was passed in 1712 for building 5o 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. To break down the oppo sition to the terms of the peace of Utrecht Marlborough was dis missed on the 31st from all his employments, while the House of Lords was "swamped" by Anne's creation of 12 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 March 31 1713, and proclaimed on May 5 in London.
As the Queen's reign drew to its close, rumours were rife on the subject of the succession to the throne. Both Oxford and Boling broke were in communication with the Pretender's party, and on July 27 Oxford, who had gradually lost influence and quarrelled with Bolingbroke, resigned, leaving the supreme power in the hands of Bolingbroke. Anne herself had a natural feeling for her brother. On March 3 1714 James wrote to Anne, Oxford and Bolingbroke, 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 sum mons for the electoral prince as Duke of Cambridge having been obtained, Anne forbade the Hanoverian envoy, Baron Schutz, her presence, and declared all who supported the project her ene mies; while to a memorial on the same subject from the Electress Sophia and her grandson in May, Anne replied in an angry letter.
These demonstrations, however, were the outcome merely of her intense dislike of any "successor," "it being a thing I cannot bear to have any successor here though but for a week"; and it is certain that religion and political wisdom kept Anne firm to the Protestant succession. A proclamation was issued (June 23) for the apprehension of James. On April 27, 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 contem plating. Anne was seized with fatal illness on retiring from a council meeting at two o'clock in the morning. The final act of her life was to secure the Revolution settlement and the Protes tant succession. During a last moment of returning consciousness, she placed the lord treasurer's staff in the hands of the Whig duke of Shrewsbury, and measures were immediately taken for assur ing the succession of the elector. Her death t,'ok place on Aug. 1. She was buried on the south side of Henry V1I.'s chapel in West minster 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. (q.v.).
According to her physician 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, had not then been invented ; and Anne, like her Hanoverian successors, maintained the struggle, though without success, to rule independently, finding support in Harley. 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." Anne was a woman 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 dis agreeable, and without the least sign of understanding or judg ment."' "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 Burnet considered that "she laid down the splendour 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 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 kind ness and consideration for others. Her moderation towards the Jacobites in Scotland, after the Pretender's expedition in 1708, was much praised by Saint Simon.
According to her small ability she served the State well, and was zealous and conscientious in the fulfilment of public duties. Marlborough testifies to her energy in finding money for the war. She surrendered £ I o,000 a year for public purposes, and in 1706 she presented £3o,000 to the officers and soldiers who had lost their horses.
Anne's husband, Prince George (1653-1708), 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.
Correspondence, ii. 120.
MSS. Comm., MSS. of Marq. of Bath at Longleat, i. 237. and Queries, xi. 254.
of Queen Anne's Bounty (1867) ; Somers Tracts, xii. xiii. (1814-15) ; H. Paul, Queen Anne (London, i9o7) . (P. C. Y., X.)