ANNE, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and the last British sovereign of the house of Stuart, was b. at Twickenham, near London, on 6th Feb., 1664. She was the second daughter of James II. of England, and VII. of Scotland (who at the time of her birth was duke of by his first wife, Anne Hyde, the daughter of the famous Claren don. 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, to which A. always retained an ardent if not a very enlightened attachment—seldom manifesting, in the whole course of her life, so much resolution and independence of mind as in her resistance to the attempts of her father, after his accession to the throne, to induce her to join the church of Home, accompanied, as these were, with the offer that she should be preferred in the succession to her sister Mary. To advance his own popularity, her father gave her in marriage, in 1684, 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. A.'s own weakness of character and that of her husband gave opportunity to lady Churchill, afterwards duchess of Marlborough, her early playfellow, to acquire an influence over her which, during many years, was almost supreme and absolute. During the reign of her father, A. 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 lord 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; hut quarreled with her sister about questions of etiquette, and was afterwards drawn into intrigues in whial the Churchills were engaged, for the restoration of her father, or to secure the succession of the throne to his son. She even entered into a secret correspondence with her father. She was herself childless when, on the death of William III., on 8th Mar., 1702, she succeeded to the throne. She bore, indeed, 17 children ; but only one, the duke of Gloucester, survived infancy, and he d. in 1700, at the age of 11. The influence of Marlborough, and his wife was most powerfully felt in all public affairs (luring the greater part of her reign. The strife of parties was extremely
violent, and political complications were increased by the queen's anxiety to secure the succession for 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 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 acces sion, 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. A. found a new favorite in Mrs. Masham, a relation of the duchess, whom she herself had introduced 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 (afterwards earl of Oxford) and St. John (lord Bolingbroke) becoming the leaders of the ministry. But, although concurring 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, and it oozed out sufficiently to alarm the nation, and to alienate many of their political supporters. A dispute between Oxford and Mrs. Masham, carried on for hours in the queen's presence, and which terminated in her demanding his instant resignation, seems to have brought on the attack of of which she died, 1st 1714. The elector of Hanover succeeded her as George I.—The public events of her reign belong to the history of Britain; but the union of England and Scotland, in 1707, may be mentioned in its personal relation to herself, as she was the last sovereign who reigned over these as separate kingdoms, and the first sovereign styled of Great Britain.—Queen A. 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.