229 



ANNE. 



ANNE. 





Ferdinand, electoral prince of Bavaria, and upon the death of Joseph 

 Ferdinand, the archduke Charles, was declared heir-presumptive to the 

 Spanish crown. The will of Charles II. of Spain, who died Novem- 

 ber 1, 1700, by giving the crown to Philip of Anjou, had materially 

 disturbed the balance of power in Europe established by the Peace 

 of Ryswick in 1697; and the recognition by France of this testa- 

 mentary disposition, in violation of the partition treaties, united, in 

 1701, England, Holland, and other European powers, against this 

 attempt to bestow upon the French monarchy such a formidable 

 preponderance. 



Under these circumstances, Anne ascended the throne, upon the 

 death of William III., on the 8th March, 1702. The hostility between 

 the whig and tory factions at home, which went on increasing in vio- 

 lence to the end of the reign of Anne, was in its commencement 

 greatly mitigated by the united opinion of the country in favour of 

 the war with France and Spain. On the 4th May, within two months 

 after Anne had succeeded to the throne, war waa declared by England, 

 the Empire, and Holland, against these powers. This memorable 

 war bore the name of the War of the Succession. The extraordinary 

 campaigns in the Low Countries and Bavaria, by which the military 

 glory of England was raised higher than at any period since the days 

 of Kdward III., belong to the life of Marlborough ; the successes of 

 the English arms in Spain to that of Charles Mordaunt, lord Peter- 

 borough. Of the naval exploits of this war, the more signal examples 

 were the capture of Gibraltar and Port Mahon. 



The legislative union of Scotland and England, completed on the 

 27th July, 1706, was one of the most important events in the reign of 

 Anne. 



During the period of Marlborongh's conquests, the spirit of politi- 

 cal intrigue was stifled by the enthusiasm of the people. But as the 

 War of the Succession slowly proceeded, Marlborough gradually lost 

 his popularity, from the belief that his own avarice and ambition were 

 the principal causes of the burdens which the war necessarily entailed 

 upon the nation. A formidable party, too, bad arisen, who asserted 

 the supremacy of the church and the doctrine of the right divine of 

 kings and the passive obedience of subjects opinions which had 

 expelled James II. from his kingdom, and had placed his childless 

 daughter upon the throne. These opinions however were supposed to 

 be indirectly encouraged by the queen, and were exceedingly popular 

 amongst the people. The impeachment of Dr. Sacbeverel for preach- 

 ing these opinions his mild punishment, which had the effect of a 

 real acquittal and bis subsequent triumphant progress through the 

 kingdom, furnished an unerring presage of violent changes. In the 

 eltctinns of 1710 the tory supremacy was established. The duchess 

 of Marlborough, to whose talents and decision of character the queen 

 had long submitted, was thrust out by the new favourite, Mrs. Masham. 

 The ministry of Qodolphin and Sunderland was displaced by that of 

 Bolingbroke and Oxford. The command of the army was taken from 

 Marlborough and bestowed upon the duke of Ormund. During the 

 progress of these convulsive changes, which must have been distracting 

 enough to the quiet temper of Anne, she was deprived of the sympathy 

 of her placable husband. Prince George of Denmark died on the 

 2Sth October, 1708. 



The first act of the tory ministry was to enter upon arrangements 

 to bring the war to a conclusion. In 1711 negociations were entered 

 into with France, amidst the protestations of the allies of Great 

 Britain ; and these negociations, after various difficulties', were termi- 

 nated by the memorable treaty of Utrecht, April 11, 1713. 



The subsequent events of Anne's rei/n are exceedingly interesting 

 with reference to the intrigues for bringing back the Stuart', to the 

 exclusion of the House of Hanover. 



The Pretender, whom the treaty of Utrecht obliged Louis XIV. to 

 semi out of France, had taken up his residence in Lorraine, which 

 was nominally a separate country, but which was to all intents and 

 purposes a part of France, and his residence in which was a complete 

 eva-ion of thu treaty. From here he carried on his intrigues in 

 England with as much facility as he could have done at St. Germain. 

 In the ia-t parliament addresses had been sent to the queen by both 

 Lords and Commons, praying her to endeavour to procure the Pre- 

 tender's dismissal from the Duke of Lorraine's dominions. The new 

 parliament speedily took up this subject, and eagerly pursued it. 

 During this last year of Anne's reign the arrival of the Pretender in 

 England was constantly expected : and great a< the danger then 

 appeared, facts which have been since brought to light show that 

 it was even greater than wa* then supposed. The Stuart papers, 

 c nit lined in Macphersou's ' Original Papers,' and the extracts from 

 .Sir James Mackintosh's manuscript collections from the French 

 archive*, which were published in the ' Edinburgh Keview,' vol. Ixii. 

 p. 1-36, prove that a design waa on foot, of which Bolingbroke and 

 Lady Masham were the chief promoters, iu which all the principal 

 ministers of state were more or lew concerned, and which received 

 nance from Anne herself, to secure the succession to the Pre- 

 tender, on the condition of his renouncing the Koinan Catholic 

 n> a condition to which the Pretender would not assent, but 

 which, if li" li i'l been a person disposed to assent to it, would, it may 

 be concluded, have been nugatory. The friends to the Hanoverian 

 liiimniiiii thought it necessary to bestir themselves, and among these 

 were several members of the tory party, and almost all the bishops, 



who joined with the whigs in the various motions now made in> 

 houses against the government. By the advice of the leading friends 

 of the house of Hanover in England, Schutz, the Hanoverian resident, 

 applied to the lord chancellor for the electoral prince's writ of sum- 

 mons to the House of Peers as Duke of Cambridge, in order that he 

 might come over and take his seat. This step caused great con- 

 sternation and anger in the mind of Anne, and the scheme was 

 given up. 



On the 9th of July, Anne prorogued parliament ; ami the proroga- 

 tion was almost immediately followed by the fall of Oxford, the 

 victim of the intrigues of Bolingbroke and Lady Masham. Oxford 

 had not entered with sufficient heartiness into the Jacobite intrigues 

 to satisfy the favourite ; but having made fair promises, had always 

 endeavoured to put off their fulfilment by excuses, and, while pro- 

 fessing to be favourable to the Pretender, had maintained a corre- 

 spondence with the house of Hanover likewise. There had been 

 jealousies, moreover, almost from the commencement of their joint 

 ministry. The immediate cause of Oxford's dismissal is said to have 

 been offence given to Lady Masham by opposition to a scheme from 

 which she would have derived pecuniary benefit. Irritated by this, 

 Lady Masham told Oxford, whom she had herself raised to royal 

 favour and power, that he had never done the queen any service ; and 

 was incapable of doing her any. Oxford replied, "I have been 

 abused by lies and misrepresentations : but I will leave some people 

 as low as I found them." The altercation lasted till two iu the morn- 

 ing in the queen's presence ; and at the end of it, Anne demanded of 

 Oxford the treasurer's staff. This was on the 27th of July. Three 

 days after, the queen was seized with an apoplectic fit, and the day 

 after she died. Immediately after Oxford's fall, Boliugbroke had 

 made a number of new appointments, and the persons whom he had 

 selected had been all Jacobites. The treasury was put into com- 

 mission, Sir William Wyndham being made the chief commissioner, and 

 Dr. Attcrbury was appointed lord privy seal. The queen's illness, 

 foreboding immediately a fatal resuit, came upon Bolingbroke before 

 he could mature his plans for the restoration of the Pretender ; and, 

 unnerved by the suddenness of the crisis, he shrunk from the execu- 

 tion of his designs before the bold and firm measures taken to secure 

 the succession of the House of Hanover by the dukes of Arzyll, 

 Somerset, and Shrewsbury. The day before the queeu's death the 

 council met at Kensington in a room close to that iu which the queen 

 was dying. The dukes of Argyll and Somerset, who had not been 

 summoned, presented themselves at the council, pleading the queen's 

 danger as their apology ; and the Duke of Shrewsbury immediately 

 thanked them for coming, and invited them to take part in the 

 deliberations. The dukes of Argyll and Somerset then urged the 

 necessity of the appointment of a lord-treasurer at a moment so 

 critical for the country, and named the Duke of Shrewsbury as the 

 person most fit to be recommended to the queen for the appointment. 

 The council then adjourned to the queeu's bed-side, Bolingbroke 

 offering no opposition, and recommended to Anne to appoint Shrews- 

 bury lord-treasurer. Anne nodded, and her nod was construed into 

 assent. The council then returned to the room in which they had 

 before sat, and, on the motion of Argyll, resolved to summon every 

 privy-councillor who might be in London or the neighbourhood, to 

 attend immediately. The aged and venerable Somers at once obeyed 

 the summons, and many members of the. whig party followed him. 

 Prompt and vigorous measures wer<3 now taken, by onler of the 

 council, to prevent any attempt that might be made by the Pretender; 

 and the heralds-at-arms, and a troop of Life-Guards, were kept iu 

 readiness to proclaim George I. the moment after Anne's death. 

 Thus, in this critical moment, was the peaceful succession of the 

 house of Hanover secured, after all the doubt and danger that had 

 threatened it. 



Anne died on the 1st of August, 1714, iu the fiftieth year of her 

 age. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, had died about six 

 years before. They had been unfortunate, to a degree which seldom 

 occurs, ic reapect of children ; for out of seventeen to which Anne 

 gave birth, the greater number were still-born, and out of the remain- 

 der only one survived infancy, and that one was carried off at the age 

 of eleven. 



Anne had no abilities which enabled her to give of herself either 

 impulse or direction to that great development of the national mind 

 which, equally in politics and iu literature, marked the period of her 

 reign. And with every allowance for the strong bias of revenge in 

 the Ducheas of Marlborough, who has principally furnish*, d what is 

 known of Anne's habits and dispositions and private conversations, it 

 cannot be said that the virtues of her character are so many or so 

 great as to atone for her intellectual deficiencies. The influence which 

 she exercised on public events was exercised through favourites, who 

 for a time ruled everything. With Anne, reason did not determine 

 her first choice of her favourites ; and the disgrace of the Earl of 

 Oxford, no less than that of the Duchess of Marlborough, proves that 

 no amiable feeling " moderated the whimsical passion which would 

 suddenly turn her boundless love and confidence into aversion. Such 

 was the queen to whom it may indeed be said to have been a happy 

 accident that for a time her armies were led by Marlborough, and her 

 councils guided by Somers ami Godolphiu, and whose reign is marked 

 out In the history of England by the lustre of the literary names 



