she informed the commons that she desired to grant for the benefit of the church her entire revenues from tenths and first-fruits, appropriated to the crown in 1534, and amounting to between 16,000l. and 17,000l. a year (Stoughton, v. 349). Notwithstanding the rancorous accusations of Swift, there seems no reason to doubt Burnet's assertion that he had suggested this step to the queen and Godolphin after having previously recommended it to her predecessors; but Queen Anne's Bounty, as the fund established by statute to carry out her wishes was called, remains a living monument of her piety and beneficence, more especially since its application has been extended to cognate purposes (Stanhope, 118, who refers to Burn's Ecclesiastical Law, ed. Phillimore, ii. 283–95).
The ecclesiastical views of the queen, which, beyond all doubt, added to her popularity in England, were not of a nature to augment such goodwill as accrued to her in Scotland by virtue of her Stuart descent. Here discontent had reached a very high pitch; the union was still a mere project, and the ministers of the crown who, contrary to expectation, had been continued in office after the queen's accession, were universally unpopular. It was now rumoured that a letter from the queen to the Scottish privy council betrayed suspicious tendencies towards a continued toleration of the adherents of episcopalianism in Scotland, and these suspicions were confirmed when the letter, either surreptitiously or by authority, found its way into print (Burton's History of Scotland, 1689–1748, i. 354–5). Though the parliament, opened 9 June 1702 by the Duke of Queensberry as the royal commissioner, unanimously recognised Queen Anne's title, voted the requisite supply, and agreed to the joint commission for negotiating the union, yet, when the draft of an abjuration bill was presented, a strong feeling of opposition manifested itself. Two very factious sessions followed, as the result of which bills were passed showing the angry and jealous temper of the people. The act securing the presbyterian establishment as ‘the only church of Christ within this kingdom,’ and another declaring that after her majesty's decease no king or queen of Scotland should have the power to make war or peace without the consent of parliament, received the royal assent; but the act of security which the Scottish parliament had chiefly at heart, the queen's commissioner refused to touch with the sceptre (10 Sept.). This act provided that in the event of the queen's death the Scottish estates should name a successor from among the protestant descendants of the royal line (the proposal to insert the name of the Electress Sophia had been rejected with furious indignation); but that this successor should not be the same as the successor to the English throne, unless the religion, freedom, and trade of the Scottish nation should have been previously secured. Queen Anne had throughout manifested the strongest disapproval of the proceedings of the Scottish parliament, and had sent instructions, which fortunately arrived too late, for the suppression or rejection of the act of security. The Scottish titles granted at this time by the queen, and her revival of the order of the Thistle, could not act as balm to the ‘spirit of ferocity and opposition’ which, as Smollett says, ‘threatened the whole kingdom with civil war and confusion.’ The winter of 1703–4 witnessed the natural result of this state of things in the shape of a plot, or the rumour of a plot, of which the queen apprised the lords on 17 Dec. The reality of the so-called ‘Scottish plot’ [see Lovat] being asserted by the whigs and denied by the tories, the lords and the commons were at issue on the subject, and the queen had to assuage the troubled waters by pointing out how inconvenient for the public service and how uneasy to her were such misunderstandings between the houses (for a full account of the dispute see Somers Tracts, xii. 423–30). The ‘Scottish plot’ itself dropped out of notice; and when the Scottish parliament had reassembled in July 1704 and the act of security, tacked to a bill of supply, had been passed without debate for a second time, the royal commissioner (now the Marquis of Tweeddale) was empowered to signify the royal assent (Somerville; Burton). In Ireland the succession was, in 1703, settled by an act modelled upon the English act of 1701, and containing the imposition of a severe church of England test upon all officials and magistrates.
The domestic troubles of the year 1703 were not counterbalanced by any brilliant successes abroad. The Emperor Leopold I having on 12 Sept. 1703 renounced his claim to the Spanish throne, his second son was, under the title of Charles III, proclaimed King of Spain and the Indies. He soon set forth on his journey to Spain, visiting on the way, under the guidance of Marlborough, the lords ‘of the heretics in England, by whose grace,’ according to the Jacobite pamphleteers, he was ‘the catholic king’ (Noorden, i. 401). His voyage across the Channel was delayed by the effects of the terrible storm which strewed the English coasts with wrecks and filled the land with desolation, so that the queen gave orders for the observance of a general fast on 19 Jan.
