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 William kept her in the background and refrained from appointing her regent during his absence. In March 1695 Marlborough was allowed to kiss the king’s hands, and subsequently was made the duke of Gloucester’s governor and restored to his employments. In return Anne gave her support to William’s government, though about this time, in 1696—according to James, in consequence of the near prospect of the throne—she wrote to her father asking for his leave to wear the crown at William’s death, and promising its restoration at a convenient opportunity.[1] The unfounded rumour that William contemplated settling the succession after his death on James’s son, provided he were educated a Protestant in England, may possibly have alarmed her.[2] Meanwhile, since the birth of the duke of Gloucester, 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 the 29th of July 1700. Henceforth Anne signs herself in her letters to Lady Marlborough as “your poor unfortunate” as well as “faithful Morley.” In default of her own issue, Anne’s personal choice would probably have inclined at this time to her own family at St Germains, but the necessity of maintaining the Protestant succession caused the enactment of the Act of Settlement in 1701, and the substitution of the Hanoverian branch. She wore mourning for her father in 1701, and before his death James is said to have written to his daughter asking for her protection for his family; but the recognition of his son by Louis XIV. as king of England effectually prevented any good offices to which her feelings might have inclined her.
On the 8th of March 1702 Anne became, by King William’s death, queen of Great Britain, being crowned on the 23rd of April. Her reign was destined to be one of the most brilliant in the annals of England. Splendid military triumphs crushed the hereditary national foe. The Act of Union with Scotland constituted one of the strongest foundations of the future empire. Art and literature found a fresh renascence.
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 ministry, mostly Tory, with Godolphin at its head, was established. She obtained a grant of £700,000 a year, and hastened to bestow a pension of £100,000 on her husband, whom she created generalissimo 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 1704 she announced to the Commons her intention of granting to the church the crown revenues, amounting to about £16,000 or £17,000 a year, from tenths and first-fruits (paid originally by the clergy to the pope, but appropriated by the crown in 1534), 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 powerful favourites the Marlboroughs, identified their interests with the war and its glorious successes, the queen slowly and unwillingly, but inevitably, gravitating towards the latter.
In December, the archduke Charles visited Anne at Windsor and was welcomed as the king of Spain. In 1704 Anne acquiesced in the resignation of Lord Nottingham, 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, upon whom Anne now conferred the manor of Woodstock. Nevertheless, she declared in November to the duchess that whenever things leaned towards the Whigs, “I shall think the church is beginning to be in danger.” Next year she supported the election of the Whig speaker, John Smith, but long resisted the influence and claims of the Junto, as the Whig leaders, Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland, were named. In October she was obliged to appoint Cowper, a Whig, lord chancellor, with all the ecclesiastical patronage belonging to the office. Marlborough’s successive victories, and especially the factious conduct of the Tories, who in November 1705 moved in parliament that the electress Sophia should be invited to England, drove Anne farther to the side of the Whigs. But she opposed for some time the inclusion in the government of Sunderland, whom she especially disliked, only consenting at Marlborough’s intercession in December 1706, when various other offices and rewards were bestowed upon Whigs, and Nottingham with other Tories was removed from the council. She yielded, after a struggle, also to the appointment of Whigs to bishoprics, the most mortifying submission of all. In 1708 she was forced to dismiss Harley, who, with the aid of Mrs Masham, had been intriguing against the government and projecting 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. Abigail, however, soon ventured to talk “business,” and in the summer of 1707 the duchess discovered to her indignation that her protégée had already undermined her influence with the queen and had become the medium of Harley’s intrigue. The strength of the Whigs at this time and the necessities of the war caused the retirement of Harley, but he remained Anne’s secret adviser and supporter against the faction, urging upon her “the dangers to the crown as well as to the church and monarchy itself from their counsels and actions,”[3] while 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 submission after a futile appeal to Marlborough in October 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. His death on the 28th of October was felt deeply by the queen, and opened the way for the inclusion of more Whigs. But no reconciliation with the duchess took place, and in 1709 a further dispute led to an angry correspondence, the queen finally informing the duchess of the termination of their friendship, and the latter drawing up a long narrative of her services, which she forwarded to Anne together with suitable passages on the subject of friendship and charity transcribed from the Prayer Book, the Whole Duty of Man and from Jeremy Taylor.[4] Next year Anne’s desire to give a regiment to Hill, Mrs Masham’s brother, led to another ineffectual attempt in retaliation to displace the new favourite, and the queen showed her antagonism to the Whig administration on the occasion of the prosecution of Sacheverell. She was present at his trial and was publicly acclaimed by the mob as his supporter, while the Tory divine was consoled immediately on the expiration of his sentence with 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
