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Stephenson:Neal:Quicksilver:18:...—behaving as if Queen Anne were already dead and buried,... (Alan Sinder)

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Enoch is apalled at the Harvard mobile!

William and Mary

The Restoration of the Crown was soon followed by another Glorious Revolution. William and Mary of Orange ascended the throne as joint monarchs and defenders of Protestantism, followed by Queen Anne, the second of James II's daughters.

The end of the Stuart line with the death of Queen Anne led to the drawing up of the Act of Settlement in 1701, which provided that only Protestants could hold the throne. The next in line according to the provisions of this act was George of Hanover, yet Stuart princes remained in the wings. The Stuart legacy was to linger on in the form of claimants to the Crown for another century.Queen-Anne-MW.jpg
QUEEN ANNE OF GREAT BRITAIN
She cleaned up just dandy

Anne the Queen

On William's death in 1702, his sister-in-law Anne (Protestant younger daughter of James II and his first wife) succeeded him. Within months, another war in Europe had started (the War of the Spanish Succession), which was to overshadow most of Anne's reign. A series of military victories by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, strengthened England's negotiating position at the end of the war. Under the 1713 Treaties of Utrecht, France recognized Anne's title (and exiled James II's Roman Catholic son, James Stuart, from France) - the treaty also confirmed England's possession of Gibraltar.

Party politics became more significant throughout Anne's reign, with Whigs (who supported limited monarchy, and whose support tended to come from religious dissenters) and Tories (who favored strong monarchy and the religious status quo embodied in the Church of England) competing for power.

Sacheverell & Peace!

December 1709 saw the start of anti-war rioting in London, remember Enoch was caught up in one in September 1713 in New York. Henry Sacheverell (1674 - June 15, 1724) was an English churchman and politician. The rioters shouted "Sacheverell & Peace!"

The son of Joshua Sacheverell, rector of St Peter's, Marlborough, he was adopted by his godfather, Edward Hearst, and his wife, and was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1689. He was a student there until 1701 and a fellow from 1701 to 1713. Joseph Addison, another native of Wiltshire, had entered the same college two years earlier; he later dedicated to Sacheverell his work on English poets (1694). Sacheverell took his degree of B.A. in 1693, and became M.A. in 1695 and D.D. in 1708. His first preferment was the small vicarage of Cannock in Staffordshire; but he came to fame when preacher at St Saviour's, Southwark. His famous sermons on the church in danger from the neglect of the Whig ministry to keep guard over its interests were preached, the one at Derby on August 15, the other at St Paul's Cathedral on November 5 1709.

They were immediately reprinted, the latter being dedicated to the lord mayor and the former to the author's kinsman, George Sacheverell, high sheriff of Derby for the year; and, as the passions of the whole British population were at this period keenly exercised between the rival factions of Whig and Tory; Sacheverell's arguments on behalf of the church which supplied the Tories with most of their support made him their idol. The Whig ministry, then slowly but surely losing the support of the country, were divided in opinion as to the propriety of prosecuting this zealous parson. Somers was against such a measure; but Sidney Godolphin, who was believed to be personally alluded to in one of these harangues under the nickname of "Volpone," urged the necessity of a prosecution, and gained the day. Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax sat as one of the judges of Henry Sacheverell, but voted for a mild sentence. Being now no longer in favour, he obtained a writ for summoning the Electoral Prince to Parliament as Duke of Cambridge.

The trial lasted from February 27 to March 23, 1710, and the verdict was that Sacheverell should be suspended for three years and that the two sermons should be burnt at the Royal Exchange. This was the decree of the state, and it had the effect of making him a martyr in the eyes of the populace and of bringing about the downfall of the ministry. Immediately on the expiration of his sentence (April 13, 1713) he was instituted to the valuable rectory of St Andrew's, Holborn, by the new Tory ministry, who despised the author of the sermons, although they dreaded his influence over the mob. He died at the Grove, Highgate, on the 5th of June 1724.

Last Stuart of England

Queen Anne was the last of the official Royal Stuarts, the second daughter of James II and his first wife — the Protestant — Ann Hyde. She was shy, conscientious, stout, gouty, shortsighted and very small. Anne was homely, and she did not have a particularly happy married life.

Historian .J.P. Kenyon suggests she preferred women over men. Wonder why? He also says that she attended Parliament sessions incognito.

  • Lady Clarendon, who was Anne's first Lady of the Bedchamber, said Anne looked like a mad women and talked like a scholar.

Prince George of Denmark (April 2, 1653 - October 28, 1708) was the consort of Queen Anne of Great Britain. He was born in Copenhagen, a son of King Frederick III of Denmark, and was considered a suitable partner for Anne, Denmark being, like Britain, a Protestant country; at that time, there was no likelihood of her becoming queen. They were married on July 28, 1683, at St James' Palace, London. George was subsequently created a British subject and a Knight of the Garter, and was given several titles, including Duke of Cumberland. However, he was never styled king. He was a drunk and a crashing bore!

  • Prince George was a gross, rather ridiculous figure, even King James II, Anne's father, remarked "I have tried him drunk and I've tried him sober, but there is nothing in him".

Anne never enjoyed good health, and the almost constant pregnancies that ended in miscarriages did not help. She became pregnant 17 times, but only one child lived, William, who became the Duke of Gloucester. Unfortunately he died aged 11, it is thought of hydrocephalus.

Enter Jonathan Swift

Queen Anne's War dragged on due to maneuvers by the Hanovers causing riots everywhere. Swift's visits to London were largely political, but he also visited the great in the literary and aristocratic circles. For the first time the literary world met on equal terms with statesmen. Having been introduced to the political world by Temple, he supported the Whigs, but, his first care being the English Church, he gradually veered to the Tory party. The friendship of Harley, later Earl of Oxford, assisted the change which was decisively made in 1710 when Harley returned to power. His Four Last Years of the Queen Anne described the ferment of intrigue and pamphleteering during that period.

In the latter part of November 1711, a few days before the meeting of parliament, his treatise on The Conduct of the Allies appeared. In the space of a week four editions were swallowed by the public. To this treatise is attributed the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht. It was a masterly piece of political workmanship, drawn up with great care and skill, and carried public opinion with it in a wave. The Whigs denounced it violently, and even Walpole and Aislabie urged that Swift should be impeached at the bar of the House of Lords.[1]

The chief aims of the Tory party were to make the Establishment secure and to bring the war with France to a close. The latter object was powerfully aided by his On The Conduct of the Allies 1713, one of the greatest pieces of pamphleteering. The death of Queen Anne in 1714 disappointed all the hopes of Swift and his friends of the Scriblerus Club, founded in 1713. Swift accepted his 'exile' to the Deanery of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, and from then on, except for two visits in 1726 and 1727, correspondence alone kept him in touch with London.

The Sucession

During the final years of the seventeenth century, the Parliaments of England and Scotland had conflicting foreign and economic policies. Difficulties reached a climax when England settled the succession on the Protestant Sophia of Hanover (Charles I's niece and cousin to James II), as Anne (the last of her line) had failed to produce an heir. The Scots declared that they were free to choose someone different, with the implication that this could be the exiled Roman Catholic Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, James II's son by his second wife, Mary of Modena. (The scene had been set for the later uprisings in Scotland led by the two Stuart pretenders against the Hanoverian kings.)

This disagreement over the succession was clearly untenable. In 1707 after months of bitter debate in Edinburgh and lengthy debate elsewhere, the two Parliaments agreed to unite. Henceforth one British Parliament would sit at Westminster, and there would be a common flag and coinage. Scotland would, however, retain its own established Church and its legal and educational systems.

Until their dismissal in 1710, the political scene was dominated by Marlborough (whose wife enjoyed the influence of a 20-year friendship with the Queen) and the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, who headed a financial team mostly independent of the party factions. However, in 1711, as a result of a Tory ministry's disagreement with the Whig majority in the House of Lords over the future peace settlement to war in Europe, Anne was persuaded to create peers for party purposes. This represented an important weakening of the royal prerogative.

Queen Anne died on Sunday August 1, 1714, she was 49. The possible cause of her death was Erysipelas and suppressed gout. Britain became a major military power on land, and the country became a firm base for the 18th century's Golden Age during her reign. She created Queen Anne's Bounty which restored to the Church an increase in the incomes of the poorer clergy, a fund raised from the tithes which Henry VIII had taken for his own use.

Waiting in the Wings

The Hanoverians came to power in difficult circumstances that looked set to undermine the stability of British society. The first of their Kings, George I, was only 52nd in line to the throne, but the nearest Protestant according the Act of Settlement. Two descendants of James II, the deposed Stuart King, threatened to take the throne and were supported by a number of 'Jacobites' throughout the realm.

The Threat of James III

From the moment of his birth, on June 10, 1688, at St James's Palace, the prince was the subject of controversy. He was the son of King James II of England and his Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena. From his first marriage, the king had adult daughters who had been brought up in the Protestant faith, and as long as there was a possibility of one of them succeeding him directly, the British people were prepared to tolerate his own Catholic sympathies. However, when it was feared that Mary would produce a son and heir, a movement grew to replace James by force with his son-in-law, William of Orange.

  • There was a fiction that James II abdicated his throne.

When the young prince was born, a rumor was immediately spread that the call for a "warming-pan" had been the pretext for a substitution, the real baby having allegedly been born dead. There is no historical evidence for this. However, within weeks of his birth, the child was sent to France for safety, and his father was fighting unsuccessfully to retain his crown.

The prince was brought up in France, where, recognized by King Louis XIV of France as the rightful heir to the English throne, he became the focus for the Jacobite movement. On his father's death in 1701, he was declared King, with the title of James III of England and VIII of Scotland. James landed at the Firth of Forth on March 23, 1708. Had he renounced his Catholic faith, he could have succeeded to the throne after the death of his half-sister Anne, but he refused to do so. As a result, in 1714, a German Protestant became King George I of Great Britain.