Anne (1665-1714) was queen of England from 1702 to 1714 and, after 1707, of Great Britain. During her reign England won a long war with France and persuaded Scotland to join in a new united kingdom of Great Britain. She was the last Stuart ruler.

On Feb. 6, 1665, Anne was born in London, the second daughter of James, Duke of York. Her father was a Roman Catholic, but her mother, Anne Hyde, was a Protestant, and Anne was brought up and remained a staunch Church of England Protestant. In 1677 her sister, Mary, to whom she was devoted, married William of Orange and moved to his country, Holland. Six years later Anne married Prince George of Denmark and established her own court in London. There the leading figure was Sarah Churchill, to whom Anne was greatly attached. Sarah was the wife of John Churchill, later 1st Duke of Marlborough, and she and her husband's family and friends dominated Anne's court.

Anne's father became king as James II in 1685. His reign was a difficult period for Anne, the more so when her Italian Catholic stepmother produced a male child who blocked the two Protestant princesses from the throne. Public dissatisfaction with James for his Catholicism and his excessive emphasis on royal power was already widespread. The birth of a Catholic heir crystallized discontent into revolution, and James was deposed in 1688. Anne's sister and her husband took the English throne as King William III and Queen Mary II.

With her sister back in England and Sarah Churchill and her friends close by, Anne was happier for a while. Then came Mary's death in 1694 and 4 years later a worse loss. Brought to childbed 15 times, Anne lost every child but one, the Duke of Gloucester, and in 1698 he died at the age of 9. This left no Protestant English heir to the throne and forced Parliament to provide for a German successor should both William and Anne die without surviving children, and this situation did, in fact, occur.

On March 8, 1702, Anne succeeded to the English throne. She was a semi-invalid, content - aside from concern for the Church of England and the appointment of individuals whom she favored - to leave major policy to the Duke of Marlborough and his friend Sidney Godolphin. They in turn entrusted the management of Parliament to Robert Harley, leader of the Tories. The War of the Spanish Succession against Louis XIV of France was the great issue, and on this Anne loyally backed Marlborough and Godolphin. She rejoiced with them in the victory of Blenheim (1704) and, to a lesser degree, in the union with Scotland (1707).

When the Tories proved less enthusiastic about the war than the Whigs, the government was forced to rely on the Whig party, with its support among Nonconformists and commercial interests. Relations became strained between the Queen and Lady Marlborough, and into the widening gap moved Harley and Abigail Hill, one of the Queen's dressers. Harley strengthened Anne's resolution "not to become the prisoner of a party" (meaning the Whigs). He suggested a moderate government headed by himself. In 1708, despite the Queen's support, he was unable to effect such a change and was forced out of the government.

Two years later Anne recalled Harley to power, and he and his rival, Viscount Bolingbroke, presided over the last 4 years of Anne's reign and concluded the Peace of Utrecht (1713) with France. Meanwhile Anne's health had deteriorated. Her ideal of "moderation above party" vanished in the rivalry between Harley, who was growing lazy and sodden, and the brilliant Bolingbroke, who appealed to the Tory extremists. Perhaps Anne toyed with the idea of having her half-brother succeed her as "James III." Certainly Bolingbroke did, with the hope of becoming the power behind another Stuart. Bolingbroke even got Anne to dismiss Harley, but she could not be persuaded to make Bolingbroke lord treasurer. A few days later, on Aug. 1, 1714, after a lingering illness, the last of the Stuarts died - to be succeeded by the first of the Hanoverian line, George I.

Further Reading

A recent satisfactory biography of Anne is David Green, Queen Anne (1970). Many of Anne's letters to Sarah Churchill are printed in the latter's An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1742 and later editions). From his reading of this work, Thomas B. Macaulay derived the prejudice against the Marlboroughs and the lack of sympathy for Anne that mark his History of England from the Accession of James II (2d ed., 5 vols., 1849-1861). His account is nonetheless worth reading. His grandnephew George M. Trevelyan is kinder to Anne in England under Queen Anne (3 vols., 1930-1934), while Geoffrey S. Holmes credits her with still more influence and character in British Politics in the Age of Anne (1967). See also G.N. Clark, The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714 (1934; 2d ed. 1955).

Additional Sources

Gregg, Edward., Queen Anne, London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

For more information on Anne, visit Britannica.com.

1. Period of English architecture during the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14), when the English Baroque style of Wren, Vanbrugh, Archer, and Hawksmoor came to maturity, notably with Vanbrugh's Blenheim Palace, Oxon. (1705–25), and Hawksmoor's London churches (e.g. Christ Church, Spital-fields of 1714–29). Domestic architecture of the time was derived from Carolean and Dutch precedents: in London, for example, houses were mainly faced with red brick, had tall sash-windows and canopy-like timber door-cases, while roofs became flatter and hidden behind parapets. Plainness and dignified restraint marked the domestic architecture in Britain and the American Colonies, and were influential virtues appreciated by later generations, especially from c.1860 to c.1890 and again in C20.

2. The Queen Anne style or Revival evolved from the 1860s, and was not really what its label suggests. Some details were derived from C17 and C18 English and Flemish domestic architecture, but eclectic motifs were drawn from many sources: they included tall white-painted small-paned sash-windows with rubbed-brick arches and dressings over and around openings, terracotta embellishments, open-bed and broken pediments, steeply pitched roofs (often rising from eaves-cornices), monumental chimneys, shaped and Dutch gables, white-painted balustrades, balconies, and bay-windows. Such architectural elements were combined with a new freedom of asymmetrical and informal planning derived from the Gothic Revival and the ideas of A. W. N. Pugin. In the hands of architects such as G. F. Bodley, W. E. Nesfield, R. N. Shaw, J. J. Stevenson, and Philip Webb, the style evolved and began to incorporate elements from vernacular architecture (e.g. tile-hung gabled walls with barge-boards, clap-boarding, and casement-windows with leaded lights). Such developments led to the adoption of the term Domestic Revival, while buildings in which Classical motifs predominated were referred to as examples of Free Classicism or the Northern Renaissance Revival. It should be emphasized that the so-called Queen Anne style was not a purist scholarly revival, as aspects of the Gothic and Greek Revivals had been, but essentially eclectic, drawing on a wide range of motifs from various periods and regions. It affected domestic architecture in the USA as well, often merging with the Colonial Revival. Professor Crook has called it ‘a flexible urban argot’, which is as close a description as one can get to capture its flavour.

Bibliography

• Crook (1987)
• D&M (1985)
• Girouard (1977)
• A. S. Gray (1985)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

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Queen of the United Kingdom from the House of Stuart. Born 1665, younger daughter of James II and Anne Hyde. Married Prince George of Denmark, son of Frederick III of Denmark. Died in 1714 aged 49, having reigned twelve years.

1665–1714, queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1702–7), later queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1707–14), daughter of James II and Anne Hyde; successor to William III.

Early Life

Reared as a Protestant and married (1683) to Prince George of Denmark (d. 1708), she was not close to her Catholic father and acquiesced in the Glorious Revolution (1688), which put William III and her sister, Mary II, on the throne. She was soon on bad terms with them, however, partly because they objected to her favorite, Sarah Jennings (later Sarah Churchill, duchess of Marlborough), who was to exercise great influence in Anne's private and public life.

Of Anne's many children the only one to live much beyond infancy—the duke of Gloucester—died at the age of 11 in 1700. Since neither she nor William had surviving children and support for her exiled Catholic half brother rose and fell in Great Britain (see Stuart, James Francis Edward; Jacobites), the question of succession continued after the Act of Settlement (1701) and after Anne's accession.

Reign

The last Stuart ruler, Anne was the first to rule over Great Britain, which was created when the Act of Union joined Scotland to England and Wales in 1707. Her reign, like that of William III, was one of transition to parliamentary government; Anne was, for example, the last English monarch to exercise (1707) the royal veto. Domestic and foreign affairs alike were dominated by the War of the Spanish Succession, known in America as Queen Anne's War (see French and Indian Wars). In the actual fighting on the Continent, Sarah Churchill's husband, the duke of Marlborough, won a series of spectacular victories. At home the costs of the fighting were an issue between the Tories, who were cool to the war, and the Whigs, who favored it.

Party lines were slowly hardening, but party government and ministerial responsibility were not yet established; intrigues and the favor of the queen still made and unmade cabinets, though the influence of public opinion, shaped by an increasingly powerful press and elections, was growing. Thus it was at least partly through the pressure of the Marlboroughs that Anne was induced, despite her Tory sympathies, to oust Tory ministers in favor of Whigs. The Marlboroughs were even able to force the dismissal of Robert Harley in 1708, though the scolding duchess had already lost much of her power to Anne's new favorite, the quiet Abigail Masham, kinswoman and friend of Harley.

When the unpopularity of the war and the furor over the prosecution of Henry Sacheverell showed the power of the Tories (who won the elections of 1710) and made the move feasible, Anne recalled Harley to power, and the Marlboroughs were dismissed. Harley, created earl of Oxford, was political leader until 1714, when he was replaced by his Tory colleague and rival, Viscount Bolingbroke (see St. John, Henry). Soon afterward the queen died, and Jacobite hopes were dashed by the succession of George I of the house of Hanover.

Character and Period

Queen Anne was a dull, stubborn, but conscientious woman, devoted to the Church of England and within it to the High Church party. She supported the act (1711) against “occasional conformity” and the Schism Act (1714), both directed against dissenters and both repealed in 1718. She also created a trust fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, for poor clerical benefices. During Anne's reign such thinkers as George Berkeley and Sir Isaac Newton and such scholars and writers as Richard Bentley, Swift, Pope, Addison, Steele, and Defoe were at work, while Sir Christopher Wren and Sir John Vanbrugh were at the same time setting in stone and brick the rich elegance of the period.

Bibliography

See biographies by M. R. Hopkinson (1934), D. Green (1970), and E. Gregg (1984); G. M. Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (3 vol., 1930–34); G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts (2d ed. 1955).

Anne (England) (1665–1714; ruled 1702–1714), queen of Great Britain and Ireland. The last Stuart monarch, Anne was the second daughter of James II (ruled 1685–1688) and his first wife, Anne Hyde. Married to the Protestant Prince George (1653–1708) of Denmark in 1683, Anne opposed her by then Catholic father in 1688–1689, when he was overthrown by her brother-inlaw William III (ruled 1689–1702) of Orange. This betrayal greatly upset both James and Anne. Anne succeeded to the throne after the death of William, whose coruler, Anne's elder sister Mary (ruled 1689–1694), had died in 1694.

Anne has been reevaluated as an able and independent monarch, less dependent on her courtiers than was previously believed. Leading politicians could not hope for the physical proximity to the monarch that was possible under a king, and the court was less important politically than it had been under earlier monarchs. But that did not mean that Anne lacked weight. She also sought to take a prominent role, modeling herself on Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603). However, as she had no domestic program of change, Anne was a relatively uncontroversial figure, and political criticism in her reign was centered on ministers, not monarch. Anne followed William III in sustaining the Grand Alliance created to fight Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) of France. In 1701–1714 Britain took a leading and successful role in the War of the Spanish Succession with France, and John Churchill (1650–1722) won great glory as well as promotion in the peerage to the dukedom of Marlborough by triumphing at a series of battles, including Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenaarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709). Other British forces captured Gibraltar, Minorca, and Nova Scotia. British conquests abroad under Anne were celebrated in the renaming of the French base in Nova Scotia as Annapolis Royal.

By 1709–1710 Anne realized that a compromise peace would have to be negotiated. Her sense that the war was unpopular and that the vital war goals had already been obtained played a major role in weakening the Whig ministry, which wanted to fight on. Anne had also wearied of her favorite, the increasingly possessive and headstrong Sarah Churchill (1660–1744), duchess of Marlborough, and turned to a new Tory favorite. Without the support of the crown, the Whigs did badly in the 1710 election. Conversely, Anne supported their Tory successors, Robert Harley (1661–1724), earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John (1678–1751), viscount Bolingbroke, in their contentious task of negotiating peace, and was willing to create Tory peers to ensure that the peace preliminaries passed the House of Lords. The Peace of Utrecht of 1713 was seen as a triumph for Britain.

A keen supporter of the Church of England, Anne revived ceremonial and touched for scrofula, the skin complaint known as king's evil, which many believed could be cured by the royal touch. She was personally unhappy in large part because of her failure to have any of her many children live to adulthood. Anne became pregnant eighteen times, but these led to twelve miscarriages, three neonatal deaths, and three children who lived to only seven months, nineteen months, and eleven years respectively. The last, William, duke of Gloucester, died in 1700. As a result, the Act of Settlement of 1701, which had designated the Hanoverian descendants of James I (ruled 1603–1625) as her successors, came into effect when she died. Her last years were affected by severe ill health caused by dropsy, gout, and rheumatism. Ill health led to her heavy dependence on opium in the form of laudanum. She was also much affected by the death of her asthmatic husband in 1708. She had been close to him, and she was left very lonely. Anne would have been happy to be succeeded by her half brother James Edward (James Francis Edward Stuart, 1688–1766), James II's son in his second marriage. But she wanted him to accept Protestantism, and he was unwilling to do so.

Bibliography

Bucholz, R. O. The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture. Stanford, 1993.

Gregg, Edward. Queen Anne. 2nd ed. London and New Haven, 2001.

Harris, Frances. A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Oxford, 1991.

—JEREMY BLACK

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anne hooper	anne murray