page_title: Anne, Queen of Great Britain
section_title: War of the Spanish Succession
hierarchical_section_title: Anne, Queen of Great Britain / Reign / War of the Spanish Succession
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Queen Anne of England, in a tinted engraving from an atlas commissioned by Augustus the Strong (Duke of Saxony), 1706-1710.
context_page_description: Anne was Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland between 8 March 1702 and 1 May 1707. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, the kingdoms of England and Scotland united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. She continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death in 1714.
  Anne was born in the reign of Charles II to his younger brother and heir presumptive, James, whose suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England. On Charles's instructions, Anne and her elder sister, Mary, were raised as Anglicans. Mary married their Dutch Protestant cousin, William III of Orange, in 1677, and Anne married Prince George of Denmark in 1683. On Charles's death in 1685, James succeeded to the throne, but just three years later he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Mary and William became joint monarchs. Although the sisters had been close, disagreements over Anne's finances, status, and choice of acquaintances arose shortly after Mary's accession and they became estranged. William and Mary had no children. After Mary's death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.
context_section_description: As the expensive War of the Spanish Succession grew unpopular, so did the Whig administration. The impeachment of Henry Sacheverell, a high church Tory Anglican who had preached anti-Whig sermons, led to further public discontent. Anne thought Sacheverell ought to be punished for questioning the Glorious Revolution, but that his punishment should only be a mild one to prevent further public commotion. In London, riots broke out in support of Sacheverell, but the only troops available to quell the disturbances were Anne's guards, and Secretary of State Sunderland was reluctant to use them and leave the Queen less protected. Anne declared God would be her guard and ordered Sunderland to redeploy her troops. In line with Anne's views, Sacheverell was convicted, but his sentence—suspension of preaching for three years—was so light as to render the trial a mockery.
  The Queen, increasingly disdainful of the Marlboroughs and her ministry, finally took the opportunity to dismiss Sunderland in June 1710. Godolphin followed in August. The Junto Whigs were removed from office, although Marlborough, for the moment, remained as commander of the army. In their place, she appointed a new ministry, headed by Harley, which began to seek peace with France. Unlike the Whigs, Harley and his ministry were ready to compromise by giving Spain to the Bourbon claimant, Philip of Anjou, in return for commercial concessions. In the parliamentary elections that soon followed his appointment, Harley, aided by government patronage, secured a large Tory majority. In January 1711, Anne forced Sarah to resign her court offices, and Abigail took over as Keeper of the Privy Purse. Harley was stabbed by a disgruntled French refugee, the Marquis de Guiscard, in March, and Anne wept at the thought he would die. He recovered slowly. Godolphin's death from natural causes in September 1712 reduced Anne to tears; she blamed their estrangement on the Marlboroughs.
  The elder brother of Archduke Charles, Emperor Joseph I, died in April 1711 and Charles succeeded him in Austria, Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire. To also give him the Spanish throne was no longer in Britain's interests, but the proposed Peace of Utrecht submitted to Parliament for ratification did not go as far as the Whigs wanted to curb Bourbon ambitions. In the House of Commons, the Tory majority was unassailable, but the same was not true in the House of Lords. The Whigs secured the support of the Earl of Nottingham against the treaty by promising to support his Occasional Conformity bill. Seeing a need for decisive action to erase the anti-peace majority in the House of Lords, and seeing no alternative, Anne reluctantly created twelve new peers, even though such a mass creation of peers was unprecedented. Abigail's husband, Samuel Masham, was made a baron, although Anne protested to Harley that she "never had any design to make a great lady of [Abigail], and should lose a useful servant". On the same day, Marlborough was dismissed as commander of the army. The peace treaty was ratified and Britain's military involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession ended.
  By signing the Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis XIV of France recognised the Hanoverian succession in Britain. Nevertheless, gossip that Anne and her ministers favoured the succession of her half-brother rather than the Hanoverians continued, despite Anne's denials in public and in private. The rumours were fed by her consistent refusals to permit any of the Hanoverians to visit or move to England, and by the intrigues of Harley and the Tory Secretary of State Lord Bolingbroke, who were in separate and secret discussions with her half-brother about a possible Stuart restoration until early 1714.
caption: Tinted engraving of Anne from an atlas commissioned by Augustus the Strong, 1707
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