Two parliaments vote themselves out of existence and a single kingdom is created on the first of May (1707)
The Acts of Union of 1706 and 1707 joining England and Scotland as Great Britain
Monarchs · Stuart
Anne
1665–1714
House of Stuart — the Union and the War of the Spanish Succession
In office: 1702–1714
The last Stuart sovereign, Anne came to the throne in 1702 and in 1707 became the first monarch of a united Great Britain. Her reign was dominated by Marlborough's victories over Louis XIV, by the furious first age of party politics, and by her own tragedy: seventeen pregnancies produced no surviving heir, so the crown passed at her death to the Elector of Hanover.
How to spot them
- ▸The last Stuart; the first sovereign of Great Britain; Queen Anne architecture and furniture
- ▸Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough — 'Mrs Freeman' to Anne's 'Mrs Morley' — supplanted by Abigail Masham
- ▸Seventeen pregnancies, no surviving child; gout, and a coffin almost square
- ▸The last sovereign to refuse royal assent to a bill, and the last to touch for the King's Evil
In the reign
An allied army marches from the Low Countries to the Danube and shatters a Franco-Bavarian force (1704)
The Battle of Blenheim, won by Marlborough and Prince Eugene
A combined fleet and landing party take a rock at the mouth of the Mediterranean, held ever since (1704)
The capture of Gibraltar by Sir George Rooke
A sovereign refuses royal assent to a bill for arming the Scottish militia — the last time it has ever happened (1708)
The Scottish Militia Bill, 11 March 1708
A vast baroque palace in Oxfordshire voted by a grateful nation to a victorious general (1705)
Blenheim Palace, by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor
The impeachment of a high-church preacher for a sermon sets off riots in London (1710)
The trial of Dr Henry Sacheverell, which brought down the Whig ministry
A treaty ending a long European war gives Britain Gibraltar, Minorca and the asiento slave-trading contract (1713)
The Treaty of Utrecht, ending the War of the Spanish Succession
A monarch touches a scrofulous child from Lichfield who will grow up to write a dictionary (1712)
The last royal touching for the King's Evil; the child was Samuel Johnson
Quick-fire facts
- •Second daughter of James II and Anne Hyde; she was raised a Protestant on Charles II's orders
- •Married Prince George of Denmark in 1683; he died in 1708
- •She had seventeen pregnancies; only William, Duke of Gloucester, survived infancy, and he died in 1700 aged eleven, prompting the Act of Settlement
- •Her intimacy with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, collapsed by 1711 in favour of Abigail Masham
- •Queen Anne's Bounty of 1704 diverted first fruits and tenths to augment the incomes of poor clergy
- •She became the first sovereign of Great Britain on 1 May 1707 and used the style of the united kingdom thereafter
- •She was the last British monarch to veto an Act of Parliament, in 1708
- •The phrase 'Queen Anne's dead' became a proverbial retort to stale news
- •She died on 1 August 1714 and is buried in Westminster Abbey; the Electress Sophia had died weeks earlier, so the crown went to Sophia's son George
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Anne (r. 1702-1714)
- Anne Somerset — Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion