Anne 1665-1714
Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702

Anne was born at St James's Palace in London, the second daughter of the Duke of York (later James VII and II) and his first wife, Anne Hyde. She was the younger sister of Mary II (wife of William III). Although her father became a Catholic and married the Catholic Mary of Modena in 1773, Anne was brought up a staunch Protestant. In 1683 she married Prince George of Denmark (1653-1708); she bore him 17 children, only one of whom survived infancy but died at the age of 12.

For much of her life she was greatly influenced by her close friend and confidante, Sarah Churchill, the future Duchess of Marlborough. During her father's reign, Anne took no part in politics. When he was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, she supported the accession of her sister Mary and her brother-in-law William, and was placed in the succession; but after quarrelling with Mary she was drawn by the Marlboroughs into Jacobite intrigues for the restoration of her father or to secure the succession of his son, James Stuart, the Old Pretender. In 1701, however, after the death of her own son, she signed the Act of Settlement designating the Hanoverian descendants of James VI and I as her successors, and in 1702 she succeeded William III on the throne.

Queen Anne's reign was marked by a concern for national unity under the Crown, which was achieved with the union of the parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707. The other major event was the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13) with Marlborough's victories over the French at Blenheim, (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708) and Malplaquet (1709). Anne finally broke with the Marlboroughs in 1710-11, when Sarah was supplanted by a new favourite, Sarah's cousin, Mrs Abigail Masham, and the Whigs were replaced by a Tory administration led by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, and Lord Bolingbroke. Anne was the last Stuart monarch, and on her death in August 1714, she was succeeded by George I.

Bibliography: Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (1984); David B Green, Queen Anne (1970).

Notable figures of Queen Anne's reign: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough; Sir George Rooke, English admiral who captured Gibraltar in 1704; Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who rose to the rank of admiral from being a cabin boy; the scientist Sir Isaac Newton; and the literary figures Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Joseph Addison.