A History of the Four Georges, Volume I | Page 2

on to tell his correspondent that "when it is over we act as if
she were immortal; neither is it possible to persuade people to make
any preparations against an evil day." Yet on the condition of Queen
Anne's health depended to all appearance the continuance of peace in
England. While Anne was sinking down to death, rival claimants were
planning to seize the throne; rival statesmen and rival parties were
plotting, intriguing, sending emissaries, moving troops, organizing
armies, for a great struggle. Queen Anne had reigned for little more
than twelve years. She succeeded William the Third on March 8, 1702,
and at the time when Swift wrote the words we have quoted, her reign
was drawing rapidly to a close.
Anne was not a woman of great capacity or of elevated moral tone. She

was moral indeed in the narrow and more limited sense which the word
has lately come to have among us. She always observed decorum and
propriety herself; she always discouraged vice in others; but she had no
idea of political morality or of high {2} political purpose, and she had
allowed herself to be made the instrument of one faction or another,
according as one old woman or the other prevailed over her passing
mood. While she was governed by the Duchess of Marlborough, the
Duke of Marlborough and his party had the ascendant. When Mrs.
Masham succeeded in establishing herself as chief favorite, the Duke of
Marlborough and his followers went down. Burnet, in his "History of
My Own Times," says of Queen Anne, that she "is easy of access, and
hears everything very gently; but opens herself to so few, and is so cold
and general in her answers, that people soon find that the chief
application is to be made to her ministers and favorites, who, in their
turns, have an entire credit and full power with her. She has laid down
the splendor of a court too much, and eats privately; so that, except on
Sundays, and a few hours twice or thrice a week, at night, in the
drawing-room, she appears so little that her court is, as it were,
abandoned." Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of English
literature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's portrait of the
Queen gives her a face rather agreeable and intelligent than
otherwise--a round, full face, with ruddy complexion and dark-brown
hair. A courtly biographer, commenting on this portrait, takes occasion
to observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that her death was
more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps any other monarch who
ever sat on the throne of these realms." A curious comment on that
affection and devotion of the English people to Queen Anne is supplied
by the fact which Lord Stanhope mentions, that "the funds rose
considerably on the first tidings of her danger, and fell again on a report
of her recovery."
[Sidenote: 1714--Fighting for the Crown]
England watched with the greatest anxiety the latest days of Queen
Anne's life; not out of any deep concern for the Queen herself, but
simply because of the knowledge that with her death must come a crisis
and might come a revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fell

from Queen Anne's dying head? Over at Herrenhausen, in {3} Hanover,
was one claimant to the throne; flitting between Lorraine and St.
Germains was another. Here, at home, in the Queen's very
council-chamber, round the Queen's dying bed, were the English heads
of the rival parties caballing against each other, some of them deceiving
Hanover, some of them deceiving James Stuart, and more than one, it
must be confessed, deceiving at the same moment Hanoverians and
Stuarts alike. Anne had no children living; she had borne to her
husband, the feeble and colorless George of Denmark, a great many
children--eighteen or nineteen it is said--but most of them died in their
very infancy, and none lived to maturity. No succession therefore could
take place, but only an accession, and at such a crisis in the history of
England any deviation from the direct line must bring peril with it. At
the time when Queen Anne lay dying, it might have meant a new
revolution and another civil war.
While Anne lies on that which is soon to be her death-bed, let us take a
glance at the rival claimants of her crown, and the leading English
statesmen who were partisans on this side or on that, or who were still
hesitating about the side it would be, on the whole, most prudent and
profitable to choose.
The English Parliament had taken steps, immediately after the
Revolution of 1688, to prevent a restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The
Bill of Rights, passed in the first year of the reign