Ten Top Tips on Queen Anne (1702-1714)

Malplaquet

Marlborough won the last of his four great battles in the Spanish Netherlands against the French in 1709, (Blenheim, Ramillies and Oudenard being the others), a battle whose death toll was comparable to the Somme during World War One.

James II

Queen Anne's Catholic father, who lost the throne in 1688 as he produced a son through his Catholic second wife, Mary of Modena, so precipitating the "Glorious Revolution", the Bill of Rights and the Triennial Act.

William III

Queen Anne's Dutch brother-in-law, who had co-reigned with her elder sister, Mary, and from whom Mary succeeded when he died in 1702, having spent the latter part of his reign fighting Louis XVI of France.

George of Denmark

Queen Anne's husband, considered a bit lazy, even when promoted to Lord High Admiral of the Navy. However, he died in 1708, leaving Anne a widow during the last six years of her reign. The marriage resulted in eighteen pregnancies, but no adult children.

George I

Queen Anne's successor, who reached the throne in 1714 owing to the Act of Settlement of 1701 during the reign of Queen Mary, which declared that no Catholic could ever rule again, overlooking in the process, fifty Stuarts, in order to pronounce Sophia of Hanover the next heir. However Sophia died two months before Queen Anne, (aged eighty three), leaving her son George to become the first Hanoverian King of Great Britain, speaking not a word of English.

Treaty of Utrecht

Signed as a peace treaty with France in 1713, this was an agreement which ended a period of extreme instability in European affairs. It aimed at a "balance of power" with France conceding lands in America and requiring France to recognise the Protestant succession in England and to expel the exiled Stuarts, who had sought refuge in Lorraine, Avignon, and finally Rome. The Spanish Netherlands was given to the Hapsburgs, safeguarding Holland, whilst Britain gained whole tracts of North America, Gibraltar and Minorca.

"Act of Union"

The parliamentary bill passed in 1707, which brought together England and Scotland under one crown and one parliament, creating the "United Kingdom". Ever since James I, the two countries had been under one ruler, but had been governed by two Parliaments; the Act of Union now had the effect of uniting the Parliaments in Westminster for the first time.

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough

The wife of the Duke of Marlborough, who became a great friend of Queen Anne, and was envied because of her influence over Anne, but who fell out with her towards the end of her reign.

Blenheim

This battle, part of the "War of Spanish Succession", (1701-1714), fought to prevent Spain from falling into French hands, was won by Marlborough in support of the Holy Roman Empire, with a largely German army. Marlborough was famed as a painstaking organiser and the battle proved to be the first great English victory since the Armada in 1588, portrayed at time as a Protestant triumph over an immoral Louis XIV, seen as a religious persecutor. The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the reconstituted Grand Alliance.

John Vanbrugh

This renowned architect, a pioneer of the new English "naturalistic" style, completed Blenheim Palace, a gift from a grateful nation to the Duke of Marlborough in 1710. Its design emphasized an optimism and beauty of the natural world, a movement which reached its literary peak with the romantic poetry of Wordsworth and Shelley in the 19th century.