[1] See the Bill of Rights (third paragraph) on page xxxi of the Appendix. [2] Macaulay's "England"; and compare Stanhope's "Reign of Anne."
Along with the amiable qualities which gained for the new ruler the title of "Good Queen Anne" her Majesty inherited the obstinacy, the prejudices, and the superstitions of the Stuart sovereigns. Though a most zealous Protestant and an ardent upholder of the Church of England, she declared her faith in the Divine Right of Kings (SS419, 429), which had cost her grandfather, Charles I, his head, and she was the last English sovereign who believed that the touch of the royal hand could dispel disease.
The first theory she never openly proclaimed in any offensive way, but the harmless delusion that she could relieve the sick was a favorite notion with her; and we find in the London Gazette (March 12, 1712) an official announcement, stating that on certain days the Queen would "touch" for the cure of "king's evil," or scrofula.
Among the multitudes who went to test her power was a poor Lichfield bookseller. He carried to her his little half-blind, sickly boy, who, by virtue either of her Majesty's beneficent fingers or from some other and better reason, grew up to be known as the famous author and lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson.[2]
[2] Johnson told Boswell, his biographer, that he remembered the incident, and that "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood."—Boswell's "Johnson."
507. Whig and Tory; High Church and Low.
Politically, the government of the country was divided between the two great parties of the Whigs and the Tories (S479), since uscceeded by the Liberals and Conservatives. Though mutually hostile, each believing that its rival's success meant national ruin, yet both were sincerely opposed to despotism on the one hand, and to anarchy on the other. The Whigs (S479), setting Parliament above the throne, were pledged to maintain the Act of Settlement (S497) and the Protestant succession; while the Tories (S479), insisting on a strict, unbroken line of hereditary sovereigns, were anxious to set aside that act and restore the excluded Stuarts (S494).
The Church of England was likewise divided into two parties, known as High Church and Low Church. The first, who were generally Tories, wished to exalt the power of the bishops and were opposed to the toleration of Dissenters (S472); the second, who were Whigs as a rule, believed it best to curtail the authority of the bishops, and to secure to all Trinitarian Protestants entire liberty of worship and all civil and political rights and privileges. Thus to the bitterness of heated political controversy there was added the still more acrid bitterness of theological dispute.
Addison illustrates the feeling that then prevailed by an amusing story of an earlier occurrence. A boy who had lost his way in London was called a "popish cur" by a Whig because he ventured to inquire for Saint Anne's Lane, while he was cuffed for irreverence by a Tory when, correcting himself, he asked bluntly for Anne's Lane.
The Queen, although she owed her crown mainly to the Whigs (S479), sympathized with the Tories (S479) and the High Church, and did all in her power to strengthen both. As for the leaders of the two parties, they seem to have looked out first for themselves, and afterwards— often a long way afterwards—for their country. During the whole reign they were plotting and counterplotting, mining and undermining. Their subtle schemes to secure office and destroy each other become as incomprehensible and fathomless as those of the fallen angels in Milton's vision of the bottomless pit.