Queen Anne.—The queen was a Protestant, as opposed to the Romanists and Jacobites; a faithful wife, and a tender mother in her memory of several children who died young. She was merciful, pure, and gracious to her subjects. Her reign was tolerant. There was plenty at home; rebellion and civil war were at least latent. Abroad, England was greatly distinguished by the victories of Marlborough and Eugene. But to one who looks through this veil of prosperity, a curious history is unfolded. The fires of faction were scarcely smouldering. It was the transition period between the expiring dynasty of the direct line of Stuarts and the coming of the Hanoverian house. Women took part in politics; sermons like that of Sacheverell against the dissenters and the government were thundered from the pulpit. Volcanic fires were at work; the low rumblings of an earthquake were heard from time to time, and gave constant cause of concern to the queen and her statesmen. Men of rank conspired against each other; the moral license of former reigns seems to have been forgotten in political intrigue. When James II. had been driven out in 1688, the English conscience compromised on the score of the divine right of kings, by taking his daughter Mary and her husband as joint monarchs. To do this, they affected to call the king's son by his second wife, born in that year, a pretender. It was said that he was the child of another woman, and had been brought to the queen's bedside in a warming-pan, that James might be able to present, thus fraudulently, a Roman Catholic heir to the throne. In this they did the king injustice, and greater injustice to the queen, Maria de Modena, a pleasing and innocent woman, who had, by her virtues and personal popularity alone, kept the king on his throne, in spite of his pernicious measures.
When the dynasty was overthrown, the parliament had presented to William and Mary A Bill of Rights, in which the people's grievances were set forth, and their rights enumerated and insisted upon; and this was accepted by the monarchs as a condition of their tenure.
Mary died in 1695, and when William followed her, in 1702, Anne, the second daughter of James, ascended the throne. Had she refused the succession, there would have been a furious war between the Jacobites and the Hanoverians. In 1714, Anne died childless, but her reign had bridged the chasm between the experiment of William and Mary and the house of Hanover. In default of direct heirs to Queen Anne, the succession was in this Hanoverian house; represented in the person of the Electress Sophia, the granddaughter of James I., through his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia. But this lineage of blood had lost all English affinities and sympathies.
Meanwhile, the child born to James II., in 1688, had grown to be a man, and stood ready, on the death of Queen Anne, to re-affirm his claim to the throne. It was said that, although, on account of the plottings of the Jacobites, a price had been put upon his head, the queen herself wished him to succeed, and had expressed scruples about her own right to reign. She greatly disliked the family of Hanover, and while she was on her death-bed, the pretender had been brought to England, in the hope that she would declare him her successor. The elements of discord asserted themselves still more strongly. Whigs and Tories in politics, Romanists and Protestants in creed, Jacobite and Hanoverian in loyalty, opposed each other, harassing the feeble queen, and keeping the realm in continual ferment.
Whigs and Tories.—The Whigs were those who declared that kingly power was solely for the good of the subject; that the reformed creed was the religion of the realm; that James had forfeited the throne, and that his son was a pretender; and that the power justly passed to the house of Hanover. The Tories asserted that monarchs ruled by divine right; and that if, when religion was at stake, the king might be deposed, this could not affect the succession.
Anne escaped her troubles by dying, in 1714. Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, who had only wished to live, she said, long enough to have engraved upon her tombstone: "Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," died, in spite of this desire, only a few weeks before the queen; and the new heir to the throne was her son, George Louis of Brunswick-Luneburg, electoral prince of Hanover.
He came cautiously and selfishly to the throne of England; he felt his way, and left a line of retreat open; he brought not a spice of honest English sentiment, but he introduced the filth of the electoral court. As gross in his conduct as Charles II., he had indeed a prosperous reign, because it was based upon a just and tolerant Constitution; because the English were in reality not governed by a king, but by well-enacted laws.
The effect of all this political turmoil upon the leading men in England had been manifest; both parties had been expectant, and many of the statesmen had been upon the fence, ready to get down on one side or the other, according to circumstances. Marlborough left the Tories and joined the Whigs; Swift, who had been a Whig, joined the Tories. The queen's first ministry had consisted of Whigs and the more moderate Tories; but as she fell away from the Marlboroughs, she threw herself into the hands of the Tories, who had determined, and now achieved, the downfall of Marlborough.
Such was the reign of good Queen Anne. With this brief sketch as a preliminary, we return to the literature, which, like her coin, bore her image and carried it into succeeding reigns. In literature, the age of Queen Anne extends far beyond her lifetime.
Addison.—The principal name of this period is that of Joseph Addison. He was the son of the rector of Milston, in Wiltshire, and was born in 1672. Old enough in 1688 to appreciate the revolution, as early as he could wield his pen, he used it in the cause of the new monarchs. At the age of fifteen he was sent from the Charter-House to Oxford; and there he wrote some Latin verses, for which he was rewarded by a university scholarship. After pursuing his studies at Oxford, he began his literary career. In his twenty-second year he wrote a poetical address to Dryden; but he chiefly sought preferment through political poetry. In 1695 he wrote a poem to the king, which was well received; and in 1699 he received a pension of £300. In 1701 he went upon the Continent, and travelled principally in France and Italy. On his return, he published his travels, and a Poetical Epistle from Italy, which are interesting as delineating continental scenes and manners in that day. Of the travels, Dr. Johnson said, "they might have been written at home;" but he praised the poetical epistle as the finest of Addison's poetical works.