If you look at the map of Europe, you will see that where the Mediterranean Sea joins the great Atlantic Ocean Gibraltar is placed. Now all captains of ships who want to go into the Mediterranean must pass that way. You would be surprised if you could see the number of ships of all sizes that pass there every day. They fetch figs, and currants, and silk, and fine wool, and shawls, and velvets, and wine, and oil, and a great many other useful things from the Mediterranean; and whoever Gibraltar belongs to can stop the ships going in and out. So the English were very glad that Admiral Rooke took Gibraltar for Queen Anne.
At last, after Marlborough had gained several other battles, peace was made with the French at a place called Utrecht, and Queen Anne died the very next year.
Queen Anne was kind and good-natured, but not very clever. She was rather lazy, and allowed the Duchess of Marlborough to govern her for several years. Afterwards she quarrelled with her, and then some other ladies governed her.
In the reign of Queen Anne there were a great many clever men in England, some poets, and many writers of other things. Pope was the great poet, and Addison wrote the most beautiful prose. But our little history would not hold an account of half of them.
Queen Anne’s husband and all her children died before her, and though she did not love any of her Protestant cousins, it was settled by law that the son of her cousin Sophia, who was married to the Elector of Hanover should be king after her.
CHAPTER LV.
GEORGE I.—1714 to 1727.
How the Elector of Hanover became George the First of England; how the Pretender tried to make himself King, but was defeated; how Lady Nithisdale saved her husband’s life; and how the Spaniards were beaten at sea.
George the First was Elector of Hanover, in Germany; and as it was settled in King William’s reign that nobody but a Protestant should be king of England, he was sent for and made king of England, rather than the son of James II., who was a Roman Catholic.
But a great many people in Scotland still wished to have a king of the old Scotch family of Stuart again; so they encouraged young James Stuart, that is the Pretender, whom they called King James, to come to Scotland, and promised they would collect men and money enough to make an army, and buy guns and everything fit for soldiers, and march into England, and make him king instead of George I. From this time all those who took the part of the Pretender against George were called Jacobites, from Jacobus, the Latin for the Pretender’s name, James.
James’s chief friend in Scotland was Lord Mar, and he was in hopes that a great many English gentlemen would join him, and send money from England, and get another army ready there to help him.