“The Lady Anne, although not a peerless beauty, possessed considerable personal attractions. She was of middle size, but not so majestic as her sister Mary; and her hair was a deep chestnut-brown; her complexion ruddy. Her face was round, but rather comely than handsome; her features were strong and regular; the only blemish in her face was that of a defluxion, which had affected her eyes when young, and left a contraction in her upper lids and given a cloudiness to her countenance. Her bones were small, her hands beautiful. She had an excellent ear for music, was a good performer on the guitar; and her voice being strong, clear, flexible, and melodious, she took pleasure in the practice of vocal harmony.”
When Anne’s establishment was appointed by her uncle, King Charles, after her marriage, Sarah Churchill was permitted to become one of her ladies.
The death of Charles II. in 1685, which placed her father upon the English throne, as James II., caused very little immediate change in the household of the Princess Anne. She became one of the central figures at her father’s court, but possessed no particular influence, and occupied herself with court gossip and card-playing, in the society of her favorite, Lady Churchill, when not engaged with the cares of her nursery. The Princess Anne was a good wife and devoted mother; and although all her children but one died in early infancy, it was not through neglect on her part. But Anne was poorly fitted by tastes or nature to play the brilliant part in history which fortune afterwards decreed to her lot. She was simply a good-natured, commonplace, and very weak-minded woman, led by the stronger minds of her favorites, and swayed by every political breeze around her. Her favorites, to her credit be it said, however, were women, and not men admirers. So that although her character was undeniably weak and petty, her life as a wife and mother was blameless, and her heart was kindly. And yet such were the circumstances which environed her after-years, that the name of this simple-minded queen, whose narrow understanding might have been compassed by the circumference of her thimble, and “who put on her crown as she would have put on her cap”—the name of this unaspiring, unqueenly woman, who would have been more at home as a fish-wife than as a sovereign, was pronounced with awe from one end of Europe to the other; and even the Grand Monarque himself, “hitherto the insolent arbiter of the world,” the magnificent, the matchlessly imperial Louis Quatorze, trembled on his throne before Queen Anne and her victorious general, the Duke of Marlborough.
The French general, the Duke of Vendôme, who replaced the defeated Marshal Villeroi, wrote concerning Anne’s illustrious military leader:—
“Every one here is ready to take off his hat at the very mention of Marlborough’s name.”
When, in after-years, the daring generalship of Marlborough had been replaced by the daring ambition of Bolingbroke, whose marvellous and impassioned eloquence caused even Mr. Pitt in later years to exclaim, when asked what treasures he would especially like to snatch from out of the shadows of the past, “I would choose one of the lost Decades of Livy and a speech of Bolingbroke’s!”—no wonder that with such generals and such orators, the name of Queen Anne was reflected to the world in shining glory.
And what was the woman herself doing in the midst of such stirring times and brilliant opportunities? Quarrelling with the haughty, arrogant-willed Duchess of Marlborough; bickering over some contested point of favoritism; or becoming a puppet in the hands of an ignorant bedchamber-woman, who ruled the queen because this politic but petty Mrs. Masham knew enough to hold her tongue when her royal mistress desired to rave against her overbearing Duchess of Marlborough; and because Mrs. Masham was smart enough to use her little stock of brains in scheming to entrap the favor of the wily politicians who courted her smiles because her ignorant but keen cunning had gained the friendship of the queen.
Observing such a state of things, it is little wonder that the quick-witted Addison flashed the scintillating sparks of his keen humor all over the pages of his famous “Spectator papers,” which appeared at that time.
Great Britain had been for some time divided into two strong parties, known as the Whigs and Tories. The Tories held that the rights of kings were divine, while the Whigs contended a king ruled for the good of his subjects, and that by illegal or oppressive acts he forfeited his right to reign, and could be justifiably dethroned by his people. The Tories upheld the English Protestant church, but detested the Presbyterians and Dissenters, while they feared the Roman Catholics; while the Whigs maintained that the Reformed religion being the religion of the state, a Roman Catholic could not lawfully be placed at its head. There was also a third party, called the Jacobites, who were more violent Tories, being partisans of the deposed James II., who, on account of his Roman Catholic principles, which caused him to entertain certain designs against the religion and liberty of the state, had been obliged to fly from England upon the appearance of his Protestant son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, who had invaded England at the head of an army, and been placed by the English people upon the throne in conjunction with his wife Mary, the eldest daughter of James II., who had been educated a Protestant.
Notwithstanding the benefit to the country arising from the accession of the Protestant William and Mary to the throne in place of the Catholic James II., the unfilial plottings and intrigues of the princesses Mary and Anne, abetted by their husbands, William, Prince of Orange, and George, Duke of Denmark, against the indulgent and kind-hearted James II., their father, was outrageous and dastardly. Looking at the kingdom, it was well that James II. was dethroned, and that his Catholic son, called the “Pretender,” the half-brother of Mary and Anne, was forever debarred from gaining his ancestral rights of succession; but looking at the side of the treatment which King James received at the hands of his daughters, upon whom he had lavished every indulgent kindness, the treacherous scheming, which in the course of events resulted in vast benefits to England and to Europe, have at the same time forever covered the names of the children of James II. with the stigma of most contemptible and unfeeling and wicked ingratitude.