April 3, 1721: Robert Walpole was appointed First Lord of the Treasury and de facto “Prime Minister” of Great Britain. Part I.

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1st Earl of Orford, Cambridge, First Lord of the Treasury, King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Robert Walpole, Whigs. Tories

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG PC (August 26, 1676 – March 18, 1745) was a British statesman and Whig politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Walpole was born in Houghton, Norfolk, in 1676. One of 19 children, he was the third son and fifth child of Robert Walpole, a member of the local gentry and a Whig politician who represented the borough of Castle Rising in the House of Commons, and his wife Mary Walpole, the daughter and heiress of Sir Geoffrey Burwell of Rougham, Suffolk. Horatio Walpole, 1st Baron Walpole was his younger brother.

As a child, Walpole attended a private school at Massingham, Norfolk. Walpole entered Eton College in 1690 where he was a King’s Scholar. He left Eton on April 2, 1696 and matriculated at King’s College, Cambridge on the same day.

Robert Walpole Prime Minister of Great Britain

On May 25, 1698, he left Cambridge after the death of his only remaining elder brother, Edward, so that he could help his father administer the family estate to which he had become the heir. Walpole had planned to become a clergyman but as he was now the eldest surviving son in the family, he abandoned the idea.

In November 1700 his father died, and Robert succeeded to inherit the Walpole estate. A paper in his father’s handwriting, dated 9 June 1700, shows the family estate in Norfolk and Suffolk to have been nine manors in Norfolk and one in Suffolk.

Political career

Like his father, Robert Walpole was a member of the Whig Party from the gentry class. He was a country squire and looked to country gentlemen for his political base.

Walpole’s political career began in January 1701 when he won a seat in the English general election at Castle Rising in Norfolk. He left Castle Rising in 1702 so that he could represent the neighbouring borough of King’s Lynn, a pocket borough that would re-elect him for the remainder of his political career. Voters and politicians nicknamed him “Robin”.

In 1705, Walpole was appointed by Queen Anne to be a member of the council for her husband, Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral. After having been singled out in a struggle between the Whigs and the government, Walpole became the intermediary for reconciling the government to the Whig leaders.

His abilities were recognised by Lord Godolphin (the Lord High Treasurer and leader of the Cabinet) and he was subsequently appointed to the position of Secretary at War in 1708; for a short period of time in 1710 he also simultaneously held the post of Treasurer of the Navy.

Queen Anne died in 1714. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded Roman Catholics from the line of succession, Anne was succeeded by her second cousin, the Elector of Hanover, George I.

King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover

George I distrusted the Tories, who he believed opposed his right to succeed to the Throne. The year of George’s accession, 1714, marked the ascendancy of the Whigs who would remain in power for the next fifty years. Robert Walpole became a Privy Councillor and rose to the position of Paymaster of the Forces in a Cabinet nominally led by Lord Halifax, but actually dominated by Lord Townshend (Walpole’s brother-in-law) and James Stanhope.

Walpole was also appointed chairman of a secret committee formed to investigate the actions of the previous Tory ministry in 1715. Lord Oxford was impeached, and Lord Bolingbroke suffered from an act of attainder.

The resignation of Sunderland and the death of Stanhope in 1721 left Walpole as the most important figure in the administration.

On April 3, 1721 he was appointed First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. Walpole’s de facto tenure as “prime minister” is often dated to his appointment as First Lord of the Treasury in 1721, though he himself rejected that title (it was originally a term of abuse), stating in 1741: “I unequivocally deny that I am sole and prime minister.”

His brother-in-law Lord Townshend served as Secretary of State for the Northern Department and controlled the nation’s foreign affairs. The two also had to contend with the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, Lord Carteret. Townshend and Walpole were thus restored to power and “annihilated the opposing faction”.

April 2, 1653: Birth of Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland

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Duchess of Marlborough, Duke of Cumberland, George I of Great Britain, Glorious Revolution, King James II-VII of England, Lady Sarah Churchill, Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Mary II of England

Prince George of Denmark (April 2, 1653 – October 28, 1708) was the husband of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He was the consort of the British monarch from Anne’s accession on March 8, 1702 until his death in 1708

Early life

George was born in Copenhagen Castle, and was the younger son of Frederik III, King of Denmark and Norway, and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His mother was the sister of Ernst August, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, later Elector of Hanover, whose son, George Louis, would succeed his future wife as King of Great Britain. This made Prince George of Denmark and King George I of Great Britain first cousins.

His father died in 1670, while George was in Italy, and George’s elder brother, Christian V, inherited the Danish throne. George returned home through Germany. He travelled through Germany again in 1672–73, to visit two of his sisters, Anna Sophia and Wilhelmine Ernestine, who were married to the electoral princes of Saxony and the Palatinate.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland

In 1674, George was a candidate for the elective Polish throne, for which he was backed by King Louis XIV of France and Navarre. George’s staunch Lutheranism was a barrier to election in Roman Catholic Poland, and John Sobieski was chosen instead.

As a Protestant, George was considered a suitable partner for the niece of King Charles II of England, Lady Anne. They were distantly related (second cousins once removed; they were both descended from King Frederik II of Denmark), and had never met.

George was hosted by Charles II in London in 1669, but Anne had been in France at the time of George’s visit. Both Denmark and Britain were Protestant, and Louis XIV was keen on an Anglo-Danish alliance to contain the power of the Dutch Republic.

Anne’s uncle Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, and the English Secretary of State for the Northern Department, Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, negotiated a marriage treaty with the Danes in secret, to prevent the plans leaking to the Dutch. Anne’s father, James, Duke of York, welcomed the marriage because it diminished the influence of his other son-in-law, Dutch Stadtholder William III of Orange, who was naturally unhappy with the match.

George and Anne were married on July 28, 1683 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, London, by Henry Compton, Bishop of London. The guests included King Charles II, Queen Catherine, and the Duke and Duchess of York. Anne was voted a parliamentary allowance of £20,000 a year, while George received £10,000 a year from his Danish estates, although payments from Denmark were often late or incomplete.

George was not ambitious, and hoped to live a quiet life of domesticity with his wife. He wrote to a friend: “We talk here of going to tea, of going to Winchester, and everything else except sitting still all summer, which was the height of my ambition. God send me a quiet life somewhere, for I shall not be long able to bear this perpetual motion.”

Charles II, Anne’s uncle, famously said of Prince George, “I have tried him drunk, and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him”.

In February 1685, King Charles II died without legitimate issue, and George’s father-in-law, the Roman Catholic Duke of York, became king as James II in England and Ireland and James VII in Scotland. George was appointed to the Privy Council and invited to attend Cabinet meetings, although he had no power to alter or affect decisions.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, husband of the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, wearing a ducal robe with the collar of the Garter.

William of Orange refused to attend James’s coronation largely because George would take precedence over him. Although they were both sons-in-law of King James, George was also the son and brother of a king and so outranked William, who, although a Prince, was an elected stadtholder of a republic.

George was unpopular with his Dutch brother-in-law, William III, Prince of Orange, who was married to Anne’s elder sister, Mary. Anne and Mary’s father, the British ruler James II and VII, was deposed in the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and William and Mary succeeded him as joint monarchs with Anne as heir presumptive.

In early April 1689, William assented to a bill naturalizing George as an English subject, and George was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Kendal and Baron of Okingham (Wokingham) by the new monarchs. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 20 April 1689, being introduced by the Dukes of Somerset and Ormonde.

William excluded George from active military service, and neither George nor Anne wielded any great influence until after the deaths of Mary and then William, at which point Anne became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. In 1707 with the Act of Union between England and Scotland and the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Anne’s title changed accordingly.

During his wife’s reign, George occasionally used his influence in support of his wife, even when privately disagreeing with her views. He had an easy-going manner and little interest in politics; his appointment as Lord High Admiral of England in 1702 was largely honorary.

George was quiet and self-effacing. John Macky thought him “of a familiar, easy disposition with a good sound understanding but modest in showing it … very fat, loves news, his bottle & the Queen.”

The previous husband’s of a British queen regnant had become King Consorts. Felipe II of Spain was a King Consort to his wife Queen Mary I of England. King François II of France and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, were King Consorts to Mary I of Scotland.

William of Orange, one the other hand, had become a joint sovereign king, and not a King Consort, with his wife, refusing to take a subordinate rank to Mary.

William III and Mary II had exemplified the traditional gender roles of seventeenth-century Europe: Mary was the dutiful wife and William wielded the power.

Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland and Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland

George and Anne, however, reversed the roles: George was the dutiful husband and it was Anne who exercised the royal prerogatives. William had assumed incorrectly that George would use his marriage to Anne as a means of building a separate power base in Britain, but George never challenged his wife’s authority and never strove to accrue influence.

In Britain at this time Husbands had a legal right to their wife’s property, and it was argued that it was unnatural and against the church’s teachings for a man to be subject to his wife. George made no such claim or demand; he was content to remain a prince and duke. “I am her Majesty’s subject”, he said, “I shall do naught.”

Anne’s seventeen pregnancies by George resulted in twelve miscarriages or stillbirths, four infant deaths, and a chronically sick son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of eleven. Despite the deaths of their children, George and Anne’s marriage was a strong one.

George died on October 28, 1708 aged 55 from a recurring and chronic lung disease, much to the devastation of his wife.

His death has flung the Queen into an unspeakable grief. She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and ’twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.

Anne wrote to her nephew, Frederick IV of Denmark, “the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.” Anne was desperate to stay at Kensington with the body of her husband, but under pressure from the Duchess of Marlborough, she reluctantly left Kensington for St James’s Palace.

The immediate aftermath of George’s death damaged their relationship further. He was buried privately at midnight on 13 November in Westminster Abbey.

Accession of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland. Conclusion

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Archduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Marlborough, Electress Sophia of Hanover, King Carlos II of Spain, King Felipe V of Spain, King George I of Great Britain, Philippe of Anjou, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Sarah Churchill, Treaty of Utrecht, War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715) was a conflict involving many of the leading European powers that was triggered by the death in November 1700 of the childless Carlos II of Spain.

Prince Louis, The Grand Dauphin, had the strongest genealogical claim to the Spanish throne held by King Carlos II who was his maternal uncle. The Grand Dauphin was the son and heir-apparent of King Louis XIV of France and Navarre.

However, since neither the Grand Dauphin nor his eldest son, Louis, Duke of Burgundy, could be displaced from the succession to the French throne, King Carlos II named the Philippe, Duke of Anjou as his heir. The Duke of Anjou was the second son of Louis, Grand Dauphin, Duke of Anjou as his heir-presumptive.

If Philippe, Duke of Anjou refused the crown, the alternative was Archduke Charles of Austria, younger son of Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.

King Felipe V of Spain

Having accepted, Philippe was proclaimed King Felipe V of an undivided Spanish Empire on November 16, 1700. The proclamation led to war, with France and Spain on one side and the Grand Alliance on the other to maintain the separation of the Spanish and French thrones.

At issue wasn’t just who had hereditary right to the Spanish throne; at it’s heart was to established the principle that dynastic rights were secondary to maintaining the balance of power between different countries.

As the expensive War of the Spanish Succession grew unpopular, so did the Whig administration. The impeachment of Henry Sacheverell, a high church Tory Anglican who had preached anti-Whig sermons, led to further public discontent.

Anne thought Sacheverell ought to be punished for questioning the Glorious Revolution, but that his punishment should only be a mild one to prevent further public commotion.

In London, riots broke out in support of Sacheverell, but the only troops available to quell the disturbances were Anne’s guards, and Secretary of State Sunderland was reluctant to use them and leave the Queen less protected.

Anne declared God would be her guard and ordered Sunderland to redeploy her troops. In line with Anne’s views, Sacheverell was convicted, but his sentence—suspension of preaching for three years—was so light as to render the trial a mockery.

The Queen, increasingly disdainful of the Marlboroughs and her ministry, finally took the opportunity to dismiss Sunderland in June 1710.

Godolphin followed in August. The Junto Whigs were removed from office, although Marlborough, for the moment, remained as commander of the army. In their place, she appointed a new ministry headed by Harley, which began to seek peace with France.

Unlike the Whigs, Harley and his ministry were ready to compromise by giving Spain to the Bourbon claimant, Philippe of Anjou, in return for commercial concessions. In the parliamentary elections that soon followed his appointment, Harley, aided by government patronage, secured a large Tory majority.

In January 1711, Anne forced Sarah to resign her court offices, and Abigail took over as Keeper of the Privy Purse. Harley was stabbed by a disgruntled French refugee, the Marquis de Guiscard, in March, and Anne wept at the thought he would die. He recovered slowly. Godolphin’s death from natural causes in September 1712 reduced Anne to tears; she blamed their estrangement on the Marlboroughs.

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I, died in April 1711and his brother Archduke Charles of Austria, succeeded him in Austria, Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire as Emperor Charles VI.

To also give him the Spanish throne was no longer in Britain’s interests, but the proposed Peace of Utrecht submitted to Parliament for ratification did not go as far as the Whigs wanted to curb Bourbon ambitions.

In the House of Commons, the Tory majority was unassailable, but the same was not true in the House of Lords. The Whigs secured the support of the Earl of Nottingham against the treaty by promising to support his Occasional Conformity bill.

Seeing a need for decisive action to erase the anti-peace majority in the House of Lords, and seeing no alternative, Anne reluctantly created twelve new peers, even though such a mass creation of peers was unprecedented.

Abigail’s husband, Samuel Masham, was made a baron, although Anne protested to Harley that she “never had any design to make a great lady of [Abigail], and should lose a useful servant”. On the same day, Marlborough was dismissed as commander of the army. The peace treaty was ratified and Britain’s military involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession ended.

By signing the Treaty of Utrecht, King Louis XIV of France recognised the Hanoverian succession in Britain. Nevertheless, gossip that Anne and her ministers favoured the succession of her Catholic half-brother, Prince James Francis, Prince of Wales rather than the Hanoverians continued, despite Anne’s denials in public and in private.

The rumours were fed by her consistent refusals to permit any of the Hanoverians to visit or move to England, and by the intrigues of Harley and the Tory Secretary of State Lord Bolingbroke, who were in separate and secret discussions with her half-brother about a possible Stuart restoration until early 1714.

Death

Anne was unable to walk between January and July 1713. At Christmas, she was feverish, and lay unconscious for hours, which led to rumours of her impending death. She recovered, but was seriously ill again in March.

By July, Anne had lost confidence in Harley; his secretary recorded that Anne told the cabinet “that he neglected all business; that he was seldom to be understood; that when he did explain himself, she could not depend upon the truth of what he said; that he never came to her at the time she appointed; that he often came drunk; [and] last, to crown all, he behaved himself towards her with ill manner, indecency and disrespect.”

On July 27, 1714, during Parliament’s summer recess, she dismissed Harley as Lord Treasurer. Despite failing health, which her doctors blamed on the emotional strain of matters of state, she attended two late-night cabinet meetings that failed to determine Harley’s successor.

A third meeting was cancelled when she became too ill to attend. She was rendered unable to speak by a stroke on July 30, 1714, the anniversary of Gloucester’s death, and on the advice of the Privy Council handed the treasurer’s staff of office to Whig grandee Charles Talbot, 1st Duke of Shrewsbury.

Anne died around 7:30 a.m. on August 1, 1714. John Arbuthnot, one of her doctors, thought her death was a release from a life of ill-health and tragedy; he wrote to Jonathan Swift, “I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her.”

She was buried beside her husband and children in the Henry VII Chapel on the South Aisle of Westminster Abbey on August 24.

Succession

The Electress Sophia of Hanover had died on May 28, two months before Anne, so the Electress’s son, Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, succeeded to the British throne as King George of Great Britain and Ireland pursuant to the Act of Settlement 1701.

The possible Catholic claimants, including Anne’s half-brother, James Francis, Prince of Wales were ignored. The Elector’s accession was relatively stable: a Jacobite rising in 1715 failed. Marlborough was reinstated, and the Tory ministers were replaced by Whigs.

Accession of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland. Part VIII.

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Abigail Hill, Duke of Cumberland, George of Denmark, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Sarah Churchill, The Duchess of Marlborough, Tories, Whigs

The Duchess of Marlborough was angered when Abigail moved into rooms at Kensington Palace that Sarah considered her own, though she rarely if ever used them. In July 1708, she came to court with a bawdy poem written by a Whig propagandist, probably Arthur Maynwaring, that implied a lesbian relationship between Anne and Abigail.

The Duchess wrote to Anne telling her she had damaged her reputation by conceiving “a great passion for such a woman … strange and unaccountable”. Sarah thought Abigail had risen above her station, writing “I never thought her education was such as to make her fit company for a great queen. Many people have liked the humour of their chambermaids and have been very kind to them, but ’tis very uncommon to hold a private correspondence with them and put them upon the foot of a friend.”

While some modern commentators have concluded Anne was a lesbian, most have rejected this analysis. In the opinion of Anne’s biographers, she considered Abigail nothing more than a trusted servant, and was a woman of strong traditional beliefs, who was devoted to her husband.

At a thanksgiving service for a victory at the Battle of Oudenarde, Anne did not wear the jewels that Sarah had selected for her. At the door of St Paul’s Cathedral, they had an argument that culminated in Sarah offending the Queen by telling her to be quiet. Anne was dismayed.

When Sarah forwarded an unrelated letter from her husband to Anne, with a covering note continuing the argument, Anne wrote back pointedly, “After the commands you gave me on the thanksgiving day of not answering you, I should not have troubled you with these lines, but to return the Duke of Marlborough’s letter safe into your hands, and for the same reason do not say anything to that, nor to yours which enclosed it.”

Death of her husband

Anne was devastated by her husband’s death on October 28, 1708 and it proved a turning point in her relationship with the Duchess of Marlborough. The Duchess arrived at Kensington Palace shortly before George died, and after his death insisted that Anne leave Kensington for St James’s Palace against her wishes.

Anne resented the Duchess’s intrusive actions, which included removing a portrait of George from the Queen’s bedchamber and then refusing to return it in the belief that it was natural “to avoid seeing of papers or anything that belonged to one that one loved when they were just dead”.

The Whigs used George’s death to their own advantage. The leadership of the Admiralty was unpopular among the Whig leaders, who had blamed Prince George and his deputy George Churchill (who was Marlborough’s brother) for mismanagement of the navy. With Whigs now dominant in Parliament, and Anne distraught at the loss of her husband, they forced her to accept the Junto leaders Lords Somers and Wharton into the cabinet.

Anne, however, insisted on carrying out the duties of Lord High Admiral herself, without appointing a member of the government to take George’s place. Undeterred, the Junto demanded the appointment of the Earl of Orford, another member of the Junto and one of Prince George’s leading critics, as First Lord of the Admiralty.

Anne appointed the moderate Earl of Pembroke, on November 29, 1708. Pressure mounted on Pembroke, Godolphin and the Queen from the dissatisfied Junto Whigs, and Pembroke resigned after less than a year in office. Another month of arguments followed before the Queen finally consented to put Orford in control of the Admiralty as First Lord in November 1709.

Sarah continued to berate Anne for her friendship with Abigail, and in October 1709, Anne wrote to the Duke of Marlborough asking that his wife “leave off teasing & tormenting me & behave herself with the decency she ought both to her friend and Queen”.

On Maundy Thursday April 8, 1710, Anne and Sarah saw each other for the last time. According to Sarah, the Queen was taciturn and formal, repeating the same phrases—”Whatever you have to say you may put in writing” and “You said you desired no answer, and I shall give you none”—over and over.

Accession of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland. Part VII

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1st Duke of Marlborough, Lady Sarah Churchill, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Tories, War of the Spanish Succession, Whigs

Anne’s reign was marked by the further development of a two-party system. In general, the Tories were supportive of the Anglican church and favoured the landed interest of the country gentry, while the Whigs were aligned with commercial interests and Protestant Dissenters.

As a committed Anglican, Anne was inclined to favour the Tories. Her first ministry was predominantly Tory, and contained such High Tories as Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham, and her uncle Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester. It was headed by Lord Treasurer Lord Godolphin and Anne’s favourite the Duke of Marlborough, who were considered moderate Tories, along with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Robert Harley.

The Whigs vigorously supported the War of the Spanish Succession and became even more influential after the Duke of Marlborough won a great victory at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. Many of the High Tories, who opposed British involvement in the land war against France, were removed from office. Godolphin, Marlborough, and Harley, who had replaced Nottingham as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, formed a ruling “triumvirate”.

Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, incessantly badgered the Queen to appoint more Whigs and reduce the power of the Tories, whom she considered little better than Jacobites, and the Queen became increasingly discontented with her.

In 1706, Godolphin and the Marlboroughs forced Anne to accept Lord Sunderland, a Junto Whig and the Marlboroughs’ son-in-law, as Harley’s colleague as Secretary of State for the Southern Department.

Although this strengthened the ministry’s position in Parliament, it weakened the ministry’s position with the Queen, as Anne became increasingly irritated with Godolphin and with her former favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough, for supporting Sunderland and other Whig candidates for vacant government and church positions.

The Queen turned for private advice to
Harley, who was uncomfortable with Marlborough and Godolphin’s turn towards the Whigs. She also turned to Abigail Hill, a woman of the bedchamber whose influence grew as Anne’s relationship with Sarah deteriorated. Abigail was related to both Harley and the Duchess, but was politically closer to Harley, and acted as an intermediary between him and the Queen.

The division within the ministry came to a head on 8 February 8, 1708, when Godolphin and the Marlboroughs insisted that the Queen had to either dismiss Harley or do without their services. When the Queen seemed to hesitate, Marlborough and Godolphin refused to attend a cabinet meeting.

Harley attempted to lead business without his former colleagues, and several of those present including Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset refused to participate until they returned. Her hand forced, the Queen dismissed Harley.

The following month, Anne’s Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart, attempted to land in Scotland with French assistance in an attempt to establish himself as king. Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill 1708 in case the militia raised in Scotland was disloyal and sided with the Jacobites.

She was the last British sovereign to veto a parliamentary bill, although her action was barely commented upon at the time. The invasion fleet never landed and was chased away by British ships commanded by Sir George Byng. As a result of the Jacobite invasion scare, support for the Tories fell and the Whigs were able to secure a majority in the 1708 British general election.

Accession of Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland. Part VI

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Act of Union, Alien Act, Duke of Cumberland, George of Denmark, Queen Anne of England, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland

Anne became queen upon the death of King William III on March 8, 1702, and was immediately popular. In her first speech to the English Parliament, on March 11, she distanced herself from her late Dutch brother-in-law and said, “As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England.”

Soon after her accession, Anne appointed her husband George, Duke of Cumberland, Lord High Admiral, giving him nominal control of the Royal Navy. Anne gave control of the army to Lord Marlborough, whom she appointed Captain-General. Marlborough also received numerous honours from the Queen; he was created a Knight of the Garter and was elevated to the rank of duke. The Duchess of Marlborough was appointed Groom of the Stool, Mistress of the Robes, and Keeper of the Privy Purse.

Anne was crowned on St George’s Day, April 23, 1702. Afflicted with gout, she was carried to Westminster Abbey in an open sedan chair, with a low back to permit her train to flow out behind her. On May 4, England became embroiled in the War of the Spanish Succession, in which England, Austria, and the Dutch Republic fought against France and Bourbon Spain.

Carlos II of Spain had died childless in 1700, and the succession was disputed by two claimants: the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria and the Bourbon Philippe, Duke of Anjou.

She took a lively interest in affairs of state, and was a patron of theatre, poetry and music. She subsidised George Frideric Handel with £200 a year. She sponsored high-quality medals as rewards for political or military achievements. They were produced at the Mint by Isaac Newton and John Croker. She knighted Newton when she visited Cambridge in 1705.

Acts of Union

While Ireland was subordinate to the English Crown and Wales formed part of the kingdom of England, Scotland remained an independent sovereign state with its own parliament and laws. The Act of Settlement 1701, passed by the English Parliament, applied in the Kingdoms of England and Ireland but not Scotland, where a strong minority wished to preserve the Stuart dynasty and its right of inheritance to the throne.

Anne had declared it “very necessary” to conclude a union of England and Scotland in her first speech to the English Parliament, and a joint Anglo-Scots commission met at her former residence, the Cockpit, to discuss terms in October 1702.

The negotiations broke up in early February 1703 having failed to reach an agreement. The Estates of Scotland responded to the Act of Settlement by passing the Act of Security, which gave the Estates the power, if the Queen had no further children, to choose the next Scottish monarch from among the Protestant descendants of the royal line of Scotland.

The individual chosen by the Estates could not be the same person who came to the English throne, unless England granted full freedom of trade to Scottish merchants. At first, Anne withheld Royal Assent to the act, but she granted it the following year when the Estates threatened to withhold supply, endangering Scottish support for England’s wars.

Queen Anne addressing the House of Lords
In its turn, the English Parliament responded with the Alien Act 1705, which threatened to impose economic sanctions and declare Scottish subjects aliens in England, unless Scotland either repealed the Act of Security or moved to unite with England.

The Estates chose the latter option; the English Parliament agreed to repeal the Alien Act, and new commissioners were appointed by Queen Anne in early 1706 to negotiate the terms of a union.

The articles of union approved by the commissioners were presented to Anne on July 23, 1706 and ratified by the Scottish and English Parliaments on January 16, and March 6, 1707, respectively. Under the Acts of Union, England and Scotland were united into a single kingdom called Great Britain, with one parliament, on May 1, 1707.

A consistent and ardent supporter of union despite opposition on both sides of the border, Anne attended a thanksgiving service in St Paul’s Cathedral. The Scot Sir John Clerk, 1st Baronet, who also attended, wrote, “nobody on this occasion appeared more sincerely devout and thankful than the Queen herself”.

With the Act of Union Queen Anne’s title became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

March 11, 1708: Queen Anne becomes last British monarch to veto legislation.

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House of Commons, House of Lords, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Assent, Royal Veto, Scottish Melita Bill of 1708, William III-II of England

The Scottish Militia Bill 1708 (known formerly as the Scotch Militia Bill) was a bill that was passed by the House of Commons and House of Lords of the Parliament of Great Britain in early 1708.

However, on March 11, 1708, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland, withheld Royal Assent on the advice of her ministers for fear that the proposed militia would be disloyal. This was due to the sudden appearance of a Franco-Jacobite invasion fleet en route to Scotland which gave ministers second thoughts, at the last minute, about allowing it to reach the statute books. It was the last occasion on which the Royal Veto was used.

Content

The bill’s long title was “An Act for settling the Militia of that Part of Great Britain called Scotland”. Its object was to arm the Scottish militia, which had not been recreated at the Restoration. This happened as the unification between Scotland and England under the Acts of Union 1707 had been passed.

On the day the bill was meant to be signed, news came that the French were sailing toward Scotland for the planned invasion of 1708 and there was suspicion that the Scots might be disloyal. Therefore, support for a veto was strong.

Significance

The Scottish Militia Bill 1708 is the last bill to have been refused the Royal Assent. Before this, King William III-II had vetoed bills passed by Parliament six times. Royal Assent to bills generally came to be viewed as a mere formality once both Houses of Parliament had successfully read a bill three times, or a general election had taken place.

In the British colonies, the denial of royal assent (exercised on the advice of ministers) had continued past 1708, and was one of the primary complaints of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776: that the King “has refused his Assent to Laws, most wholesome and necessary for the public Good” and “He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance”.

November 9, 1683: Birth of King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover. Part I.

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Act of Settlement of 1701, Act of Union 1707, Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, House of Hanover, Imperial Elector of Hanover, King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland

George II (George Augustus; November 9, 1683 – October 25, 1760) was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) and a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.

George Augustus was born in the city of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire, followed by his sister, Sophia Dorothea, three years later. Their parents, George Louis, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later King George I of Great Britain), and Sophia Dorothea of Celle, both committed adultery. In 1694 the marriage was dissolved on the pretext that Sophia had abandoned her husband. She was confined to Ahlden House and denied access to her two children, who probably never saw their mother again.

George Augustus spoke only French, the language of diplomacy and the court, until the age of four, after which he was taught German by one of his tutors, Johann Hilmar Holstein. In addition to French and German, he also learnt English and Italian, and studied genealogy, military history, and battle tactics with particular diligence.

George Augustus as Prince of Wales

George Augustus’s second cousin once removed, Queen Anne, ascended the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1702. She had no surviving children, and by the Act of Settlement 1701, the English Parliament designated Anne’s closest Protestant blood relatives, George’s grandmother Sophia of the Rhine and her descendants, as Anne’s heirs in England and Ireland.

Consequently, after his grandmother and father, George was third in line to succeed Anne in two of her three realms. He was naturalized as an English subject in 1705 by the Sophia Naturalization Act, and in 1706 he was made a Knight of the Garter and created Duke and Marquess of Cambridge, Earl of Milford Haven, Viscount Northallerton, and Baron Tewkesbury in the Peerage of England. England and Scotland united in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and jointly accepted the succession as laid down by the English Act of Settlement.

Marriage

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach by Godfrey Kneller, 1716

George’s father did not want his son to enter into a loveless arranged marriage as he had and wanted him to have the opportunity of meeting his bride before any formal arrangements were made. Negotiations from 1702 for the hand of Princess Hedvig Sophia of Sweden, Dowager Duchess and regent of Holstein-Gottorp, came to nothing. the eldest child of Charles XI of Sweden and Ulrike Eleonore of Denmark. Princess Hedvig Sophia of Sweden,was heir presumptive to the Swedish throne until her death in 1708.

In June 1705, under the false name “Monsieur de Busch”, George visited the Brandenburg-Ansbach court at its summer residence in Triesdorf to investigate incognito a marriage prospect: Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, the former ward of his aunt Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia. She was married to Friedrich I, King in Prussia.

Caroline was born on March 1, 1683 at Ansbach, the daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and his second wife, Princess Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach. Her father was the ruler of one of the smallest German states; he died of smallpox at the age of 32, when Caroline was three years old.

The Brandenburg-Ansbach family belonged to a branch of the House of Hohenzollern and was the ruler of a small German state, the Principality of Ansbach. Since Caroline was orphaned at a young age she moved to the enlightened court of her guardians, King Friedrich I and Queen Sophia Charlotte in Prussia. At the Prussian court, her previously limited education was widened, and she adopted the liberal outlook possessed by Sophia Charlotte, who became her good friend and whose views influenced Caroline all her life.

The English envoy to Hanover, Edmund Poley, reported that George was so taken by “the good her character that he had of her that he would not think of anybody else”. A marriage contract was concluded by the end of July. On September 2, 1705 Caroline arrived in Hanover for her wedding, which was held the same evening in the chapel at Herrenhausen.

George Augustus his fathe, the new King George I of Great Britain, sailed for England from The Hague on September 16, 1714 and arrived at Greenwich two days later. The following day, they formally entered London in a ceremonial procession. George Augustus given the title of Prince of Wales.

Caroline followed her husband to Britain in October with their daughters, while thier eldest son, Frederick Louis, remained in Hanover to be brought up by private tutors. London was like nothing George Augustus had seen before; it was 50 times larger than Hanover, and the crowd was estimated at up to one and a half million spectators. George Augustus courted popularity with voluble expressions of praise for the English, and claimed that he had no drop of blood that was not English.

In the first years of his father’s reign as king, George Augustus associated with opposition politicians until they rejoined the governing party in 1720.

King George I died on June 22, 1727 during one of his visits to Hanover, and George Augustis succeeded him as King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, Elector of Hanover at the age of 43. The new king decided not to travel to the Holy Roman Empire for his father’s funeral, which far from bringing criticism led to praise from the English who considered it proof of his fondness for England.

George II suppressed his father’s will because it attempted to split the Hanoverian succession between George II’s future grandsons rather than vest all the domains (both British and Hanoverian) in a single person. Both British and Hanoverian ministers considered the will unlawful, as George I did not have the legal power to determine the succession personally. Critics supposed that George II hid the will to avoid paying out his father’s legacies.

George II was crowned at Westminster Abbey on October 22, 1727. George Frideric Handel was commissioned to write four new anthems for the coronation, including Zadok the Priest.