[1] Her father was the younger brother of King Charles II, who ruled the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, and her mother was the daughter of Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon.

At her Anglican baptism in the Chapel Royal at St James's, her older sister, Mary, was one of her godparents, along with the Duchess of Monmouth and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon.

[18] The Duke and Duchess of York retired to Brussels in March 1679 in the wake of anti-Catholic hysteria fed by the Popish Plot, and Anne visited them from the end of August.

[24] With George of Hanover out of contention as a suitor for Anne, King Charles looked elsewhere for an eligible prince who would be welcomed as a groom by his Protestant subjects but also acceptable to his Catholic ally Louis XIV of France.

To the consternation of the English people, James began to give Catholics military and administrative offices, in contravention of the Test Acts that were designed to prevent such appointments.

Anne may have left the capital deliberately to avoid being present, or because she was genuinely ill,[44] but it is also possible that James desired the exclusion of all Protestants, including his daughter, from affairs of state.

[65] From around this time,[66] at Anne's request she and Sarah Churchill, Lady Marlborough, began to call each other the pet names Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman, respectively, to facilitate a relationship of greater equality between the two when they were alone.

He restored her previous honours, allowed her to reside in St James's Palace,[73] and gave her Mary's jewels,[74] but excluded her from government and refrained from appointing her regent during his absences abroad.

[109] 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.

[110] Anne had declared it "very necessary" to conclude a union of England and Scotland in her first speech to the English Parliament,[111] and a joint Anglo-Scots commission met at her former residence, the Cockpit, to discuss terms in October 1702.

[115] 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.

[117] The Estates chose the latter option; the English Parliament agreed to repeal the Alien Act,[118] and new commissioners were appointed by Queen Anne in early 1706 to negotiate the terms of a union.

[122] 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.

[128] After the Great Storm of 1703, Anne declared a general fast to implore God "to pardon the crying sins of this nation which had drawn down this sad judgement".

[129] The Occasional Conformity Bill was revived in the wake of the storm,[130] but Anne withheld support, fearing its reintroduction was a ruse to cause a political quarrel.

[132] 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.

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.

[148] In July 1708, she came to court with a bawdy poem written by a Whig propagandist, probably Arthur Maynwaring,[149] that implied a lesbian relationship between Anne and Abigail.

[161] 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".

[163] 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.

[168] 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.

Unlike the Whigs, Harley and his ministry were ready to compromise by giving Spain to the Bourbon claimant, Philip of Anjou, in return for commercial concessions.

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.

[184] The rumours were fed by her consistent refusals to permit any of the Hanoverians to visit or move to England,[185] 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.

[193] She was rendered unable to speak by a stroke on 30 July 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.

[204]In the opinion of modern historians, traditional assessments of Anne as fat, constantly pregnant, under the influence of favourites, and lacking political astuteness or interest may derive from sexist prejudices against women.

[207] She attended more cabinet meetings than any of her predecessors or successors,[208] and presided over an age of artistic, literary, scientific, economic and political advancement that was made possible by the stability and prosperity of her reign.

[214] The political and diplomatic achievements of Anne's governments, and the absence of constitutional conflict between monarch and parliament during her reign, indicate that she chose ministers and exercised her prerogatives wisely.

[219] As queen regnant, Anne's coat of arms before the union were the Stuart royal arms, in use since 1603: Quarterly; I and IV grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II, Or, a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III, Azure, a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).