Category: Princess Anne

Princess Anne, Part 2: Revenge of the Crying Tomato

February 19, 2018

 

A marker outside the Virginia Beach courthouse.

A brief note from our sponsors…

Princess Anne, part 1, was brought to you by a pot of coffee in the middle of the night and a cat who kept waking me up by sleeping on my face.  Princess Anne, part 2, is sponsored by cheap wine from Lidl and some really tasty gouda cheese crackers.

It’s time for a quick recap.

In Part 1, Anne Stuart is born and spends her childhood imitating a crying tomato.  Her uncle, King Charles II, dies with no heirs, making Anne’s father King James II.  Anne gets married to a kindly anti-Viking from Denmark.  James’ flirtation with Catholicism gets him forcibly removed from the English throne after only 3 years.  Anne’s sister and brother-in-law ascend the throne in his place, and Anne becomes the new heir presumptive to the crown of England.  Not bad for being born a woman in early modern Europe, eh?

Here’s part 2.

A Waiting Game

Anne Stuart was extremely popular in the 1690s.  She was expected to replace William and Mary as Queen of England one day, and that made her top of mind in Virginia throughout the last days of the 17th century.

In 1691, a very large Lower Norfolk County in southeast Virginia was split in two pieces.  One part became Norfolk County (eventually Chesapeake), the other part became Princess Anne County – the precursor of Virginia Beach.

Many other American places were named for Anne around the same time, especially in Maryland and Virginia.  (Annapolis, anyone?)

Aside from her newfound popularity, Anne spent the 1690s mostly removed from politics.  Despite her status as heir, the co-monarchs William and Mary didn’t really include Anne in the decision making of the realm.

Anne and her husband George had a quiet life in London with their only living son, George.  Anne was still struggling with miscarriages and stillbirths, of which there were at least ten between 1689 and 1700.

Friends said there was nothing more moving than to see the Queen and her husband mourning together as the little coffins mounted up.  Sometimes they would weep together.  Other times they just sat in silence hand in hand.  It was unimaginably awful.  To this day, no one really agrees on the reason behind [Anne’s fertility struggles].5

Despite the horror at home, Anne was known for her charm, her obstinacy, her fun-loving spirit, and her weight.  Her statue sits outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London; a contemporary commented “it was fitting she was depicted with her rump to the church, gazing longingly into a wineshop.”6

She sounds like a good time.

Queen at Last

Anne’s sister Mary died in 1694.  Mary’s husband William died in 1702 in a riding accident. William wasn’t a well-loved King.  More than a few of his subjects were spotted saluting the horse that toppled him.7

Does anyone remember Mr. Ed? Imagine if he were King William’s horse. “I’ve had enough of your shit Willy. Also, I can time travel. Peace!”

Anne became the first Queen Regnant since Elizabeth I.  This was somewhat controversial, and not for the reasons you might think: Government ministers worried that when the time came, her chronic ill health would make her physically incapable of the job.  To 17th century eyes, Anne was gigantic – both in height and weight.  Whether because of her weight, or her reported gout, Anne’s joints were in constant pain.8  Her mobility was so bad that she hobbled around Kensington Palace in a sedan chair.

Accordingly, the new queen’s ministers were fearful of being at the mercy of a sickly woman.  They soon realized there was no reason to worry.  Shortly after her “Sunshine Day” of ascension, Anne appeared before Parliament for the first time.  She was a smash.

 
According to one eyewitness, “Never any woman spoke more audibly or with better grace.”…  [She was] resplendent.  She wore the crown, the star and garter, and a magnificent gown of red velvet lined with ermine and edged with gold galloon.9

 

King Charles II of Spain. His family tree was a collection on spoons instead of forks. His autopsy says his body “did not contain a single drop of blood; his heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.”12 And these people LIKED HIM.

Her lifelong rosacea was interpreted as bashfulness, which the Parliamentarians viewed as especially charming.10  After giving a heartfelt speech about her loyalty to England and her wishes for the prosperity of its people, she was compared to Elizabeth I.11

It was good that Parliament adored her.  She was about to experience her first trial by fire.

How to Go to War in 60 Days

Only 2 months after Anne became queen, Europe erupted in war.  After years of baffling Christendom by continuing to live, the inbred King of Spain had died childless.  His closest heir was also an heir to the French throne – creating the terrifying possibility of a new European Empire.

England, Holland, and Austria fought together to prevent France and Spain from forming this new, Super-Catholic Superpower.  The War of the Spanish Succession was one of the first world wars, and it dominated the rest of Anne’s reign until finally being settled in 1714.

Anne – who had never demonstrated any interest nor aptitude for warfare – now found herself trying to lead an army.

She chose the best possible route: she delegated the war effort to people who knew what they were doing.  She consulted experienced admirals, generals, and diplomats.13  Soon, the British were winning victories.

This became the hallmark of Anne’s ruling style.  She knew that her own experience was too limited, so she found and listened to subject matter experts and made decisions based on their recommendations.
 
In Part 3, Queen Anne settles the succession on a distant German prince and united England and Scotland under one flag.

5 “Stuarts to Hanoverians.”  Fit To Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History, series 1, episode 2, BBC Two, April 2013.  Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAQ2SrKFfBg.

6 Somerset, Anne (2012). Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion. London: HarperCollins.

7 “Stuarts to Hanoverians.”  Fit To Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History, series 1, episode 2, BBC Two, April 2013.  Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAQ2SrKFfBg.

8 Saxbe, W. B. Jr.  “LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES AND QUEEN ANNE.”  Pediatrics, vol. 49, no. 1, 1972. American Academy of Pediatrics News Gateway, http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/49/1/97..info.

9 Bucholz, R.O. (1993).  The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

10  Possibly the best moment in the History of Rosacea.

11  Green, David (1970). Queen Anne. London: Collins.

12  Gargarilla, Pedro. “Enfermedades de los reyes de España. Los Austrias : de la locura de Juana a la impotencia de Carlos II el Hechizado” La Esfera de los Libros S.L., 2005.

13  John B. Hattendorf, “English Governmental Machinery and the Conduct of War, 1702–1713.” War & Society 3.2 (1985): 1-22.

Consulted:

Curtis, Gila; introduced by Antonia Fraser (1972). The Life and Times of Queen Anne. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

 

Princess Anne, Part 1

January 22, 2018
Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach, near Nimmo Church

Lots of landmarks and businesses in Virginia Beach are named for Princess Anne, so I thought it was fitting to include a brief bio of our patron Princess.1

Anne wasn’t born a princess.  She was never supposed to be Queen of England.  She liked drinking.  She liked music.  She was fat.  And she was the first Queen of a united Great Britain.

A Funny Looking Kid

Anne was born in 1665.  Her parents were James, the arrogant, irritating younger brother of King Charles II, and Anne Hyde, the daughter of an earl.

Anne was a fugly kid.  She was born with some kind of eye disorder that meant she always looked like she was crying.2  Her family sent her to see an eye doctor in France when she was 4, but nothing worked.  Her eyes continued to water for the rest of her life.  She had a bright red face that got redder when she was excited or embarrassed.  Her parents weren’t around much, consigning her and her sister to be raised by governesses.  When she was 6, her mother died.  When she was 12, she caught smallpox, and carried its scars for the rest of her days.

It wasn’t the best start in life.

Nonetheless, while Anne was still young, her uncle the King came to the realization that he wouldn’t have any legitimate children of his own.3  That meant the succession would fall to her father James, and possibly Anne herself.  Charles had sworn himself to the Anglican Church; James had very publicly converted to Catholicism with a wink and a pinky swear to not let his conversion affect his reign when he was King.

With her son in 1694.  There are dozens of images of Anne online at the UK National Portrait Gallery.

Hint: it did.

The English court in 1683 was a teeter-totter, swinging up and then swinging down in favor of Protestant this and Catholic that.  As palace intrigues swirled around her, Anne’s uncle arranged a Protestant marriage for her with a Danish Prince.  George was 12 years older and dull as paint.  But he was kind to Anne, notoriously easy-going, and supported her publicly in everything she did.  They were very happily married, except for one thing: children.

Poor Anne is famous among British queens for being pregnant 18 times.  Her gynecological history is heartbreaking:  out of 18 pregnancies, there were 8 miscarriages, 5 stillbirths, 2 dead within a week of birth, 2 dead of smallpox before age 2, and a single boy who died at age 11 in 1700.  Her son George’s death would have momentous consequences for the English crown.

Cut It Out, James

As Anne came of age and set up her own household with her new husband, the ever murky world of English politics was getting worse.  Most of this was because of her father James.

James was… special.  He was a loving but distant father.  He spent most of Anne’s early years wandering the Court of St James with his mistresses.  His favorite hobbies were whoring and annoying his brother with Catholic plots.

Have you ever been told not to do something?  After being forbidden, were you ever seized with the desire to do exactly the thing you were told not to?

A portrait of James from the Royal Collection. Am I the only one getting a “come hither” vibe?

Yeah.  James felt the same way.

Charles told James not to enact pro-Catholic policies in England.

Parliament told James not to enact pro-Catholic policies in England.

William of Orange told James not to enact pro-Catholic policies in England.

Anne told James not to enact pro-Catholic policies in England.

Charles kicked it in 1685.  James became King.  James enacted pro-Catholic policies in England.

Like a 17th century episode of Quantum Leap, James was determined to hop into the quantum accelerator and turn back the clock to 1530.  He was hell-bent on reversing the English Reformation.

After three years of this, Parliament had enough.  Parliament and James’ son-in-law William of Orange engineered a “Glorious Revolution” in 1688 to get rid of the English King.  James was kicked out, and his very Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband were invited in.

I’ve put Glorious Revolution in quotes because a better description of 1688 is “carefully crafted invasion.”  Today, if I told you that the President of the United States was leaving and would soon be replaced by a Dutchman offshore firing Tomahawk missiles, you’d say a coup had taken place.4  Anyway…

Anne was now two heartbeats away from the throne.

 

1 Nerd Note: I was so excited to write about Princess Anne, that I created a JSTOR account. 😀

2 Emson, H. E. “For The Want Of An Heir: The Obstetrical History Of Queen Anne.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, vol. 304, no. 6838, 1992, pp. 1365–1366. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29715689.

3 But he did have bastards.  So, so, so many bastards.

4 “The Glorious Revolution.”  British History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley, series 1, episode 2, BBC Four, Jan 2017.  Youtube, https://youtu.be/QgOPIwh9ggI?t=1133.