108). Luttrell (v. 163) gives a list of the ladies of the bedchamber, who included whig as well as tory ladies. Rochester, whose daughter's services were declined, was himself, instead of being placed at the head of the treasury, left in the doubtful position of an Irish viceroy, whose commission had been cancelled by the late king. The rivalry between him and Marlborough soon became patent, and ended in his angrily resigning his office, in which he was succeeded by Ormond. By Marlborough's advice the treasurer's staff was given to his political alter ego Godolphin. Other changes were made, among which need only be mentioned the appointment of the high-church Earl of Nottingham to one of the secretaryships of state. Several whigs were left in the ministry and household, but from the list of the new privy council the names of the great whig leaders of the late reign were omitted. Politics apart, the queen seems to have acted generously towards her predecessor's servants (Luttrell, v. 172); but not all the claims left unsettled by him were liquidated by her (Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1702–7, Preface, x).
With regard to another class of appointments, it was rumoured very early in Anne's reign that ‘her majesty would herself dispose of all ecclesiastical preferments belonging to the crown as they became vacant, and not leave it to the Archbishop of Canterbury and five other bishops as the late king did’ (Luttrell, v. 157). High-church feeling had of late vigorously revived. Anne appointed the Archbishop of York (Sharpe) instead of Tenison of Canterbury to preach her coronation sermon; and of the statesmen admitted to office upon her accession most were well-known ‘highfliers.’ Among the addresses presented to her on her accession she left unnoticed one presented by the presbyterian, independent, and baptist ministers of London, and at the prorogation of parliament in May, while undertaking to maintain the act of toleration, she declared that ‘her own principles must always keep her entirely firm to the interest and religion of the church of England, and would incline her to countenance those who had the truest zeal to support it’ (Stoughton, v. 323). In the elections for the new parliament the church question accordingly assumed great prominence, and the result was that the tory high-churchmen were stronger in Queen Anne's first parliament than they had been in any since the revolution (Somerville~, 23–4). She gratified the majority by dismissing from the office of almoner the Bishop of Worcester (Lloyd), who was accused of having sought to influence his clergy against the tory candidate in the Worcestershire election. During the summer she had paid a state visit to the headquarters of the high-church party, the university of Oxford, afterwards continuing her progress, on which she was enthusiastically welcomed, to Bath and Bristol.
Intent, however, as the new House of Commons, with Harley as its speaker, was upon church affairs, the war necessarily claimed its first attention. The grand alliance had been strengthened by further additions, but the chief military successes of the year were gained by the English general. On 12 Nov. Queen Anne went in state to St. Paul's, the Countesses of Marlborough and Sunderland accompanying her in her coach. After Marlborough's return to England she insisted, notwithstanding the protests of his lady, on raising him to a dukedom (she may have been annoyed by the pyramidical illumination at Ludgate, in which his name was placed after Ormond's, Coke, 129), and on settling upon him for the term of her own life an annual pension of 5,000l., derived from the post office. Her wish that this pension should be settled for ever on the title was, however, rejected by the commons, and it was on this occasion that the queen made the offer of a further 2,000l. a year to the duchess out of the privy purse, which the latter declined at the moment, but afterwards, ‘by the advice of her friends,’ inserted in her accounts.
On 4 Nov. 1702 the bill against occasional conformity, which was for many years to be regarded as the test measure of church opinion and sentiment, was brought into the House of Commons. The queen was ardently on the side of the bill. The Prince of Denmark, though himself an occasional communicant, had been induced to vote for it. But it had at last to be dropped in the lords. When, in a rather less rigorous form, it was reintroduced in November 1703, stronger opposition was offered to it by the whigs, and Marlborough and Godolphin, though they voted for it, were less than lukewarm in its favour; and though the queen seems still in her heart to have wished it to pass, the prince absented himself from the division in which it was thrown out by a majority of eleven. In November 1704 it again appeared. This time its defeat in the lords was foreseen, and not averted by the shameless proposal to force it through the lords by tacking it to a land-tax bill. As both Marlborough and Godolphin on this occasion voted against it, there can have been little or no pressure from the queen in its favour. In this very year 1704, however, she had chosen a better way for proving her goodwill to the national church. On the day after her birthday, which fell on a Sunday,
