human destitution and misery should lead us to reflect well on the folly of attempting to regulate the affairs of the continent by our guns and swords, but to leave the continental powers to settle their own disputes. Our reward has been the hatred of the whole continent, the crushing weight of this enormous debt, for which we are called yearly to pay twenty-eight millions interest, and the mortification of seeing the whole continent in the worst and most miserable condition of political slavery that can be conceived. In weighing, therefore, the benefits and the evils which we received at the hands of king William, whilst we gratefully acknowledge the freedom which we achieved through him, we must sorrowfully remember, too, the heavy debt which he prepared for us, and the crimes and the bloodshed which he led us to perpetrate, and the slavery which he has induced us to perpetuate in all the continental states, by supporting the tottering thrones of their tyrants. There is no reign in our annals more pregnant with political suggestions of profound import.
Chapter V.
The Reign of Queen Anne.
When Anne succeeded to the throne she was in her thirty-eighth year. She was fat, indolent, and good natured. She had long been under the complete management of the imperious lady Marlborough, and through her Marlborough expected to be the real ruler of the country. Through them the queen had imbibed a deep-rooted hatred of the whigs, whom they had taught her to regard as the partisans of king William, and the real authors of all the indignities and mortifications which she had endured during his reign. The tories, therefore, calculated confidently on recovering full power under her, and had resolved to place Marlborough at the head of the army. The queen, on her part, had a great leaning towards the tories, as the enemies of the whigs, and the friends of the church, to which she was strongly attached. The endeavours which had been made in her father's time to make a catholic of her, and in her brother-in-law's time to level the distinctions betwixt church and dissent, had only rooted more deeply her predilection for the church; nor did the fact of her husband being a Lutheran, and maintaining his Lutheran chapel and minister in the palace, at all diminish this feeling.
No sooner was the king dead than the courtiers who had been eagerly watching the shortening of his breath—the lord Jersey and others—ran in breathless haste to bring the news to Anne, who, with her friend the lady Marlborough, sate on that Sunday morning anxiously waiting for the message which should announce her queen. The first person who reached her with the news, lord Dartmouth says, was bishop Burnet, who drove hard, and outwent the earl of Essex, whose office it was to make that communication. Dartmouth insinuates that Burnet was not well received for what he calls his officiousness; but Dartmouth is decidedly inimical to the bishop, and if he was not favourably received, it was, most probably, less from the haste he showed, than from his having been always a devoted servant of William and Mary. But Burnet was rapidly succeeded by the press of eager courtiers. First amongst them was the earl of Clarendon, the queen's uncle, who was a rabid Jacobite, and his object was to claim from the queen a promise she was said to have made to her father after the death of her son the duke of Gloucester, that she would name her brother, the prince of Wales, her successor. But Anne, well aware of his errand, on his demanding admittance to her, desired the lord in waiting to ask him whether he was prepared to take the oath of allegiance to the queen, for he had not taken it to William. "No," replied the haughty Hyde, "I came to talk to my niece. I will take no other oaths than I have done." Anne, therefore, refused to see him, and he remained, says Roger Coke, a non-juror to the day of his death. Her other uncle, the earl of Rochester, the great champion of the church, met with a different reception. Lord Dartmouth, who criticises Burnet's haste, was not far behind him, and the marquis of Normandy, the queen's quondam lover, also pressed in amongst the first. Anne, who was not famous for her conversational talents, observed to him that it was a very fine day, and Normandy, with the ready wit of a true courtier, replied, "Your majesty must allow me to declare that it is the finest day I ever saw in my life," which was echoed through the whole court circle as a most felicitous impromptu.
Though it was Sunday, both houses of parliament met, for they were empowered still to sit by an act passed in William's reign, and the death of William was formally announced to the commons by Mr. Secretary Vernon. There was a great speechifying, full of congratulations, Mr. Granville saying, "We have lost a great king, and got a most gracious queen." Both houses then proceeded to the palace with addresses of felicitation, and were graciously received. The privy council also waited on the queen, who assured them of her determination to maintain the laws, liberties, and religion of the country, to secure the succession in the protestant line, and the church and state as by law established. The privy council having taken the oaths, she caused a proclamation to be issued, signifying her pleasure that all persons in office should continue to hold their respective posts till further orders.
On the 11th of March she went in state to the house of lords. She was accompanied in her coach by her consort
