Anne I

Anne had at least seventeen pregnancies, but none of her children outlived her. Her only son to survive infancy, William, Duke of Gloucester, died at the age of eleven in 1700. This personal tragedy had immense political consequences: with no direct Protestant heir, Parliament had to arrange the succession in favour of the House of Hanover.

Before she became queen, Anne shared a passionate friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. To write to each other as equals and escape court etiquette, they used nicknames: Anne signed herself “Mrs Morley” and Sarah “Mrs Freeman.” Their spectacular falling-out, around 1710, in favour of a new favourite, Abigail Masham, shook the politics of the kingdom.

Anne was the last British sovereign to practise the “royal touch,” a gesture believed to cure scrofula (a skin disease). In 1712, she touched a little boy from Lichfield named Samuel Johnson, the future great English writer and lexicographer — without curing him.

In 1708, Anne refused to give royal assent to the Scottish Militia Bill. It was the last time in British history that a monarch vetoed a law passed by Parliament.

Suffering terribly from gout and frail health, Anne could barely walk. At her coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1702, at only thirty-seven years old, she had to be carried to the altar in a special chair.

To reward her great general, John Churchill, for his victory at Blenheim in 1704, Anne gave him a royal estate in Oxfordshire and funded the construction of a magnificent palace. It was named “Blenheim Palace” in honour of the battle; three centuries later, Winston Churchill would be born there.