| Abstract |
The much-maligned Queen Anne (1665-1714) was never expected to reign. Her father, James II, was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and succeeded by his daughter, the childless Mary, and her husband, William of Orange. Anne's 17 pregnancies before her accession produced only one child, who survived only to age 11. Her devotion to her friend and First Lady of the Bedchamber, Sarah Churchill, was a most unfortunate liaison. Sarah treated Anne as an uninformed fool, unable to form opinions of her own. However, Anne blossomed when she became queen, a situation that Sarah never accepted. Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1702, at age thirty-seven, and five years later united two of her realms, England and Scotland, as a sovereign state, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain. Sarah's husband, the Duke of Marlborough, and Lord Treasurer Sidney Godolphin, were Anne's primary ministers; many thought they completely controlled her. Anne's correspondence shows just how malicious and even criminal Sarah was. Today's reader will easily recognize the rancorous party politics, obstructionism and inability to enact laws that existed in that period. Anne's natural reserve and her instinct for discretion has led historians to believe that she was weak and dominated by women of stronger character. Somerset's impressive scholarship debunks that belief and shows Anne as a masterful, even authoritative, queen who survived the influence of her "friends." At the core of Anne Somerset's fascinating new biography is a portrait of this fraught, complex bond between two very different women: Queen Anne, reserved, stolid, shrewd; and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the Queen's great general--beautiful, willful, outspoken, whose acerbic wit was equally matched by her fearsome temper. |
