Page:The Queens of England.djvu/552

 500 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. and followed. His influence is said to have maintained the Marlborough faction for some years longer than Anne desired. Her grief for his loss was intense : it was very long ere she was sufficiently recovered to attend to public matters. Her first solace then was to rid herself of her enemies : and so effectually did she apply herself to the task, that in the course of one year, 1 710, she freed herself of every member of the Marlborough family. The memorable Treaty of Union between England and Scot- land is perhaps the most important event of the queen's reign. It is notorious that this was one of her most fervent aspirations, and that she effected it in the year 1707, in direct opposition to the Marlborough clique. The Treaty of Peace with France, toward which she had so long and anxiously labored, was finally completed on January 18, 1712. The efforts of the party which then surrounded her seem to have been directed toward estab- lishing the claims of the young Pretender, James, to the succes- sion ; but his religious opinions were as insuperable an objection to the Protestant Anne, as to the nation at large. There seems no doubt that, but for this circumstance, she would have gladly seconded his views. In the autumn of 1713, Anne grew so unwieldy, that she was habitually let down through the ceiling at Windsor Castle, and placed in a carriage by a machine prepared for the purpose ! From this time her health declined until July 29, 17 14, when she was seized by an abscess, which proved fatal on the 1st of August following, in the fiftieth year of her life, and fourteenth of her reign. Since the reign of Elizabeth there had been none so brilliant and prosperous as that of Anne. It is singular that under queens regnant England has almost invariably risen remarkably in power, consequence, and reputation. Mary's short reign of five years was the exception. But around Elizabeth stood a galaxy of the ablest statesmen, and most illustrious men of genius which had ever cast a glory on England. Shake- speare, Spenser. Sidney, Bacon, and Raleigh are the names in literature, which still diffuse their splendor around that epoch. Drake and Raleigh, in that department too, Frobisher, Haw- kins, and Lord Howard of Effingham, by the destruction of the Armada, and the splendor of their discoveries in various reg- ions, raised the name and power of England far bevond any former achievements of her commanders, while Burleigh and Walsingham, though cold and unscrupulous in their political