Anne summary

Know about the life and reign of Anne, Queen of Great Britain and the last Stuart monarch

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Anne.

Anne, (born Feb. 6, 1665, London, Eng.—died Aug. 1, 1714, London), Queen of Great Britain (1702–14) and the last Stuart monarch. Second daughter of James II, who was overthrown by William III in 1688, Anne became queen on William’s death (1702). Though she wished to rule independently, her intellectual limitations and poor health led her to rely on advisers, including the duke of Marlborough. Her reign was marked by the Act of Union with Scotland (1707) and by bitter rivalries between Whigs and Tories. Because she never gave birth to a successor, the regency passed to the Hanoverian descendants of James I.

James II Summary

James II was the king of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1685 to 1688, and the last Stuart monarch in the direct male line. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution (1688–89) and replaced by William III and Mary II. That revolution, engendered by James’s Roman Catholicism, permanently

government Summary

Government, the political system by which a country or community is administered and regulated. Most of the key words commonly used to describe governments—words such as monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy—are of Greek or Roman origin. They have been current for more than 2,000 years and have not

England Summary

England, predominant constituent unit of the United Kingdom, occupying more than half of the island of Great Britain. Outside the British Isles, England is often erroneously considered synonymous with the island of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales) and even with the entire United

Scotland Summary

Scotland, most northerly of the four parts of the United Kingdom, occupying about one-third of the island of Great Britain. The name Scotland derives from the Latin Scotia, land of the Scots, a Celtic people from Ireland who settled on the west coast of Great Britain about the 5th century ce. The