biography
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1665–1714)
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| biography:
| Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1702–14), born in London, UK, the second daughter of James II (then Duke of York) and his first wife, Anne Hyde. In 1672 her father became a Catholic, but Anne was brought up as a staunch Protestant. In 1683 she married Prince George of Denmark (1653–1708), bearing him 17 children. Probably only six were born alive and only one survived infancy - William, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1700 at the age of 12. For much of her life she was greatly influenced by her close friend and confidante, Sarah Churchill, the future Duchess of Marlborough. In 1688, when her father James II was overthrown, she supported the accession of her sister Mary and her brother-in-law William, and in 1701, after the death of her own son, signed the Act of Settlement designating the Hanoverian descendants of James I as her successors. Her reign saw the union of the parliaments of Scotland and England (1707), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13). She finally broke with the Marlboroughs in 1710–11, when Sarah was supplanted by a new favourite, Sarah's cousin, Mrs Abigail Masham, and the Whigs were replaced by a Tory administration. She was the last Stuart monarch. |
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