rding as one old woman or the other prevailed over her
passing mood. While she was governed by the Duchess of Marlborough,
the Duke of Marlborough and his party had the ascendant. When Mrs.
Masham succeeded in establishing herself as chief favorite, the Duke of
Marlborough and his followers went down. Burnet, in his "History of My
Own Times," says of Queen Anne, that she "is easy of access, and hears
everything very gently; but opens herself to so few, and is so cold and
general in her answers, that people soon find that the chief
application is to be made to her ministers and favorites, who, in their
turns, have an entire credit and full power with her. She has laid
down the splendor of a court too much, and eats privately; so that,
except on Sundays, and a few hours twice or thrice a week, at night, in
the drawing-room, she appears so little that her court is, as it were,
abandoned." Although Anne lived during the Augustan Age of English
literature, she had no literary capacity or taste. Kneller's portrait
of the Queen gives her a face rather agreeable and intelligent than
otherwise--a round, full face, with ruddy complexion and dark-brown
hair. A courtly biographer, commenting on this portrait, takes
occasion to observe that Anne "was so universally beloved that her
death was more sincerely lamented than that of perhaps any other
monarch who ever sat on the throne of these realms." A curious comment
on that affection and devotion of the English people to Queen Anne is
supplied by the fact which Lord Stanhope mentions, that "the funds rose
considerably on the first tidings of her danger, and fell again on a
report of her recovery."

[Sidenote: 1714--Fighting for the Crown]

England watched with the greatest anxiety the latest days of Queen
Anne's life; not out of any deep concern for the Queen herself, but
simply because of the knowledge that with her death must come a crisis
and might come a revolution. Who was to snatch the crown as it fell
from Queen Anne's dying head? Over at Herrenhausen, in {3} Hanover,
was one claimant to the throne; flitting between Lorraine and St.
Germains was another. Here, at home, in the Queen's very
council-chamber, round the Queen's dying bed, were the English heads of
the rival parties caballing against each other, some of them deceiving
Hanover, some of them deceiving James Stuart, and more than one, it
must be confessed, deceiving at the same moment Hanoverians and Stuart