her in opposite directions, and her whole life had
been a prey to jealousies and factions which closed around her at her
accession to the throne, and surged to their height when she lay on her
deathbed. The modern theory of the relations between the sovereign and
the parties, by which the former identifies himself with the faction for
the time in power while maintaining his detachment from all, had not
then been invented; and Anne, like her Hanoverian successors, maintained
the struggle, though without success, to rule independently finding
support in Harley. During the first year of her reign she made known
that she was "resolved not to follow the example of her predecessor in
making use of a few of her subjects to oppress the rest. She will be
queen of all her subjects, and would have all the parties and
distinctions of former reigns ended and buried in hers."[14] Her motive
for getting rid of the Whigs was not any real dislike of their
administration, but the wish to escape from the domination of the
party,[15] and on the advent to power of the Tories she carefully left
some Whigs in their employments, with the aim of breaking up the party
system and acting upon what was called "a moderate scheme." She attended
debates in the Lords and endeavoured to influence votes. Her struggles
to free herself from the influence of factions only involved her deeper;
she was always under the domination of some person or some party, and
she could not rise above them and show herself the leader of the nation
like Elizabeth.

Anne was a women of small ability, of dull mind, and of that kind of
obstinacy which accompanies weakness of character. According to the
duchess she had "a certain knack of sticking to what had been dictated
to her to a degree often very disagreeable, and without the least sign
of understanding or judgment."[16] "I desire you would not have so ill
an opinion of me," Anne writes to Oxford, "as to think when I have
determined anything in my mind I will alter it."[17] Burnet considered
that "she laid down the splendour of a court too much," which was "as it
were abandoned." She dined alone after her husband's death, but it was
reported by no means abstemiously, the royal family being characterized
in the lines:--

"King William thinks all.
Queen Mary talks all,
Prince George drinks all,
And Princess Anne eats all."[18]

She took no interest in the art, the drama or the literature of her day.
But she