was at about one o'clock in the afternoon. The queen continued ill the whole day, through which as well as through the ensuing night the council continued to sit. (The scandal as to the evil intentions of Arbuthnot and the cold selfishness of Lady Masham (see Wentworth Papers, 408) is not worth repeating. As to Dr. Radcliffe's refusal to attend the queen, see Radcliffe.) In London, on the morning of 30 July, the report went that the queen was dead. She was not prayed for, says Ford, even in her own chapel at St. James's, ‘and, what is more infamous, stocks arose three per cent. upon it in the city.’ At Kensington a full privy council was sitting, including Somerset and Argyll and a large number of whigs. They dictated a series of orders; a regiment was despatched to Portsmouth, and instructions were given to secure the tranquillity of London. Messengers were sent to Flanders to recall the troops, and to the Hague and Hanover. On the 31st the queen was in a lethargic state—‘the breath is said to be in her nostrils, but that is all,’ writes Lewis, another of Swift's correspondents.
Everything was in readiness for the nomination of the regency, and for the proclamation of King George. But the queen still lingered. By her bedside lay her will, ready for signature; and the Bishop of London was in attendance, in case an opportunity should still offer for his ministrations. But the lethargy continued till, a few minutes after seven on the morning of Sunday, 1 Aug. 1714, Queen Anne died. (As to the circumstances of her last illness and death, see especially Ford's letters to Swift, ii. 74–80; and cf. Boyer, 714. A full narrative will be found in Wyon, ii. 522–8, and Miss Strickland has further particulars. Among them is the legend, which Carte is supposed to have had from Ormond, that the queen at the last made a sort of confession to the bishop, and that his words, on leaving the room, pointed to this confession having had reference to her brother. See also Original Papers, vi. 231, and a note to Burnet, vi. 231). The cause of the queen's death seems to have been suppressed gout, ending in erysipelas, which produced an abscess and fever. (After her death an inspection of the body was made by Dr. Thomas Lawrence, of which an account will be found in Treasury Papers, 1714–1719, 363). Her funeral took place at Westminster on 24 Aug., when she was interred in the vault on the south side of Henry VII's Chapel, which already contained the remains of her children and of her husband, and in which, according to the instructions given by her after his death (Private Correspondence, i. 415), room had been left ‘for her too.’ The vault was then closed up with brickwork (Coke, 482).
A few days after Queen Anne's death, Arbuthnot, who had been her physician since 1705, wrote to Swift that her days had been numbered in his imagination, ‘and could not exceed certain limits, but those were narrowed by the scene of contention among her servants. I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveller than death was to her’ (Swift's Letters, ii. 92). He adds that, owing to the queen's will having been left unsigned, Lady Masham and several of the queen's servants were left in deplorable case, and in another letter (ib. ii. 99) he says that ‘the queen's poor servants are like so many poor orphans exposed in the streets.’ There is certainly no feature more striking in the early administrative records of the new reign than the difficulty which was found in meeting the claims which had come over to it from that of Queen Anne (see Treasury Papers, 1714–1719, passim). The will also contained a bequest of 2,000l., to be distributed among poor people as her majesty's alms, the payment of which had likewise to be left to the decision of her successor (ib. 70).
Queen Anne's good qualities were not altogether unroyal. She loved her country and its institutions, and shrank from no exertion of which she was capable on their behalf. Her hatred of the factiousness which clogged the wheels of the state-machine was not mere lip-hatred, and to those in whose guidance she had come to trust she was, during by far the greater part of her reign, no fickle mistress but a steady friend. More than this, she was on occasion generous and self-sacrificing; neither wholly lost in the frivolities of life nor deaf to the call of its nobler duties; condescending, without want of dignity in bearing; and open-handed to the soldiers who fought her battles, and to the poor under the shadow of her throne. But the effect of these qualities was marred by the obstinacy of character which she had inherited from her ancestors, and which in her took the form of a tenacity of opinion often proof against arguments, threats, or entreaties alike, coupled with a certain dulness of intellect, incapable of distinguishing between the binding force of moral principles and the duty of having her own way. Probably the Duchess of Marlborough was near the truth when she wrote of her former mistress and friend that ‘in matters of ordinary moment her discourse had nothing of brightness or wit, and in weightier matters she never spoke but in a hurry, and had a
