Queen Anne Quotes

“Sitting still all summer . . . was the height of my ambition.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“I am apt to think she was too artful to rail at me, but rather pretended to have a kindness for me, and like Iago gave, as she saw occasion, wounds in the dark.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Whatever changes there are in the world I hope you will never forsake me and I shall be happy.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“I hope in the next world I shall be at ease, but in this I find I must not expect it long together.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“We are torn to pieces by parties and animosities. For my part I see no end to them.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“People may say . . . that all is made up and well again, but such breaches between great people are seldom or never so.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“From now on Anne saw herself as someone indelibly marked by suffering. Her letters to Sarah often ended with an allusion to her tragic history of bereavement, for she took to signing them "your poor unfortunate faithful Morley.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“The princess reiterated to Sarah that "her faithful Morley . . . will never part with you till she is fast locked in her coffin.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Anne declared that if Sarah abandoned her, "I swear to you I would shut myself up and never see a creature.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of all the world without you.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“To his distress, the Queen suddenly "burst into a passion of weeping and said it was plain [she] was to be miserable as long as [she] lived, whatever [she] did.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Passing on information to a friend "was no breach of promise of secrecy . . . because it was no more than telling it to oneself.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“I believe nobody was ever so used by a friend as I have been by her ever since coming to the Crown.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Such vows . . . strike one with a sort of horror at what happened afterwards.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“So ended . . . a royal friendship which once could not be contained within the common bounds of love.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“I go out an honest man, but you stay in a rogue.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“The two groupings soon acquired names, originally intended as insults. Those hostile to the Duke of York were known as “Whigs,” short for “Whiggamore,” a term formerly applied to extremist Presbyterian rebels in Scotland. Their more traditionalist opponents were dubbed “Tories,” after the lawless Catholic bandits who rampaged in Ireland.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Fear of Popery now reached such a peak that a sizeable section of the political nation was no longer prepared to tolerate the prospect of a Catholic king. In January 1679 Charles II dissolved Parliament, but a new one was summoned for the spring and it was clear that when it met, the King would face calls to disinherit his brother. The country became so polarised that political parties emerged, with allegiances divided between those who favoured excluding James from the throne, and those who wished to preserve intact the hereditary succession. The two groupings soon acquired names, originally intended as insults. Those hostile to the Duke of York were known as “Whigs”, short for “Whiggamore”, a term formerly applied to extremist Presbyterian rebels in Scotland. Their more traditionalist opponents were dubbed “Torries”, after the lawless Catholic bandits whom rampaged in Ireland. These labels would outlast the Exclusion Crisis, and bitter divisions along those lines would become so entrenched a feature of political life that when Anne came to the throne, the two parties became her declared “bugbears”.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“The fact is, just as Anne’s contributions towards the reign’s triumphs should not be overlooked, so she cannot be absolved from her part in less praiseworthy events. The idea that Anne was hopelessly weak and ineffectual, and constantly imposed on by others does not stand up to scrutiny.”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion

“Many people shared the view expressed by the diarist Samuel Pepys ‘that he that doth get a wench with child and marries her afterward, it is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it upon his head’.2”
― Anne Somerset, Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion