40. Bye, bye Anne. Hello, George. And bye, bye James yet again

In the dying days of her reign, we see Queen Anne refusing royal assent to a bill, a historic moment only because it was the last time ever that a British monarch blocked a bill passed by both Houses of Parliament from becoming law (but she did do it on the advice of her ministers...)

We also see her engineering herself a Tory government, backing her High Church Anglican views. Not for long though. When she died and George I took over, he lined up with the Whigs, especially on the terms of the Peace of Utrecht at the end of the War of Spanish Succession, which he thought sold Britain short. So he in turn engineered a Whig majority and many Tories, realising they were in for a bad time, fled abroad. Where some of them went over to the side of the Stuart claimant to the throne, James Edward.

We now get him having another go at conquering Britain. Not just once. Not even twice. But three times in under fifteen years. What a bore they were, the Stuarts, weren't they? They just couldn't learn to go away. And as we know from our own experience, a head of state who won't go through the door when he's shown it, is a real pain.

Illustration: Prince James Francis Edward Stuart. Studio of Alexis Simon Belle, circa 1712
National Portrait Gallery 348

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License