CHAPTER XXXIX
ANNE. A DEAD QUEEN
Queen Anne was considered rather a remarkable woman and hence was usually referred to as Great Anna, or Annus Mirabilis. Besides being dead she was extremely kind-hearted and had a very soothing Act passed called the Occasional Conformity Act which said that people only had to conform with it occasionally: this pleasant trait in her character was called Queen Anne’s Bounty. (The Occasional Conformity Act was the only Act of its kind in History, until the Speed limit was invented.)
The Queen had many favourites (all women), the most memorable of whom were Sarah Jenkins and Mrs. Smashems, who were the first Wig and the first Tory. Sarah Jenkins was really the wife of the Duke of Marlborough, the famous General, inventor of the Ramillies Whig, of which Sarah wore the first example.
SUCCESSION OF WARS
All through the XVIIIth Century there was a Succession of Wars, and in Queen Anne’s reign these were called the Spanish Succession (or Austrian Succession) because of The Infanta (or The Mariatheresa); they were fought mainly on account of the French King L/XIV (le grand Monomarque) saying there were no more Pyrenese, thus infuriating the Infanta who was one herself.
Probably the Wars could never have been fought properly but for the genius of Marlborough, who could always remember which side the Bavarians and the Elector Pantomime of the Rhine were supposed to be on: this unique talent enabled him to defeat his enemies in fierce battles long before they could discover which side he himself was on. Marlborough, however, was a miser in politics and made everyone pay to go into his party; he was therefore despised as a turnstyle.
In this reign also occurred the memorable Port Wine Treaty with Portugal, directed against Decanters (as the Non-Conformists were now called), as well as a very clever Act called the Schism Act which said that everybody’s religion was to be quite different from everybody else’s. Meanwhile the Whigs being the first to realize that the Queen had been dead all the time chose George I as King.