“A partial world will listen to my lays,
While Anna reigns, and sets a female name
Unrivall’d in the glorious lists of fame.”—YOUNG.
SOME monarchs make their reign illustrious by their own individual
characters and famous deeds; other sovereigns are illustrious only
because their reigns have been important epochs in the annals of
history, irrespective of any merits of their own or any renowned
actions or policies on their part. Upon the importance of certain
political and religious aspects of the times of the “Good Queen Anne”
rest all her claims to be enrolled upon the lists of fame.
One kind and generous deed, however, must be credited to her own
good-natured heart. Without possessing any of the refined tastes and
mental capabilities of the Stuart royal line, of which she was the last
representative upon the English throne, she nevertheless inherited the
generous disposition of her race, and she has made her individual name
to be held in loving remembrance by her people, by the liberal fund
which she relinquished from her own entitled rights, in favor of the
poor clergy, whose petty livings, or rather “_starvings_,” had made
the lives of some of the most excellent and worthy in that profession
really objects of charitable commiseration. The fund set apart for the
relief of poor clergymen was called “Queen Anne’s Bounty”; and surely
this beautiful charity, which placed her name high upon the list of
royal foundresses in the Christian church, must needs cover many of her
glaring defects of mind and character beneath the shining mantle of
unselfish benevolence.
Another claim which makes Queen Anne personally illustrious is the fact
that she was the first monarch crowned as the sovereign of United Great
Britain. Scotland had been united with England under James I., but only
during the reign of Queen Anne was the union made complete; and in
October, 1707, the Parliament of Great Britain sat for the first time.
“To have first thought of the Union was William III.’s last title to
glory; to Queen Anne’s counsellors, in particular to Lord Somers,
belongs the honor of having accomplished the work and achieved
the enterprise, in spite of much violence and many obstacles. The
representation of Scotland in the United Parliament of Great Britain
was decided rather by its historical status as an independent kingdom
than by the proportion of its population; forty-five representatives
and sixteen Scottish peers were to sit in Parliament.”
Thus Queen Anne is known in history as the first sovereign of Great
Britain.
Anne Stuart was the second daughter of James, Duke of York, younger
brother of Charles II. of England. Her mother was Anne Hyde, the
daughter of the illustrious Lord Chancellor Clarendon. The Princess
Anne was born in 1664, and at the age of five years she was sent to
France on account of her delicate health, and while she was in that
country, in 1671, her mother died. In two years after, her father,
Duke James, was married to Maria of Modena. This duchess was a kind
and estimable lady; but as she was a Roman Catholic and as Duke James
had also embraced that faith, Charles II. ordered that the Princess
Anne and her elder sister, the Princess Mary, should be educated in
the Protestant religion, as his prospective successors after their
father. Their father never attempted to interfere with their Protestant
education, though they were allowed to reside in the same palace with
him.
In 1667 the Princess Mary was married to William, Prince of Orange; and
in 1679 her father was driven into exile, and the Princess Anne and her
step-mother were permitted by Charles II. to reside with the exiled
Duke of York for some months in Brussels.
Previously to this time the friendship between the Princess Anne
and Sarah Jennings had been formed, which in after-years exerted so
important an influence upon the destinies of both lives, and even
became a remarkable factor in determining the results of various
portentious political changes in Europe.
The elder sister of Sarah Jennings had been a maid of honor to the
first Duchess of York, the mother of Anne; and when that princess
was about nine years of age, Sarah, who was then twelve years old,
became the constant companion of the young princess. Even in childhood
Sarah Jennings manifested many of the strong characteristics of mind
and will which gave her the overpowering ascendency over the weak
and good-natured Anne which she maintained with such remarkable
influence after Anne became queen of England, and Sarah the Duchess of
Marlborough.
In 1678 Sarah Jennings married Colonel Churchill, afterwards Duke of
Marlborough, a gentleman attached to the service of the Duke of York;
and when Duke James was sent into exile the Churchills accompanied his
family, and thus Anne was still permitted to enjoy the presence of her
favorite friend.
When James was recalled to England, his daughter Anne and Sarah
Churchill returned to their native land; and upon the marriage of the
Princess Anne to Prince George of Denmark, in 1683, King Charles of
England settled upon his niece and her husband the sum of £20,000 a
year, and gave to her as a residence the Cockpit, a capacious building
which had formerly been the theatre of Whitehall Palace. Prince George
Louis of Hanover, afterwards George I. of England, had been a former
suitor for the hand of the Princess Anne, but on account of mutual
aversion, when the royal couple met for the first time, the match was
broken off, and the Prince of Denmark became the successful suitor. The
Prince of Denmark was poor and was possessed of little influence, but
he was a Protestant, and that was esteemed a sufficient merit in his
favor. He is described as a “fair, good-natured, heavy-looking young
man, who spoke bad French, loved good wine, and was rather awkward and
bashful in his manners. He succeeded, however, in pleasing the ‘gentle
Lady Anne’; and as they were both endued with good dispositions and
equal tempers, and neither of them very capable of discovering each
other’s deficiencies, this marriage proved extremely happy, and they
lived together in uninterrupted harmony”; though, like most royal
marriages, the princess and her future husband were allowed a very
short time to make each other’s acquaintance; for the marriage took
place nine days after the Prince of Denmark had been welcomed to London
by the king and queen of England and the parents of his future bride.
The nuptial ceremony was celebrated with great pomp, in the Royal
Chapel at Saint James’s, by the Bishop of London, at ten o’clock at
night.
“The bride was given away by her merry uncle, Charles II., who
delighted in being present at marriages and christenings. The chapel
was brilliantly lighted; and as the king, the queen, the Duke and
Duchess of York, and the leading nobility then in London were present,
the scene was magnificent, dazzling, and joyous. The citizens of
London also took their part in the nocturnal festivity. Throughout the
metropolis the bells rang all night, bonfires blazed at every door,
the conduits ran with wine, and showers of fireworks and other popular
sports and pastimes were provided for the amusement of the people.”
“The Lady Anne, although not a peerless beauty, possessed considerable
personal attractions. She was of middle size, but not so majestic
as her sister Mary; and her hair was a deep chestnut-brown; her
complexion ruddy. Her face was round, but rather comely than handsome;
her features were strong and regular; the only blemish in her face
was that of a defluxion, which had affected her eyes when young, and
left a contraction in her upper lids and given a cloudiness to her
countenance. Her bones were small, her hands beautiful. She had an
excellent ear for music, was a good performer on the guitar; and her
voice being strong, clear, flexible, and melodious, she took pleasure
in the practice of vocal harmony.”
When Anne’s establishment was appointed by her uncle, King Charles,
after her marriage, Sarah Churchill was permitted to become one of her
ladies.
The death of Charles II. in 1685, which placed her father upon the
English throne, as James II., caused very little immediate change in
the household of the Princess Anne. She became one of the central
figures at her father’s court, but possessed no particular influence,
and occupied herself with court gossip and card-playing, in the society
of her favorite, Lady Churchill, when not engaged with the cares of
her nursery. The Princess Anne was a good wife and devoted mother; and
although all her children but one died in early infancy, it was not
through neglect on her part. But Anne was poorly fitted by tastes or
nature to play the brilliant part in history which fortune afterwards
decreed to her lot. She was simply a good-natured, commonplace, and
very weak-minded woman, led by the stronger minds of her favorites,
and swayed by every political breeze around her. Her favorites, to her
credit be it said, however, were women, and not men admirers. So that
although her character was undeniably weak and petty, her life as a
wife and mother was blameless, and her heart was kindly. And yet such
were the circumstances which environed her after-years, that the name
of this simple-minded queen, whose narrow understanding might have been
compassed by the circumference of her thimble, and “who put on her
crown as she would have put on her cap”—the name of this unaspiring,
unqueenly woman, who would have been more at home as a fish-wife than
as a sovereign, was pronounced with awe from one end of Europe to the
other; and even the _Grand Monarque_ himself, “hitherto the insolent
arbiter of the world,” the magnificent, the matchlessly imperial _Louis
Quatorze_, trembled on his throne before Queen Anne and her victorious
general, the Duke of Marlborough.
The French general, the Duke of Vendôme, who replaced the defeated
Marshal Villeroi, wrote concerning Anne’s illustrious military leader:—
“Every one here is ready to take off his hat at the very mention of
Marlborough’s name.”
When, in after-years, the daring generalship of Marlborough had been
replaced by the daring ambition of Bolingbroke, whose marvellous and
impassioned eloquence caused even Mr. Pitt in later years to exclaim,
when asked what treasures he would especially like to snatch from out
of the shadows of the past, “I would choose one of the lost Decades of
Livy and a speech of Bolingbroke’s!”—no wonder that with such generals
and such orators, the name of Queen Anne was reflected to the world in
shining glory.
And what was the woman herself doing in the midst of such stirring
times and brilliant opportunities? Quarrelling with the haughty,
arrogant-willed Duchess of Marlborough; bickering over some contested
point of favoritism; or becoming a puppet in the hands of an ignorant
bedchamber-woman, who ruled the queen because this politic but petty
Mrs. Masham knew enough to hold her tongue when her royal mistress
desired to rave against her overbearing Duchess of Marlborough; and
because Mrs. Masham was smart enough to use her little stock of brains
in scheming to entrap the favor of the wily politicians who courted her
smiles because her ignorant but keen cunning had gained the friendship
of the queen.
Observing such a state of things, it is little wonder that the
quick-witted Addison flashed the scintillating sparks of his keen humor
all over the pages of his famous “Spectator papers,” which appeared at
that time.
Great Britain had been for some time divided into two strong parties,
known as the Whigs and Tories. The Tories held that the rights of kings
were divine, while the Whigs contended a king ruled for the good of his
subjects, and that by illegal or oppressive acts he forfeited his right
to reign, and could be justifiably dethroned by his people. The Tories
upheld the English Protestant church, but detested the Presbyterians
and Dissenters, while they feared the Roman Catholics; while the Whigs
maintained that the Reformed religion being the religion of the state,
a Roman Catholic could not lawfully be placed at its head. There was
also a third party, called the Jacobites, who were more violent Tories,
being partisans of the deposed James II., who, on account of his Roman
Catholic principles, which caused him to entertain certain designs
against the religion and liberty of the state, had been obliged to fly
from England upon the appearance of his Protestant son-in-law, William,
Prince of Orange, who had invaded England at the head of an army, and
been placed by the English people upon the throne in conjunction with
his wife Mary, the eldest daughter of James II., who had been educated
a Protestant.
Notwithstanding the benefit to the country arising from the accession
of the Protestant William and Mary to the throne in place of the
Catholic James II., the unfilial plottings and intrigues of the
princesses Mary and Anne, abetted by their husbands, William, Prince
of Orange, and George, Duke of Denmark, against the indulgent and
kind-hearted James II., their father, was outrageous and dastardly.
Looking at the kingdom, it was well that James II. was dethroned, and
that his Catholic son, called the “Pretender,” the half-brother of Mary
and Anne, was forever debarred from gaining his ancestral rights of
succession; but looking at the side of the treatment which King James
received at the hands of his daughters, upon whom he had lavished every
indulgent kindness, the treacherous scheming, which in the course of
events resulted in vast benefits to England and to Europe, have at the
same time forever covered the names of the children of James II. with
the stigma of most contemptible and unfeeling and wicked ingratitude.
James II. having been deposed, William and Mary of Orange ascended the
throne of England, and William is to be commended for several wise
measures, and England was much the gainer by her change of masters;
but his usurpation, which is called in history the “Revolution,” is
somewhat to be questioned upon the grounds of justice. That it was
highly beneficial no Protestant can for a moment doubt; that the change
of government caused by the celebrated act of Parliament called the
“Bill of Rights,” which raised William and Mary to the throne, to be
succeeded by the Princess Anne, and in case Anne died without heirs,
that the right should then descend to the Electress of Hanover, which
succession afterwards brought in the Protestant Georges of Hanover in
place of the Catholic House of Stuarts,—that a revolution which caused
this change of government was beneficial to England and the world, is
not to be underestimated. This extraordinary but bloodless revolution
occurred in 1688, just one hundred years before the bloody and terrible
French Revolution of 1789. But leaving political questions and turning
to the personal history of the Princess Anne, we find her engaged in an
ignoble squabble with her sister, the Queen Mary, over the allowance
which shall be allotted to the maintenance of the household of the
Princess Anne. The princess had schemed with her sister Mary and the
Prince of Orange to dethrone their father; and now that Mary is queen,
Anne finds her allowance given by her indulgent father cut off, and in
being treacherous to her father she has only worsted her own condition.
So disgraceful was this sisterly quarrel, augmented by the haughty Lady
Churchill (now the Countess of Marlborough), who fomented the disputes
between the sisters, that at last the king and queen were forced to
make a compromise with Anne, and allow the princess £50,000 a year.
As Lord and Lady Marlborough were known to be enthusiastic partisans
of Anne, they fell under the displeasure of King William and Queen
Mary, who demanded that Anne should banish them from her household,
and the Earl of Marlborough was deprived of his offices. But this
opposition only increased the power of Lord and Lady Marlborough over
the princess, and she strenuously refused to part with her overbearing
favorite.
The lord chamberlain having been sent to Lady Marlborough with the
royal order to remove from Whitehall, Anne immediately left Whitehall
herself, declaring that she “would live on bread and water, between
four walls, with her dear Mrs. Freeman, rather than that her friend
should ever be separated from her faithful Mrs. Morley.” These
assumed names of Freeman and Morley had been chosen by the Princess
Anne and Lady Marlborough that they might converse and write to each
other with greater freedom from conventional restraints; and their
respective husbands were also called by them, the Lord Marlborough,
Mr. Freeman, and the Duke of Denmark, Mr. Morley; and many were the
political intrigues, as well as friendly secrets, which they disclosed
to each other under these false names. These confidential letters
became a powerful weapon in the hands of the proud Lady Marlborough
in after-years, for when she found her influence over Queen Anne was
waning, and another was usurping her place as royal favorite, the
arrogant Lady Marlborough threatened to publish these secret epistles,
which would reveal all of Anne’s treachery against her father and
various other political intrigues. The fear of this exposure made Anne
a puppet in the hands of the self-willed but brilliant duchess long
after Anne’s intense liking had turned to intense detestation.
The death of Queen Mary in 1694 somewhat changed Anne’s position. When
Anne heard of her sister’s dangerous illness, she sent a request that
she might be allowed to come and see her; but their quarrels had never
been forgotten, and though Mary refused to see Anne, she sent a message
of forgiveness.
Anne now succeeded in becoming reconciled to King William, and she
received the greater part of her sister’s jewels, in token of his
friendliness.
Of many children Anne had only one son remaining. He was a very bright
and interesting boy of eleven years of age. He had been treated with
great kindness by King William and Queen Mary, even throughout the
disgraceful family quarrels. But this beautiful boy, around whom so
many fond hopes clustered, died suddenly with scarlet fever in 1700,
having just celebrated his eleventh birthday. The loss of this only
child, the last of six, was a terrible blow to the fond heart of the
Princess Anne. But she was soon called from private griefs to public
duties.
In 1702 King William died, and Anne was immediately proclaimed queen.
“In the commencement of the reign of Anne, the Earl of Marlborough was
a Tory; but his wife became a Whig, and, as a natural consequence,
Marlborough was soon drawn over to that party. Admiral Churchill, his
brother, was a violent Tory; Lord Sunderland, his son-in-law, was a
violent Whig; Lady Tyrconnel, the sister of Lady Marlborough, was an
enthusiastic Jacobite, and was at this time one of the court of the
exiled king. This one instance will give some idea of the manner in
which not only the nation but private families were divided by the
spirit of faction.
“A continued series of disputes and intrigues agitated the country;
and among several minor events was the trial of Dr. Sacheverel for
preaching a seditious sermon, a circumstance unimportant in itself, but
which was made to serve the purposes of a faction, and to inflame the
populace almost to frenzy. Never, perhaps, did party spirit rage in a
manner at once so disgraceful, so vicious, and so ludicrous. It was
not the strife of principles; it was not, like the civil wars of the
preceding century, a grand struggle between liberty and despotism,—it
was a vile spirit of faction, which had filled the nation with spleen
and rancor, and extinguished the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and
humanity; which had affected at once the morals and the common sense of
the people; and even interfered with the administration of justice.
“The women, instead of tempering the animosities of the time, blew up
the flame of discord. Addison, in some of the most elegant papers of
the ‘Spectator,’ attempted to mitigate this evil spirit. He attacked
the men with grave humor and graver argument; he endeavored to bring
back the women to the decorum and reserve of their sex by the most
exquisite raillery, that delicate mixture of satire and compliment in
which he excelled; he reminded these petticoat politicians and viragoes
of the tea-table that party spirit was in its nature a male vice, made
up of many angry passions, which were altogether repugnant to the
softness, modesty, and other endearing qualities proper to their sex.
“He assured them there was nothing so injurious to a pretty face
as party zeal; that he had never known a party woman who kept her
beauty for a twelve-month; and he conjured them, as they valued their
complexions, to abstain from all disputes of this nature. Every one
will recollect the admirable description of the Whig ladies and the
Tory ladies drawn up in battle array at the opera, and _patched_, by
way of distinction, on opposite sides of the face; the perplexity of
the Whig beauty, who had a mole on the Tory side of her forehead, which
exposed her to the imputation of having gone over to the enemy; and the
despair of the Tory partisan, whom an unlucky pimple had reduced to the
necessity of applying a patch to the wrong side of her face.
“But it was all in vain; a transient smile might have been excited at
such palpable absurdity; some partial good was perhaps effected; but
fashion and faction were far too strong to be acted upon by wit, or
argument, or eloquence, or satire. At a time when a low-bred, artful,
ignorant bedchamber-woman, with no more sense than would have sufficed
to smooth a crumpled ribbon or comb a lapdog, possessed supreme power,
and Swift, Arbuthnot, Harley, and Bolingbroke were dancing attendance
in her anteroom, it was in vain to preach to women the forbearance and
reserve proper to their sex, to point out the confined sphere of their
duties, or to remind them of the advice of Pericles to the Athenian
women, ‘not to make themselves talked of one way or another.’ Mrs.
Masham ruled the queen, but she was herself the contemptible tool of a
set of designing men. In the end she and her tutor Harley triumphed;
the Tories prevailed; the Whigs were all turned out; Marlborough was
not only disgraced at court, but, by a sudden turn of feeling produced
in the popular mind by the calumnies and contrivance of his enemies,
he became an object of contempt and hatred; and he whose victories had
been hailed with such national pride and exultation, found himself
‘baited with the rabble’s curse.’ This might have been contemned, for
mere popular clamor dies away, and leaves no trace on the dispassionate
page of history; but when Swift, the political gladiator of that time,
collected all his terrible powers of invective and satire, and sarcasm,
and fell upon the devoted general, branding, stabbing, and slashing
at every stroke, he left the duke standing like a column scathed by
the thunderbolt, and the lapse of a century has hardly enabled us to
distinguish the truth from falsehood of his rancorous libels.”
The brilliant victories of the Duke of Marlborough, in alliance
with the German princes under Prince Eugene, had filled all Europe
with wonder. In 1704, the victory of Blenheim was achieved, and
notwithstanding Marshal Villars’ heroism at the battle of Malplaquet,
in 1709, the victory was gained by Marlborough and Prince Eugene,
though so great was the loss of the allies, that Villars wrote to Louis
XIV.: “If God permits us to lose such another battle, your Majesty can
count on your enemies being destroyed.”
Marlborough had joined the Whigs because they were in favor of war; but
now the Tories were gaining the ascendency in England; and with their
coming into power peace was declared, and the Marlboroughs were deposed
from their high places.
Wearied of the ill-temper of the haughty duchess, which broke out in
most violent language even in the presence of the queen, Anne at last
determined to rid herself of her overbearing companion, whose strong
will had for so long a time awed her into submission; while the
necessary military generalship of the illustrious duke had long kept
the queen from daring to dismiss the insolent duchess, who at length
forgot even her politic behavior in her fits of anger, and endeavored
to scold back the favor of the queen which had been lost to her by
her own impolitic arrogance, and through the wily cunning of her own
relation, Mrs. Masham, whom she had herself recommended to the queen
for the position of bedchamber-woman, never imagining that this poor
ignorant relative would usurp her own place as royal favorite.
Before Anne had ascended the throne, a little incident occurred which
eventually led to the downfall of the duchess. The Princess Anne was
one day alone in her private drawing-room at St. James. The Duchess of
Marlborough entered the anteroom where the princess’ waiting-woman,
afterwards Mrs. Masham, was in attendance. Observing a pair of gloves
upon the table, the duchess, thinking they were her own, drew them upon
her hands. Whereupon the attendant remarked that the gloves belonged
to the princess, who had sent her to get them, as her mistress was
about to enter her carriage. “What! have I touched anything that has
been upon the hands of that odious woman!” exclaimed the duchess in a
fury of ill-temper; and tearing them from her fingers she threw them
on the floor and retired, little thinking that the insulting words
had been overheard by the princess in the adjoining room. From that
moment the ultimate disgrace of the imperious duchess was determined
upon, although, owing to her husband’s victories and her own threats of
publishing the confidential letters of her “loving Mrs. Morley,” her
downfall was long delayed.
Queen Anne had not ceased to be a loving wife, when she became a
sovereign; and the death of her husband in 1708 was a terrible blow
to her. As the queen sat by her dead, though she was the monarch of a
vast realm, she was the slave of court etiquette; and as the Duchess
of Marlborough still held her office as mistress of the robes, this
tyrannical etiquette required that the hated duchess should invade
even the sanctuary of Anne’s beloved dead, and lead the queen from the
funereal chamber.
But the days of the ascendency of the brilliant but terrible virago
were nearly numbered. In 1710, the Whig ministry was deposed, and the
Tories came into power.
“Anne could not cope with her discarded favorite in eloquence and
violence, but she could resist and dissemble; above all, she could
hold her tongue.” Influenced by the Tories, who gained the ear of
the queen through the connivance of Mrs. Masham, it was secretly
arranged that the Whig ministry should be forced to retire; that the
Marlboroughs should be disgraced, and that peace should be negotiated
with Louis XIV. The proud duchess had not yet been publicly informed
of her impending downfall, but rumors had reached her of the queen’s
animosity. Hastening to Kensington, she forced herself into the
presence of the queen, and demanded with the air of a sovereign rather
than a subject, of what she was accused. The queen, aware that her
only weapon against the sarcastic and voluble tongue of the duchess
was silence, remarked with cutting composure: “I shall make no answer
to anything you say.” This was more than the enraged duchess could
bear, and she launched forth into such a terrible tongue-lashing of
violent vituperation, that the incensed queen turned to leave the room;
whereupon the duchess exclaimed, “I am confident you will suffer in
this world or the next for so much inhumanity.”
“That is my business,” retorted the queen, as she lifted the portière
and retired, leaving the discomfited duchess to weep in a fury of rage
and humiliation.
They never met again. When the Duke of Marlborough returned from his
campaign, not all his condescension in begging on his knees that the
golden key,—his wife’s badge of office,—might be retained by her for
a few weeks sufficed to appease the queen. “I will have it in two
days,” exclaimed the angry Anne; and upon reporting his failure to
his indignant wife, she also hurled upon his poor head her invectives
of wrath, and throwing the golden keys upon the floor, the haughty
virago, who had lost all power over her queen, but still maintained
her ascendency in her husband’s heart in spite of all her outbursts of
temper, sullenly retired, leaving her humiliated spouse to pick up her
tardily relinquished badge of office and meekly bear it back in shame
and sorrow to her offended sovereign. Hard fate for a man to fall into
the snare of playing the go-between of two angry women, especially when
one is his wife and the other his sovereign.
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough afterwards went abroad, and their
history is no longer connected with that of Queen Anne.
The famous peace of Utrecht was signed in 1713. The remainder of Queen
Anne’s reign was unmomentous. After her experience with the Duchess of
Marlborough she determined to assert her own will, but she deceived
no one but herself, as she was now alternately swayed by her two
favorites, the Duchess of Somerset, who was appointed mistress of the
robes, and Lady Masham, whom she had raised to a title and made the
keeper of the privy purse. Swift says of Anne at this time:—
“Often, out of fear of being imposed upon by an over-caution, she
would impose upon herself; she took a delight in refusing those who
were thought to have the greatest power with her, even in the most
reasonable things, and such as were necessary for her service; nor
would let them be done till she fell into the humor of it herself.”
In her best days, Anne was merely a dull, uninformed woman, without the
slightest literary tastes, and yet her reign is called the “Augustan
Age of Anne,” and the “wits of Queen Anne’s time” are held only second
to the “poets of the Elizabethan age.” No one would probably have been
more surprised than Anne herself to have been thus classed with the
glorious names of literary fame, for she never read, and was hardly
cognizant of the existence of the brilliant minds which gave her
reign its brightest lustre. Sir Isaac Newton, Pope, Dryden, Addison,
Steele, Swift, De Foe, Gay, Prior, Arbuthnot, Congreve, Young, Parnell,
Granville, and Bishop Atterbury, were the most celebrated among the
literary lights in her time.