Quotes from Anne Somerset

Sitting still all summer . . . was the height of my ambition.

Whatever changes there are in the world I hope you will never forsake me and I shall be happy.

I hope in the next world I shall be at ease, but in this I find I must not expect it long together.

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.

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.

We are torn to pieces by parties and animosities. For my part I see no end to them.

People may say . . . that all is made up and well again, but such breaches between great people are seldom or never so.

Such vows . . . strike one with a sort of horror at what happened afterwards.

Passing on information to a friend was no breach of promise of secrecy . . . because it was no more than telling it to oneself.

I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of all the world without you.

Anne declared that if Sarah abandoned her, I swear to you I would shut myself up and never see a creature.

The princess reiterated to Sarah that her faithful Morley . . . will never part with you till she is fast locked in her coffin.

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.

I believe nobody was ever so used by a friend as I have been by her ever since coming to the Crown.

So ended . . . a royal friendship which once could not be contained within the common bounds of love.

I go out an honest man, but you stay in a rogue.

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.

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

The financial squeeze at Court was greeted with shrill cries by those on the upper reaches of society who saw it as the primary duty of the Crown to provide them with a comfortable livelihood.

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.