1702–1714
Queen Anne and the 1707 Act of Union
After William III and Mary II, who had ruled together since the Glorious Revolution, the crown passed to Mary's younger sister, Queen Anne. There has only ever been one Queen Anne, so she has no number after her name.
Anne had no children who survived, so nobody knew who would wear the crowns of England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland after her. So in 1707 England and Scotland agreed to the Act of Union, called the Treaty of Union in Scotland. It created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Scotland stopped being an independent country. But it held on to its own legal system, its own education system and its Presbyterian Church. Even today, Scotland's law and schools are different from England's.
Anne's own story explains the worry. She was pregnant at least 17 times, but none of her children outlived her, and her only child to survive infancy, William, Duke of Gloucester, died in 1700 at the age of 11. So Parliament passed a law in advance naming her distant Protestant relatives, the House of Hanover in Germany, as next in line.
Money had a lot to do with Scotland agreeing to the union, too. In the 1690s Scotland put huge sums into a plan to start a colony at Darien in Central America; it failed completely and lost a large share of the nation's wealth. In the treaty, England agreed to pay Scotland compensation.
Queen Anne died in 1714, and with her the Stuart period came to an end. Parliament chose a German to be the next king, and a new figure appeared in British politics: the Prime Minister.
Quiz
What did the Act of Union of 1707 create?
In 1707 England and Scotland joined to form the Kingdom of Great Britain. B only came in 1801, when Ireland joined. C is the republic set up after Charles I was executed in 1649. D was set up much earlier, in the Scottish Reformation of 1560.
Key facts
| 1603 James VI & I | James VI of Scotland became James I of England; Scotland stayed a separate country |
|---|---|
| King James Version | The King James (Authorised) Version of the Bible: not the first English Bible, but still in use |
| 1605 Gunpowder Plot | Catholics tried to blow up the king and failed; Bonfire Night on 5 November |
| Plantations | English and Scottish Protestants settled in Ulster on land taken from Catholic landholders |
| Divine Right of Kings | James I and Charles I believed kings were appointed by God and did not need Parliament's approval |
| 1642 Civil War | Cavaliers for the king, Roundheads for Parliament; Marston Moor and Naseby |
| 1649 Commonwealth | Charles I was executed and England became a republic |
| Lord Protector | Cromwell's title; he was never king, and ruled until 1658 |
| 1660 Restoration | Charles II came back from the Netherlands to be king |
| 1665 / 1666 | The Great Plague / the Great Fire of London; Wren's new St Paul's; Pepys's diary |
| 1679 Habeas Corpus | No unlawful imprisonment; everyone held has the right to a court hearing |
| Royal Society | The oldest surviving scientific society; Halley and Newton |
| Isaac Newton | Born in Lincolnshire; gravity; white light contains all the colours of the rainbow |
| 1688 Glorious Revolution | The Catholic James II was replaced by the Protestants William III and Mary II, with no fighting in England |
| 1689 Bill of Rights | The monarch must be a Protestant; a new Parliament at least every 3 years; the start of constitutional monarchy |
| 1690 Boyne | William beat James II in Ireland; James's supporters were called Jacobites |
| Whigs and Tories | The beginning of party politics |
| 1695 Free press | Newspapers no longer needed a government licence |
| 1656 / 1680–1720 | Jewish people come back to London / Huguenots, French Protestants, come to Britain |
| 1707 Act of Union | The Kingdom of Great Britain; Scotland kept its own law, education and Presbyterian Church |