ANNIVERSARIES

1 AUGUST 1714

Queen Anne suffers a fatal stroke

The monarch’s death marks the end of the House of Stuart

By the summer of 1714, Queen Anne was in dreadful health. She was only 49 but seemed older, swollen by dropsy and half-crippled by gout. To cap it all, she took political stresses personally – and this was a summer of intense political turmoil.

In recent years Anne had relied heavily on Robert Harley, who is sometimes described as the first prime minister in all but name. But their relations had long since broken down, and in July she told the cabinet that he had come to work drunk and late, and treated her with “ill manner, indecency and disrespect”. On 27 July she sacked him as Lord Treasurer,