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William III was on the throne, you may remember his wife Mary died in 1694, and he had no children and his natural successor Anne, the sister of his wife Mary, had no living children either despite getting pregnant 17 times. Parliament didn't want another long battle of who might succeed Anne so, in 1701, the Act of Settlement was passed. It stated that if Anne became Queen and died childless then the succession would pass to the heirs of James I’s daughter who, if you remember, had married a Prince of Hanover. By the way if you have started our history of England with this section, the “if you remember” bits won't mean much which is why we think it a good idea to learn history from the beginning, in order. This is known as chronologically (sorry, long word) which simply means in the order things happened. Back to the Act of Settlement and it also said, once again, that no Catholic, or person married to a Catholic, could sit on the throne. This meant that the actual heir to the throne would be the Empress Sophia of Hanover.

On the 8 March 1702 William died. Two weeks before he had been thrown from his horse when it tripped down a molehill in Hyde Park, London and now he was dead. He had broken his collarbone in the fall but the cause of his death was said to be pneumonia. Anne now became Queen of England.

Almost as soon as Anne came to the throne England got involved in a war. It was called the War of Spanish Succession but was really all about power in Europe. It lasted till 1713 and, as all the fighting was overseas, the battles do not concern us. However I should mention that one of the great British commanders was a man called John Churchill who was also the Duke of Marlborough. His victories at Blenheim (1704), Ramillies (1706), Oudenarde (1708), and Malplaquet (1709) made him famous.

His wife, Sarah, who was once a friend of Queen Anne but fell out with her meant that, after achieving so much success for Anne’s government, Churchill went into exile until Anne’s death. One of his descendants was, in case you haven’t guessed by the name, Winston Churchill, of whom we will read much later and who may encourage all of you who don’t appear to be doing so well at school to press on.

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