cerning the Danger of the Protestant
Succession." Such an author, writing comparatively soon after the
events, and in a book dedicated to the reigning king, was not likely to
do any conscious injustice to the memory of Queen Anne, and was
especially likely to take a fair view of the influence which her
personal inclinations were calculated to have on the succession. Dr.
Somerville declares with great justice that "mildness, timidity, and
anxiety were constitutional ingredients in the temper" of Queen Anne.
This very timidity, this very anxiety, {14} appears, according to Dr.
Somerville's judgment, to have worked favorably for the Hanoverian
succession. [Sidenote: 1714--James the Third] The Queen herself, by
sentiment, and by what may be called a sort of superstition, leaned
much towards the Stuarts. "The loss," says Dr. Somerville, "of all her
children bore the aspect of an angry Providence adjusting punishment to
the nature and quality of her offence." Her offence, of course, was
the part she had taken in helping to dethrone her father. "Wounded in
spirit, and prone to superstition, she naturally thought of the
restitution of the crown to her brother as the only atonement she could
make to the memory of her injured father." This feeling might have
ripened into action with her but for that constitutional timidity and
anxiety of which Somerville speaks. There would undoubtedly have been
dangers, obvious to even the bravest or the most reckless, in an
attempt just then to alter the succession; but Anne saw those dangers
"in the most terrific form, and recoiled with horror from the sight."
Moreover, she had a constitutional objection, as strong as that of
Queen Elizabeth herself, to the presence of an intended successor near
her throne. "She trembled," says Somerville, "at the idea of the
presence of a successor, whoever he might be; and the residence of her
own brother in England was not less dreadful to her than that of the
electoral prince." But it is probable that had she lived longer she
would have found herself constrained to put up with the presence either
of one claimant or the other. Her ministers, whoever they might be,
would surely have seen the imperative necessity of bringing over to
England the man whom the Queen and they had determined to present to
the English people as the destined heir of the throne. In such an
event as that, and most assuredly if men like Bolingbroke had been in
power, it may