ntention of granting to the church the crown revenues,
amounting to about 16,000 pounds or 17,000 pounds a year, from tenths
and first-fruits (paid originally by the clergy to the pope, but
appropriated by the crown in 1534), for the increase of poor livings;
her gift, under the name of "Queen Anne's Bounty," still remaining as a
testimony of her piety. This devotion to the church, the strongest of
all motives in Anne's conduct, dictated her hesitating attitude towards
the two great parties in the state. The Tories had for this reason her
personal preference, while the Whigs, who included her powerful
favourites the Marlboroughs, identified their interests with the war and
its glorious successes, the queen slowly and unwillingly, but
inevitably, gravitating towards the latter.

In December, the archduke Charles visited Anne at Windsor and was
welcomed as the king of Spain. In 1704 Anne acquiesced in the
resignation of Lord Nottingham, the leader of the high Tory party. In
the same year the great victory of Blenheim further consolidated the
power of the Whigs and increased the influence of Marlborough, upon whom
Anne now conferred the manor of Woodstock. Nevertheless, she declared in
November to the duchess that whenever things leaned towards the Whigs,
"I shall think the church is beginning to be in danger." Next year she
supported the election of the Whig speaker, John Smith, but long
resisted the influence and claims of the _Junto_, as the Whig leaders,
Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland, were named. In October
she was obliged to appoint Cowper, a Whig, lord chancellor, with all the
ecclesiastical patronage belonging to the office. Marlborough's
successive victories, and especially the factious conduct of the Tories,
who in November 1705 moved in parliament that the electress Sophia
should be invited to England, drove Anne farther to the side of the
Whigs. But she opposed for some time the inclusion in the government of
Sunderland, whom she especially disliked, only consenting at
Marlborough's intercession in December 1706, when various other offices
and rewards were bestowed upon Whigs, and Nottingham with other Tories
was removed from the council. She yielded, after a struggle, also to the
appointment of Whigs to bishoprics, the most mortifying submission of
all. In 1708 she was forced to dismiss Harley, who, with the aid of Mrs
Masham, had been intriguing against the government and projecting the
creat