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Biography
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Queen Anne was firmly on the Protestant side of the Stuart family, despite the fact that her father was the openly Catholic James II. It was therefore no barrier to her becoming Queen when her sister Mary and her husband William died. The most significant constitutional development during her reign was the passing of the 1707 Act of Union. This joining together of her two kingdoms of Scotland and England could probably have only occurred under a Stuart monarch - of which she was to become the last! Queen Anne was pregnant at least seventeen times over as many years, and had miscarried or given birth to stillborn children at least twelve times. Of her five liveborn children, four died before reaching the age of two. The only surviving child died at the age of eleven in 1700. Due to her great misfortune in childbirth, an alternative succession line was debated and determined by Parliament. They agreed on inviting the elector to Hanover to provide the next line as they were descended from James I. There were plenty of other Catholic Stuarts who fulfilled all the criteria except for the fact that Catholics had been specifically barred from inheriting the Crown in 1689. Distant relations in Hanover were to take over from her when she died in 1714.
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