The Last Queen of England Read Online Free PDF

was working on was likely to have been with him at Rules and his killer clearly knew how important it was.
    “And what about Queen Anne?” Tayte said.   “You told me she’d been the hot topic with Marcus all month.   How might she fit in?”
    Jean shook her head while she thought about it.   “I really don’t know,” she said.   “Anne succeeded William III in 1702 and reigned until 1714 when the Hanovers came to the throne.   Since the Act of Union between England and Scotland was passed during Anne’s reign, she became the first monarch of Great Britain and the last queen of England.   Further Jacobite risings happened soon after she died.   One in 1715 and another in 1745.   Marcus wasn’t so much interested in the Bonny Prince as with Jacobitism in general.   It’s all basic history stuff.”
    Tayte considered what he knew about the Jacobite movement, most of which he’d gleaned from movies about Bonnie Prince Charlie and books by authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson.   He quickly concluded that he didn’t know much at all and decided to let the professional bring him up to date.
    “How about a little history 101?” he said.   “What was their beef?”
    Jean sipped her wine and settled back with the glass.   “It began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution, when Anne’s father, James II, fled England and thus abdicated from the throne.   The situation was later aggravated by the 1701 Act of Settlement, passed under William III’s reign just before he died and Anne came to the throne.   She and her sister Mary - although daughters of James II who was a devout catholic - were equally devout converts to the Church of England.   The Act stipulated that only those of the Church of England faith were eligible for succession to the throne.”
    “And that placed the Hanovers next in line?”
    “That’s right.   It ensured that in the event of Anne dying without issue - which she did - succession would fall to the Electress Sophia of Hanover, rather than to James II’s son, who was also called James and was later known as the Old Pretender.   Anyway, Sophia died a few weeks before Anne, so the title fell to her son George, who in 1714 was crowned King George I.   The Act still stands today.”
    Tayte scoffed.   “I thought all your British kings and queens came to power by right of succession through the divinity of God, not man.”
    “And there’s your beef as you put it.   The Jacobites essentially stood for what was arguably right - maintaining the line of kings through the direct Stuart bloodline and James II.   When Anne died, being the last of the Stuart monarchs, the uprisings against the Hanovers gained momentum in an attempt to restore the bloodline.”
    “Because the Hanovers only came to power by virtue of their faith?”
    “More or less.   You see, the Electress Sophia of Hanover was - now let me get this right.   She was Queen Anne’s first cousin once removed, descended from the Stuart line through James I’s daughter, Elizabeth.   George I was Anne’s second cousin and something like fiftieth in the line of succession.”
    “Fiftieth?”
    Jean nodded with enthusiasm.   “It’s an unprecedented figure.”
    “And all because of the Act of Settlement?” Tayte said, letting Jean know that he was paying attention.
    “Precisely.   You could argue that it changed all the rules, interfering with the intended line of kings to suit man’s purpose.   Although the bloodline has survived, if to a lesser extent.   The Windsor ancestry, or I should say the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha ancestry as it was before it was changed to something that sounded more British, still runs all the way back to Alfred the Great.”
    “But theirs is not the true, direct bloodline?”
    “Not if you take religion out of the equation.   If the Act of Settlement hadn’t been passed, we’d have an entirely different monarchy.   They were very political times.”
    “Sounds like a