Anne of Denmark

Anne of Denmark
Anne of Denmark
Queen of Scotland, England, and Ireland
Tenure20 August 1589 – 2 March 1619
Coronation17 May 1590
Born12 December 1574
Skanderborg, Denmark
Died2 March 1619(1619-03-02) (aged 44)
Hampton Court Palace
Burial
Spouse
(m. 1589)
Issue
HouseHouse of Stuart
House of Oldenburg
FatherFrederick II of Denmark
MotherSophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow

Anne of Denmark (12 December 1574 – 2 March 1619) was queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland. She was the wife of King James VI and I.[1]

Anne, the second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, married James in 1589 when she was 15 years old. She gave birth to seven children but only three lived to become adults. One of these children was the future Charles I. She often used Scottish politics when she fought with James about her son, Prince Henry. She also used them in her arguments about his treatment of her friend Beatrix Ruthven. Anne seems to have loved James at first. However, they later became cooler towards one another and lived separately.[2] However, though they both had respect and even some love for one another.[2]

In England, Anne was more interested in art than politics. She built a beautiful and culturally rich court of her own.[3] After 1612, she became ill and later stopped being in the center of court life. She was said to have died a Protestant. However, some proof suggests that she may have been a Catholic at some time in her life.[4]

Historians have often thought of Anne as a queen who was light, selfish, and not very important.[5] Recently, however, many people point out Anne's independence and importance as an encourager of the arts in the Jacobean age.[6]

  1. Williams, 1, 201; Willson, 403.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Stewart, 182, 300–301.
  3. Barroll, 15, 35, 109; "Although Anna had considerable personal freedom and her own court, she does not...[go against] her husband in factional politics as she did in Scotland, and her support was not often sought (looked for). Where the Queen's court came into its own was as an artistic salon." Stewart, 183.
  4. The archbishop of Canterbury reported that she had died saying that Catholicism was false. "But, then,” adds historian John Leeds Barroll, “we are all familiar with the modern 'press release'. In Anna's day, too, there was much to be said for...[spreading] an official version of England's queen dying 'respectably'." Barroll, 172; A letter from Anne to Scipione Borghese of 31 July 1601 is "open in its embrace of Catholicism", according to McManus, 93.
  5. Agnes Strickland (1848), 276 Retrieved 10 May 2007; Willson, 95; "Her traditionally flaccid court image..." Barroll, 27; Croft, 55; "Anne had proved to be both dull and indolent (lazy), though showing a certain ... amiability so long as her whims were satisfied. She was interested in little that was more serious than matters of dress." Akrigg, 21.
  6. "She quickly moved vigorously into court politics...she soon became a political presence at the Scottish court." Barroll, 17; "Though she has been accorded insufficient (not enough) attention by historians, James's Queen, Anne of Denmark, was politically astute and active." Sharpe, 244; "This new king's influence on the high culture of the Stuart period, although considerable in certain discrete areas, has been misunderstood in terms of innovations at the court itself...during the first decade of his reign (rule), these innovations were...[mostly] shaped by James’s much neglected queen consort, Anna of Denmark." Barroll, 1–2.

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