Coat of arms of Queen Anne, dated 1710, at the west end of St John the Evangelist church, Whitfield.
"The church was rebuilt in 1784, by the Ord family, who had previously erected a new parsonagehouse. The structure is very substantial, consists of a nave and chancel, with a square tower, and is capable of holding 230 persons. The chancel was rebuilt in 1839, by Mr. Ord, from designs by Mr. John Green, of Newcastle, and is ornamented with painted windows, and a carved oak roof; it contains a monument to the late William Henry Ord, Esq., M.P., a lord of the treasury under the administration of Earl Grey."
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This royal coat of arms must have survived damage when the tower and spire came down in a gale in 1869.
"Anne (6 February 1665 – 1 August 1714) became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Acts of Union, two of her realms, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, united as a single sovereign state known as Great Britain. She continued to reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland until her death.
Anne was born in the reign of her uncle Charles II, who had no legitimate children. Her father, James, was thus heir presumptive to the throne. His suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England, and on Charles's instructions Anne and her elder sister, Mary, were raised as Anglicans. Three years after he succeeded Charles, James was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Anne's sister and Dutch Protestant brother-in-law and cousin William III of Orange became joint monarchs. Although the sisters had been close, disagreements over Anne's finances, status and choice of acquaintances arose shortly after Mary's accession and they became estranged. William and Mary had no children. After Mary's death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.
During her reign, Anne favoured moderate Tory politicians, who were more likely to share her Anglican religious views than their opponents, the Whigs. The Whigs grew more powerful during the course of the War of the Spanish Succession, until 1710 when Anne dismissed many of them from office. Her close friendship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, turned sour as the result of political differences. The Duchess took revenge in an unflattering description of the Queen in her memoirs, which was widely accepted by historians until Anne was re-assessed in the late 20th-century.
Anne was plagued by ill health throughout her life, and she grew increasingly lame and obese from her thirties. Despite seventeen pregnancies by her husband, Prince George of Denmark, she died without surviving issue and was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded all Catholics, she was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover, whose maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, was a daughter of James VI and I."
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