Queen Anne was a monarch more noted for her furniture than her statesmanship, but the National Trust, at least at Hanbury House, seems keen to rehabilitate her. I’ll explain the reason in a minute, but first, here’s a picture of Paula in a field of broad beans.

Yes, bushwhacking through a bean field is one of the many skills required to bring you this blog. Now, technically we were on a public right of way, but the farmer had planted the beans so close on either side of the footpath that it felt like wading chest deep in baby triffids.

We escaped the beans, only to get lost in a field of sheep.

Handy travel tip #152A. Don’t ask sheep for directions.

We found a fairy ring. Look for the darker grass.

Paula thinks it is just runoff from the tree, but what does she know about unnatural history. It even has toadstools for the fairies to sit on.

We finally found our way to Hanbury House…

… and made through the parterre which is as lovely and silly as ever…

… straight for the tea room, in the former servant’s hall, where we lunched under the baleful gaze of some failed attempts at taxidermy.

I’m sorry, but animal skulls don’t count. There was a fake skull in the Hogarth exhibition, so I guess that will have to do.

But what has all this to do with Queen Anne, you ask. Well, remember the last time we went to Hanbury? No you don’t because it was three years ago, and even I had to look it up. So if you click on the link you find out that one of the striking things about the place is the huge murals by the staircase, including one of Achilles in drag, holding a spear.

Well, it turns out that it was not really Achilles in the picture, but Sarah Churchill, distant ancestor of both Winston Churchill and Archie Windsor.

On the top right in the green dress is Queen Anne and next to her is Abigail Masham née Hill.

Churchill and Masham were rivals for the Queen’s ear, and possibly other body parts. The painting is a political cartoon dressed up in classical clothes, commenting on Churchill’s support for the Whig party who were the hawks of the day.

Incidentally, the whole proscenium arch effect with the pillars and decorative glop is painted. The wall is smooth apart from a gentle curve to the ceiling which Mercury is flying up.

In his hand is a leaflet picturing the controversial preacher Henry Sacheverell. How controversial was Sacheverell? Well the infamous Riot Act was passed by parliament after the Sacheverell Riots.

Anyhow, having found that they have a portrait of Queen Anne on their hands, the National Trust have decided that she was quite a good monarch really, pointing out that she attended more cabinet meetings than any monarch before or since, and during her reign the Act of Union was signed, making Scotland part of Great Britain.

But what happened to those rivals Churchill and Masham? In the end Masham became the Queen’s favorite and Churchill was banished from court. Churchill responded by having scurrilous poems about Masham written and circulated.

Queen Anne died without any surviving children, condemning the British monarchy to an interminable succession of Georges. After Anne’s death, Masham, now a Baroness, retired to the country. Churchill held on to Odysseus’s spear and passed it down in the family.