Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/152

George I ‘Promptorium’ is Harl. MS. 221. Five others are known. Bale attributes to Geoffrey the following works: ‘In Doctrinale Alexandri’ (i.e. Neckam), lib. iii.; ‘In Johannis Garlandi Synonyma,’ lib. i.; ‘In Equivoca ejusdem,’ lib. i.; ‘Expositiones Hymnorum,’ lib. i.; ‘Hortus Vocabulorum,’ lib. i.; ‘Medulla Grammatices,’ lib. i.; ‘Præceptiones Pueriles,’ lib. i., all of which he says he had seen printed at Paris and London. The ‘Synonyma’ and ‘Equivoca’ were several times printed by Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde ‘cum expositione Magistri Galfridi Anglici,’ who may reasonably be identified with the author of the ‘Promptorium.’ From his quotation of the ‘Incipit,’ Bale's ‘Medulla’ seems to have been the same work as the ‘Promptorium.’ The colophon to Pynson's edition of 1499 says: ‘Finit opus … quod nuncupatur Medulla grammatice.’ There is, however, another ‘Medulla Grammatice,’ a Latin-English dictionary, of which seventeen manuscripts are extant; this has been with great probability ascribed to Geoffrey. The ascriptions in the manuscript are apparently by a later hand. The ‘Hortus’ or ‘Ortus’ is also a Latin-English dictionary (the first printed in England, W. de Worde, 1500); it seems to be a modified reproduction of the ‘Medulla.’ A ‘Liber Hymnorum’ is bound up with the Lincoln MS. (A. 3, 15) of the ‘Medulla,’ and is there stated to be by the same author. To Bale's list Pits erroneously adds ‘In Poetria Nova,’ a poem by Geoffrey Vinsauf. Bale and Pits give Geoffrey's date as 1490; 1440 is the date given by the author himself in his preamble.

 GEORGE I (1660–1727), king of Great Britain and Ireland, and elector of Hanover, was born at Hanover 28 March 1660. His father, Ernest Augustus, married in 1658 to Sophia, youngest daughter of Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I of England, became bishop of Osnabrück in 1662, and in 1679 succeeded to the principality of Calenberg (Hanover). George William of Lüneburg-Celle had entered into an engagement to remain unmarried, and to transmit his dominions on his death to his younger brother, Ernest Augustus, or his descendants. The consequent prospect of uniting all the possessions of the younger branch of the House of Brunswick suggested at an early date to Ernest Augustus the thought of obtaining from the emperor the creation of a ninth (Hanoverian) electorate. This purpose shaped the earlier career of his eldest son. The education of George Lewis must have been influenced by the clear and lively intellect of his mother, but, as was indignantly noted by her favourite niece, he was not in the habit of showing her affection (Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, An die Raugräfin Louise, 22 April 1702; cf., p. 20; , Hist. of the House of Guelph, 1821, p. 162; see, however, his dutiful letters to her from the field, ap. , pp. 131-2; and cf. ib. p. 433 as to  his grief at her illness). His campaigns in the wars of the empire began in 1675, when, as Ernest Augustus announced to his wife, 'her Benjamin bore himself bravely' in the battle of the Bridge at Conz (Memoiren der Herzogin Sophie, p. 104). In December 1680 he started, well furnished with money, on a journey to England, where he was well received at court, and believed to have a fair chance of the hand of the Princess Anne (, iii. 426). But he was suddenly (see his statement to Lord Lansdowne ap., ii. 283) recalled by his father, in conformity with whose schemes he on 21 Nov. 1682 married Sophia Dorothea, the only child of his uncle of Celle and his uncle's French wife, formerly his mistress. The arrangement as to the Celle succession still holding good, and primogeniture having been recently established by Ernest Augustus in the whole of his dominions, the future importance of the House of Hanover seemed better assured than ever, and in 1692 the father of George Lewis actually became elector. Meanwhile the prince continued his service under the imperial flag, taking an honourable part in Sobiesky's rescue of Vienna in 1683, in 1685 distinguishing himself at the capture of Neuhäusel in Hungary, and in the battle of Neerwinden, 29 July 1693, only escaping with his life through the devotion of General von Hammerstein (, iii. 310, 311, and note, p. 357; cf., i. 70, as to his visit to Venice after his Hungarian campaign).

His wife had borne him two children, the future king, George II, and Sophia Dorothea, afterwards queen of Frederick William I of Prussia; but their conjugal relations, partly in consequence of the prince's amour with Madame von dem Bussche, sister of the Countess Platen, had sunk from coldness into mutual repugnance. The faults were probably not all on one side, though George Lewis's dislike of his wife may have been intensified by his prejudice against her mother