Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/211

 schweig, i. 39; cf. Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, ix. 178). In his youth the prince travelled through France, Italy, and Germany, and gained some experience of naval training as well as of active service under arms (, v. 391–2). In 1674 efforts were made to place him on the Polish throne, but his aversion to catholicism caused the scheme to break down, and Sobiesky was elected (see a notice of ‘C. H. Brasch, det polske Kongevalg,’ 1674, Copenhagen, 1882, in Revue Historique, xxv. pt. ii. 397). After a preliminary visit to England in 1681 he was, on 28 July 1683, married to the Princess Anne, the second daughter of the Duke of York. Charles II presented his niece on her marriage with Wandsworth manor-house, where she lived with her husband for eighteen years. In the year after his marriage Prince George was created a K.G. (, i. 294). He made a good personal impression at the English court, but as his brother, Christian V, was now at peace with France, the match was attributed to French influence, and the conversion of the prince to the church of Rome was thought likely to follow. But he had been brought up a strict Lutheran, and even after his wife's accession to the throne ‘kept his chapel in the Lutheran way,’ though ready to ‘conform occasionally’ to the church of England (, v. 53). A French intrigue, carried on in England by an agent named Bonrepos (March 1686), for converting the Princess Anne to catholicism, was thought by the agent to be favoured by Prince George (, iv. 205–6), but it failed completely; in the summer of the following year he paid a visit to Denmark (, i. 407, 411). Prince George, from whom, ‘whether drunk or sober,’ Charles II had failed to extract anything at all, seems in the next reign to have made no difficulty in acquiescing with his wife in the schemes for the overthrow of her father's throne; and after William's landing, though he accompanied the royal army on its march, and on its retreat as far as Andover, where he supped with James II, on the same evening (25 Nov. 1688) rode away with the Duke of Ormonde, the Earl of Drumlanrig, and Mr. H. Boyle to join the Prince of Orange at Sherborne, where they came in on 30 Nov. King James is said, in allusion to the phrase repeated by the prince as each fresh case of desertion became known, to have exclaimed, ‘So Est-il possible is gone too,’ and to have kindly ordered his servants and equipage to follow their master (, Life of James II, ii. 227, and note; cf. Diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, ii. 208, and 213 and notes; for the prince's letter to the king see Kennet, p. 531). The prince, who took his wife's subsequent departure from London very coolly (, ii. 216), soon joined her in her progress at Oxford, and returned with her to Whitehall. His adhesion was rewarded by the king's assent to the act for his naturalisation (April 1689; see, i. 517), and by his admission a few days afterwards into the English peerage as Baron of Ockingham, Earl of Kendal, and Duke of Cumberland; a year later he was made chief commissioner of appeal for prizes . These honours may have had some connection with the successful efforts of William III to hold Denmark to his alliance, and to obtain Danish troops for Scotland and Flanders (, i. 587, 603, ii. 117, 148; cf. as to the alliance of 1696, ib. iv. 142). But the extreme personal coldness which King William soon began to show towards Prince George proved one of the causes of the estrangement between the princess and her sister the queen (see art. ; cf. Marchmont Papers, ii. 418). In August 1691, when applying in vain with the princess for a Garter for Marlborough, Prince George reminded the king that this was the only request he had ever addressed to him (, vi. 26). After the death of Queen Mary (December 1694), the relations between them assumed a more friendly aspect. But the death of the prince's only surviving son, the young Duke of Gloucester (1700), made it indispensable to introduce the house of Hanover by name into the succession, and the proposal made by Lord Normanby during the debates on the Act of Settlement, that in the event of Anne's accession to the throne the title of king should be conferred on her husband, was rejected (May 1701; ib. ix. 266).

When Anne became queen (March 1702) her first thoughts were for her husband, and one of the first orders issued in the new reign was designed as a mark of attention to the Danish court (cf., v. 152). She had to relinquish the intention of associating him with herself in the royal dignity (a motion to this effect in the commons was made and lost as late as November 1702), and her plan for inducing the States-General to name him their captain-general in William III's place came to nothing (, x. 18, 32, 72). When Marlborough was appointed captain-general of the army, George received the sounding title of generalissimo of all her forces (17 April 1702), Marlborough declaring himself ‘ravished’ to serve under the prince (Marlborough Despatches, i. 44). Of a far more questionable nature was his appointment (21 May) to the office of lord high admiral, with a council to conduct the administration of the navy in his name. To these