Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/628

GEO was outvied by none in obsequious flattery of the emperor. A selection of Geoffrey's contributions to the Debats was published in Paris in 1819-20, 5 vols.—J. S., G.  GEORGE: the kings and princes so named are here noticed in the alphabetical order of the countries to which they respectively belonged; the other celebrated persons of this name follow alphabetically in the order of the designations by which they are distinguished:—   I., King of Great Britain and Ireland, or, elector of Hanover, was born on the 28th of May, 1660. In 1681 he visited England with a view to a union with the Princess Anne, the death of whose children by her marriage with the prince of Denmark subsequently opened the path for George I. to the British throne. Had it been destined that he was to carry out his project of marriage with the princess, a great change in the subsequent history of the British empire would have been a part of the same destiny. He was recalled, however, by his father Ernest Augustus, who married him in 1682 to Sophia Dorothea, daughter of the duke of Zell. This union was signally unhappy. An impenetrable mystery shrouds the actual conduct of the two parties, and it is only known that heavy accusations were made against her, but they were never brought to any public ordeal, and she remained a secret prisoner. A proceeding so contrary to English practice and feeling was well calculated to excite dissatisfaction in Britain, and it was frequently and dexterously urged against the Hanover succession by those who secretly favoured the exiled house. George was early trained in arms. He fought in Hungary in the imperial war against the Turks. In the war of the Spanish succession he sided with Austria and Britain; and after the battle of Blenheim in 1707 he took the chief command of the army of the empire. He had the bravery which none of his race seem to have been without, and was doubtless a good soldier. But though occupying the high command which his rank introduced him to, it is evident that he was no great general, and he never had any critical enterprise committed to him. The time when he commanded the army of the empire was intentionally one of quiescence.

On the death of his father in 1698 he succeeded to his ancestral dominions, which were raised from a dukedom to the rank of an electorate in 1692. It was not until the year 1701 that he could have had any hopes of succession to the British throne. His political conduct previous to this period is part of the history only of his own small hereditary state; and even for some time afterwards his chances of the British throne were not so great as apparently to have much influence upon his conduct or that of his little court.

To understand the important epoch which the accession of the Hanover dynasty became in British history, it is necessary to keep in view the relationship of George I. to the exiled house of Stewart, and the conditions which pointed him out as the most suitable occupant of their vacant throne. On the death of the duke of Gloucester, the last of the Princess Anne's children, which happened shortly before that of her brother-in-law, King William, the Revolution settlement came to an end, and it was necessary to make another. After his daughters Mary and Anne, the nearest representatives of the exiled King James, would have been the children of his sister, the daughter of Charles I., who had married the duke of Orleans; but these were of the Romish faith, and it was a fundamental condition of the settlement that the monarch of England should be a protestant. Going back to a prior generation, it was remembered that James I. of England had a daughter who married the Elector Palatine, afterwards king of Bohemia. They had three sons, but the descendants of all these were liable to the objection of Romanism. Their daughter Sophia, however, who was alive when the act of succession passed in 1701, was a protestant, and the widow of the protestant elector of Hanover. The succession was consequently fixed on the Electress Sophia and her heirs, and on her death in 1712, her son George represented the right thus conferred on her. It was by no means certain, however, that he would mount the throne, and the correspondence of Queen Anne's reign, lately brought to light, shows that the Hanover succession ran far more risk than was generally supposed. Many of the leading statesmen of the reigns of William and of Anne were in communication with the exiled house. Among these were even men who professed to be firm friends of the Revolution, such as Marlborough and Godolphin. When St. John and Harley displaced the whigs in 1710, their policy as ministers was directed to serve the interests of the Stewarts, with whom they were in communication, giving them great encouragement. They possessed a strong personal influence over the queen, the tendency of which was aided by her natural partiality for her brother's son, and it is supposed that she privately desired his restoration. On her death on 1st August, 1714, the ministers met in cabinet council at Kensington, and there is reason to believe that they were meditating some project inimical to the Hanover succession, when they were surprised by the entrance of the dukes of Somerset and Argyle, members of the privy council but not of the ministry, who insisted on the immediate proclamation of King George. In the meantime his own Hanoverian councillors were on the alert, to see that his cause suffered nothing from want of watchfulness; although by the terms of the constitution they dared not openly interfere in British politics. One thing it was deemed proper that the Hanoverian resident at the British court, Creyenberg, should do; he presented an instrument in which the king, in terms of the statute to that effect, named certain persons to act with the great lords of state as lords justices in the administration of the ordinary functions of the crown until his arrival. Parliament met instantly, and the oath of allegiance was taken by the members. Meanwhile George made arrangements for the administration of his dominions in Hanover by committing it to a council headed by his brother, Prince Ernest. He resolved to bring his son George along with him, to be trained in British politics.

His journey to Britain was procrastinated to an extent which caused much anxiety and speculation. Some said that etiquette caused the delay; others that it was part of a profound policy to enable the advisers of the new king to distinguish his friends from his enemies; others again attributed it to mere indolence and German phlegm. It was on the evening of the 8th September that the first of the Hanover dynasty landed at Greenwich. At that juncture trifles were often of momentous importance, and it was said that the mere hour of his arrival (six o'clock) had an influence on the events which followed. The ministers of the late queen, considering it their privilege and their duty to be foremost in receiving him, had made arrangements for doing so in a body; and they seem to have expected that the king, a perfect stranger to the British constitution and the habits of the country, must look with reliance and respect on those who were authorized by their position in the state to welcome him to his kingdom, and place, as it were, his new authority in his hands. But they made a blunder about the time of his arrival, and were not ready. All the approaches were crowded, so that there was no precedence for any one; and thus not only did they fail in obtaining the distinction they expected, but it even seemed as if through their culpability or negligence the royal stranger had been permitted to land without the proper courtesies and homage, and to find his way through an indiscriminate crowd.

Probably he was not sorry to miss the special attentions of the queen's ministry, for he had previously announced his hostility to them by appointing Townshend to supersede St. John, then Lord Bolingbroke, as secretary of state. The act was done without the ceremonious courtesy which attends a change of ministry in ordinary times. It was suspected that, pleading the sovereign's absence, he might exhibit some politic procrastination in giving up all the attributes of office—there might even be resistance; and so Shrewsbury, Somerset, and Cowper took the seals from his possession and locked the doors of his office, like the warehouse of a fraudulent bankrupt. This affront penetrated deeply into his proud heart, and he said with angry sarcasm, "To be removed was neither matter of surprise nor concern to me; but the manner of my removal shocked me for at least two minutes." This was followed up immediately after the arrival of the king by the almost equally rude dismissal of Ormond from the high office of captain-general. A ministry was immediately selected from the whig party, with Townshend at its head, and what afterwards was of more moment, it included as a subordinate Robert Walpole, who exercised so long and so powerful an influence on the government of the Hanover dynasty. Bolingbroke and Ormond, with others of inferior note, took guilt to themselves by flying from the country and entering the service of the exiled court. Harley, Lord Oxford, remained and stood his trial.

