George I (1660–1727), king of Great Britain and Ireland (1714–27) and elector of Hanover. George was the eldest son of Ernest Augustus, elector of Hanover (1692–8), and of
Sophia, granddaughter of James I of England, who herself became heir to the British throne by the 1701 Act of
Settlement. She died on 8 June 1714, and George succeeded peacefully on 1 August upon the death of Queen Anne.
Having established links with the Whig Party before his succession, largely because of their mutual opposition to the Tory peace with France at
Utrecht in 1713, George favoured a Whig administration, though he did employ a handful of senior Tories until the Jacobite Rebellion in 1715 led to the proscription of that party. The Whigs won the general election of 1715, and established their supremacy for the next four and a half decades. Though unpopular, George's position was never seriously threatened either by the rebellion of 1715 or by the Jacobite plots of 1719 and 1722. In fact these episodes served only to strengthen the Hanoverian succession.
George appears to have been diligent in politics, especially in his chosen fields of foreign affairs, diplomacy (he helped to negotiate the
Quadruple Alliance of 1718), and the army, over which he insisted on keeping control. His court was private and he much preferred the company of his German ministers to his British advisers, as well as that of the duchess of Kendal and the countess of Darlington. These two were long thought to have been his mistresses, and indeed Kendal was from 1691, but she may also have later been his morganatic wife (he had divorced his wife
Sophia Dorothea in 1694 for adultery and imprisoned her for life). Darlington, however, was his half-sister.
Contrary to long-established views, George did attend cabinet meetings throughout his reign. The language he commonly used with his ministers was French but he arrived with a smattering of English and knew sufficient to write and converse in it by the end of his reign. However, he rarely attended Parliament and never debates in the House of Lords ‘incognito’ as had some of his predecessors, such as Charles II and Anne.
Relations between George and his son, the prince of Wales (later George II), were often strained, and in 1717 a violent quarrel erupted. The prince and his wife were expelled from the court (their children were kept by the king) and set up a rival one in
Leicester House. This quarrel coincided with the Whig schism in which
Walpole and
Townshend left the ministry of
Sunderland and
Stanhope. In April 1720 the royal quarrel was patched up as a cover for the reconciliation of the ministry with the schismatic Whigs.
George frequently returned to Hanover in the summer months. The king's attachment to his electorate and its presumed prominent influence on English foreign policy (as well as the interference of the German ministers at the English court) created a good deal of friction. George, however, was close to some of his English ministers, particularly Stanhope, who looked after foreign policy, and Sunderland. It was the king's attachment to the latter which kept him in power after the bursting of the
South Sea bubble in 1720 (the most serious crisis of the reign) and Stanhope's untimely death in 1721. Sunderland had arranged for fraudulent South Sea shares to be given to the king, and had overseen the distribution of
douceurs in Parliament to help things along. George and his chief minister had to stick together in the ensuing crisis, and managed to weather the storm. Sunderland's unexpected death in April 1722 forced George to accept Walpole (whose acumen in salvaging the financial disaster had saved the dynasty) and Townshend as his chief ministers, though
Carteret (a protégé of Sunderland) was to remain a serious contender for power for a further two years.
George's reign ended with domestic affairs entering a period of quiet, while abroad Britain was recognized as the major arbiter of the balance of power. He died of a stroke on 20 June 1727 at Osnabrück.
Clyve Jones
Bibliography
Hatton, R. , George I: Elector and King (1978).
