A History of the Four Georges, Volume I | Page 3

of William and Mary,
declared that the crown of England should pass in the first instance to
the heirs of Mary, then to the Princess Anne, her sister, and to the heirs
of the Princess Anne, and after that to the heirs, if any, of William, by
any subsequent marriage. Mary, however, died childless; William was
sinking into years and in miserable health, apparently only waiting and
anxious for death, and it was clear that he would not marry again. The
only one of Anne's many children who approached maturity, the Duke
of Gloucester, died just after his eleventh birthday. The little duke was
a pupil of Bishop Burnet, and was a child of great promise. {4}
Readers of fiction will remember that Henry Esmond, in Thackeray's
novel, is described as having obtained some distinction in his
academical course, "his Latin poem on the 'Death of the Duke of

Gloucester,' Princess Anne of Denmark's son, having gained him a
medal and introduced him to the society of the University wits." After
the death of this poor child it was thought necessary that some new
steps should be taken to cut off the chances of the Stuarts. The Act of
Settlement, passed in 1701, excluded the sons or successors of James
the Second, and all other Catholic claimants, from the throne of
England, and entailed the crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover as
the nearest Protestant heir, in case neither the reigning king nor the
Princess Anne should have issue. The Electress Sophia was the mother
of George, afterwards the First of England. She seems to have had
good-sense as well as talent; her close friend Leibnitz once said of her
that she was not only given to asking why, but also wanted to know the
why of the whys. She was not very anxious to see her son George made
sovereign of England, and appeared to be under the impression that his
training and temper would not allow him to govern with a due regard
for the notions of constitutional liberty which prevailed even then
among Englishmen. It even seems that Sophia made the suggestion that
James Stuart, the Old Pretender, as he has since been called, would do
well to become a Protestant, go in for constitutional Government, and
thus have a chance of the English throne. It is certain that she strongly
objected to his being compared with Perkin Warbeck, or called a
bastard. She accepted, however, the position offered to her and her son
by the Act of Settlement, and appears to have become gradually
reconciled to it, and even, as she sank into years, is said to have
expressed a hope many times that the name of Queen of England might
be inscribed upon her coffin. She came very near to the gratification of
her wish. She died in June, 1714, being then in her eighty-fourth
year--only a very few days before {5} Queen Anne received her first
warning of the near approach of death. Her son George succeeded to
her claim upon the crown of England.
[Sidenote: 1714--The House of Brunswick]
The reigning house of Hanover was one of those lucky families which
appear to have what may be called a gift of inheritance. There are some
such houses among European sovereignties; whenever there is a breach
in the continuity of succession anywhere, one or other of them is sure

to come in for the inheritance. George the Elector, who was now
waiting to become King of England as soon as the breath should be out
of Anne's body, belonged to the House of Guelf, or Welf, said to have
been founded by Guelf, the son of Isembert, a count of Altdorf, and
Irmintrude, sister of Charlemagne, early in the ninth century. It had two
branches, which were united in the eleventh century by the marriage of
one of the Guelf ladies to Albert Azzo the Second, Lord of Este and
Marquis of Italy. His son Guelf obtained the Bavarian possessions of
his wife's step-father, a Guelf of Bavaria. One of his descendants,
called Henry the Lion, married Maud, daughter of Henry the Second of
England, and became the founder of the family of Brunswick. War and
imperial favor and imperial displeasure interfered during many
generations with the integrity of the Duchy of Brunswick, and the
Electorate of Hanover was made up for the most part out of territories
which Brunswick had once owned. The Emperor Leopold constructed
it formally into an Electorate in 1692, with Ernest Augustus of
Brunswick-Lüneberg as its first Elector. The George Louis who now, in
1714, is waiting to become King of England, was the son of Ernest
Augustus and of Sophia, youngest daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen
of Bohemia, sister to Charles First of England. Elizabeth had married
Frederick, the