Death of George I
GEORGE'S LAST JOURNEY
It is worth tracing George's last journey in detail mainly because no modern biography of him exists in any language and contemporary stories connected with his death have been given credence down to this day in British historiography, especially the one that he had a premonition of his death before leaving England, and that the heart attack which killed him was caused by the fright he took when he was presented with a letter from his deceased divorced wife* in which she prophesied that he would die within a year of her own death.1
From reliable accounts that have survived, principally those of Fabrice, from the moment George left St James's Palace at seven o'clock in the morning of 3/14 June 1727, we know that the king was in a serene mood, even if the death of Trudchen in the previous year had cast a shadow over his personal life. He had much to look forward to. At Osnabrück he would meet Ernst August, the last relative of his own generation since their half-sister Sophia Charlotte had died in 1725 and Max, who had cut himself off from the family, died in the following year;2 the prince-bishop was to join the king and Melusine for the whole visit. At Herrenhausen George would see [Anna] Louisa settled in the Delitzsche Palais. Best of all, his daughter, the queen of Prussia, would travel from Berlin to Herrenhausen, where the double-marriage plan would be finalized. Now that the shadows of war were dispelled he had told his daughter this was the time for a public announcement: there were no obstacles and Friedrich Wilhelm's ‘desertion’ to the side of the emperor could be forgiven and forgotten.3 George knew that the marriage plans would please his grandson, since Frederick, who always looked forward to his grandfather's visits (and all his life revered his memory as ‘a good and great king’), had become as attached as his aunt to the idea that he should marry Wilhelmine – a bright, intelligent girl who shared his interest in the arts. For her part, as her memoirs testify, Wilhelmine was also keen on the match. For both of them it was a grievous disappointment when George II and her father reversed George I's plans and forbade the planned marriages since they could not mutually agree on conditions and timing.4
Quite apart from meeting relatives, George looked forward to seeing what progress had been made at Herrenhausen with his latest project there; it was only in 1725 that he had ordered the planting of the linden trees which were to form a long double allée between the summer residence and the town of Hanover.
Greenwich was reached within the hour on 3/14 June. The king went on board his yacht, courtiers and officers who were not to accompany him to Hanover came to bid adieu, dinner was served, and sail was set to go with the tide to Gravesend. There the wind was found to be contrary and it was not till 16 June that the crossing to the Dutch side of the water could be effected, but then with so favourable a wind that the coast of the Republic was sighted at 8 o'clock the next morning. After passing the Holland Diep and Moerdijk, George transferred to a Dutch yacht sent by the States General in his honour. In the early evening of 18 June, after passing through the Kil waters, he landed at Schoonhoven where his carriage awaited him as well as a guard of Dutch cavalry to look after his security as long as he was on the Republic's soil. The baggage, including the king's bed, had gone ahead; in the king's own carriage only Hardenberg, his court marshal, and Fabrice, his Hanoverian Kammerherr, accompanied him while his body servants, the Kammerdiener, followed fairly close behind. The ladies of the party, British ministers and officials, both Hanoverian and British, set out in their own or hired carriages as and when their yachts made landfall, some ahead of the king, most behind him. George pushed on immediately on 18 June till 10 o'clock at night when he halted at a small place called Varth, an hour and a half from Utrecht.
He dined (miserably, Fabrice felt) on a single carp, and was up and about by 5 o'clock the next morning, eager to continue his journey. Contrary to custom – ‘for the first time in all his journeys’, Fabrice averred – he stopped to eat dinner halfway through the day's estimated stint at Appeldoorn, presumably because of the meagre supper of the previous night. At 8 in the evening he reached Delden (where, according to tradition, the fateful letter was handed to him); there he had supper and spent the night. To his entourage he seemed in good health (völlig gesund) and in good humour; he gave ‘a kind of audience’ to some five or six Dutch ladies who wanted to meet him and he conversed with them in Dutch till about midnight.
The next day, 20 June, George, Hardenberg and Fabrice, accompanied by their Dutch guard, set out at 7 o'clock in the morning. The carriage party talked of this and that for some three-quarters of an hour. Then the king revealed that he had suffered a bad night, stomach pains – which he blamed on his over-indulgence in strawberries and oranges at supper – having kept him awake.* When the two courtiers deplored George's decision to continue his journey without taking time to recover at Delden, the king assured them that he felt better. Half an hour later he bade the carriage stop that he might answer a call of nature. When he returned, Hardenberg noted that the king's face was oddly distorted and that his right hand seemed to be out of control. Just as Fabrice (who himself had recently suffered a disjointed ankle) was asking the king whether his hand had come out of joint and if he wished Fabrice to put it back, George grew pale and fainted. It happened that, contrary to custom, the Kammerdiener carriage was only two steps behind and that it contained a surgeon, lodged there at the request of Hardenberg and Fabrice with a view to their own need of assistance: Fabrice's foot was still swollen and Hardenberg was not well. Never before on George's travels had a medical man been so close and, while Hardenberg halted the king's coach to fetch the surgeon, Fabrice took smelling salts (known as ‘English salt’ on the continent) from his pocket and held them under the king's nose in an attempt to bring him out of the faint. The surgeon diagnosed a stroke and ordered the king to be carried out and placed on the ground to be bled; hardly two minutes, it was estimated, elapsed between the apoplexy and the bloodletting. The king recovered consciousness on being replaced in the coach and indicated with his left hand that he wished the journey to continue. He answered lucidly, if with words of one syllable, questions put to him on how he felt; but after another half hour he fell into a sleep that appeared unnatural because of the strange snoring which accompanied it. The surgeon, Hardenberg and Fabrice, who between them supported the king in their arms, began to fear the worst. The king seemed to be falling into a ‘lethargy’. One of the Dutch officers was sent ahead to locate and stop the baggage with the king's bed and did so at Noordhorn. Hattorf, who had been ahead of the royal carriage, sent his secretary galloping to find the king's physician Steigerdahl far back in the royal cavalcade. Various remedies were, meanwhile, tried in the open field at Noordhorn, but neither drawing-plasters – applied to his hand (presumably the right one) and his neck – nor strong spirits had any effect. What to do? Hattorf travelled in haste to Lingen to see if he could find one of Friedrich Wilhelm's two doctors resident there, but both were away – one at Osnabrück, the other at Amsterdam. At this news some (including Fabrice and Hattorf) were for moving George to Lingen and putting him to bed there; but Hardenberg decided to continue to Osnabrück. All approved of this once the surgeon had reassured them that the movements of the carriage would not worsen the king's condition; he was, in fact, so insensible that ‘the movement of the coach would be as comfortable as the softest bed’. Hattorf and Fabrice moved ahead to apprise Ernst August of the situation, and to disperse the Hanoverian courtiers already assembled to greet George I so that he might be carried along the ‘secret stairs’ into his room without publicity. On arrival at Osnabrück – some time between 10 and 11 o'clock – George revived sufficiently to realize where he was; with his left hand he removed his hat in greeting and replaced it. But once in bed he sank into unconsciousness again. Blood was let during the night of 20–21 June, but to no avail. The following night between half an hour and an hour after midnight, George died. The only movement that Fabrice noted before death was the death cramps. The king's last conscious or semi-conscious movement had been the left-handed greeting to Osnabrück, his childhood home.5
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Melusine and young Melusine arrived in Osnabrück on Sunday morning, 22 June. Townshend caught up the next day and returned to England on the Wednesday.6 Fabrice had written twice to Bothmer, with the ‘riding post’ on the evening of 20 June and by courier on the morning of 21 June, so that he might prepare the prince of Wales for the news of the king's illness. At 4 o'clock in the morning of 22 June Fabrice wrote to George II, after consultations between Ernst August, Hattorf and himself – to give formal notification of George I's death. Fabrice – who had met Georg August fairly frequently in Hanover ever since he (Fabrice) was a lad of fourteen or fifteen and had been in correspondence with him when in Turkey – had naturally become somewhat removed from the successor when serving the father after 1718. He would have liked to ride post-haste with the news, in the hope of securing his own position and even more that of his elder brother Johann Ludwig in Hanoverian service, but his still swollen ankle prevented him from doing so. In the meantime, he regarded it as his duty to stay close to the late king's body until orders should arrive from George II.7
As soon as the medical men had pronounced George I dead, Fabrice and Hattorf had the gates of Osnabrück closed so that only their own couriers should be able to leave with the news; George's suecessor might take offence unless he was the first in England to be told. One hour after the couriers had left for London, Fabrice sent another with letters to George I's grandson, Frederick, and to the Hanoverian regency government to confirm the forebodings communicated the previous day. Another courier went to meet Townshend so that he should not be unprepared for what he would find at Osnabrück. George I's apartments at Osnabrück were locked and sealed with the seal of Ernst August, in order to keep the late king's clothes, papers and trunks with other properties – of which a list was made – undisturbed. A report on all this, written by Fabrice, was sent to England on 23 June at 6 o'clock in the morning with a Kammerjunker of Ernst August's. The duchess of Kendal and lady Walsingham left for Hanover on 23 June, as did all the late king's entourage with the exception of Fabrice, who – impatient to know George II'sorders – travelled by slow stages towards the Dutch border to intercept the king's courier. Naturally enough, no one had wanted to take the responsibility for arrangements in connection with the late king's funeral which might conflict with the wishes of George II. The only stipulation George I had laid down was that his body should not be opened, or embalmed.8
George II decided that his father should be buried at Hanover, close to the late electress Sophia in the Leineschloss church.* He asked that Hattorf and the two Reiches, father and son, Deutsche Kanzld officials, should return to London immediately, as he needed their services. Fabrice returned, briefly, after the funeral to hand over the jewels and valuables which the late king had taken with him on his journey, and which George II had asked that he return. He was not, and had hardly expected to be, retained in constant attendance on George II; but he hoped, and eventually succeeded, in being given a more lucrative appointment than that of Kammerherr to the king on his visits to Hanover. The king is dead, long live the king. The concern to retain, or gain, the favour of George II was naturally uppermost in the minds of those who enjoyed positions of power and influence or even a livelihood in administration or at court in the kingdom as in the electorate.
Many of George's old ministers, friends and servants had died before him: Stanhope in 1721, Robethon in 1722, Sophia Charlotte in 1725, Bernstorff, Cadogan and Mehemet in 1726. Of those still alive, we know from Fabrice that Hardenberg was quite broken by the king's death, to such a degree that he left all practical work that had to be done in June 1727 to Hattorf and Fabrice.9 The countess of Schaumburg-Lippe wrote that her family had ‘lost a father and never would things be as in his lifetime’.10 Frederick mourned the grandfather who had been the only person to show him paternal affection and concern after 1714 and spoke of him – long afterwards – to his own children.11 The most intense personal grief was felt by Melusine. She returned to England and in 1728 bought a house at Twickenham, close to that of Johanne Sophie of Schaumburg-Lippe.12* There is a story told from her Twickenham years that she believed George I had come back to her in the shape of a bird which she befriended and tamed. The reason for her belief is given as a remark, supposedly overheard during a conversation in George's lifetime, in which he had promised to return to her ‘from the other side’ if he should precede her in death. The original story has ‘a large bird’, but this was soon improved to ‘a large raven’. Melusine's fondness for songbirds is well established and there may well be no more foundation for the story than this. If the legend has any basis, one would prefer to believe that the bird was a dove – since that may have reminded Melusine of the sublime colomba aria by Handel to which she and George had often listened. In the raven tradition, again on the supposition that the story is not totally apocryphal, the connotation might conceivably be that old European folklore belief (since proved erroneous) that the raven remains faithful all its life to its chosen mate, and that it returns to the nest to sing just once a year.13 Sentiment one can attribute to Melusine, but not superstition.
THE BALANCE SHEET
George I was king of Great Britain for slightly less than thirteen years, from 2/13 August 1714 to 11/22 June 1727. He was elector of Hanover for twenty-nine years.
Having followed his life and career, we may wonder at the epithet ‘lucky George’ which his Hanoverian courtiers bestowed upon him.14 Lucky? With the traumatic experiences of the Prinzenstreit, the Königsmarck affair, and the Sophia Dorothea divorce and imprisonment? ‘Lucky’, on a less personal level, in the serious problems which the dynastic union between Hanover and Great Britain posed: Jacobite invasions of the kingdom and growing unease in the electorate that it was being reduced to an ‘Irish’ dependent status?
The ‘luck’ uppermost in the courtiers' minds was no doubt the greater personal gloire which came to George by the vicissitudes of history which made an elector of Hanover king of so prosperous and powerful a state as Great Britain, and also the way in which George succeeded in his objectives. Hanover was extended to include Bremen and Verden; Britain's influence in European politics in creased; what from the outside looked like his diplomatic ‘gambles’ paid off; and time and again he managed to extricate himself from situations that looked desperate, like the Fifteen, the South Sea bubble and the threat of war from 1725 to 1727.
With the wisdom of hindsight, and access to material which illuminates the decision-making process of George and his political advisers, the historian can focus on the determination and ruthlessness in grasping and exploiting opportunities which are so characteristic of George as a ruler, and also on the long accumulated experience which made him so effective a figure on the European scene.
Yet the historian may also judge George ‘lucky’ in several respects. He was ‘lucky’ in that he had not, like his son, grandson and great-great-grandson, been condemned to wait for the exercise of power. Frederick, prince of Wales after 1727, waited in vain; and for George II and George IV power came so late that their characters were to some extent warped by the long years when they could not exercise the office for which they were destined by birth. No wonder that each of the three joined – for a longer or shorter period – the political opposition to the ruling king in spite of the personal difficulties and even tragedies that this brought to the royal family. Only George III was spared this fate and he, it would seem, was adversely affected by losing his father (Frederick) so early; like many another prince in his position he became obsessed with his duties and with the need to set a good example.15
George I, while he did not escape damage to his personality from the Prinzenstreit and the collapse of his marriage to Sophia Dorothea, was fortunate enough to have had an alternative métier, that of a soldier, for most of his early manhood. From the age of fifteen he fought in wars against France and the Turks, becoming a respected and experienced officer, having a raison d'être independent of his father even after Ernst August's decision to introduce primogeniture in Hanover. He was fortunate in that there were many sons, so that he, in spite of his special position as first-born, could be risked without injury to the ruling house. The military career of George's only legitimate son was cut short in part by the necessity to postpone its start till he had sired an heir, and in part also because Europe entered into a prolonged period of peace after the War of the Spanish Succession. It says much for George I's understanding of his son's need to prove himself in battle that he did send him to serve under Marlborough after Frederick's birth in 1707. George's grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson in the legitimate line all suffered under the refusal, successively, of George II and George III to let them go to war. They felt less manly because of it – even the artistically inclined Frederick – since they had been brought up in a tradition in which martial valour was still part of the royal métier.16
George was also ‘lucky’ in that the Stuart malady, porphyria, transmitted to the house of Hanover via Sophia, skipped him though it affected George III and George IV.17 His health was good. The fistula scare proved of short duration. The cure when he was at Pyrmont, his long walks both at that spa and in the grounds of Kensington Palace and Hampton Court, as well as his riding and hunting, kept him in trim. From the Göhrde hunting-season of 1723 a pleasant and evocative scene has been transferred to canvas. It shows George I, his Prussian son-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm, Ernst August, Townshend and his wife, and a host of Hanoverian courtiers and officials riding out in the early morning.18
The fact that after 1714 Georg August could not share the visits to Germany may have weakened the bond between father and son. There was, however, no help for it. Just as Frederick had to be left alone in Hanover while his father and grandfather resided in England, so Georg August had to stay in Britain as a symbol of the loyalty of the house of Hanover to the Protestant succession.
That George I did not make the best of his relationship with Georg August after 1716 is undeniable. Given the facts of political life in Britain after 1689, and Georg August's own ambitions, this is not surprising, but George I certainly tried, for as long as possible, to avoid open conflict with his son. Here memories not only of the Prinzenstreit, but of his son as a young man, affected the king. The elector and his mother Sophia had been seriously worried by Georg August's unreliability and tendency to speak impulsively on matters of state without due reflection. Their relief and joy were great when they noticed that war service had matured and improved him.19 Buried unease burst into the open when Georg August, as prince of Wales, challenged his father's authority by refusing to attend cabinet meetings and by forming a party of his own in both houses of parliament: George I, like many another parent before and after him, could no longer cope on a rational level. Again, he was fortunate in that a variety of circumstances, not least the appetite for office of Robert Walpole and Townshend, procured the reconciliation of 1720 and thus laid the foundation for the harmonious family life of the remaining years of George I's reign.
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On the rational level, where tense family relationships did not distort good intentions, George as elector and ruler was famed for his compassion, and for his concern with justice and equity. His mother stressed that he was ‘the enemy of injustice in any form’.20 This trait is also emphasized by other commentators, who may be assumed to be less biased, from 1698 to 1727. It took a variety of forms. He upheld the law in matters where he himself was involved. Two instances may be given. He accepted as king, without demur, the legal opinion that he was not entitled to reclaim from his son's British income (after the quarrel in the royal family) the expenses of the education of his granddaughters: the verdict ran that, as the king had the right to take care of them under English law, he had to pay the cost.21 And, at a later date, on the death of his divorced wife Sophia Dorothea in 1726, the negative answers to his query to Hanoverian legal authorities whether he – until her will was found – would be entitled to the income from her estate, immediately put an end to his attempts to benefit from the situation.22 When it came to the rights of others, he was especially sensitive. He paid compensation if anyone had to lose his office, at court or in the administration, for political reasons;23 and if he thought that a moral injustice followed on legal justice – for example, when Macclesfield was dismissed with ignominy for what George regarded as a technical offence, he allocated him a pension.24 In theory all his subjects, Hanoverian or British, had the right to seek audience with him, though it was not always easy for petitioners to get through the screen of courtiers and officials. All written petitions had to be submitted to him, since he wanted to ensure that cases which might not seem meritorious to his Hanoverian or British advisers should be decided by his personal scrutiny: a good example is the petition in 1724 of the old gentilhomme de la chambre of the late duchess of Celle (George's mother-in-law, with whom he had not been on the best of terms) who secured his 100 écus.25 George's close-fistedness with his private Hanoverian income or his British civil list is largely a myth. He paid the debts which a certain lieutenant von Weyhe left behind on his death, presumably for sentimental reasons since the lieutenant was a relative (possibly a son of her second marriage) of the Mlle von Meysenbug who had been a companion of his youth.26 From the Schattullrechnungen kept by Mehemet for his privy purse after 1714 we can see how generous he was both with benefit tickets for singers and actors (male and female), and how lavish with presents to members of his family.27 Quite apart from pecuniary rewards, he showed sensitivity to the feelings of others. He not only arranged for a pension for Stanhope's widow, but called on her shortly after her husband's death to express his gratitude for the services of her late husband; and his choice of words of comfort bears witness to his generosity of spirit.28 When his Hanoverian minister Görtz worried whether George would take amiss his attempts to save the life of his kinsman Georg Heinrich von Görtz, accused in Stockholm after the death of Charles XII of having ‘alienated the [late] king's affection from his subjects’, George could put himself in his minister's place. Hanover and Sweden were at war and Georg Heinrich von Görtz had been one of the perpetrators of the Gyllenborg plot; yet the ruler assured his minister that he found his endeavours ‘on behalf of so close a member of his family natural’, and that they would not in any way detract from his appreciation of his valuable work in Hanover.*29
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On a more general level, George I's concern to render justice can be seen in his attempts to secure religious toleration for his subjects. In Hanover such toleration was already in existence when George became elector, but he was not as successful as he might have wished in his later efforts to make the Hanoverian Lutheran clergy accept a reunion of Calvinism and Lutheranism.30 In Britain George was not satisfied with the halfway house constructed in 1718, whereby dissenters were permitted to keep their positions and offices as long as they were not reported by outsiders within the first six months of their appointment for not having taken the sacrament according to the rites of the Anglican church. He hoped to procure for them worship according to their own conscience without subterfuge and uncertainty.
In this George, who was not religious by temperament, was concerned with freedom of thought. Correspondence between British ministers at the time of the peerage bill shows that for most of them – with the exception of Stanhope – the matter of conscience was less important than the deal they hoped to make with the House of Commons: if the Lower House would swallow the peerage bill, the ministers were in return willing to grant freedom for dissenters and reform which would ensure that the universities (and Oxford in particular) did not remain, as hitherto, a breeding ground for High Anglicanism.31
The failure of the peerage bill, the fiasco of the South Sea speculation, Stanhope's death and Walpole's unwillingness to introduce controversial measures – all contributed to the frustration of George's hopes. Walpole's success, when in opposition,† at nullifying the king's and Stanhope's attempts to gain a measure of religious freedom for Roman Catholics, effectively killed any prospect of relief for a long time to come.32 Efforts to ease the position of Jews in Britain had also met sufficient opposition to make concessions minimal: individual Jews were allowed to apply for naturalization by submitting a private act to parliament, a long and costly process, which denied this freedom to the vast majority.33
The reasons why religious toleration was not easily established in Great Britain are not far to seek. Party loyalties and convictions were strong on religious belief and doctrine; and the struggle for power in parliament between men of great ability meant that even when these were tolerant, or religiously indifferent, as individuals, they had to take such beliefs and doctrines into account. Reform was, however, slowly prepared for by the appointment of tolerant Whig bishops whenever a see fell vacant; by the expedient, after the Hoadley controversy of 1717,34 of proroguing, and not recalling, the High Church convocations of either York or Canterbury. Attempts were also made, though in vain, to give government control of appointments of heads and fellows of colleges. The motivation was a double one: concern for the security of the dynasty (the nipping of Jacobitism in the bud) and a desire to uproot in new generations of students the dogma of the supremacy of church over state.35 Even bishops reckoned Whig by inclination were usually strongly anti-dissenter in their attachment to the power of the Anglican church; there was a closing of ranks in a way not dissimilar to that of Catholics of all shades of persuasion in the France of Louis XIV against the Huguenots.36
One of George's reforms at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge was successfully brought about: the endowment of regius professorships in history, intended to encourage the study of ‘the interests of state’, in the Pufendorf sense of the phrase. This emphasis on ‘modern’ subjects, on history and living languages to serve as a training for future diplomats and statesmen, can be seen as a measure to induce the universities to accept the wider range of subjects already studied in the dissenting academies and at the inns of court; it was thought desirable not to confine the highest educational institutions of the country to theology and the classics. Again, we can find parallels with European experiments: Louis XIV's académie politique of 1712 is the most obvious one, though that institution fell into disuse after the French king's death while George's regius professorships have lasted down to our own day.37
That George was in tune with Early Enlightenment ideas both in domestic and foreign affairs has been postulated in this study. A great deal of additional evidence could be furnished.* His administrative and financial reforms for the town of Hanover were thorough and beneficial; the state took over the care of the poor and needy in one province of the electorate after another; the university of Helmstedt (serving both Hanover and Wolfenbüttel) increased its reputation, as did the Gymnasium of Göttingen which in George II's reign rose to university status. The Oberappellationsgericht in Celle was held in the highest regard and widely appealed to, even by non-Hanoverian courts; and the fame of Hanoverian lawyers became widespread. German historians have agreed that George's motto (‘Never desert a friend, strive to do justice to every person, fear no one’*) was peculiarly appropriate to his achievement in the electorate. Minor changes to the advantage of his subjects were also effected: for instance, the opening, with certain safeguards, of the Herrenhausen gardens and the grounds of Kensington Palace,† to the public. (Visitors were bidden not to frighten the birds, or damage plants and trees, and were enjoined to follow the directions of attendants.)38 More significantly, George was thought of in Europe as a protector of progressive views. This was not only because he had, in principle, accepted the ‘mixed government’ of the English system, but also because he made clear his sympathy with the freedom of expression held to be inseparable from that system. In Britain George is not thought of as a man well versed in or well disposed towards literature. This is justified to the extent that the books we know he bought for himself are on the whole factual (the Relation des Indes Orientales, Voyage d'Espagne et de Portugal, Histoire de Louis XIV, Relation d'un Voyage de Dannemarck are typical examples), or connected with his métier, such as collections of treaties and accounts of diplomatic negotiations.39 But his reading of French authors and dramatists and his general interest in philosophical exchange of ideas had given him the reputation of a ‘modern’ ruler.40 It is not accidental that Voltaire dedicated his Henriade to George I, sought and was permitted refuge in Britain in 1726 when he got into trouble with the French authorities, and received encouragement and financial help from the king as well as from the princess of Wales.41 George's lack of prejudice is noteworthy and extended even to his Stuart relatives. He expressed himself mildly enough on the topic of the Pretender42 to astonish the British; and lord Percival marvelled (according to his diary of 1716) that the king refused to attend a thanksgiving service for the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion: he reported George as saying that he did not think it fitting that he should render thanks to God for having vanquished his own subjects.43 There was no strict censorship of the press, though British ministers retaliated, in print and by propaganda, when they were attacked.44 Popular ditties – to well-known tunes and often with only slightly altered text – ridiculing the king and his family were tolerated. The quarrel between George and the prince of Wales was a natural target for this kind of versifying, but compared to those current in the reign of George II they were mild in tone.45 The best-known verse on George I, focused on the statue of the king placed on the top of St George's church in Bloomsbury, is of a later date;* the contemporary version poked fun at the fact that the benefactor who had the statue cast and put in position was a brewer.46
The men and women George personally met were, naturally, drawn from a fairly narrow social range. The story that he frequented coffee-houses incognito to hear what was being said about him is suspect, though his presence at public plays, operas, concerts and masquerades must have helped to foster the image of a king who behaved like a private person.47 That George cared for decorum is shown by his finding it necessary to apologize to the archbishop of Canterbury for the fact that colonel Charles Churchill had appeared at a masquerade, where the king had been present, in the habit of a bishop: the king would see that it did not happen again 48 It was not difficult, if one had a bit of nerve, was reasonably dressed and willing to behave properly, to gain entry into the king's receptions or ‘drawingrooms’. A young student, neither well-connected nor rich, found it easy enough to be a guest at the king's birthday celebrations at St James's once he had greased the palm of the doorkeeper; and at Hampton Court there were gatecrashers at plays and entertainments. This did not mean, however, that these interlopers came into personal contact with the king.49 Vagabonds and beggars were, as elsewhere in Europe, kept away from routes along which George was expected to travel; but George, since he lived in London, was probably more aware of the actual state of his British subjects than, for instance, Louis XIV after he had moved himself and his court to Versailles. George's accounts occasionally list sums for ‘poor on the streets’, ‘poor students’ and ‘poor prisoners’.50
The years of his reign, in spite of the Jacobite alarms and the South Sea bubble, were on the whole years of prosperity and of a rising standard of living for all sections of society. Taxes were low (though the crisis of 1726–27 pushed the land tax up to four shillings in the pound), and food was plentiful if monotonous for the vast majority in town and country. The king, as we have seen, encouraged economic initiative both in Hanover and in Britain and took a special interest in linking the kingdom and the electorate commercially. His support for a company which aimed at bypassing the Imperial free city of Bremen (not part of the Hanoverian possession) and Hamburg to give easy access from Britain to the Hanoverian parts of north Germany by the construction of a network of canals has been studied in detail. George lent his Hanoverian army-trained surveyors for the construction of this network and helped also with gifts of money and loans.51 One of the British directors of this company was later found to be a crook, and the company got into serious difficulties through his actions: a fact which (if we take the South Sea bubble period into account) leads one to assume that George was more trusting and less successful in picking entrepreneurs than in his choice of ministers. Financial trickery was only one aspect of vice and crime in George I's Britain. Punishment was not always carried out according to the savage letter of the law, but theft, highway robbery and poaching (including wholesale poaching in the royal forests) were severely punished to protect property;52 while madams of ‘houses of ill repute’ suffered spells in prison if they too openly flouted the convention of relative discretion.53
* * *
During George's reign London took a shape still discernible to our own day. Before the death of queen Anne money had been put aside for the building of churches outside the city boundaries to cater for the population of an ever-expanding capital. The commission in charge of this programme was, for political reasons, changed on George I's accession, but the programme itself went speedily ahead. Wren, Hawksmoor, Gibbs and other skilled architects were employed, and the places of worship they created (though some have been reduced to rubble or to ruins beyond repair during the second world war of this century) form a glorious heritage: St Martin-in-the-Fields, St Anne, Limehouse, St George's, Hanover Square and St George's, Bloomsbury, a dozen in all.54
Many of the pleasant squares of London were laid out between 1714 and 1727, among them St James's Square, Grosvenor Square and Hanover Square, though, alas, the majority of them are now more pleasing seen on old prints than in their modified or vandalized modern state. The regularity of the Georgian houses, the open square with its trees and, usually, a statue in the centre convey that impression of order and harmony which was the aesthetic ideal of that time. The squares were, of course, not personally inspired by George, but he gave an impetus to them since his courtiers and ministers built or bought houses in these squares within easy distance of St James's Palace, and Melusine at one time owned No. 43 Grosvenor Square as well as a house in Portugal Row.55
We owe, however, to George's personal building initiative the extension of Kensington Palace and the layout of its grounds. Nearly all the furniture from his time has disappeared, but the decorations are intact or restored as near to the original as possible and convey the atmosphere of George's favourite residence, surely one of the most pleasant and intimate of palaces. George's patronage of William Kent won him other commissions, the most notable being Robert Walpole's magnificent Houghton Hall in Norfolk, and this added to England's architectural treasures.
British musical heritage also owes much to George. In part this was a consequence of the Hanoverian succession since George's German entourage and his whole court strengthened the bonds which had already been forged in respect of church and secular music between England and Germany: German Kapellmeister and German instrumentalists were found in England before George I's reign.56 Where the king's own patronage was especially influential, however, was in his strong support for Handel in particular and for opera in general.
* * *
In the political field George contributed two great services to Britain. One was that he reconciled the country to Europe. The separate Tory peace with France had alienated the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Habsburg state from ‘perfidious Albion’; and resentment was felt also by the German states of the Empire who had held objectives of their own in the War of the Spanish Succession. George was particularly well fitted for this reconciliation. He had publicly protested against the separate British agreement with Louis XIV, and against the Tory collusion with France in the ‘restraining orders’ that took the British army out of the war in a way regarded as treacherous by the allies. On his accession George took the initiative to improve relations with Dutch statesmen and with the emperor Charles VI, and achieved considerable success. But his initiatives, and those of the British ministers whom he most trusted in foreign policy matters, especially Stanhope, went beyond the old comrades-in-arms of the late war and extended also to France, the enemy of that war. His family relationship to Philippe, duc d'Orléans, was helpful here. The ideas which animated the peace plans for the south and for the north – agreements reached by mutual sacrifices and mutual advantages – are significant ones. Great patience, much ingenuity, and a fair amount of ruthless determination were needed by George, Stanhope and their foremost French partner, Dubois, to start this early eighteenth-century experiment in solving acute inter-state European problems without recourse to war. There was no undue optimism about the ease with which wars could be avoided; the expressed objective, to keep the peace ‘as long as humanly possible’, was, however, genuinely meant. The realism and the persistence of the three main architects of the two peace plans is remarkable, and the congress tradition which they helped to build is of more than early eighteenth-century importance. That George, by the very situation in which he found himself as elector, saw less clearly in northern affairs than Townshend in the early years of the reign is a fact that should not be glossed over. Hanover's commitment to the conquest of Bremen and Verden did rob Britain of a chance to play the forceful mediator in the north between 1715 and 1719. Conversely, George managed to restrain Townshend in the years 1725–27 when his principal secretary of state was more aggressively inclined than the king: even if Townshend did not plan for war during that period, his contingency preparations were so blatant in the diplomatic field that Europe expected war between the great powers to break out any moment. It needed all the king's expertise to guide, with French help, the British ship of state towards the Soissons congress.
The debate whether British interests suffered from George's Hanoverian ambitions ought now to be a dead one. George certainly used the trump-card of the British navy for electoral purposes, though he largely managed to conceal this from the majority of his British ministers and subjects, or – at least – not to provide them with proof. Yet British interests were also served by protection of trade to the Baltic, and commercial advantages for Britain were obtained at the peacemakings of the north. There was thus a large measure of overlap between the interests of the electorate and those of the kingdom. If a generalization can be made, it is that Hanoverian interests tended to dominate George's policy in the north between 1715 and 1718, and that British and European interests dominated that theatre – as they had always dominated the south of Europe – from the end of 1718 to George's death. George's preoccupation with the Great Northern War made him the effective advocate of a strong British navy; here again electoral and royal policies merged: the navy increased its number of fast ships during his reign.57
As we have seen, George became progressively more British in outlook, and when he planned for the dissolution of the dynastic union between Hanover and Great Britain, it was on the condition that his own senior line should remain kings and (if fate so decreed) queens regnant of Britain: Hanover would become secundogeniture on the European model worked out for the Italian states in the dynastic competition between Spain and Austria. That the separation of Hanover and Britain did not take place in the way George had planned, does not rob his will of 1716 with its 1720 codicil of interest. On the contrary, it is a most convincing example of his realism and rationalism. In smaller ways also George's increasing absorption into the kingdom can be demonstrated. We have already noted his growing command of the language; and it is, for instance, noteworthy that the governess he chose for his granddaughters when he took charge of their education was the countess of Portland, a highly intelligent and learned Englishwoman, the niece of William Temple who, after her husband's death, had brought up a large family of her own as well as his children of his first marriage.58
George's second great service to Great Britain was his contribution to the political stability of his kingdom. His military experience and his unflappability softened the impact of the Jacobite invasions and plots, while his clemency (more pronounced than that of his ministers) blunted Tory resentment after the failure of the Fifteen. He did not, as we have seen, achieve a ‘mixed’ government in the sense of Whig and Tory ministers cooperating with him in a ‘king's party’; but he adapted to the reality of the situation and tried to balance one set of Whig ministers against another so that in the inner cabinet, where he himself presided throughout his reign, he could influence decisions. After Carteret's removal from the secretary of state's office in 1724, George may be thought to have been more of a ‘captive’ of the remaining powerful ministers, Townshend and Walpole, than in the days of Stanhope and Sunderland; but what evidence we have points to control by George over Townshend in foreign policy and to a smooth cooperation with Robert Walpole on domestic matters. If George ever was a captive of his ministers, it was during the peerage bill crisis which has been analyzed in this study in its chronological perspective.
The closet, where George all along saw his ministers in groups or individually, was the necessary and important venue for cooperation between king and ministers. It would, however, in my judgment be misleading to characterize George I's reign as one of ‘closet government’ pure and simple. The king's government was made up of the king and the whole of the inner cabinet; and the necessary presence of the ministers of the inner cabinet in the two houses of parliament, and their need to carry both Commons and Lords, made for a smoother exercise of the ‘mixed’ constitutional principles of England than in the years between 1640 and 1714.
George's reputation, in the sense of gloire, and power in Britain as in Europe, stood high in his own lifetime. In the very nature of international relations, his reconciliation of Britain to Europe and his peacetime congresses to solve European problems, could not but undergo changes; particularly as Britain, with the larger navy built during George I's reign, began to concentrate on overseas commercial expansion. In time the cooperation with France lapsed and Britain became involved in the War of the Austrian Succession in 1740, in the Seven Years War of 1756 and in the War of American Independence: by the latter period Britain was considered an ‘exorbitant’ state making undue use of its naval power to dictate to other nations. Nor could George have visualized that Hanover, during these wars, would become so important for Britain as a continental centre for British intelligence and for Europe as a focal point for the spread of British intellectual ideas.59
Understandably, George's contribution to British and European history tended to be forgotten, as the century wore on. The field was left open for the build-up of the stock picture which this study has sought to modify by going back to contemporary records beyond memoir literature and propaganda, both pro-George and anti-George. Most of the statues of George have disappeared. Of the three best-documented equestrian statues, the one which, after the Canons sale, was put up in Leicester Square was removed temporarily to make room for an exhibition. It was then forgotten for years and when remembered found to be too damaged to survive a return to the square.60 The one put up in Dublin was taken down (at what date is not known) and resurrected from a junk-yard in the present century. It is now nicely placed outside the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham, close enough to the ground for George's finely moulded hands to be studied. Alas, recent years of student demonstrations have resulted in the loss of one hand, one stirrup and the king's baton.61 The second surviving equestrian statue is in the grounds of Stowe school and is the only one which is in an appropriate Georgian setting, flanked by fine buildings, with space and trees around it as far as the eye can see. The interested spectator can now look more closely at George's face in the statue in Roman dress at the entrance to the Public Record Office museum, rediscovered as recently as 1954. The two, together with some of the paintings from life, illuminate the public and private figure of the elector-king.
The present study is not meant as an apologia for George I but as an illumination, from all the evidence available, of an elusive ruler, in the sense that so much of the evidence was hard to come by. When the balance sheet is made up, George turns out to be, if not the most attractive of the Hanoverian kings in Britain, the most competent and politically imaginative.
Of literary characterizations,62 the one by a Dutch diplomat who had lived some considerable time at George's electoral court can be largely upheld by the historian: ‘He is much concerned for his reputation but is not excessively ambitious; he has a special aptitude for affairs of state, a well-ordered economy, very sound brain and judgment; he does not waste his time on trifles; he keeps good discipline among his troops and good order in his finances; he does not flare up, being of a calm temperament; he bears justice in mind at all times and, withal, he is goodhearted.’
* Sophia Dorothea had died at Ahlden on 13 November 1726 (NS).
* It would seem as if the fruit had given him an upset stomach; for quite apart from the reference in the text, culled from Fabrice, of the king's need to leave the carriage after only one hour and a half to answer a call of nature, Mustafa volunteered information during the night of 20–21 June to those who considered purging the king that this was not necessary: his master had left his bed several times the previous night.
* The Leineschloss, with the Schlosskirche, were severely damaged during the Second World War. When rebuilding took place, the decision was made to move George's sarcophagus, and that of his mother, to the nineteenth-century mausoleum in the Herrenhausen garden.
* The Gräfin, feeling responsible for Trudchen's motherless boys, left England on her son's accession as ruling Graf of Schaumburg-Lippe, but kept up a lively correspondence with friends in England; she also promoted knowledge of the English language in Germany.
* The Hanoverian minister was unsuccessful in his efforts: given the anti-absolutist fervour of Sweden at this time, Georg Heinrich's execution in February 1719 was as inevitable as it was unjust.
† Walpole then insinuated that George leant towards Roman Catholicism and inferred that it was ‘a good thing’ for the Church of England that the next heir would not continue along his father's path.
* Two examples must suffice. First, the keen interest of George (like others who knew of the Turkish experience) in promoting inoculation against smallpox: he had his granddaughters inoculated and was pleased when Frederick chose to follow their example. Second, George's insistence that a bill put before the Irish parliament which decreed castration for Catholic priests caught proselytizing should be dropped: it would offend the Catholic allies of Britain, he argued, and it was in any case ridiculous.
Verlasse nie einen Freund
Strebe, jeden Gerechtigkeit zu erwiesen
Fürchte niemand
† Access here was only for Saturdays and Sundays if George I was in residence.
* When Henry the Eighth left the Pope in the lurch
The Protestants made him head of the Church;
But George's good subjects the Bloomsbury people
Instead of the Church, made him head of the steeple.