VI

Two issues of principle

THE STRUGGLE FOR PLACE AND PROFIT

The accusation of Hanoverian greed for British money is one which has reverberated from George I's own reign to the present day.1 Several facts need to be taken into account.

The position of George's electoral courtiers and ministers, and even of Melusine and Sophia Charlotte, was not easy after 1714. They all had commitments at home, estates or houses to keep up and relatives to support, and this they had to do without the fees which – within limits – had been available to the majority of them in the electorate. Transfer to London meant a drop in earnings, and everything was found to be four times dearer than at home.² The chief ministers had, in any case, been able to earn little above their salaries and fees after 1698, in contrast to the reign of Ernst August when – because of the international situation – von Platen and Otto Grote increased their official salaries tenfold when gratifications from Louis XIV and domestic presents flowed freely.³ Bernstorff had accumulated money before the union of Celle and Hanover in 1705, but in his case riches had derived mainly from duke Georg Wilhelm's generous rewards for his services and not from foreign gratifications.⁴

Leaner times had come with George's reign as elector; and, after 1714, the Hanoverians in England, even the most upright of them, like Görtz and Bernstorff, looked about for ways either of economizing on expenditure or of maximizing their income. Görtz hoped for a house paid for by the British crown during his stay and was surprised when Sir John Vanbrugh, of the Office of Works, informed him that there were none in the king's gift: English ministers paid for their own homes.⁵ On a more significant level, Brydges, who sought an earldom for his father,* found that Melusine, Sophia Charlotte, Bernstorff, Bothmer and Kreienberg (who had assisted Bothmer in the London embassy before 1714) were willing to accept money-presents in return for ensuring the success of his quest. His accounts, now in the Huntington library, show that between August 1715 and February 1720 he gave £9,545 to La Kielmansegg, £9,500 to La Schulenburg, £2,909 to Bernstorff, £1,350 to Bothmer and £750 to Kreienberg.

Whether these sums should be regarded as ‘bribes’ in the modern sense is open to question. The sale of offices or of the reversion of offices was part of the social system of Europe in an age when pensions or other provisions for one's old age were rare. In England places at court changed hands for money, as did army commissions, and the sale of votes was quite common. Numerous minor posts were sold by the chief clerk of the House of Commons and by officials of many kinds at the local as well as at the central level.6 In France, Louis XIV's courtiers, male and female, were ‘commission agents’ selling services: effecting introductions, soliciting petitions, helping to procure places, titles, charters and grants.⁷ Brydges certainly had some success in obtaining minor office for relatives: the deanship of Carlisle for his brother and the reversion to the office of clerk of the Hanaper for his son. His money-presents to Bernstorff and Bothmer may have eased these transactions. We know that he offered Robethon 400 guineas, in cash or lottery-tickets, for the reversion of a post in the salt office for a friend. We do not know if Robethon accepted; in any case this was a small sum when compared both with Brydges' fortune and with the going price for offices and positions: on her own admission, Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, sold the place of a page of the backstairs at the court of queen Anne for £400.⁸

In George I's reign no important place at court was for sale, and the evidence we possess tends to show a decline also in the sale of offices in general.⁹ George's personal examination of all applications that touched the army is well known; but even where court or administrative office was concerned, his Hanoverian, like his British, advisers would have to take the king's prejudices into account – not only the person's fitness for the post and the influence of his patrons, but also his own past political behaviour and that of his family. Peter Wentworth, brother of the earl of Strafford, was told that he must ‘be content yet awhile’ when, supported by the duke of Shrewsbury and Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz, he sought promotion; he did not rise beyond the rank of equerry until the reign of George II.¹⁰ The earl of Strafford was never reinstated in any post. He was keen to be employed and humbled himself (for he was a proud man) to the extent of begging Görtz to assure George I, if current rumours should reach the king's ear, that he had not drunk the health of Ormonde on the latter's birthday.¹¹ Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg's hints that it would be sensible to give Strafford a minor post to content him, or at least to tie him closer to the Hanoverian dynasty, also went unheeded.12 Even men of impeccable antecedents had to wait their turn. Thomas Burnet, son of bishop Burnet and the author of pro-Hanoverian pamphlets both before and after George I's accession, assiduously solicited a post from September 1714. Not till May 1719 was he rewarded with a consulship in Lisbon, though it is fair to add that this exceeded his expectations.¹³ Conversely others, sacked in 1714, who had become more or less reconciled to being out of office, were agreeably surprised to be brought back after the death of Stanhope in 1721 when Sunderland for a while had great influence on appointments – among them Sir John Evelyn, who became a commissioner of the customs.¹⁴ It should be noted, however, that he was not restored to the sensitive post of postmaster-general; George's concern for the vital services of the state took precedence over ministerial recommendations.

While no firm evidence has been found beyond the sums actually spent by Brydges, it must be stressed that, quite apart from general gossip of the efficacy of bribes spent on the old Baron (as Bernstorff was often called), Bothmer and Robethon, or on ‘the Germans’ in general, important and responsible British ministers – Townshend, Robert Walpole and Craggs in particular – assumed and even claimed that George I's Hanoverian ministers lined their pockets with money-presents accepted in return for their recommending to the king candidates for British posts. Their accusations cannot be taken lightly.

In 1716, when George was in Hanover, Townshend complained to Stanhope that Bothmer and Robethon interfered in Scottish patronage and that Bothmer had ‘every day some infamous project or other on foot to get money, having nothing in his view but raising a vast estate to himself’; and in 1717 he spread a story in London that Robethon, shortly after George's accession, had asked ministers for £40,000 to be shared among Bernstorff (£20,000), Bothmer (£10,000), Schütz and himself (£5,000 each).¹⁵ In 1719, on hearing a rumour that Görtz might return to London, Craggs worried that this would mean ‘filling a new purse’ and charged the whole of George's Hanoverian entourage with excessive greed: ‘I have remarked that there is no distinction of person or circumstances. Jacobites, Tories, Papists, at the Exchange or in Church, by Land or Sea, during the Session or in the Recess, nothing is objected to provided there is money.’¹⁶

It is of course true that both secretaries wrote at times when they feared that their political enemies would gain the upper hand through Hanoverian money-trafficking and that, from their point of view, the king's ‘credit, interest and service’ would then suffer. There is certainly an element of exaggeration in Craggs's letter and a shade of venom in Townshend's contention that Bothmer would not ‘be satisfied till he has got the Ministry and Treasury into such hands that will satisfy his avarice’.17

Yet their concern to keep British patronage in British hands was natural since such patronage was part of political power, and George's rejoinder to Robert Walpole that he was sure the British ministers received douceurs for their recommendations fell on deaf ears.¹⁸ Even if there was more smoke than fire in their accusations, a question of principle was raised, since any encroachment by Hanoverian ministers and courtiers in British affairs was deemed contrary to the spirit of the Act of Settlement. For this act, its authors bearing in mind the rewards of land, titles and political influence to William III's Dutch favourites (particularly Portland and Albemarle, but also prominent army officers), laid down that a future monarch should not be able to give land or office of any kind to those not British-born: even naturalized subjects could not qualify as recipients of royal bounty from any source but the ruler's private purse. That a minister or courtier of George I in his capacity as elector of Hanover should circumvent the act by using his proximity to and familiarity with the king to recommend even a single person for a British place was held to infringe the rights reserved for British-born subjects: an effrontery, a cheating of British subjects out of profits reserved solely for them, as well as a political danger. This explains the note of near-hysteria in the letters quoted above. The indignation was not directed at payment for recommendations to office as such. Walpole, Townshend and Craggs, and every other British statesman of the period, regarded this practice as normal to gain adherents and supporters, and used it without qualms; but they wanted the power associated with the practice to remain in British ministerial hands. The lesser officials shared the attitude of their superiors. News in 1723 of Bothmer's purchase of an estate in Mecklenburg set the secretarial staff of Townshend and Carteret speculating on the sum he paid for it. This was variously estimated, with £20,000 at its lowest and £36,000 at its highest; but all assumed that the purchase price had been amassed at the expense of the British and hotly resented this.¹⁹ There is also some evidence from the German side (though admittedly from Fabrice, who was not well disposed towards Bernstorff and Bothmer) that he, Fabrice, did not intend to follow the example of those of George's Hanoverian ministers who had harmed their reputation in England by cashing in on royal appointments: he did not wish to incur hatred as they had done; he hoped, eventually, to become a naturalized British subject and realized that he would need the support of George's British ministers and advisers.20

That the ‘German ministers’ had not profited to the extent their British colleagues assumed can be deduced from various circumstances : Bernstorff and Görtz had made their fortunes before 1714, and Bothmer and Robethon lived in relatively modest circumstances in London. Their wills do not indicate great wealth. Indeed, Robethon stresses that he had lost a good deal of money in the South Sea bubble and deplores the fact that all he can leave his wife is an annuity of £66 and the interest on the equivalent of £1,200 left him by an uncle in France.²¹ His other bequests, to his son-in-law and to the son of a cousin, his ‘universal heir’ after his wife's death, amounted to £1,500. Bothmer's Mecklenburg estate, at Elmenhorst, was in the joint possession of himself and a nephew, though – since the whole revenue from the estate had accrued to Bothmer during his lifetime – it seems probable that Bothmer had provided the whole purchase-price. He assessed his own share at 100,000 Taler* and made arrangements for his wife and daughter to share a regular income of 4 per cent on that sum to be paid at stipulated times of the year, the daughter to have the whole interest on her mother's death. If the revenues of Elmenhorst could not bear that sum at any one time, the estate was to be mortgaged. Stipulation was also made that his daughter, a widow, should benefit from the repayment of 6,000 Taler which he had lent to one of his brothers. He wished her to buy a ‘noble estate’ in a Lutheran or Calvinist part of Germany and turn that into a fideikommis for her male descendants. As the nephew was the one who would carry on the Bothmer name and title of Freiherr, all movables at Elmenhorst were left to him, with arrangements for primogeniture in succession to the land.²² While there was thus a considerable difference between Bothmer and Robethon in the way they were able to provide for those members of the family that survived them, there is a close similarity about the other clauses of their wills.

Both demanded simple funerals (though Bothmer asked to have his body sent to Germany); both made bequests to the poor or to hospitals of their choice; both had minor collections of plate, medals, linen, books and manuscripts to dispose of – but the only value revealed is that Bothmer's plate was worth 300 Taler.

Concern for those who survived is also shown in her will by Sophia Charlotte, countess of Darlington. A widow since 1717, she had long been responsible for the four sons (the eldest of whom died before his mother) and two daughters of her marriage to Kielmansegg. The future in terms of rank for the boys had been arranged by George I's obtaining promotion from the Freiherr standing of their late father to that of Graf; when she herself became ill, she sold her Hanover estate (for 8,000 Taler) and put the exquisite contents of ‘Fantaisie’ into store, stipulating in her will23 that all her furniture, paintings, books, objets d'art and jewellery should be sold for the pecuniary benefit of her descendants.* In London Sophia Charlotte had a reputation of being a spendthrift: it was said that she had soon squandered the £40,000 left her by her mother.²⁴ It seems likely, however, that Sophia Charlotte's main inheritance from Klara von Platen was in the form of jewellery. This was certainly valuable (even if it did not reach the figure recorded by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu); but it was not ‘squandered’ since it formed part of her effects sold after her death. The inheritance from her father was governed by entail regulations: she had no free access to the capital which was administered on her behalf. Though generous and impulsive, Sophia Charlotte kept regular accounts. We have already seen that she had to take up a loan on the von Platen fideikommis to move her family to England in 1714 and also that she repaid it by instalments. While her husband was alive and in receipt of his salary as Hanoverian master of the horse, the couple lived in some state in lodgings provided by George I with much of the furniture and hangings provided by the Wardrobe. As a widow, Sophia Charlotte received a pension of £2,000 from the king. She moved to a house in Great George Street, near Hanover Square. This was run with the help of a butler, a cook, a porter, two carriers for sedan chairs, four footmen and eight female servants – not an excessive staff, judged by the standards of the time, when one remembers the number of children and her family relationship to George. From her accounts it has been noted that she bought several tickets in the state lottery and that she recorded a win of £10,000. It has been assumed that from this prize she bought her South Sea stock.²⁵ That this is erroneous is clear from testimony given at the South Sea bubble inquiry to the effect that Sophia Charlotte had received, as a secret gift, stock to the value of £15,000: a douceur equal to that given to the duchess of Kendal – in the expectation that ‘George I's ladies’ would speak in the company's favour with the king and demonstrate their confidence in its future to the public, thus encouraging other investors.

This knowledge renders Sophia Charlotte's entry of £10,000 as a lottery prize somewhat suspect. The sum seems to tally with the £9,545 which the duke of Chandos enters, in his accounts of 1720, as paid to the countess of Darlington as a reward for her support with king George for the title of duke of Chandos bestowed in 1719. But even if Sophia Charlotte's ticket brought a prize of £10,000 (while she did not enter the money-present from Chandos), the fact that her South Sea Company holding is noted at £15,000 in the list of her effects gives independent confirmation of the evidence given at the inquiry as to the sum she received. The chronicler of the Kielmansegg family history is mistaken in thinking that Sophia Charlotte was rewarded for keeping her head when the bubble burst. He argues that her refusal to sell increased her stock in the reconstituted company from £10,000 to £15,000 by the time of her death (May 1725).26 On the contrary, the douceur she had received had much declined in value, though eventually the fideikommis benefited just because the stock had been a gift.

The duchess of Kendal and her two younger daughters were similarly unable to make the expected profit during the bubble, but for them also the slow rise of the stock, once the crisis of the company had been overcome, represented clear gain from the douceur. The only money apart from this South Sea Company stock which has been proved in the case of the elder Melusine is the gift of £9,500 from the duke of Chandos in 1720. This was for the same service in respect of his title as that performed by Sophia Charlotte; it rated fractionally higher as if Chandos was aware of their different relationships to the king. There were rumours of other presents to Melusine. She and young Melusine were supposed to have received ‘something’ in 1717 for helping the duke of Newcastle to the Garter and to have divided £12,000 between them when the duke of Kent obtained the same honour a little later. Melusine is also said to have pocketed £11,000 in 1725 for having persuaded George I to let Bolingbroke return to England.²⁷ This may well be so, even if in every case there were political reasons sufficient to explain George's actions; but direct proofis hard to come by where money presents are concerned.²⁸

Melusine certainly needed money after 1714. She gave financial support to her brother of the alchemy experiments, as well as to the two brothers-in-law who were the putative fathers of her daughters by George. She seems to have been somewhat worried about her financial prospects if George I should die before her. An enigmatic letter from her brother, the field marshal, after George I's death makes the point that Melusine has only herself to blame if she is not now ‘easy’: she would never listen to her family's advice but kept her own counsel. If this means anything except a general grumble (and Johann Matthias was not given to them), it implies that Melusine did not use her position at George's court to amass a fortune.29 This estimate seems to fit the picture we have of Melusine from the side of George's family better than the money-grabbing harpy of English memoir literature.

In any case George was Melusine's financial mainstay. The pension he paid her was put at £7,500 a year by an Imperial diplomat, who had good contacts with the king's Hanoverian ministers.³⁰ George assuaged her vague worries over the future by granting her, in 1722, the patent for the Irish coinage which she was able to dispose of, at a profit of £10,000, to the contractor William Wood.³¹ By this time she already held £10,000 in Bank of England stock,³² and in 1720 she bought an estate in Holstein which she sold at a profit after the king's death.³³ George was clearly uneasy about her financial position; with her capital tied up in the estate she might be in need of ready money if she survived him. In 1723 he therefore made a last will and testament, witnessed by Robert Walpole, in which he left her £22,986. 2s. 2d.;* he let her know, as we can deduce from other evidence, the details of his bequest. As this will – only recently discovered in the British Museum³⁴ – makes no mention of anyone but Melusine, Hervey's story that George II suppressed a will of his father's in which the middle daughter, young Melusine, was left £20,000 and that the man she married in 1733, the earl of Chesterfield, was able to press this sum out of George II as the price for his keeping quiet about other aspects of the will, must be regarded with scepticism.³⁵ It is possible, however, that when the duchess of Kendal in 1730 demanded and received payment from Robert Walpole of the money he held in trust for her from the late king – in theory £12,986. 2s. 2d., but realizing, with dividends, only £6,993. is. id. – she did so in connection with marriage negotiations for young Melusine: discreet as ever, she just told Walpole that she had need of the money, all in one go, ‘for a specific purpose’.³⁶ But it is more likely that she needed the cash to buy or build Kendal House at Twickenham where she lived for the rest of her life.³⁷ On her death in 1743 she made young Melusine, countess of Chesterfield since 1733, her main heir, with bequests both to Melusine's elder sister, the Gräfin Delitz, and to her nephews and nieces on the Schulenburg side. Her main charitable bequest, of £1,000, was to a missionary society in Africa.³⁸ The sums donated to nephews and nieces were quite modest (£300 to each); and the somewhat straitlaced attitude of Melusine as she got older (which we have already noticed in her dislike of gambling for high stakes) is evident in her leaving out one nephew from the list of bequests with the explanation that she did so because he had married against his parents' wishes. When the dowager countess of Chesterfield had her own will drawn up in 1778, she noted that the residue of the duchess of Kendal's estate then stood at £17,164.39 On the whole one is entitled to conclude that La Schulenburg did not amass a fortune commensurate with the rumours of her own lifetime. The pattern of the wills that I have been able to examine tends to be consistent: concern for relatives and especially for those expected to carry on the family rank and shoulder responsibility for its landed property; concern for servants in present or past employment; and small bequests to charitable institutions. That the family dynasty was more dominant than any other consideration is supported by arrangements made by those Hanoverians who had the misfortune to survive all their own sons and grandsons in the male line: in Bernstorff's case, this meant that his estates and fortune had to be entailed on the male descendants of a daughter who had, providentially, married a distant relative who also carried the Bernstorff name.⁴⁰

That the ‘Hanoverians sucked England dry’ would therefore seem to be a gross exaggeration. George I clearly had some sympathy with those of his Hanoverian entourage who were willing to accept not only the usual presents of politeness (these the Hanoverians also bestowed on their English friends and connections),⁴¹ but money-presents intended to influence him through them. The intention of bribing was thus present, and the secrecy connected with gratifications that could be deemed to be bribes was probably also present [vide the possible false entry in Sophia Charlotte's accounts). It would seem, however, from George's already quoted remark to Robert Walpole, that the king was au courant and this, according to the contemporary way of thinking, robbed the money-presents of the tinge of treason.⁴²

In the cases of promotions to titles or minor office, where we have evidence of money-presents actually paid, we find them politically innocent, seen from George's point of view, since they were in tune with his policy of rewards for past services: Brydges had been paymaster-general during the War of the Spanish Succession and had punctually paid the Hanoverian auxiliary troops, in sharp contrast to the Tories who took over after him.⁴³ George therefore thought that Brydges and his family deserved rewards and did not mind his Hanoverian ministers benefiting from the largesse of so rich a British subject. And if, as rumoured, Melusine accepted money-presents for easing the path of the dukes of Newcastle and Kent to the Garter she was still working within George's concept of rewards: Kent, though a nobleman of ‘indifferent parts’,⁴⁴ was a staunch Whig who had rendered good service in queen Anne's reign,* while Newcastle was a useful Whig of the younger generation – both were courtiers who would be given greater lustre by the blue ribbon. Again, if she helped Bolingbroke, for a fee, to return from exile, there may well have been an element of collusion between herself and the king who – as we have seen – wanted Bolingbroke in his ‘party’ at that particular moment.

That George himself felt, if not the need, then the desire to increase his private income from British sources in the early years of his reign can be traced in some detail from correspondence in the Bernstorff archives. At the peace of Utrecht Louis XIV had ceded the Caribbean island of St Christopher (the possession of which had been in dispute between France and England), and it was then renamed St Kitts. Via Bernstorff, George made inquiries whether he would be entitled to profit from certain land-sales there. This seems to have shocked Robert Walpole: only if the king publicly announced that he would use such money for a project that would please the nation, such as the rebuilding of Whitehall Palace, did he think there was any hope of success.45 Busy as he was with Great Northern War issues, George let the matter drop; the time for London palace building had not yet come and he clearly had other ways of spending the St Kitts money (if it had materialized) in mind. Possibly the rebuttal taught him a lesson. It is worth noting that, though his ladies received stock in the South Sea Company as douceurs, he paid hard cash, and in full, for his own stock.

PROMOTION BY TITLE

While George, in the opinion of his British ministers, was not strict enough with Hanoverians who sought British money for recommendations to British posts and titles, he won their praise for meticulously keeping to the rules that forbade his giving British titles and posts to Hanoverians. Hereditary peerages were given only to legitimate male members of the house of Hanover: George's youngest brother, Ernst August, was made duke of York in 1716; and his grandson Frederick, at the age of eleven, was given the title duke of Gloucester.

For the royal ladies a halfway house was found – peerages for life after naturalization. Melusine, already naturalized in 1716, was in the same year created countess of Munster in the Irish peerage, progressing in 1719 to duchess of Kendal (a ducal title dormant since the death of the son of James II who bore it) in the English peerage. In 1722 young Melusine was given the title of countess of Walsingham.⁴⁶ Her elder sister Louise was not given an English title, but was In the same year made an Imperial countess in her own right, the Gräfin von Delitz (the name being taken from a property in the Schulenburg family). Trudchen was still too young to be honoured; and in the event she received high rank through marriage in 1721 to the heir of the ruling Graf zu Schaumburg-Lippe. George's half-sister, Sophia Charlotte, had, after her husband's death, to rely on George to complete arrangements for her sons to receive Imperial Graf rank, herself becoming a naturalized British subject preliminary to being granted the titles of countess of Leinster in 1719 and of Darlington in July 1722. Her younger daughter, Caroline, received naturalization at the same time; her elder daughter, named after herself, had become British by her marriage in 1719 to Emanuel Scrope, viscount Howe.47

This was the sum total of those whom George honoured by British titles, all members of his family or regarded as such. It is interesting to find, however, that discussions took place between Townshend and Robert Walpole in 1723 as to whether Sophia Charlotte's sister-in-law, wife of Ernst August, count von Platen, could be made a life-member of the English peerage. Townshend makes it clear that George had never hinted that he contemplated such a step (indeed, the secretary of state confessed that he was not certain whether the king would favour it or not): the query arose from his idea that he and Robert Walpole might, if it were legally possible, use the bait of the title to wean Sophia Charlotte from her friendship with Carteret, their feared rival for George's favour. The realization that the countess in question was of the Catholic religion (a fact which Townshend in his eagerness had overlooked) put an end to this particular pursuit, though not to their rivalry with Carteret.⁴⁸

THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION

Surprisingly early in his reign as king, George I began to contemplate what we may call the Hanoverian succession, that is, the putting an end to the dynastic union between Britain and Hanover: already in February of 1716 he had a will drawn up which stipulated its future dissolution. That this was not a passing fancy is shown by his discussion of the problem with Hanoverian and British advisers, including legal experts, and also by a codicil to the will in 1720. Furthermore, he broached the subject with the person most concerned, his grandson Frederick; he also made strenuous efforts in Vienna to obtain Imperial cooperation; finally, he deposited three copies of the will, signed and witnessed: one in Britain, one in Vienna, and one in Wolfenbüttel.49

The reasons why he took these steps were various. The most immediate was the impact of the Jacobite menace as shown in the Fifteen. As an experienced soldier, George had no doubt that James Edward's invasion, and others that might follow, would be unsuccessful; but he argued that as long as the dynastic union between Britain and Hanover lasted there would be an element of division between ‘Stuart’ and ‘Hanoverian’, while Britain's enemies at any given time might be tempted to render assistance in money, arms, soldiers, or ships to the Stuart pretender to the British throne. Conversely, if the dynastic union between the electorate and the kingdom could be dissolved, then the accusations that the ‘Hanoverian’ line was ‘foreign’ would become muted, support for the Pretender and his descendants would die away and the country would have civil peace.

Secondly, he was concerned for Hanover and the Hanoverians. The separation of families brought problems and at times sorrows which he saw at close quarters. He himself had felt the pangs of parting and saw to it that the clause in the Act of Settlement of 1701 which forbade the monarch to leave the confines of the kingdom without express permission from parliament was repealed as early as 1715. He planned to visit Hanover ‘frequently’, to breathe familiar air and see familiar faces and places, to take the waters at Pyrmont for his health's sake, to hunt for pleasure, to watch the growth and development of his grandson Frederick, and – as he wrote to his daughter, the queen consort of Prussia – to give him the opportunity to meet her.⁵⁰

In the event George was able to pay only five visits to Germany (in 1716, 1719, 1720, 1723 and 1725), but during four of these he met Sophia Dorothea and also, on one occasion in Berlin, his Prussian grandchildren, including Wilhelmine and the future Frederick the Great. The prince and princess of Wales and their younger children never went with George on his continental visits since their absence from London would have created serious constitutional problems: it was enough of a nightmare for the British ministers that the king went abroad at all and more often than not returned so late that parliament had to be prorogued again and again if politics, pleasure, or merely adverse winds on the Dutch side of the water delayed his return to London. Melusine was always of the royal party, as were her daughters and also Sophia Charlotte in her widowhood. Some of the London-based Hanoverian ministers and courtiers accompanied the king, though at least one – usually Bothmer – was left behind to take care of Hanoverian interests. George's physician and a royal chaplain of the Church of England formed part of his suite on every visit, and individual British courtiers attended as and when it suited them and George. The presence of at least one British secretary of state with his staff was essential since much diplomatic business was transacted during George I's stays on the continent; and, at times of tension between his British ministers, two members of the inner cabinet made the journey to Hanover with the king.

George was naturally disappointed, as was his Hanoverian entourage, in those years when circumstances did not permit a continental visit. In 1715 news of the Pretender's approaching invasion made it unthinkable that the king should leave Britain for however short a time; and even in the summer of 1716, when George decided to travel to Hanover, he did so in spite of the grave doubts expressed by his British ministers as to the wisdom of the journey so soon after the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion. In 1717 and 1718 the unsettled domestic situation was sufficiently serious for George to accept that he could not go abroad, even if important diplomatic negotiations in progress during those years would have benefited from his presence on the continent.* Hanoverians close to George felt convinced that the king stayed in England at a significant risk to his health during these two years; by the spring of 1719 it was judged medically imperative that the king go to Germany to take the Pyrmont waters as soon as possible and he left England already at the end of May. Again there had been strong opposition from most of his British ministers, though Stanhope realized the advantage of George's being able to confer in person with his volatile son-in-law, Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, and win his cooperation for a ‘peace plan for the north’ now Charles XII of Sweden had been removed from the European scene.

Once George's cure had been completed, attention was concentrated on the role of Prussia within the northern peace plan. Success was hard to come by. Not only did Bernstorff remain suspicious of Prussia's ultimate objectives, but Friedrich Wilhelm was in a difficult position – wooed by George as elector of Hanover and by Britain, but fearful of tsar Peter's reaction to any cooperation between Prussia and George I. The Prussian king's vacillations kept the British party longer on the continent than contemplated: it was already mid-November when Friedrich Wilhelm and Sophia Dorothea arrived at Herrenhausen, thus intimating that the Prusso-Hanoverian and the Anglo-Prussian treaties already signed would be implemented.

For political and sentimental reasons, George was reluctant to cut his Hanover stays short and when he at last embarked on his Channel crossing, suitably escorted by British naval vessels, he often encountered terrible storms on the voyages back to his kingdom. In 1726 the ships were scattered and rumours spread all over Britain that the king had perished at sea. There was general relief when it became known that his yacht had got safely into Rye harbour, but the need to have carriages sent to his unexpected landing-place along snow-bound January roads made for further delay. The modest house in which the king stayed while in Rye can still be seen. Contemporary gazettes made much of the fact that the owners gave up their own bedroom to George, and that George – in return – stood godfather to the child born to the wife of his host during his stay: the boy was named after him and given 100 guineas as a christening gift.51

In 1720 George had the smoothest passage ever in arranging his visit to Hanover with his ministers. Stanhope was firmly in the saddle and as anxious as the king to exert influence on negotiations still in progress to end the Great Northern War in ways which suited Hanover and Britain. Moreover, the reconciliation, in February 1720, of the prince of Wales with his father gave assurance of domestic tranquillity, as did the re-entry of Townshend and Robert Walpole into George's government: Sunderland therefore felt free to go with the king and Stanhope.

That summer's visit to Germany was especially festive and George was so lustig, by all the reports Liselotte received from Hanover, that she could hardly believe this was the same person whom she remembered as froid and sérieux from his stay in France as a young man.⁵² Ernst August, prince-bishop of Osnabrück since 1716, joined George's party at Göhrde, as did young Frederick of Hanover and prince Wilhelm of Hesse, the brother of king Fredrik I of Sweden.* When Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia arrived with ministers and courtiers, it was estimated that George was at the expense of feeding seven hundred people (guests, their suites and servants, as well as his own staff) and of keeping over 1,000 horses for transport, riding and the hunt. The weather was fine. The days settled into a routine. At 8 o'clock in the morning the royal and princely guests and the more important ministers, courtiers, and officers met in the king's anteroom to take hot chocolate before hunting deer, foxes and hares. Dinner was served in the big hall at three large tables for those of high rank and office, and at six smaller tables in adjoining rooms for those who, in Fabrice's words, ‘did not trust themselves to eat with royalty’.⁵³ Some of the twenty ladies (the number of George's usual female entourage having been swelled by ladies of the electoral court, including one of Melusine's sisters) followed the hunt, Trudchen the keenest among them. In the afternoon all the ladies came into their own when courtiers and officers repaired to Melusine's apartments to drink coffee, gossip and flirt; and concerts, plays and dances were arranged in the evenings. At least one romance blossomed. The elder Schaumburg-Lippe son was of the party and must have found favour with both die schöne Gertrud and George: her marriage to Albrecht Wolfgang was celebrated in October 1721.

The afternoons, and often the evenings as well, were filled with work for the rulers and their ministers. Their secretaries and other trusted staff had been busy since early morning, deciphering sections of incoming despatches and enciphering parts of outgoing instructions, drafting treaty clauses and copying documents.

A similar routine, if with fewer guests in residence, was followed when George returned to Herrenhausen. There were balls and other entertainments. Increasingly, however, unease about the affairs of the South Sea Company transmitted itself to Hanover, affecting British and Hanoverian ministers and George and Melusine as well, necessitating a speedy return on both private grounds and reasons of state. It was therefore particularly galling for the king and the ministers to be held up in the Dutch port of Helvoetsluys for eleven days by contrary winds; but Fabrice (though worried about his own losses) depicts the king's dinner and supper tables during the waiting period, with Stanhope, Sunderland and the earl of Stair, from the British side, Hardenberg, Ilten and himself from the Hanoverian, as well as Sophia Charlotte and Melusine with the two younger daughters, as at least superficially jolly.54

The next two years George could not possibly get away from Britain: in 1721 the Bubble crisis had not yet been overcome, nor had George's ministry been re-established on a stable enough basis after Stanhope's death. And in 1722 the Jacobite invasion project, the so-called Atterbury plot, planned to take advantage of the general outcry against the South Sea Company directors and George I's government, was taken seriously enough by the British ministers to make them more or less veto the king's going abroad: news of a Stuart plot to assassinate George during his journey to Hanover was also given some credence.⁵⁵

But in 1723 came another protracted visit to Germany, this time taking in Prussia as well as Hanover. Both British secretaries of state, Townshend and Carteret, accompanied the king with their respective under-secretaries and staff. This was in part a result of tension between the Townshend-Walpole group in the cabinet and Carteret who – on the death of Sunderland in 1722 – had gathered round him the remnants of the Stanhope-Sunderland group. More importantly, the presence of both secretaries demonstrated the predominance of British issues in George I's foreign policy negotiations: a significant shift (which will be discussed in due course) had taken place after 1719 in the relative priority for George of his electorate and his kingdom.

The 1723 visit followed the usual pattern of Pyrmont, Herrenhausen and Gohrde, and finally Hanover. At Göhrde there were a great many visitors who were lavishly entertained. Again the king, like his ministers, worked hard and hunted vigorously. For his visit to the court of Sophia Dorothea and Friedrich Wilhelm he drove, as he liked to do, his own light chaise with strong horses changed at every relay.56 It was on 9 October NS, the first day of his stay at Charlottenburg, that he suffered a fainting-fit at the festive feast of welcome. This has been regarded as a slight stroke, though probably because the king died of a stroke in 1727.⁵⁷ In any case, George's indisposition was brief. He enjoyed meeting the Prussian grandchildren and discussing their future. In principle he accepted the double-marriage project which Sophia Dorothea had long desired, to marry her daughter Wilhelmine to Frederick of Hanover and her son Friedrich to a daughter, preferably the eldest, of the prince of Wales, though the king thought the cousins too young for any public announcement.⁵⁸

The fainting-fit may have given Melusine a fright. Her plotting with Townshend to avoid a visit to Hanover in 1724 possibly had other reasons than unpleasantness with Sophia Charlotte and the von Platen clan: she may have started to worry about George's health and to think the journey and its festivities too tiring for him two years running. In the event she was the one who was seriously ill in 1724,⁵⁹ whereas George, during his 1725 visit to Hanover, was well and active enough – three to four hours in the saddle at hunts – to impress the British officials who reported to Whitehall.⁶⁰

Biennial visits to Hanover became the pattern for the rest of the reign. No pressure can be traced from George or his electoral entourage in Britain for journeys to Germany in either 1724 or 1726. Conversely, there were urgent political reasons in 1725, as in 1727, why British ministers concerned with foreign policy should encourage the king to travel to the continent. In 1725 the build-up of two opposed political systems of alliances in which vital British interests were at stake necessitated a move, so to speak, of Whitehall to Hanover. In 1726 the diplomatic scene remained unstable enough for the ministry to prefer the king to stay at home, since the Spanish blockade and projected siege of Gibraltar, and the fear of large-scale war, turned their thoughts to defensive and contingency offensive military and naval preparations. By the summer of 1727 the threat of war had vanished – due more to George and his cooperation with Robert Walpole and French statesmen than to a bellicose Townshend; and there was general agreement that George's desire to finalize the double-marriage project with Prussia would serve British political ends. On 15 June (NS) the usual large party, spread over several yachts and other ships, left the British coast. Townshend and his officials stayed on for a short while at The Hague to concert measures with the Dutch, while George hurried ahead towards Hanover. On the way he suffered a stroke, and, hardly conscious, was taken to the palace of Osnabrück where he died during the night of 21-22 June.

*    *    *

During his five visits to Hanover George found time to look into electoral affairs. Indeed, he worked those Hanoverian ministers and officials whom he met only at rare intervals so hard that they were apt to feel they ‘had no time to breathe’ during the king-elector's stays.61 Not that control was lax when George resided in his kingdom. All threads of foreign policy remained in his hands, and no army promotion could take place without reference to him. Extraordinary expenditure above a given sum – set as low as 50 Taler – had to be submitted to him for authorization. So did all petitions for pensions and other financial help, such as a dowry to permit the daughter of a former official to enter a Protestant convent.⁶² In routine matters George relied on Görtz, the president of the Kammer, who had great expertise in financial matters. His incorruptibility was a byword; yet he remained uneasy lest his distance from the king-elector should work in his disfavour. His correspondence with young Schulenburg abounds with requests that he, or Melusine, should intercede for him with George when he suspected that his enemies in Hanover, or Bernstorff in London, were trying to make mischief in law-suits in which he was involved, or weaken his authority by arranging appointments in the Kammer directly with the king-elector.⁶³ Görtz was pro-Swedish in his views on foreign policy and had therefore an additional cause for worry: could Bernstorff use this to bring him into disfavour? Again and again Schulenburg had to stress that Görtz was the minister who had His Majesty's greatest trust in the realm of domestic Hanoverian affairs and to assure him that George would respect his views on foreign affairs as long as he did not take measures to undermine the king-elector's foreign policy.64

The greater opportunity which the separation of his Hanoverian ministers gave for misunderstandings and jealousies affected George's thinking on the Hanoverian succession. So did the suspicions and resentment (more or less strong) that his British ministers harboured of Bernstorff, Bothmer and Robethon. Of these, Robethon was the least important or influential. To call him George's ‘private secretary’ is somewhat misleading.⁶⁵ His official title was secretary of embassies and as such he was entrusted with much of the drafting of foreign despatches for Hanoverian diplomats. Research has established that instructions issued by him at critical moments of the Great Northern War touched upon British affairs. Yet he played no independent role; what he wrote was at Bernstorff's dictation and derived ultimately from George, who was not above exploiting his position as king for electoral purposes in the early years of his reign.⁶⁶ George increasingly distrusted Robethon. He had the reputation of a gossip, of not being sage, and in 1718 had to be taken to task (receiving une bonne Mercuriale in Schulenburg's phraseology) for having spread a rumour that the king planned to bring his grandson Frederick to England.⁶⁷ This hit George on a sensitive spot. British advisers, especially bishops, were apt to recommend that Frederick should come to Oxford or Cambridge to be trained for his future role as king;⁶⁸ while for the sake of Hanover it was essential for George to keep Frederick in the electorate to maintain loyalty and to serve as the rallying point for resistance if Hanover should suffer enemy invasion: a not unlikely prospect as long as the Great Northern War lasted.

If British contemporaries were deceived in overestimating Robethon's importance, they were right in ascribing to Bernstorff a greater influence with George than his fellow Geh. Rat in London, Bothmer. Bothmer, valued for his diplomatic experience, remained an adviser rather than a forceful minister willing to argue with his master when he disagreed with him.⁶⁹ Bernstorff, by contrast, held strong views and was not afraid to press them strongly on the king. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that he decided George's foreign policies whether as elector or king: there is much evidence to show that George sought a variety of opinions from British and Hanoverian subjects and took ultimate decisions himself. Nor is it correct to speak of Bernstorff's ‘fall from grace’ in the summer of 1719 (as a result of Stanhope's victory over him) and to assume that he never set foot in England again after that date; he was in England during 1720 and his influence with George was then thought ‘as great as ever’.⁷⁰ He was, however, conscious of his advancing age, and wished to spend his remaining years at Gartow; he did not go back to London after the king's Hanover visit of 1720. From then on he kept in touch with London Kanzlei business through correspondence with Bothmer and with foreign affairs in general by letters from and meetings with Hanoverian and British diplomats.71 He remained prominent enough in George's councils to make Townshend embark in 1723 on a campaign to have him excluded from any participation in the politics of George as king of Great Britain; and Townsend, Robert Walpole and Newcastle reckoned it a great victory when George in that year named Christian Ulrich von Hardenberg, his Hofmarschall, as Geh. Rat in Bernstorff's place.⁷²

The resentment and fear of successive British ministers felt by his Hanoverian advisers could not but reinforce George's desire to dissolve the dynastic union between the electorate and the kingdom. It is noteworthy that the king's codicil of 1720, which reinforced the will of 1716, was signed after the Stanhope-Bernstorff tussle of 1719. George himself had increasingly become more British in outlook, but it was as if his British ministers would not believe this and distrusted him: Stanhope's toughness with Bernstorff in 1719 was mirrored (and even enlarged) when Townshend crowed in 1723 that he had forced the king to promise that he would not sign any document touching on British foreign policy issues except in his, Townshend's, presence.⁷³

*    *    *

But how to effect a dissolution? George was not afraid of drastic changes. In 1700 he had accomplished the reform of the Hanoverian calendar in one fell swoop; in that year he discarded the Julian calendar and adopted the Gregorian by lopping off eleven days after 28 February.⁷⁴ On his accession in Britain he dropped the practice (as William III had done, though it had been revived by queen Anne) of touching for scrofula – the king's evil – not (as has been suggested) because he felt himself a usurper who had no right to lay on hands for healing but because he was in tune with the ideas of the early enlightenment and regarded the custom as mere superstition.⁷⁵ In political thinking he was a follower of Pufendorf and admired the latter's concept that the general good was the highest law. The fact that Pufendorf's translator dedicated the German version of Of the duty of Man and Citizen to George is no proof of this; but the range of the conversation George encouraged at his table and his support for a variety of scholars attuned to Pufendorf's ideas justify this conclusion.⁷⁶

It should therefore cause no surprise that George adopted a rationalist attitude to the problem that faced him. He realized that the obstacles would be formidable and that his solution could not be applied in the near future. He had only one son and, so far, only one grandson, Frederick, by that son.* Recalling the wounds which the quarrel over primogeniture had inflicted on his parents, his brothers and himself, George had no wish to rob anybody of his legal expectations. He insisted that Georg August and Frederick, having been brought up in the expectation that they would become kings of Great Britain as well as rulers of the electorate of Hanover, must not be deprived of either succession. What he stipulated was that, if Frederick should have more than one son, the first-born should inherit the royal crown and the second the electoral cap. If Frederick had only one son, that son should become king of Great Britain, while the electorate would pass into the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel branch of the house of Brunswick.

The wisdom and maturity of this solution is striking: his own Brunswick-Lüneburg branch was to continue in Hanover if fate so decreed; if not, he had no thoughts of revenge on the enemy of 1692–1706, but harked back to the far older unity of the Gesamthaus. The priority given to Great Britain is even more significant. By accepting the Act of Settlement, the house of Hanover had taken on a responsibility for the Protestant succession which George did not think it right to abandon. Though not of a religious temperament, he held it ‘a point of honour’ to maintain this succession for himself and for his descendants.⁷⁷ George was also sure that his will would help Hanover. The electorate had greatly benefited from his accession to the crown and power of Great Britain: the terms he had secured from Sweden's enemies in 1715 can only be explained by the royal resources he now had and used with skill and ruthlessness to obtain Bremen and Verden for Hanover. Whichever branch of the Gesamthaus stood to inherit Hanover when the time came for the will to take effect, his personal gloire was assured as the elector who had fulfilled the Brunswick ambitions of expansion in north Germany.

He did not expect difficulties from the Hanoverian advisers whom he took into his confidence – Bernstorff, for one, agreed with him – nor with Frederick when the boy was old enough to discuss the issue. That George did so, and that he won his grandson's support for the will is shown by Frederick, on his deathbed in 1751, revealing his grandfather's wishes to his own eldest son† and imploring him to act in accordance with George I's will.⁷⁸ George also sent a copy of his will to the Wolfenbüttels in case Frederick should have only one son, so that they might make their claim heard. It was essential, if he should not fail in his duty to Hanover, for George to gain Imperial consent to break the primogeniture rule for the electorate without having to sacrifice the electoral dignity. Efforts to achieve this were made after 1719; and though there was much discussion in Vienna as to the legality of what George wanted the emperor to do, the pressure which the king of Great Britain could put on Charles VI in the political negotiations of the 1720s gave hope of eventual success. The emperor and his closest advisers promised their consent (if in somewhat guarded terms), and a copy of George I's will was lodged at the Hofburg. A third copy was deposited with the archbishop of Canterbury.

George I put his plan before his British ministers and legal advisers, but these proved less pleased than he had anticipated. The ministers had quickly got used to the connection with Hanover which had some advantages, and promised more, in matters of British trade with the continent. More immediately, they feared that the will, if news of it should leak out, might have an unsettling effect on parliament and the country: could it not be used either by the Jacobites or by their own non-Jacobite political opponents to make mischief? Not wishing to offend the king, they remained non-committal and referred him to the jurists. In 1719 George submitted two propositions to a committee of legal experts under the chairmanship of Macclesfield, the lord chief justice. The first expressed his desire to give males preference over females in the British succession. Here the committee was not discouraging. The king had not asked to have females excluded from the succession, but was willing to contemplate a queen regnant if the male line failed. They gave as their opinion that this ‘could be arranged if the king so willed’.79 But when it came to the second submission, an examination of the will George had framed in 1716, they were deeply disturbed. They found that the prospect of an ‘interregnum’ was inseparable from George's plan for the dissolution of the dynastic union. Immediate succession was the English principle, expressed in the formula, ‘The King is dead, long live the King!’ There would be no time in law, they argued, for an heir to divest himself of his electoral title without prejudicing his royal title, since the formalities connected with that renunciation would create an interregnum, however short, and the nation ‘abhorred an interregnum’. And even if some way could be found round this problem, what guarantee was there that the ruler would not go back on any promise, however solemn, he had made in order to become king according to George I's will, and at a later date claim the electorate, even going to war to displace his younger brother? And how could a second son who had inherited Hanover with the consent of the elder brother be prevented, on the death of that brother, from reopening his claim to the British succession? In either case there would be uncertainty. The jurists' conclusion was that any dissolution of the dynastic union would bring such dangers to Great Britain that the Protestant succession itself would be at risk.80

That this pessimistic report did not make George drop his plan is evidence of his attachment to the principle of dissolution of the union for the benefit of both kingdom and electorate. European developments between 1716 and 1720 (when he signed the codicil confirming the will) had indeed reinforced his determination to do all he could to bring about the intended separation: Hanover was now secure in possession of Bremen and Verden and specifically British and European interests dictated his and his ministers' policies to the near exclusion of electoral concerns. After 1720 this process gathered ever greater momentum, to the point where one Hanoverian minister could write – if in confidence – to another, ‘Hanover will soon be a province of Great Britain, much as Ireland is now.’⁸¹ George was well aware of this. His main attempt to find a solution to the problems raised by the Macclesfield committee were directed towards Vienna. If the emperor and the relevant Imperial authorities agreed to confer the electorate on the second great-grandson of his dynastic line, then the dissolution could safely take place. The prestige and power of the Empire would guarantee the safety of the new elector, while the knowledge that such an agreement had been won ought to make it possible for the first great-grandson to succeed in Great Britain without the interregnum envisaged by English legal experts.

Another solution, a more practical one in English terms, also presented itself and won George's conditional approval. The king must have discussed his will with his son and heir, for we find the prince and princess of Wales suggesting a revision of the will once the son born to them in 1721, William Augustus, seemed likely – to the delight of his parents and his grandfather – to survive infancy.* Their proposal was that this boy, born and brought up in England, should succeed his father in the kingdom, while his elder brother, Frederick, should rest content with the electorate of Hanover. George could see the advantages of this scheme. First, it would bring a quicker end of the Jacobite threat than his own will envisaged; secondly, it would revitalize a fully independent electorate more speedily; thirdly, it would create no complications in the Empire since primogeniture would persist in Hanover. George made his consent, however, conditional on Frederick accepting this solution of his own free will: he would not, in his will, rob Frederick of his birthright.⁸² It is significant that there is no further codicil to George's will after William Augustus's birth. We have no evidence that the king broached the subject of the revised plan with Frederick: it would seem that he waited for Georg August and Caroline to speak to the elder son about their intention in respect of the succession as he drew closer to manhood.

It is against this background, and possibly also the unexpectedness of George I's death, that we must see George II's suppression of his father's will in 1727. His pocketing of that document when the archbishop of Canterbury handed it to him in his first privy council, without communicating it according to custom to the members of that council, is well-documented.83 Less well-known are George II's successful efforts to retrieve the copies of George I's will from Vienna and Brunswick. George II's having two sons strengthened his hand in negotiations with both Charles VI and the young duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel:* against concessions on European issues, he persuaded the emperor to disgorge the Hofburg copy of the will; against financial compensation he brought the young duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel – oppressed by debts left by his father – to surrender the Wolfenbüttel copy. Both copies were deposited in the Hanover archives, and it is indeed from these that historians in the twentieth century have been able to reconstruct the fate of George I's will of 1716 and its codicil of 1720.⁸⁴

George I's plan for a dissolution of the dynastic union thus came up against not only British fears of an interregnum, but also his own son's dislike of the will as framed. If Frederick had lived longer than George II, or at least long enough to be able to discuss the proposed change at a more adult level than was possible with his own heir, a boy of twelve, George I's will might have come to fruition at the time he had envisaged.

What concerns us here is not so much the vicissitudes of George's will as the light it throws on his personality and on the way in which he attempted to solve problems along rational lines. News about his will which leaked out during his own lifetime and after his death was garbled and therefore misinterpreted or misunderstood. This explains the comments in English history books down to our own day that George I, out of hatred for his son, wished to rob Georg August of the royal throne.⁸⁵ Nothing could be farther from the truth. George I had settled in Britain and accepted that Britain had the first claim on the Hanoverian family. The greater power and glory of the kingdom, as against the electorate, no doubt played some part in his calculations; but his concern for justice, equity and rational solutions of political problems can be read in every line of the will. There is rancour against none.

* The father died before he was dubbed earl of Carnarvon, but the title – since it had been bestowed – was deemed to have been inherited by Brydges, who was later created duke of Chandos.

* A Taler at this time was worth about one-third of a pound sterling.

* The sale brought 51,100 Taler, to which her jewellery, valued at 22,000, contributed most. Her eldest surviving son, Georg Ludwig, bought back several items at the sale price, and these have remained in the Kielmansegg possession to the present day.

* Made up of £10,000 worth of South Sea stock held in George I's own name and £12,986. 2s. 2d. worth of the same stock which had been transferred, the day before the will was signed, to Robert Walpole as a trustee for the duchess of Kendal.

* It is interesting to note that Kent's rise to the office of lord chamberlain in 1704 was rumoured to have been obtained by a bribe to the duchess of Marlborough of £10,000.

* The disadvantages of George's remaining in England were, in great part, compensated for by the willingness of the French statesman Dubois to make an extended stay in England – about half a year with one interruption – and by briefer visits by high-ranking diplomats from other states concerned with the peace plan for the south.

* His wife, Ulrika Eleonore, had succeeded her brother Charles XII in 1718, but in 1720 had abdicated in favour of her husband, Friedrich of Hesse, who adopted the Swedish form of his name on becoming king.

* The second son of the prince and princess of Wales to survive, William Augustus, was born in 1721.

† George, born in 1738; Frederick had four younger sons, three of whom reached adulthood.

* It will be recalled that princess Caroline had a stillborn son in November 1716, and that George William, born in October 1717, had died in February 1718.x

* Anton Ulrich had died in March 1714 and been succeeded by his eldest surviving son, August Wilhelm (1662–1731).