Notes to the text

Chapter I: Parents and childhood

This chapter is based on the printed Mémoires of Sophia, on the many volumes of her printed correspondence and of the equally voluminous volumes of Liselotte's letters, and of printed memoirs of the period. Knoop, Sophie, has been useful for information drawn from imprinted correspondence, especially Friedrich August's letters to his mother. Köcher till 1674, and Schnath, Hannover I, from that date till 1692, have provided essential background information.

1For the Reichsidee and the Empire in general see Heer; Wolf et al.; and the studies by Bandorf and Richard Thompson. For the most recent account of the 1519 election, see Manuel Fernández Alvarez, Charles V. Elected Emperor and Hereditary Ruler (1974), ch. 3.

2For a good example of this, see P. Höynck, Frankreich und seine Gegner auf dem Nymwegener Friedens-Kongress (Bonn 1960) 49 ff. For a more detailed treatment of the unsuccessful attempt of the Brunswick dukes to obtain equal status with the electors see Schnath, Hannover I, 106 ff.

3Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: Karl Ludwig's letter of 6/16 Apr. 1678.

4Sophia, Mémoires, 121.

5Ibid., 52.

6Ibid., 58–61 for the mission of Georg Christoph von Hammerstein and the wording of the convention.

7Ibid., 59. For her later realization that Karl Ludwig had been told this of Georg Wilhelm to make him consent to the substitution of bridegrooms, see Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 8 April 1666.

8Ernst August, Letters to his wife, 13 Nov. [1671]; cp. Sophia, Mémoires, 64 and Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 6 Feb. 1659.

9Sophia, Mémoires, 68 and Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 15 Aug. [1661]. Liselotte agreed; at a time when George was already a grandfather, she recalled his birth and childhood ‘as if it were yesterday … he was a beautiful child with large eyes’: Liselotte, Selected Letters (Kroll translation), 128 note 1.

10Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 12 Dec. 1661.

11Knoop, Sophie, 63.

12Sophia, Mémoires, 71.

13Ibid., 74, and Sophie, Letters to Mme von Harling, passim, for the duration of the Italy visit.

14Ernst August, Letters to his wife: 26 Aug. [1670].

15Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 12 Dec. 1661, 3 Aug. 1663, 15 June 1669 and 19 Sept. 1675.

16For Sophia's comments on Karl Philipp, see her Letters to the raugravines: to Caroline 2/12 March 1690, and to Louise 10/20 March 1690. For the comments quoted on the other children see Bodemann, Sophie, 85.

17Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig, e.g. 19 Sept. 1675, 6 July 1679. It should be noted that the stress on this trait was intended to comfort her brother, who had similar problems with his son and heir.

18Sophia's closeness to George is well demonstrated in her Letters to the Hohenzollerns, passim.

19Sophia, Mémoires, 104. She explains the nickname by a parenthesis in her copying of Ernst August's letter: ‘Vostre Benjamin (c'est ainsi que M. le due appelloit mon fils aisne) …’

20Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 13 June 1675; Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 10/20 Jan. 1689; Sophia, Letters to diplomats: to Schütz 20 June 1702.

21For Sophia's wonder see Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 7 Jan. 1703; for her comment on Christian Heinrich: to Louise 8 Dec. 1702; for Karl Philipp's gambling debts see Schnath, Hannover I, 564.

22Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 24 Nov. 1667; for the Herford visit see Knoop, Sophie, 81.

Chapter II: The electoral cap

The principal printed sources for this chapter are Sophia's Mémoires and her various correspondences, to which should be added Leibniz's letters and papers, Wendland's selection of Prinzenbriefe (illustrating the family strife caused by the primogeniture decree of Ernst August), and Schnath's superb ‘register’ edition of the Künigsmarck-Sophia Dorothea letters, Der Königsmarck-Briefwechsel. Specialized monographs, in particular Schnath's well-documented Sophia Dorothea trilogy, have been invaluable. Older works on Brunswick-Lümeburg history by Havemann, Malortie, Meier, Pfeffinger, Rothert and Sichart, have proved useful; while Esenbeck and Schnath, Hannover I, have given the necessary background for the achievement of the electoral bonnet.

1Sophia, Mémoires, 88–89.

2Ibid., 107–08: copy of Georg Wilhelm's letter of 30 Jan./9 Feb. 1676 to Sophia in answer to hers of 1 Feb. 1676.

3For the Osnabrück negotiations and commitments of this period see Schnath, Hannover I, 50 ff.; for Sweden's involvement in the Dutch War see SUPH I, part 3: 1648–1697, by Georg Landberg, 175 ff.

4See the significant comment in Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: Karl Ludwig's letter of 23 Sept./3 Oct. 1676: ‘Je crois les ris et les pleurs de mon nevue [George] et de la Freilein [i.e., Fräulein] Sophie se determineront selon la volonté de leur parents et selon les conjonctures.’

5Bussche, Letters to: Sophia's of 4 March 1682.

6For George's behaviour under fire see (apart from the Ernst August letter cited in chapter 1 note 19) Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 23 Aug. 1675. For Louis XIV's praise see Sophia, Mémoires, 43.

7Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 3 Dec. 1702, authorizing her to spend money to have Maximilian and Christian mentioned in the gazettes. Cp. her letter to Louise of 29 Aug. 1704.

8Books bought after 1699 can be traced in K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge. George's command of French is sufficiently demonstrated in his surviving correspondence; for his command of Latin see e.g. B.M., Add. MSS 6117, bishop of Dublin to archbishop Wake, 26 June 1717 and HMC, Laing MSS II, 194, letter from D. Wilkins (who was present at George I's visit to Cambridge) of 15 Oct. 1717; for the king's ability to converse fluently in Dutch in 1727 see Fabrice, Memoiren, 146 (report of 12 July 1727).

9Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 27 July 1717.

10Ibid.: 126/2, Weber's letter with draft of Görtz's reply of 15 July 1721; they show that George had read the diplomat's account of Russia with satisfaction and approval. Cp. George's questioning de la Motraye in 1727 on his travels in Russia and Poland: Motraye, Travels (2nd ed.) I, x, reporting his conversation with the king the night he landed in the Netherlands en route for Hanover.

11Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 15 Oct., 5 Nov., 24 Dec. 1676 and 21 Jan. 1677. All that is known for certain is the lady's Christian name, Anne.

12Hatton, Louis XIV, 38. Cp. for George's daughter assuming that her nephew Frederick had mistresses at the age of sixteen: Trench, George II, 127.

13For a rumoured brief relationship with a more distant relative of the father's mistress, see Leibniz, Anecdota, 23. The duration of George's affair with Maria Katharine is uncertain. Assumptions in the diplomatic reports from Hanover that it was resumed after the death of her first husband (1693) may not be well founded, given George's close attachment to Melusine from 1691.

14Sophia, Mémoires, 110–11; for documentary details of the long drawn-out marriage negotiations see Schnath, Hannover I, 146 ff.

15Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 20 June 1679.

16Bernstorff Archive: AG 25, Sophia's letter (from France) to Georg Wilhelm of 4 Sept. 1679.

17Sophia, Mémoires, 124–25.

18Prüser, Göhrde, 44 ff.

19For Sophia's reaction to the death of Wartenberg, bishop of Osnabrück, see her Mémoires, 70; for Ernst August's and her own to Johann Friedrich's death, ibid., 134.

20Phrases quoted by Sichart, Army I, 20–21. The Swedish commander was Otto Vellingk who fought during the Dutch war on the side of France as an officer in Louis XIV's Swedish regiment.

21For Rupert's suggestion of Jan. 1680 see Knoop, Sophie, 102–03; for Sophia's positive response see Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 18 Apr. 1680. For William III's favouring an English marriage for George as early as 1677 see P. L. Müller, Wilhelm III von Oranien und Georg Friedrich von Waldeck I (The Hague 1873) 109 ff; for his disappointment at the negative outcome see Conway's instructions (cited in Skelton's letter to Conway of 19 Jan. 1682/3 from Hamburg) that ‘the king doth not intend to answer the Dukes of Brunswick upon the notification they have given of the marriage lately consomated here between their children [i.e. George and Sophia Dorothea]’. This disappointment may have been a contributory cause for William III's denying Ernst August the Garter which Sophia so diligently solicited for him: for her efforts see Skelton's letters to Blathwayt of 22 Dec. 1682, 16 and 22 Jan., 23 Feb. and 2 March 1682/3; Skelton's copy of his letter to Sophia of 10 Jan. 1682/3 and his letter to Conway of 26 Jan. 1682/3: all in B.M., Add. MSS 37984.

22Those modern writers who stress the enmity of Anne towards George follow Spanheim, Account and Burnet, History; those who deduce a grudge on George's part rely on contemporary gossip committed to paper. With the lack of reliable evidence, historians have been reduced to assumptions; e.g. Knoop, Sophie, 103, holds that George himself decided against a marriage to Anne because of his dislike of ‘everything foreign’, while Chandler, Marlborough, 125–26, looks upon George as ardent but unsuccessful: ‘Anne with difficulty fended off George as a suitor for her hand.’

23The well-informed Skelton (in a letter to Blathwayt, 16 Jan. 1682/3 from Hamburg: B.M., Add. MSS 37984) states categorically that ‘there never was any proposal of marriage on either side’. It is worth noting that Sophia told Liselotte, even before George left for London, to disregard rumours that the Hanoverian heir would propose to Anne of York (Liselotte, Letters: 27 Sept. 1680). George's letter to his mother from London of 30 Dec. 1680/10 Jan. 1681 has survived in a contemporary copy in B.M., King's MSS 140 (see section I of my Bibliography) and has been printed in Archiv des Historischen Vereins für Niedersachsen (1846); George's letter to Margaret Hughes of 26 Oct. 1682 is in B.M., Add. MSS 38091, fol. 242 r and v.

24Newdigate, 256.

25Bernstorff Archive: AG 24, Sophia to Georg Wilhelm, an undated letter (the one first quoted in my text), and two others on this topic of 4/14 Sept. and 13/23 Sept. 1682.

26Sophia, Letters to diplomats: to the abbe Ballati 10/20 Sept. 1682.

27Sophia, Mémoires, 97: ‘le prince electoral vouloit voir sa maitresse avant que de l'épouser’: see also Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: to Karl Ludwig 10 Sept. 1670 and 8 July 1671.

28Evidence that George was in love with Sophia Dorothea has been available since 1938 when Schnath, Hannover I, 721–30, printed the report of d'Arcy Martel: the French diplomat noted that George ‘a un fils de sa femme, laquelle il aime, quoyque sans démonstration extérieure’.

29A copy of this horoscope, made by an Italian courtier, was generously put at my disposal by Professor Schnath; the original is in the Niedersächsisches Landesbibliothek (Hs XXXIII).

30The part of Hoya ceded consisted of the Ämter Stolzenau, Diepenau, Harpstedt, Steyerberg, Siedenburg, Barenburg and Heiligenrode; the remaining Ämter (Syke, Bruchhausen and Ehrenburg, and the town of Nienburg) came to Hanover in 1705. For the marriage contract, see Schnath, Hannover I, 164–65. During George's reign other North German territories, long desired, were bought from Hanover's neighbours: in 1700 the district of Wildeshausen (from the Swedish king), and in 1711 (from the king of Denmark) the town and district of Delmenhorst and four smaller Oldenburg districts.

31Schnath, in his introduction to Sophia, Letters to the Hohenzollerns (1927), was the first to realize this. He has been followed by Knoop, Sophie, 152 ff.

32For Ernst August's fondness for his daughter-in-law see Letters to his wife: 2/12 November 1684; for Friedrich August's appreciation of Sophia Dorothea see Knoop, Sophie, 113 and Schnath, Hannover I, 567–78 and 746; for Maximilian's paying court to her see a great many references in the Königsmarck-Briefwechsel, e.g. nos. 78, 212, 215; for Karl Philipp's role: ibid., introduction.

33The first stage of the Prinzenstreit (1682–87) is dealt with by Schnath, Hannover I, 274–97. The Prinzenbriefe, selected letters between Ernst August, Sophia and those sons who opposed the primogeniture decree of the father, published by Anna Wendland in NJ 1937, illustrate the personal aspect of all stages (the second starting in 1691 and the third in 1698) of the Prinzenstreit.

34Wendland, Prinzenbriefe, 9.

35Ibid., Friedrich August's letters to his mother, passim; for Karl Philipp's dragoon regiment (bought for him in May 1688 as soon as he had signed the primogeniture clause), see Schnath, Hannover I, 564. For Maximilian's military career with the Hanoverian troops, see Alexander Schwenke, Geschichte der hannoverschen Truppen in Griechenland 1685–89 (Hanover 1854), and, more briefly, Schnath, Hannover I, 375–76 and 396–99.

36For the second stage of the Prinzenstreit see Schnath, Hannover I, 557–91, where he (582) judges Sophia's activities treasonable. For Sophia's side of the story see Bussche, Letters to: 15/25 Feb. 1692.

37Maximilian signed on 23 Feb./5 March 1689.

38For Ernst August's exploitation of the situation see Schnath, Hannover I, 500 ff. and 592 ff.

39Sophia, Letters to the raugravines, gives many details about the changes; cp. Schnath, Leineschloss, and Seiler, passim. Note that the identification of the figures in the composite family picture (our illustration no. 6) varies. I have followed Schnath, Hannover I, ill. V. for the groupings and for the assumption that Sophia Charlotte is depicted by Sophia's side. I have further deduced that in the left group (the soldier sons) George, as Erbprinz, has the position of pre-eminence close to his father. A different (but still tentative) interpretation can be found in Kroll, Sophie, who regards the young female figure as that of Sophia Dorothea, George's wife, with George on her right; and the childlike figure as their son Georg August, not (as in Schnath) the commemorative symbolic representation of Maximilian's dead twin.

40For the opera see Wallbrecht, Theatre, 45–60, and, for the Historia Domus, Reese, Historie, 18 ff., 161–90.

41Bernstorff Archive: AG 28, Beyrie's letter from London 3/13 Jan. 1699.

42For Sophia's friendship with Spanheim see Knoop, Sophie, 43–44; his letters to her after she left Heidelberg are in Hann.: 91, Kurfürstin Sophie, 6.

43For Sophia's remark on Sophia Charlotte see Gourville, Mémoires II, 127, reinforced by Bussche, Letters to: Sophia's of 8 May 1682. It should be noted, since historians have frequently misinterpreted Sophia's expression, that what she intended to convey was not that her daughter was an atheist but that, with a view to future marriage prospects, her options between Calvinism and Lutheranism were kept open.

44For the position of the Huguenots see Beuleke's monograph; for the Catholic church built in Ernst August's reign see Woker's study; for the German Calvinist church, urged by Sophia, promised by Ernst August, and established by George see Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: 1 Nov. 1699, 2 Apr. and 12 Oct. 1702.

45For the Hanoverian summer residence see Alvensleben, Herrenhausen (1966 ed.); Meyer, Königliche Garten; and Westermann.

46For the carnivals in Ernst August's reign see Malortie, Court, and numerous references throughout Sophia's correspondence; for a fine one in George's reign see Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: 12 Feb. 1708.

47Bothmer, Mémoires, 22.

48Schnath, ‘Sophia-Dorothea trilogy’: A.B., Knesebeck, 135.

49Schnath, Königsmarck-Briefwechsel, introduction.

50Königsmarck (Aurora), ‘Mémoires’, ed. Anna Wendland, ZVHN 1910.

51The history of the family can be followed in Schmidt, Schulenburgs, especially entry no. 616 for [Ehrengard] Melusine's father. Cp. Johann Matthias's letter of 12 Nov. 1726 in Schulenburg, Leben II, 263, in which he quotes the king of Prussia's remark to him: ‘vous êtes tous de bonne race’.

52Pictorial evidence in the Kielmansegg collection shows that Sophia Charlotte was slim and beautiful as a young woman. To call her ‘grossly obese’ in her mature years (as in most English modern works, e.g. Burton, 239) is exaggerated, though not surprising in view of contemporary stories that George preferred ‘German trulls and fat trulls at that’. More bothersome may be the fact that English historians at times muddle up who was the plump and who the slim of ‘George's ladies’ (Williams, Whig Supremacy, 146, who is followed e.g. by Young, Poor Fred). For Sophia's reference to Melusine's tall and thin figure (in conversation with Mrs Howard) see Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) I, 151; for the late Melusine's portrait, now in the Landesgalerie of Hanover, see Schnath, Hannover II, ill. 15.

53For Melusine's taking the initiative to meet influential Englishwomen see Panshanger MSS: Mme Robethon's undated letter of 1714; and Halsband, Lady Mary, 240–41, for the presence of letters from Melusine in the Wortley MSS. For Melusine being used as a go-between, there is ample evidence in the Panshanger MSS for 1718 and in the Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg correspondence; see also Beattie, Court, 247–48. For the duchess of Marlborough being granted an audience with George I in 1720 through Melusine's intercession see David Green, Sarah Duchess of Marlborough (1967), 219–20.

54Wilhelmine, Mémoires, 57. For English contemporary rumours of a morganatic marriage see Montagu, Works I, 75; and Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) I, 150 and II, 258.

55Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 12/23 June 1724.

56This gift was twisted by contemporaries to suggest that she (and/or George) spent much of their time inanely cutting out ‘paper dolls’.

57See Windsor, R. A.: 52884, letter to Aislabie, from Herrenhausen 27 Sept. NS 1720; Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 668, letter to Walpole of 18 Feb. 1729/30.

58For the good looks of the daughters see Ernst August II, Letters: 20 Jan. [1708]; Fabrice, Memoiren, 133–34 and Palm's letter to Charles VI of 17 Dec. 1726: Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) III, 509. This is supported by pictorial evidence in Alvensleben, Herrenhausen (1923 ed.), for the two elder daughters and for die schöne Gertrud in Fabrice, Memoiren, ill. no. 10 (the copy by Mercier). The present illustration no. 32, also from the Bückeburg collection, seems to be of a later date when she was already marked by illness. For the three daughters being present at Pyrmont and Herrenhausen and generally sharing George and Melusine's life between 1707 and 1714 see Ernst August II, Letters, for these years. The references to [Ehrengard] Melusine and the two elder girls are easily gathered via the index, for those to Gertrud (whom the editor has not been able to identify beyond Trudchen, a Vertraute of George's, and whom he does not connect with the Fräulein von Oeynhausen mentioned in the letter of 16 Apr. 1713) see letters of 23 June [1707], 16 May [1709], 16 Apr. and 12 July 1713. Evidence for the closeness of these family links after 1714 can be found e.g. in Panshanger MSS: Mme Robethon's letter of 18 Aug. 1716; and Fabrice, Memoiren, 134, 136.

59Ernst August II, Letters: from a comparison of those of 19 Aug. [1707], 20 Jan. [1708] and 16 May [1709].

60Schnath feels confident about the two elder girls (A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 174 note 22) and near-certainty for Gertrud (Hannover II, 490). Contemporaries assumed George's paternity in the case of the two younger girls; e.g. for [Petronella] Melusine: Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) II, note 257; and for Gertrud: Fabrice, Memoiren, 125–26. The first printed German reference to George's paternity of [Petronella] Melusine, in the ADB, is not accepted by Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 860.

61These wills of 1743, 1773 and 1778 are all in the P.R.O., Probate. For the veiled references to Gertrud see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 13/24 Oct. 1721; 25 Sept./6 Oct. 1722; 7/18 Jan. 1724.

62Königsmarck-Briefwechsel: Sophia Dorothea's letter of 30 June 1693. Buccolini's mother was the dancer Zenobia Buccolini, and he rose to the position of Oberjägermeister in Celle.

63Schulenburg, Leben I, 381, for Maurice's reception in Hanover in 1709 and for his position after the legitimization in 1711.

64Cp. Sophia and George's interest in Maximilian's illegitimate daughter and her ‘princely’ marriage festivities: Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 10 Dec. 1711.

65Königsmarck-Sophia Dorothea, Correspondence: his letters undated [March 1692] and 10 Sept. OS 1692; her letters of 28 and 29 Aug. OS 1692 show that she was aware of the gossip surrounding George and Melusine.

66For the fate of the surviving correspondence see Schnath's introduction to the Königsmarck-Briefwechsel, and his A.B., Königsmarck, 89–96. For the letters found at the Leineschloss apartments of Sophia Dorothea see his A.B., Knesebeck, 133, 135, 169 and his NJ article of 1930.

67Wilkins published the Lund letters in English translation in 1901; Ward in appendix B to his Sophia of 1909 printed, both in the original languages used (French with some German) and in English translation, the Prussian letters. Biographers of Sophia Dorothea have continued to use these translations even after 1952 when Schnath's Königsmarck-Briefwechsel gave scholars a complete edition which also corrects dating and readings, particularly in Wilkins. For Sophia Dorothea and Knesebeck's public stances see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 201–02 and ibid., Knesebeck, 151.

68Sympathy for Sophia Dorothea is not, of course, restricted to those, like Wilkins, who feel convinced that George's wife did not commit adultery. For the sake of historical accuracy it should be said that the Sophia Dorothea-Königsmarck correspondence leaves no doubt of full sexual intercourse. Dislike of prying into the private relationship of two lovers of the past, more than was essential for the purposes of the biography of George, made me restrict my references to the physical aspect of the love-affair in the text. Quite apart, however, from the polite contemporary euphemism, cited in my footnote on page 57 (and frequently employed in the correspondence), the following more explicit remarks can be noted: no. 38 [March 1692] in which Königsmarck sends a thousand kisses to her bocqua sensa dente; those of 10 and 18 Aug. and 12 Sept. 1692 which conjure up for the princess une prison qui attend vostre prisonnier avec bien de l'impatience, express the hope that on his return he will find no sentinel before the prison, and urge her to take care that the prison will always be open to him, but fermée pour toute la terre; that of 29 Dec. 1692 — after George has become an electoral prince – in which Königsmarck contemptuously refers to the minces and médiocres plaisiers électoraux when compared to den unsrigen; that of 19 July 1693 in which he swears he'll take leave of his senses if the princess should monter à cheval with anyone else as passionately as she has done with him; and that of 29 Sept. 1693, when he recalls the joy in her eyes à me voir mourir sous eux and her cry Mon scher Koenigs, je – faisons le ensamble!, adding for his own part, Ah, si je pouvay baiser ses petis millieux qui m'a tans donné de plaisir! For Sophia Dorothea's reference to her own passionate feelings see her letters of 20 June, 30 July and 22 Aug. 1693; and, by inference, Königsmarck's letter of 10 July 1692.

69For Sophia Dorothea's references to and citations from George's letters see the Königsmarck-Briefwechsel, nos. 81, 83, 91, 92, 112, 128, 201 and 230; for the Lucretia quote and the count's debts, ibid., 23 June 1693; for Sophia Dorothea riling Königsmarck on the frequency of George's letters, ibid.

70Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 15/25 July 1694.

71Schnath, A.B., Knesebeck, 133–36, for her interrogation; cp. A.B., Königsmarck, 77.

72Ibid., 83–89. For the details of Montalban's reward, and an earlier gift of 50,000 Taler, see Schnath, Hannover II, 173–74. Luise Gilde, in a rejoinder to Schnath's review of her Die Reichweite der Prinzessin von Ahlden of 1966 (both in NJ 1968), disputes Schnath's deductions on the subject of Königsmarck's murder, but without supporting evidence.

73Knesebeck's letter of 26 Feb. 1710: Schnath, A.B., Knesebeck, 159–60.

74Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 3/13 and 25 Aug., and 5 Sept. 1694. For diplomats and their dilemma see e.g. Bernstorff Archive; AG 28 vol. viii: Beyrie's 1694 letters from London of 31 July/10 Aug. (on the éclat of the affair); 3/13 Aug. (acknowledging instructions of 27 July to plead ignorance); 7/17 and 14/24 Aug. (reporting rumours still current and his own attempts to lessen William III's concern).

75Anti-Hanoverian propaganda took advantage of British ignorance of the roles played by Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm in the divorce proceedings to make George the central figure; on Königsmarck's presumed fate it could utilize sensational manuscript and printed material circulating in Germany from 1695 onwards, for an analysis of which see Schnath, A.B., Königsmarck, 68–74.

76For the 1826 reconstruction (after vain searches between 1816 and 1821 for the original papers, occasioned by George IV's desire for a divorce) see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 175; for Louis XIV's attitude in 1694–99 see ibid., Königsmarck, 81 and Sophie Dorothea, 205; and for the efforts of Sophia Dorothea's mother with William III and queen Anne, see A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 206–11.

77For Jacobite efforts to gain the support of the Swedish king see Hatton, Charles XII, 404, 416–17, 438, 445, 449, 474; and Nordmann, 84 ff.

78For these gentlemen who wanted ‘to greet their Queen’, and for George I's countermeasures, see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 194–95.

79Ibid., 198–99, 212–20, 251–56 for George's behaviour towards Sophia Dorothea after 1698 and the Bar mission of 1725.

80For the former Kammerjungfer turning against Sophia Dorothea see A.B., Knesebeck, 155 ff: her praise of George is on 160–61. On the letters offered for sale (and later preserved in Lund) see Schnath, Hannover II, 143, who characterizes the refusal of Sophia Dorothea's mother in 1710, and of Sophia Dorothea herself in 1724, to buy them as ‘nearly inexplicable’. In 1727 the same letters were offered to the Hanoverian government for 100,000 Taler but no sale took place – the response being as negative as that to an earlier offer (in 1724 on behalf of the heirs of Königsmarck's former Hofmeister) of another bundle of Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck letters, which have since disappeared.

81Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) III, 261–62, based on the reminiscences (not reliable) of Horace Walpole. John Brooke, in his contribution to the Festschrift for Dame Lucy Sutherland (1973), 263, makes a wise distinction between Walpole's facts of truth and truth of feeling.

82Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick, i-vol. ed.), 353.

83See Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 742 for Melusine's Reichsfürstin status of 17 Apr. 1722.

84Cowper (Mary), Diary, 132 (note that in the index this remark is erroneously attributed to Horatio Walpole).

85For her court and daily life see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 221–30. A fine portrait of George which I noted in the Osnabrück Rathaus probably formed part of Sophia Dorothea's collection, since it is the property of the Bar family.

86For George reminding his uncle (in 1703) that Sophia Dorothea had denigrirt him in her letters to Königsmarck, see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 212. For the expressed desire of Sophia Dorothea, her mother, and Königsmarck for George's death, see Königsmarck-Sophia Dorothea, Correspondence: e.g. her letter of 22 June 1683, his letters of 22 Aug. and 14 Sept. 1693; for the lovers' contempt for George's looks and ability see nos. 18, 71, 78, 172, 272, 280, 282.

Chapter III: Experience gained

The main documentation for this chapter comes from Sophia's published letters, George's letters to his mother in the Hanover Haupstaatsarchiv, and correspondence in the Bernstorff archive. Of printed archive material the William III and Louis XIV documents edited by Grimblot and the so-called Queen Mary ‘memoirs’ (which also includes letters from William III) are the most significant. Gregg's doctoral thesis on the Protestant Succession, building i.a. on the Calenberg Brief Archiv, England, has been particularly useful for one section of the chapter, as has Holmes' study of queen Anne's reign. Schnath's Sophia-Dorothea trilogy remains important for the whole chapter, as does his Geschichte Hannovers, supplemented for the period after 1692 by studies by Schaer (administration), Brauer and Schwenke as well as Sichart (army) and Esebeck, Fricke and Schwarte (foreign policy). For the Holstein-Gottorp issue I have drawn on Scandinavian works noted in my Charles XII and the doctoral thesis of Oakley on William III's northern policy. For European issues in general I have utilized (but not specifically annotated for reasons of space) my researches into the Louis XIV period from British, French, Dutch and Austrian archives.

1The full text of this note addressed to Albert Philipp von dem Bussche, ed. by E. Bodemann, is in ZHVN 1882, 169.

2See e.g. Jordan, Sophia Dorothea, 206–08, lending support to these accounts ‘sanctioned by tradition’ by her choice of endpapers: the drawings by Rex Whistler for A. E. W. Mason's Königsmarck; and Trench, George II, 3–4, who takes for gospel at least some of the stories related in Horace Walpole's Letters I and Memoirs III.

3The original title was Octavia. Römische Geschichte, but it would be pedantic not to use the better-known title of post-1714 editions.

4It should be noted that Professor Schnath, for whose work I have the greatest respect, deduces from the Königsmarck-Sophia correspondence and from diplomatic reports that the count had been Gräfin Platen's lover and that the Gräfin was extremely jealous of Sophia Dorothea. He therefore allocates more responsibility than I am inclined to do to the Gräfin for the Königsmarck murder.

5Cited by Schnath, A.B., Knesebeck, 150, from Danish archive material. Cp. the so-called Knesebeck, Memoiren, copied from the writings of Eleanore found on the doors and walls of her prison cell.

6The Linden palace and garden, destroyed in the Second World War, are described in Lampe I, 164 ff.

7For Sophia's reference to Ernst August's ‘weak nerves’ see Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 22 May/6 June 1697; ibid., nos. 131, 146, 152, 158, 164, 171, 174, 181 for other symptoms of her husband's illness; for countess Platen's stroke ibid., letter of 18/28 Feb. 1699.

8For these vexations see Schnath, A.B., Knesebeck, 145–52.

9Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 26 Aug./5 Sept. 1694.

10For rumours of a duel with a count Lippe see Schnath, A.B., Knesebeck, 134.

11Ibid., 151 note 74. From Sophia, Letters to the raugravines, no. 152, it is clear that Ernst August had begun by the end of August 1696 to hand over much of his work to George.

12Ibid.: to Louise 20 Feb./2 March 1698.

13For the Cresset intrigues and their consequences see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 207–16. His wife, Louise Marie de la Motte, a Huguenot from Poitou, was the MIle de la Motte who had been a lady-in-waiting of the princess of Tarente. Cresset returned to represent William III with the Brunswick-Lüneburg dukes after Ernst August's death, and from then on abandoned the cause of the duchess of Celle and her daughter.

14Bernstorff Archive: AG 32 contains the Portland letters of 1688–1705; AG 9, 10, 12, 18, 26, 27, 28, 42 and 50, cover Bernstorff's correspondence with a large number of Celle and non-Celle diplomats and agents and span most of Europe for the period 1675 to 1722. English news looms large, Beyrie's letters between 1685 and 1708 (AG 28) filling nine large volumes.

15Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 209–10.

16The traditional view derives mainly from Klopp, Michael and Trevelyan and needs to be tested against a wider range of Hanoverian material, as in Gregg, Protestant Succession.

17Fricke, Leibniz, 13 ff.

18For Hanoverian complaints see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 198–99; for Eléonore's letter to queen Anne of 20 Sept. 1702 ibid., 211.

19George expressed estime, however, for Christian's consistent attitude when compared to Maximilian's vacillation: Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 18 Jan. 1703. The letters George wrote to his mother after Christian's death (Hann.: 91, Kurfürstin Sophie, no. 19a) on 23 and 29 Aug. 1703 show sympathy and concern and refer also to his own chagrin.

20The domestic and foreign aspects of the third stage of the Prinzenstreit (1698–1701) will be fully covered in Schnath's third volume of Geschichte Harmovers. Suffice it here to say that Maximilian and Christian lost their appeal to the Reichshofrat (to have Ernst August's will declared illegal) and failed to get effective political support from foreign princes.

21It is significant that Maximilian agreed to accept his father's will by a fresh signature of the primogeniture clause only after the Grand Alliance had been signed on 7 Sept. 1701 and while negotiations were in progress for Hanover's formal accession. Note that the allowance was to be increased, again in accordance with Ernst August's will, to 24,000 Taler on the death of Georg Wilhelm since the union with Celle would give George a larger income. Christian, who refused to sign, had to be content with 6,000 Taler a year (Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 20 Dec. 1701 and 3 Dec. 1702).

22Liselotte's letters to Sophia of 24 July 1701 and 8 Jan. 1702 printed in extract by Bodemann in Sophia, Letters to the raugravines, 240, note 1. For Sophia's hatred of the Jesuit père Wolf see ibid.: letters to Louise of 14 and 28 Dec. 1702, 14 and 18 Jan. 1703, and 14 Jan. 1712.

23Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 210, from Eltz's reports.

24The Liselotte quote in footnote on page 75 is from Ernst August II, Letters, 19; homosexuality has been inferred, e.g. by Kroll, Sophie Dorothea, 225.

25See e.g. Bernstorff Archive: AG 34 vol. iii, Schütz's letter from London of 24 Feb. 1699 and one undated [1700].

26Ibid.: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter of 23 Nov. 1700 from The Hague on the effect of Sophia's talk of George's ‘indifference’; cp. AG 34 vol. iii, for Schütz reporting on 13/24 Dec. 1700 from London a conversation with William III on the same subject. Sophia's letter to Stepney is printed in Klopp VIII, 208.

27For the initiatives of 1688–89 see Schnath, Hannover I, 493–96; for Sophia's disappointment see Mary, Memoirs, William III's letter of 10/20 Dec. 1689.

28Bernstorff Archive: AG 34 vol. iii, Schütz's letter of 13/24 Dec. 1700 from London reporting the English view that Sophia had shown herself ‘trop affectionée’ to king James and his son.

29This idea had been aired already during the Nine Years War in secret peace negotiations between Austrian and French diplomats: Srbik, 100–08, 129–32; for knowledge of it in Hanover, see Gregg, Queen Anne, note 51.

30Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 25 Oct. 1701.

31For this embassy see Knoop, Sophie, 196 ff., and Toland, Account, 58–62.

32Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 8 Feb. 1703. That Sophia also had hopes of saving Maximilian from his Jesuit (père Wolf) by greater financial support from an English income is shown by a copy of her letter to Maximilian of 2 June 1701 (B.M., Add. MSS 15943, 54), promising to help him: ‘ou que je vivois seulement assez pour etre deux ans Reyne’.

33Sophia, Letters to diplomats: to Schütz 25 May 1701.

34Ward, Sophia, 323–24, citing her letter to Burnet of 22 June 1701 (on being ‘too old’); for her allusions to her expected death see Letters to the raugravines: 29 Aug. 1702 and 27 Nov. 1709.

35Toland, Hanover, 65–66.

36For Rupert's relationship to Margaret Hughes (to whom he was not legally married) see Morrah, Rupert, 413–17.

37That Harley understood the real position is clear from his letter of 1/12 March 1706 to Howe (printed in Salomon, 8 note 1): ‘some people [in England] are so busy and so troublesome, what would they be, if any of that family [the electoral one] were brought into England during the Queen's life and in this heat of faction?’

38For written, as opposed to oral evidence noted down, see her letter to Marlborough of 22 July OS 1708 (Anne, Letters and Instructions): ‘I cannot bear to have any successor here, though it were but for a week.’

39Holmes, 83.

40The pamphlet printed the Gwynne letter as well as Sophia's letter of Nov. 1705 to Tenison (archbishop of Canterbury), intimating that she was keen to be invited to England. For Sophia's approval and justification of both, see her Letters to diplomats: to Schütz 29 Jan. and 30 March 1706.

41Gregg, Protestant Succession, 14–24, has two brief but important sections on ‘The role of Georg Ludwig’ and ‘The invitation crisis’ (of 1702) to which I am much indebted. For Sophia telling Schütz to follow George's orders see e.g. Letters to diplomats: 4 Nov. 1708.

42See Waldemar Röhrbein, ‘Wirtschaftspolitik in den Hannoverschen Kurlanden zur Zeit der deutschen Frühmerkantilismus’, Neues Archiv für Niedersachsen 1962.

43Bernstorff Archive: AG 34, Schütz from London 3/13 March 1699.

44For the details of the exchange of territory plan see Schnath, Hannover I, 422–23; and for the exchange and equivalent concept, Hatton, War and Peace, 13 ff. For the barrier plan against Denmark in its various stages see Schnath, Hannover I, 390 ff. and 421 ff.; and for the barrier concept in general Hahlweg, Barrier; Hahlweg, Dutch Barrier; and Schryver, Barrier.

45For the Altona recess and the negotiations leading up to it see L. Stavenow, ‘Sveriges politik 1686–89’, HT 1895; L. Laursen, Danmark-Norges Traktater VIII, 480 ff.; Schnath, Hannover I, 437–47; and S.P. Oakley, ‘William III and the Northern Crowns during the Nine Years War 1688–1697’ (unpublished London Ph.D. thesis 1961).

46For the events leading up to the peace of Travendal, see Hatton, Charles XII, 133–37.

47The only evidence for this is the diplomatic report of Gourville (see Schnath, Hannover I, 307 note 4); that Ernst August also gave his son written instructions is clear from evidence given by Schaer, 44 (destroyed in 1943).

48For Ernst August's system of government see Schnath, Hannover I, 298–339.

49See the 1685 report by the French diplomat Rene d'Arcy-Martel printed in full ibid., 721—30: opinion on George, 726. Cp. Toland, Account, 70, that George is opposed to France's ‘intended universal monarchy’.

50For Louis XIV's third-party efforts see Fayard, 213–40 and Hatton, Gratifications, 68–74; cp. Pages, Money, passim.

51For the secretly arranged scaling down of the treaty commitment of 500,000 Taler to 500,000 gulden, see Schnath, Hannover I, 607.

52For the details of the 72,900 livres paid to Ernst August's advisers see Fayard, 230 and Schnath, Hannover I, 521. There is less certainty of the sums actually paid out in Vienna, but Schnath, Hannover I, 598 and 638, shows that Ernst August authorized the expenditure of 77,000 Taler.

53Bernstorff Archive: AG 34 vol. iii, Schütz's letters of 6/16 Jan. 1699 to 17/28 Dec. 1700; for earlier information see ibid.: AG 44, Robethon's letter from The Hague, 29 Oct. 1697, and B.M., Add. MSS 371561, Stepney to Vernon from Celle, 11 /24 Oct. Oct. 1968.

54For Louis having hinted at advantages to be gained and having pressed the Brunswick-Lüneburg dukes to sign the second partition treaty see Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter from Paris of 15/25 Apr. 1698, and AG 34 vol. iii, Schütz's letter from Het Loo 2 Aug. 1700. For the disappointment when Louis XIV accepted the will of Carlos II, see AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter, The Hague, 23 Nov. 1700.

55See Hatton, Louis XIV and Fellow Monarchs, 37 ff.

56For William's determination to get the war against France moving in the Empire (until he could bring England and the Dutch Republic to go to war with Louis XIV) see Bernstorff Archive: AG 34 vol. iii, Schütz's letters of 12/23 Nov., 3/14,13/24 and 17/28 Dec. 1700.

57See Schnath, Wolfenbüttel, for an excellent study of the 1702 offensive in its diplomatic and military aspects.

58For the troop negotiations see Sichart, Army I, 243 ff. and Brauer, passim. The first convention was signed as early as March 1702.

59Sophia, Letters to the Hohenzollerns, 90.

60Toland, Hanover, 53. There are numerous references to Karl Moritz's drinking problem in Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Amalie 28 March/7 Apr. 1689; to Louise 19/29 Oct. 1699; 22 Dec. 1700; 31 July, 18 Oct. and 27 Nov. 1701.

61Hann.: 91, Kurfürstin Sophie 19a: George's letters of 29 May and 24 June 1702, both from Herrenhausen.

62For Sophia Charlotte's deathbed see Sophia, Letters to the Hohenzollerns: to Friedrich I, 11 Feb. 1705. This attitude seems to have been common among George's closest friends: see e.g. that Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg refused to see a pastor on his deathbed: Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 26 Nov. 1717.

63Hatton, Charles XII, 411. For George's attitude to doctors see e.g. George, Letters, 495: to Sophia Dorothea 16 July [1714]; and Windsor R.A.: Geo. Add. MSS 28, no. 20; for Sophia's see Letters to the raugravines: e.g. to Louise 27 Nov. 1701 and 3 March 1712.

64Cowper (Mary), Diary, 149, quoting Mehemet.

Chapter IV: The royal crown

The basic background material for this chapter is the Calenberg Brief Archiv, Des. 24, England, and the Kriegssachen papers in the Hanover Hauptstaatsarchiv, complemented by the Bernstorff and Görtz archives. Of older works Ward, Sophia, is still useful, though Klopp (who prints many documents) is misled by unreliable material into assuming that queen Anne was a Jacobite. Recent studies of the succession issue, Fricke, Shennan and, in particular, Gregg's doctoral thesis and his two published articles have been a great help to me, as have biographies of Harley and Bolingbroke by McInnes and Dickinson. For Hanoverian advisers and court life in general, family histories as well as the books by Lampe and Prüser have yielded much. They have been supplemented by a variety of archival material from the Public Record Office and the British Museum. For the war of the Spanish Succession I am indebted to Braubach's Eugene and Chandler's Marlborough biographies, to Mezgolich's study of Wratislaw, and to works on the Hanoverian and Dutch armies. Of printed material for the war the Snyder edition (with corrections and redating where necessary) of the Marlborough-Godolphin correspondence, the van't Hoff edition of the Marlborough-Heinsius correspondence and Veenendaal's first volume of the Heinsius Archief have lightened my labours.

1Schnath, Hannover I, 648–50, assesses the total sum spent by 1694 for the electoral dignity in ready cash and indirect expenses (e.g. two years campaigning with a Hanoverian army at Ernst August's own cost) as 2,000,000 Taler; and estimates the budget deficits for the years 1690–94 at 768,420 Taler.

2For Lefmann Berens-Cohen, see Schnee's long and well-documented article, NJ 1951.

3Schnath, Hannover II, 408–09, while praising his late pupil's work, stresses that Lampe's thesis is less applicable for Ernst August's reign than for the eighteenth century.

4For Bernstorft's Mecklenburg position and the complications which followed, see the studies by Ballschmieter and Mediger I. For Bernstorff's villages see Michael II, 640 ff.

5For information about these members of the Schulenburg family see Schmidt's genealogical volumes: Johann Matthias no. 740, Bodo no. 741, [Ehrengard] Melusine no. 742, and Friedrich Wilhelm no. 750.

6See e.g. the unsigned and undated letter, most informative on affairs in Hanover (possibly intercepted), placed with the post of 3/14 Sept. 1723 in P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5; ‘As to Mr. Bernstorff's capacity in business hardly anyone ever disputed it with him.’ The one exception I have come across is Craggs, who in his private letters to Stair complains of Bernstorff's ignorance and muddleheadedness: Stair, Annals II, 406, letter of 1 Oct. 1719.

7Though not immediately: after the death of the elder Schütz (Ludwig Justus) in Feb. 1710, Hanover sent a resident, Kreienberg, who remained in London from Sept. 1710 until George I's accession. A new envoy, Thomas Grote, arrived in 1712 and died in 1713. Bothmer was next accredited to both the Dutch Republic and England, and made several brief visits to London before the arrival as extraordinary envoy of the younger Schütz (Georg Wilhelm) in Sept. 1713; Bothmer took over when Schütz was recalled in Apr. 1714.

8For the Grote family see E. Grote, Familien-Geschichte der Grafen und Freiherren Grote (Hanover 1897); for Bothmer's will of 1723 see P.R.O. Probate, with codicil of 1728.

9On a more exalted level, in January 1725 George I had to make a speedy and emphatic refusal of the offer of a marriage between king Louis XV of France and his eldest granddaughter: her conversion to Catholicism (an obvious necessity) could not be contemplated without compromising the king's commitment to the Protestant cause.

10P.R.O., 31/14/159 vol. XXIV, letters from Giacomo Quirini to Inquisitor of State, Venice, from London 3/14 and 10/21 June 1715.

11Schnath, in his ed. work for the Hohenzollern correspondence, 16 note 7, has shown that the older Herrenhausen garden was largely modelled on the Dutch gardens of Sophia's childhood and youth; and that, when George became elector, it was remodelled on the French pattern, in which fountains played a dominant role. Cp. Schnath, Hannover II, 399–400 and the article by Irmgard Lange-Kohte, ‘Die Wasserkunst in Herrenhausen’, Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 1960.

12See e.g. Schnee, NJ 1951, 121 ff.

13For the building and decoration of Göhrde, 1706–10, see Prüser, Göhrde, ch. 5, and Meier I, 244 ff.; for entertainment see Malortie, Beiträge II, 148 ff.

14P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Tilson to Delafaye, 30 Nov./11 Dec. 1723, on the recent stay at Göhrde, where the king had lived truly en Roy, ‘at the rate of 3000 Dollars [i.e. Talers] a day’; with servants Tilson reckoned that George had ‘above 1100 in his family’ to pay and feed from his ‘patrimonial Estate’.

15Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 24 Sept. 1702. In conversation with Mrs Howard she was more outspoken: ‘Do you see that malkin? You would scarcely believe that she has captivated my son’ (Coxe, Robert Walpole (1816 ed.) I, 151).

16Hann.: Cal. Brief 16 (Kriegssachen), 756, at George's headquarters, Hofmarschall Hardenberg (draft) to Görtz 4 Oct. 1709, with the elector's reasoned decision in two questions, one of precedence and one of allocation of apartments, both going against ‘Mad la Raugraffe’; cp. Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 2 Apr. 1702, in which she fondly, but erroneously, imagines that Ernst August would have been easier in such matters.

17Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 443 ff.

18The family tradition (see Familien-Chronik, 454) is that he held this English court office from the time of George I's coronation (this has been followed e.g. by Schaer in the Schaumburg-Lippe Letters, 49 note 129); but Beattie's ascertaining that the salary of the Master of the Horse was saved after Somerset's resignation is conclusive (Court, 245 note 1). Note that though Kielmansegg was treated in London as George's Hanoverian Master of the Horse, he was in reality Vice-Master of the Horse, Harling holding the Master's office till his death in 1724; see the comment in Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 24 Jan. and 4 Feb. 1718, that Kielmansegg had died without having obtained the Oberstallmeister title.

19Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 750.

20Fabrice, Memoiren, 128–29.

21For this young Turk see Ernst August, Letters to his wife: no. 37, Sophia's letter of 6/16 Jan. 1686. For the common misconception about Mehemet and Mustafa being captured by George, see e.g. Trench, George II, 53. Percival notes in his diary for 26 Jan. 1715 (B.M., Add. MSS 47028) the libel that ‘the King keeps two Turks for abominable uses’; from this presumably derives the legend, still repeated in English works, that George had ‘depraved tastes’ or, more ambiguously, that the ‘backstairs duty’ of Mehemet and Mustafa was ‘to organise the King's strenuous sex life’ (Howard, The Royal Palaces, 155).

22Mehemet rose to be ‘keeper of the king's closet’; Mustafa's title remained that of Leibdiener (body servant).

23Wratislaw's role is known from the 1967 study by Mezgolich and is noted in Chandler, Marlborough, 124–25. Francis, Peninsular War (416 and as indicated in index) has independently examined part of Wratislaw's correspondence.

24Bernstorff Archive: AG 52, Georg Ludwig's letter to Bothmer, 7 Feb. 1704, with information to be passed on to Marlborough in answer to his request for George's views on the coming campaign.

25For Sophia's pride in George see her letter to Leibniz, Correspondence, 18 Aug. 1700; for her hopes of a command see Letters to the raugravines between 1700 and 1702. For a Dutch suggestion of George as ‘most suited’ to be allied commander see van der Meer's letter to Heinsius of 30 March 1702: Heinsius, Briefwisseling I, 55.

26Görtz Archive: 126/4, letter from baron Voigt, 14 Nov. 1705.

27The offer of the Reichsfeldmarschall baton was made by Joseph I on 10 July and accepted on 16 July by George who took command of the Reichsarmee in September of that year: Calenberg Brief Archiv 24, Österreich, Huldeberg's letters to George, 8 and 25 June and 9 and 27 July 1707 and George's drafts of letters to Huldeberg, 11 and 26 June, and 26 Aug. 1707. For George's share in the 1707 campaign until Villars broke off the campaign in November see HSL (Wijn) Deel VIII, vol. II (1706–10) 257 ff., and Bebenbourg, Correspondence I, letters from 17 Sept. 1707 onwards.

28For the deceit see Braubach, Eugen II, 221–38; Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence II, no. 961: 5 May 1708. HSL (Wijn) Deel VIII, vol. II (1706–10) 269 ff. shows that Heinsius was at least partially in the know. For George's letter to Joseph I reporting the deceit, though with assurances that he would remain at his post, serving the Vaterland even if his own honour should be besmirched, see Schulenburg, Leben I, 439. Eugene, unaware that a general in the Austrian service had betrayed the allied dessein to the French, suspected someone in the Reichsarmee of careless talk. He was well aware, however, of Joseph's appropriation of money earmarked for George's command, though this did not restrain him from scathing remarks on the elector's slowness in taking the field (‘Un fantôme de Prince qui doit commander l'armée): Braubach, Eugen III, 313–15 and note 184. For the Jacobite propaganda (note that Chandler, Marlborough, 250, has been misled by it into assuming that George was in command at Rumersheim) see my text page 173 and note 10.

29Hann.: Cal. Brief 16 (Kriegssachen), 756, Hardenberg (draft) to Mauro, 5 Sept. 1709, and Görtz to Hardenberg, 9 Sept. 1709, expressing fear that Mercy's defeat would put obstacles in the way of the ‘glorieuses enterprises de S.A.S. notre auguste Maitre’. For George's good opinion of Mercy see Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 16 May 1709; for his continued concern see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 16 Aug. 1717, reporting that ‘L'accident du C. de Mercy Lui [George I] effraya à un tel point, qu'il me demanda en sursaut de la chaise, est il possible?’ For the general conviction that George would not accept the field-marshal task unless he was assured of Hanover's entry into the electoral college see Bebenbourg, Correspondance I: his letter of 3 Aug. 1707.

30For George's reward in 1718 of Robert Pringle, secretary of the 1702 commission, see Gregg, Protestant Succession, 16 note 21; for the negotiations which led to the 1707 union see the works of Pryde (1950) and Riley (1964).

31Macpherson, Original Papers II, 93; George did, however, employ Scott after 1719 as a diplomat in Poland and Saxony (the courts of which he knew from a previous mission in queen Anne's reign) and Prussia: BDR, 88–89, 106 and Horn, Diplomatic Service, 115. For his being sent by George in 1717 on a secret mission, see below ch. VIII note 35.

32Michael (English ed.) I, 13 ff.

33Macpherson, Original Papers II, 192 prints George's letter to queen Anne of 24 Sept. 1710 (the date as corrected by Gregg, Protestant Succession, 331 note 72, who in his text 71 ff. deals with the elector's efforts to support Marlborough).

34Handover, Gazette, 48, for Samuel Buckley's publishing George's memorial against the separate Anglo-French peace in the Daily Courant 5 Dec. 1711.

35For James's declaration and its effect see J. H. and Margaret Shennan, ‘The Protestant Succession, April 1713–September 1715’, in William III and Louis XIV. Essays 1680–1720 by and for Mark A. Thomson, ed. Hatton and Bromley (Liverpool/Toronto 1968), 257 ff.

36Gregg, Protestant Succession, 233 ff. has convincingly demonstrated George's complicity in the writ demand and has also, ibid., 215 ff., and in his Marlborough, passim, covered the political and military preparations of George and his advisers. For Anglo-Dutch cooperation at this time see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 13–15 and 48 ff.; and for the English measures directed against the Pretender, A. Newman, ‘Proceedings in the House of Commons March–June 1714’, BIHR 1960.

37Anne's letters to Sophia, to George and to Georg August are printed in Anne, Letters and Instructions (ed. Brown); both recent biographers of Sophia (Knoop, Sophie, 212–13 and Kroll, Sophie, 245–46) read a good deal into her impetuous comment, J'y succomberai, to the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe, on receipt of Anne's letter to herself; but we also have evidence which suggests that her agitated state passed quickly.

38The trustworthiness of Hamilton on this point is enhanced by independent proof that the doctor carried out the order noted in his diary as received from the queen on the day of Oxford's dismissal: to establish a secret line of communication with George via the correspondence of the London Palatine agent Steingens with Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (see the latter's Leben I, letter to, from London, of 7 July OS 1714).

39Snyder, Queen Anne's Last Days, passim.

40Diarists tended to note down where they heard the proclamation, whether in London or in the rural market towns, e.g. Evelyn MSS, journal entry of 1 August 1714: ‘I saw it performed between four and five in the afternoon at the Royal Exchange.’

Chapter V: Settling down

In this chapter I have benefited from excellent recent treatments of English, Scottish and Irish history: Beckett and Simms on Ireland; Davis, Dickson, King, Plumb and Charles Wilson on England; Donaldson, Hamilton and Ferguson on Scotland. While some older works are still valuable (Campbell on the lord chancellors, Foss on the judges, Holdsworth on English law), Michael's pioneer work has become outdated for George as a ruler since he relied too much on unverified diplomatic reports and on English memoir literature. This memoir literature is important for ‘attitudes’, but must be critically examined. The much-quoted ‘Account’ of lady Mary Wortley Montagu has proved to be a superficial sketch from the early months of George I's reign and not (as formerly held) a considered analysis from her later years. Her letters are, however, more rewarding, as is the famous diary of lady Mary Cowper. Of German letters, those of the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe, on the best of terms with George I as well as the prince and princess of Wales, have brought new information to light, not only for this chapter but for the whole period after 1714. Of unprinted source material, the letters of Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg, Melusine's half-brother and George's Kammerherr, never before examined, have been invaluable. The Dutch archives have yielded much information (documented in my Diplomatic Relations), and so have scattered documents in the less well known collections of the British Museum. A search of printed treasury books and papers (and of treasury papers in the P.R.O.) has proved rewarding for background information. Biographies of English statesmen and office-holders have been of great help: Plumb's Robert Walpole and Dickinson's brief study of the same minister; Williams on Stanhope; Horwitz on Nottingham; the Bakers on Brydges; Sykes, Marshall and Bennett on several bishops; and the many studies of Bolingbroke (particularly those by Hart, Kramnic and Dickinson). For the court of George I as king I owe much to Beattie's fine work of 1967. Studies of the House of Commons which cover or refer to the period of George's reign (Kemp, Ford, Owen, Plumb's Stability, P. D. G. Thomas, Walcott, E. N. Williams) have been most useful, as have the biographical entries of members of the House 1714–54, published in 1970. The House of Lords has been neglected since the pioneer work of Turberville of that chamber in the eighteenth century; and it is to be hoped that research on the Upper Chamber will become, if not fashionable, respectable.

1B.M., Add. MSS 20985, fols 56 ff.: Drummond's letter to Buys, 25 Jan. 1712 reporting a conversation, often verbatim, with Oxford and St John.

2See Baxter, Treasury, and Dickson, Financial Revolution; and (for the comparison with Louis XIV's France) J. Bouvier and H. Germain-Martin, Finance et financiers de l'Ancien Régime (Paris 1964).

3William III to Shrewsbury in July 1696: cited in Somerville, Shrewsbury, 115.

4See Hatton, Drummond, 69–96; for the Bank's policy towards the new ministry, and the foundation of the South Sea Company see Dickson, Financial Revolution, 19–26 and Carswell, South Sea Bubble, 49 ff.

5For the manipulation of the navigation acts of 1651 and 1660 see N. Japikse, Verwikkelingen tussehen de Republiek en Engeland van 1660–1665 (Leiden 1900), Wilson, Profit and Power, and S. E. Åstrom, ‘The English Navigation Laws, and the Baltic trade 1660–1700’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 1960.

6Francis, Wine Trade, 139–41 and Fisher, Portugal Trade, 26 ff.

7McLachlan, 46 ff.

8Fisher, Portugal Trade, 30 ff.

9See Hatton, Europe, 46–47 and references given there.

10J. L. Price, The Dutch Republic during the Seventeenth century (1974), 215 ff.; Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 10 ff.

11I am indebted for recent research in the field of Austrian administrative history to a seminar paper read in London in 1973 by Grete Klingenstein; for the slightly earlier period see John P. Spielman, Leopold I of Austria (1977), ch. 1 and references under ‘Government’, 206–07.

12Leibniz's letter to Davenant, printed in State Papers, Kemble, 451.

13For the political reasons which dictated this policy (fear that the Habsburg powers might support the exiled James II) see Hatton, Louis and Fellow Monarchs (London ed.) 43 and authorities there cited. For William's Irish campaign see Baxter, William III, and Symcox's thesis of 1967.

14See Claude Nordmann, ‘Louis XIV and the Jacobites’, in Louis XIV and Europe, ed. Hatton (1976), 82 ff. I am further indebted to a seminar paper given by Nordmann in London in 1970 on the absorption of the Jacobites in French society.

15For French policy on the North American continent see W. J. Eccles, Canada under Louis XIV (Oxford 1964); M. Giraud, Histoire de la Louisiane française (Paris 1952). For British fear of French competition see e.g. P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 3, Stanhope to Delafaye, Hanover 14 Sept. 1720, the purpose of which is to convey George's approval of directions by the Lords Justices to enquire carefully ‘whether there is any foundation for the Report that the Squadron of French Men of War lately sail'd on a secret expedition under the Command of Mons Cassart, is intended to go and make a settlement upon the Borders of Carolina, on the River Allabahama’, and the king's opinion that ‘no time should be lost’ to prevent this if the report should prove true.

16For this epithet, common at the time, see e.g. the anonymous pamphlet, The Most Christian Turk: Or a View of the Life and Bloody Reign of Louis XIV (1690).

17They echo to a remarkable degree the similar sentiments after the Nine Years War expressed by Newdigate (.Newdigate, 325 ff.) during his visit to France, July to Oct. 1699. For post-1713 improvement see e.g. Montagu, Letters II, 142.

18Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 54 and note 4; McKay, Utrecht Settlement, passim.

19For the Tory view of Charles XII after 1709, see Bolingbroke, Letters, 55–56 (to Drummond); for the plans for a 1714 squadron to the Baltic see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 39 ff.

20See George's written answer of 18 Oct. 1710 to a memorial presented by earl Rivers: Klopp XIII, 556–57.

21His proposal for this change was submitted to a legal commission in 1717: see my text page 167.

22Hatton, Louis and Fellow Monarchs (1976 ed.), 6.

23Kent to Prior, 26 July 1710: HMC, Bath MSS III, 438–39.

24Trevelyan III, 299 note 1; Holmes, 227.

25The change was, however, to be kept secret until the king's arrival, barring an emergency: Pauli, Aktenstücke, 56.

26Evelyn MSS: Journal, entry for 22 Apr. 1722, looking back on Sunderland's career on the day of that minister's death.

27This can, in the main, be traced to Chance's somewhat misleading article on Robethon and the Robethon papers in EHR 1898, and to the fact that Bothmer was well known to contemporary Englishmen because of his several missions to Whitehall and his prolonged stay after young Schutz's recall.

28Bernstorff Archive: this paper is in AG 23.

29Panshanger MSS: Bernstorff's first preserved letter to lady Cowper [1714], in F 198.

30See Cowper (Mary), Diary, 7 and 32, for this treatise being prepared for the king, for his having read it ‘several times’, and lent it to the princess of Wales. A copy, adorned with Bernstorff's seal, is in Bernstorff Archive: AG 23. For Görtz remaining in England at least until Volkra's arrival (10 Nov. 1715) as Charles VI's representative, see Görtz Archive: 124/5, letter (on Volkra's behalf) of 6 Jan. 1723 in which the Austrian diplomat and statesman recalls the bons diners et repas delicieux with which Görtz had regaled him in London. He goes on to ask Görtz to choose him a good Hanoverian cuisinier.

31Heinsius Archief: 1869, Duyvenvoorde's undated report (in Dutch) that Bernstorff had discussed with him ‘the characters of most of the English noblemen I know personally, and I was asked about the Dukes of Devonshire and Shrewsburi, the Lords Sommers, Couper, Halifax, Townsand and some others’.

32Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 54–55.

33For the post-1689 development of the cabinet see Jennifer Carter, ‘Cabinet Records of the Reign of William III’, EHR 1963; Stephen B. Baxter, ‘The Age of Personal Monarchy in England’, in Eighteenth-Century Studies presented to Arthur Wilson, ed. Peter Gay (New York 1972); and Plumb, Cabinet, where the distinction between cabinet councils and meetings of the lords of the committee in queen Anne's reign is clearly delineated. In his Stability, 103–07, Plumb persuasively develops the argument that the faction-ridden cabinets of William III and Anne ‘had been a major factor in the political instability of their reigns’, and that ‘it required a monarch of George I's perspicacity and firmness to reduce their significance and so take a major step forward towards political stability.’

34See Mark A. Thomson, Secretaries of State, 2 ff., 90 ff. There was no official representative in Rome after Henry VIII's break with the pope, but agents were increasingly employed; for these in George I's reign see Lesley Lewis, Connoisseurs and secret agents in eighteenth century Rome (1961), 27 ff. 44

35See Veenendaal, Condominium, and Geikie and Montgomery, The Dutch Barrier, for the treaties of Barrier and Succession of 1709 and 1713.

36Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 56.

37McKay, Utrecht settlement, passim.

38Gregg, Marlborough, 599, 601–02.

39For Stanhope's youth and early career before 1714 see Williams, Stanhope; for George sending Friedrich Wilhelm von der Schulenburg to Spain see Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 750.

40For Dutch humiliation and annoyance see Hatton, Drummond, 81 ff., and Stork-Penning, 1711 (mission of Buys), passim; for Eugène's visit see Braubach, Eugen III, 77–98.

41For George's dislike of Oxford see B.M., Add. MSS 47028: lord Percival's journal, entry for 14 March 1717. There is an intriguing piece of information by Schulenburg in his letter to Görtz of 16 July 1717 (Görtz Archive: 121/6) to the effect that the House of Commons requested George to exclude Oxford from any act of pardon, ‘pour donne par la occasion aux Communs de le [Oxford] poursuivre une autre fois par les voyes Parlementaires’. For George buying Oxford's town house and making it into four apartments for his Hanoverian high officials (Hattorf, Reiche, Hammerstein) and Dr Steigerthal, his German physician, ibid., letters of 27 July and 1 Oct. 1717.

42George's views were well known to contemporaries; see e.g. B.M., Add. MSS 47028: lord Percival's journal for 26 Jan. 1715, ‘that the King was inclined to think that only the great men of the last Ministry were his Enemies and resolved to continue as many of them as would be contented to accept of the Employment he offer'd them’.

43To Kenneth L. Ellis' study of The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century (1958) should be added, for this period, the same author's Administration. For the feeling of security in government circles when Craggs replaced Evelyn, see Panshanger MSS: duchess of Marlborough's letter of Oct. 1715: ‘One may write anything by the Post very safe as long as Mr. Craggs is in the Office’ (F 203).

44Wentworth Papers, 424, Peter Wentworth to his brother, 1 Oct. 1714, reporting George's unexpected visit to Kensington to see the gardens and look over the palace. Verney Letters I, 18 and 20 Sept. and 6 Nov. 1714, tell of the king's visit to the ruins of Whitehall Palace and his walks (with the prince and princess of Wales) in St James's Park. For the refurbishings in general of all the palaces (including Windsor) there is much evidence in the entries in the Treasury Books, in the P.R.O., Treasury papers, and in Windsor, R.A.: Wardrobe account volume for the whole reign. Hedley and Hudson have made good use of plans and other documents of the Board of Works, the older volumes by Sheppard (for St James's) and Pyne (for all the residences, but especially for Hampton Court) are still invaluable. For the major reconstruction and changes at Kensington Palace see my text pages 262–65 and notes thereto.

45Wallbrecht, Theatre, 23–24, 108.

46For the ceremony and its symbolism see Sitwell, 1 ff., 47 ff., 69 ff., and for the new crown Holmes, Regalia, 18–20 and plates 12 and 13. The recent biography of George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells, adds to earlier accounts of George I's coronation: Marshall, Hooper, 130 ff.

47Cowper (William), Diary, 56–58, entry for 21 Sept. 1715.

48Plumb, Cabinet, 156; cp. his Walpole I, 201 ff.

49Marshall, England, 127; Redman, Hanoverians, 59; Walters, Frederick, 36.

50Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 3 Aug. 1717 (read in conjunction with his letters of 2 March, 2 and 6 Apr. 1717). Corroborative evidence is found in Panshanger MSS: 6 Oct. 1717 Cowper writes to his wife to say that he has to leave home tomorrow: he has had a letter from Sunderland informing him that the king wants a [cabinet] council to meet next Tuesday at Hampton Court (Family Letter Books vol. 4, 282). For the prince attending cabinet councils (and Thursday being the usual day of meeting) during 1716 see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 44 vol. 269, Methuen's letters of 13 and 17 July and 9, 25, 28 Aug. It is worth stressing that, from the letters in this volume for the whole of the period when George was in Hanover, the distinction between meetings of the cabinet council and meetings of the lords of the committee is scrupulously made, thus showing that the system developed in queen Anne's reign persisted.

51P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: Carteret to Stanyan 16/27 July 1723.

52Gwynne's letter to George of 2 Apr. 1707, cited, from Stowe MSS 223, fols. 25 ff., by Gregg, Protestant Succession, 315 note 24.

53For this piece of flattery by Harley (as he then was) see Macpherson, Original Papers II, 197: letter to George of 1 /12 Nov. 1710.

54Cowper (William), Diary, 56–58, entry for 21 Sept. 1714.

55Cited in Campbell, Lord Chancellors IV, 351. Later evidence that the king conversed freely in English when need arose comes from Saussure, Letters: no. V (151) 14 June 1727; he stood close enough to George during the traditional birthday ceremony (when the king was presented with a nosegay by the oldest male inhabitant of London of those who were fit enough to perform the task of delivering a brief speech) to overhear the king's conversation with that year's performer, a ‘common soldier’, who had first served in Charles I's reign.

56Cowper (Mary), Diary, e.g. 10, 12 (1714), 43–44 (1715).

57Ibid., 146.I have checked with the original in the Panshanger MSS to make sure that the plural was not due to a printer's error. The goods and chattels story derives from Horace Walpole and is repeated in Jesse, Memoirs III, 138–39.

58K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge, where the entries in English increase from 1717 onwards and become more or less the rule in the 1720s. There is also evidence for George's fluency in reading more testing material in English: I owe to Peter Barber (engaged on a study of the congress of Cambrai under my supervision) the information that during this congress important despatches meant for the king were not accompanied by translations into French, as had been customary in the early years of the reign.

59For these performances in 1718, and the £200 received from George see Cibber, Apology II, 214–19.

60Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 6 Apr. 1717. For London performances during George's reign see Avery, London Stage, part II. Some performances were by French players, but the majority were by English companies.

61P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, undated, but placed with letters of 10 and 11 Dec. 1723. I am greatly indebted to Professor S. Baxter for drawing my attention to this document during a conversation about the king's English, Scholars have long realized that George had a smattering of English, e.g. Michael (English ed.) I, 114; but recent books on the period still persist in the ‘not a word of the language’ legend (e.g., Burton, 1, in 1967 and Trench, George II, 51–52, in 1975).

62They were translated into German, however, by the editor, R. Grieser, to make them accessible to a wider public; for the original French see his ill. no. 2.

63For Georg August being taught English, see Toland, Account, 73. For the ridicule, see the ‘boet and bainter’ quote in note on my page 262; and his equally well-known ‘Yarmany’, often quoted.

64Windsor, R. A.: Geo I Add. MSS 28, contains Caroline's letters in French to Mrs Clayton (with a few written by Caroline's daughters, in English). Caroline's French was no odder in spelling than that of most of her contemporaries but very hard to decipher because of her open flowing hand. Mrs Clayton remonstrated and attempted copies (which she also translated into English) in her own neat hand, and these are included in the R.A. file. They are at times incorrect, but they contain occasional marginalia which help to identify people and to date Caroline's letters (nearly all undated). This convinced me that the copyist, hitherto unidentified, was Mrs Clayton herself. Mrs Clayton's objections did her little good. The princess passed on the complaints of her lady-in-waiting to the prince (who commented, according to Caroline, ‘I always said you wrote like a cat’), but no improvement is noticeable.

65For letters written in English by Melusine see e.g. those to Aislabie of 27 Sept. 1720 in Windsor, R.A. 52844, and to Robert Walpole of 18 Feb. 1729/30 in Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 668; for Sophia Charlotte see her letters, e.g. to Mrs Clayton, in Sundon, Memoirs I, 15–16, and to Robert Walpole, undated, from the period 1720–22, in Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS; Corr. 994. That Melusine could read English is stressed in Townshend's private letter to Walpole of 29 June 1723; P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4.

66Suffolk, Letters II, 23, for J. W. Croker's praise: he prints her letters of 16 Oct. 1731 and 21 Aug. 1732 as ‘samples’.

67Sehaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 21 Nov./2 Dec. 1727. For this not being unusual see Cowper (Mary), Diary, 38 on princess Anne, ‘who at five years old speaks, reads and writes both German and French to Perfection … speaks English very prettily and dances very well.’

68Sehaumburg-Lippe, Letters:. 28 Dec. 1716/8 Jan. 1717.

69Hann.: Gal. Brief 16 (Kriegssachen), 756, Hardenberg's draft letter from George's headquarters to Görtz, 27 Sept. 1709: ‘S.A.S. n'aimer a pas d'avoir des ceremonies, ne batter les timbales ou sonner les trompettes’, The cost of the electoral coronation is noted in Görtz Archive: 88/8, 16 March 1712 in two sums: 46760,9,6 and 2992,30,5 (both in Marks and its lesser dominations).

70Fabrice, Memoiren, 125–26.

71Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 24 Sept. 1717.

72George's interest in painting (often thought to be non-existent) was considerable, especially in portraits. In 1711 he ordered for the Rittersaal copies of those of his ancestors hanging in the Lüneburg Rathaus (Sophia, Letters to the raugravines, 326); and he arranged for 500 paintings to embellish the palace he built at Göhrde (Prüser, Göhrde, 60 and authorities there cited); for his rehanging of those at Kensington Palace see my text page 263. Evidence of his visits to the houses of ministers and courtiers, and for his special interest in paintings and in the layout of gardens, is plentiful in Schulenburg's letters to Görtz for 1717: to Peterborough's home (27 July), to Cranborn (24 Sept.), to Claremont (2 Nov.), to Cliveden (12 Nov.). Other references abound, in a variety of source material, for the king's viewing houses and gardens and taking dinner with even minor figures at court or in office. For his pride in the princesses see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 13/24 Jan. 1719; and for the role of the countess of Portland, see Schazmann, The Bentincks, 127 ff. with a charming illustration of the governess with the princesses and their entourage at a tea party, Handel at the harpsichord.

73Money for bell-ringing is regularly entered in K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge.

74Cowper (Mary), Diary, 13, entry for 8 Nov. 1714.

75Kielmansegg, when publishing the Ernst August II, Letters, 59–68 (a long footnote), established the position of Sophia Charlotte vis-à-vis George I as early as 1902; and in his Familien-Chronik (1910 ed.), 762–72, printed the documents relating to her Irish (1720) and English (1721) naturalization, her elevation to the Irish peerage as countess of Leinster (1721) and to the English peerage as countess of Darlington (1722) and the subsequent granting of arms (1723). The original parchment for the Irish title, decorated with a miniature portrait of George I, embodies the phrase consanguineam nostram, and is still kept framed on the walls of the study of the present Graf Kielmansegg. The phrase is also embodied in the parchment for her Darlington title. Note that Wilhelmine, Mémoires, 58, states outright that the countess of Darlington was the natural daughter of Ernst August.

76Beattie, Court, 136 and note 1. Beattie, like Plumb (neither of whom has used Kielmansegg's works), accepts the tradition (which can be traced back to Horace Walpole's conversations and written reminiscences in old age) that Sophia Charlotte was George's mistress; Burton, 239, revives (from the same sources) the story that one of her daughters – who became Lady Howe – was George I's child.

77Sophia, Correspondence with the Hohenzollerns, 265, in a letter to her granddaughter of 29 Apr. 1713, declares untrue the rumours in Berlin that Sophia Charlotte's sister-in-law was George's mistress. The countess of Platen and her husband lived apart even before 1714, when he went as Oberkammerherr with George to London and she remained in Hanover. Young Platen is hardly ever mentioned in material that has survived from George's period of kingship (I have found only two brief references to him in the Schulenburg letters); but there is evidence before that time of his being a problem to his family. Johann Adolf von Kielmansegg had been sent in 1698 to keep him out of mischief in London and Paris (Familien-Chronik, 435–36 and 459–62); and Sophia, in the letter cited above, felt he deserved to be cuckolded; he drank, gambled and wenched. Ernst August had favoured young Platen, had provided the dowry for his bride and paid his debts (Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 12/22 Feb. 1697). This, and the dissatisfaction of the elder Platen with son as well as daughter, may hint at Ernst August's feeling a paternal responsibility for both of Klara von Platen's children. For the dowry (£3000) paid by George I for the daughter of the younger Platens, see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Townshend to Robert Walpole, 15 Nov. 1723.

78Walpole (Horace), Reminiscences cxii. Stories of George I's ‘harem’ usually fail to stand up to examination; see e.g. Halsband, Hervey, 54–59, showing that Hervey's wife, Molly Lepell, was not (as is often assumed) the mistress of the king.

79Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) III, 558–59.

80For the expression ‘the apples of his eyes’ see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 13/24 Jan. 1719; for Gertrud's marriage and her children see ibid., letters of 13/24 Oct. 1721, 25 Sept./6 Oct. 1722, 7/18 Jan. 1724.

81This is specifically stated in the marriage contract of 19/30 Oct. 1721 which I examined in Niedersächsisches Archiv, Bückeburg: Des. L.Oc. vol. 12, no. 233: I am grateful for courtesies extended by Prince Philipp Ernst of Schaumburg-Lippe during my stay at Bückeburg to work in this archive.

82Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 12/23 March, 24 May/4 June and 12/23 June 1724; 25 May/5 June, 14/25 Sept. 1725; 24 June/5 July 1726.

83For their inseparability ibid., letter of 2/13 Apr. 1728. Young Melusine's marriage seems to have made little difference: there is hardly a mention of her in Chesterfield, Letters, and her husband's biographers have concluded that, though he behaved towards her with great politeness in society, they lived more or less apart. The duchess of Kendal could not have approved of him; in her will of 1743 she makes sure that he cannot touch any of the money left to the younger Melusine.

84P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Townshend to Walpole, Hanover, 17 and 25 Sept. NS 1723 on the money order composed of two bills of £500 each drawn on the treasury. It is clear from the letters that Robert Walpole had not, at this time, met Lousie.

85It is now known as the Fürstenhaus and is used to exhibit paintings and furniture illustrating the history of the house of Hanover.

86Marginal note to the letter of 17 Sept. NS 1723 mentioned in note 84 above: ‘A most agreeable woman about 67 years of age.’ Cp. Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) II, 558–59, describing her as handsome, if now somewhat declined, and witty.

87Ernst August II, Letters: 19 Aug. [1707], 20 Jan. [1708], 16 May [1709]. These also show that George sided with her in promoting her marriage, which took place on 31 Dec. 1707. Note that the editor of this collection, on p. 109, by a slip gives the year of her marriage as 1708: it is clear from a letter of 13 Jan. 1708 that she is already married.

88Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) II, 558–59.

89Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 859.

90I take the opportunity to correct my mistake in ‘George I as an English and a European Figure’, The Triumph of Culture: 18th Century Perspectives, ed. Paul Fritz and David Williams (Toronto 1972), 195 note 18 where I married her to a non-existent Graf Delitz.

91For Horace Walpole's character sketch of Chesterfield see his Memoirs I, 51 ff.

92For Sophia Charlotte's envy of Melusine's title see extract of letter from lady Cowper's brother, John Clavering, dated Hanover 7 July 1716, printed in Cowper (Mary) Diary, Appendix E, 193; for the tension between the ‘Platen clique’ and Melusine see ibid., 193 and Wilhelmine, Mémoires, 60 ff.; for Melusine's conversation with Townshend see PRO, SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5: Townshend's letter to Robert Walpole of 30 Oct. NS 1723.

93For the de Vrillière affair and the use made of it by Horatio Walpole, see Plumb, Walpole II, 63, 65–66, 70, 74 and Coxe, Horatio Walpole I, 64 ff. Cp. my text page 275.

94For such presents see K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge after 1714: e.g. 13 Apr. 1720 (paid 19 May) – fans for the queen of Prussia.

95The original is in the Kielmansegg archive; the text is printed in Familien-Chronik, 731. I am greatly indebted to Carl Graf Kielmansegg and his wife for courtesies extended to me when I was permitted to see this and other documents in their archive.

96Portraits of her English women friends are among those still in the Kielmansegg collection, and deserve the attention of English art historians.

97See Beattie, Court, 241–42 for ministers; for courtiers see Vanbrugh, who writes of ‘speaking softly to die Schulenberg’: Bingham, 300. Among the foreign diplomats Melusine dined we note Dubois: Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 22 Feb. 1718; for her being used by George to give messages to Destouches see my text page 255 and note 53.

98Beattie, Court, 244–47.

99For the Twickenham House see below ch. X, note 12; for Louise living in Paddington see the marginal note in the P.R.O. document referred to in note 86 above.

100Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 456, 467–68. This daughter, Sophie Charlotte Marie, married in 1719 Emanuel Scrope, viscount Howe. A younger daughter, Caroline Wilhelmine, was only 13 years old at the time of her mother's death and returned to Hanover, where she married Friedrich von Spörcken in 1729.

101Beattie, Court, 258–59 correcting Ward; Verney, Letters II, 14–15, lists the Hanoverian ministers and court officials who came with George and is (in spite of the odd German spelling) most useful for the grooms and gentlemen of the bedchamber.

102For Hammerstein's action in 1693 see Sichart, Army I, 238 ff.; for Jorry the dwarf, a skilled entertainer, having been presented to George by a baron Schack see Fabrice, Memoiren, 126: presumably the George Schack who was given a present from the privy purse of £330 4s 6d: B.M., Add. MSS 40843. For Jorry's clothes and expenses being paid by George see Beattie, Court, 259. For Ulrich (Jorry) taking part in the royal hunt in 1725 see Millar, Royal Collection, no. 616.

103Proof of this is found in the Lafontaine portrait painted between 1725 and 1726, illustration no. 40.

104Liselotte, Letters to Görtz: e.g. of 4 May 1719; 4 Apr. and 23 June 1720; 15 May 1721.

105For praise of the Hanover grapes see Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 11 Nov. 1708. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's praise of the Hanover hothouse pineapples is well known, and it is interesting to note that pineapples were (with oranges, bananas, truffles and sausages) sent to George from Hanover in 1720: see the charge for transport (£3 3s 8d) in K.G. Schatullrechnungsbeläge vol. xiii. From lady Mary Cowper, who had the information from Melusine, we know of another preference of George I's: he ate ‘le Pain le plus noir’ (Panshanger MSS: F 230, 121–22).

106Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 16 July 1717. There may well have been something in this taunt; for George seems to have preferred wine. In Sophia, Letters to the Hohenzollerns, there are references to his enjoyment of the Neuchâtel wine sent him from Berlin; he bought French wine (Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenberg's letter of 2 Nov. 1717); and Townshend asked Walpole to have some malmsey sent to Hanover since the king had developed a taste for it: P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: letters from Pyrmont 4/15 July 1723.

107Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenberg's letter of 22 March 1718.

108For the gentlemen of the bedchamber see Beattie, Court, 59 ff: for their duties, especially at Hampton Court, Schulenburg's letters of 1717 and 1718 are informative.

109Selkirk is mentioned by name as one of the seigneurs who attended George at Hampton Court (Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 10 Sept. 1718). Two others mentioned as serving at the same time were the French Huguenot officer marquis de Miremont and a comte de Brandenbourg (whom I have not been able to identify but who, from his name, may have been an illegitimate member of the Hohenzollern family).

110Of the musicologists Percy M. Young, in his Handel (1965 revised ed.) 28 ff., is unique in having realized the lack of enmity of George towards Handel; but historians are indebted to the musicologists in general for their demonstration that the Water Music as we now know it was not identical with the performance of 1717: Handel expanded it at a later date.

111For a list of the court offices see Beattie, Court, 279–82. One, that of the ode-maker, has been investigated by McGuiness, and George I's reign is covered.

112K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge, passim for the period 1714–1726.

113HMC, Polwarth MSS I, 316.

114Hann.: Cal. Brief 16 (Kriegssachen), 718 giving list of gentlemen in attendance, officials and servants, and the number of horses for the campaign of 1707.

115Beattie, Court, 117. Schnath, in his review of Beattie's study (NJ 1968), has drawn attention to the fact that the cost of the Hanoverian court in relation to the electorate's Kammereinkünfte was also roughly one-third.

116For this revival see Risk's history of the Order.

117Boscawen's accompanying George to Hanover in 1716, Cowper (Mary), Diary, 118, I incline to see as an indication of the king's liking for him as now attested by the Schulenburg letters (see page 203 of my text), and not as a possible indication of the significance of the duties of the comptroller's office: Beattie, Court, 69.

118This story derives from Horace Walpole and may be apocryphal; if so, like the goods and chattels story related on my page 131, it is ben trovato. For the difficulty of reform of the household as late as the 1770s and '80s see John Norris, Shelborne and Reform (1963), 102 ff., 176 ff., 189 ff.: reorganization had to wait until 1816–41.

119Windsor, R.A.: Geo 57044, ‘An Abstract of the Expenses of the Civil List of the late Queen Anne and his Present Majesty stated and compared’. Pensions granted by George I between 1715 and 1718 are listed, with the sums involved, in Sunderland's treasury papers: Blenheim Archive, D II 2/3.

120B.M., Add. MSS 40843, Privy Purse and Secret Service Pensions and Bounties Account, 25 March 1721 to 1725.

121Beattie, Court, 80, 127–28.

Chapter VI: Two issues of principle

This chapter is largely based on unpublished material from the Bernstorff and Görtz archives, from wills and the Regencies papers in the Public Record Office, and on the ‘Astie’ volume in the Royal Archives at Windsor and the Evelyn journals at Christ Church, Oxford. Letters printed in Coxe's works have eliminated references to the sources which he used, but checks have convinced me (as well as other historians) how accurate he was in his copying and how unerring was his appreciation of significant material. Of printed German letters and memoirs, those of the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe and Fabrice have been most useful. Essential has been Drögereit's research, known since 1937, on George's will, but it is here put into a wider context provided by the ‘Astle’ volume. For the background, constitutional historical works by Thomson (1938), Kemp (1957), Plumb, Stability (1967), Cannon (1973) and Dickinson, Sovereignty (1976) have been of great help.

1See e.g. one verse of the 1715 poem Blessings attending George's accession (Poems on Affairs of State VII, cited 623 note 4);

Hither he brought the dear Illustrious House:

That is Himself, his Pipe, Close-stool and Louse,

Two Turks, three W[hores], and half a dozen Nurses,

Five hundred Germans, all with empty Purses.

For recent works see e.g. Young, Poor Fred, 18: ‘the incursion of hungry Hanoverian courtiers and courtesans’, and Burton, 2, to the effect that George's rapaciousness was only exceeded by that of his mistresses.

2Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 13/24 Jan. 1716.

3Estimate by Schnath, Hannover I, 522.

4Friis, The Bernstorffs I, 10 ff.

5Görtz Archive: 126/6, Vanbrugh's letter of 23 Nov. 1715. Görtz had made Vanbrugh's acquaintance when he, as Clarenceux king of arms, visited Hanover in 1706 to present the order of the Garter to Georg August (deputizing for the aged Garter king of arms): for this ceremony and the visit in general see the excellent description in Bingham, Vanbrugh, 133–41, based on the manuscript report of Samuel Stebbing in B.M., Add. MSS 6231.

6For the sums spent by Brydges, see Baker, Chandos, 112 and note 1. For the sale of office in England see Swart, 46 ff.

7Jacques Levron, Les Courtisans (Paris 1961), an extract of which has been translated in Louis XIV and Absolutism, ed. Hatton, 130–53, under the title ‘Louis XIV's Courtiers’.

8The Memoirs of the Duchess of Marlborough, ed. William King (1930), 217.

9For George being against the sale of offices see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 6: Townshend to Delafaye 22 June/3 July 1725. For the filling of office of all kinds, military, ecclesiastical and political, ibid., vols. 2–7 (1719–25) have a great many examples of George scrutinizing all suggestions sent to Hanover during his absences from England: he frequently objected to the names put forward either on the grounds that he had already promised the post to someone else or that seniority claims were being ignored. Cp. Beattie, Court, 165–67 for suggestion that sale of office declined in the reign of George.

10Wentworth Papers, 436, Peter Wentworth to his brother 5 Nov. 1714 to the effect that the king had himself read the memorial he had presented and had sent through G[örtz] this fairly negative message.

11Görtz Archive: 124/23, Strafford to Görtz 14 March 1716.

12Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 23 July 1717.

13Burnet, Letters: editor's introduction and letters between Oct. 1714 and May 1719. All bishop Burnet's sons were provided for by George. The slowness in giving Thomas a post may have been due to doubts about his suitability; in any event he did not last long in Lisbon, returning home after a quarrel with the British diplomatic representative there.

14Evelyn MSS: journal entries for 16 March (when he kisses hands on his appointment), 21 Aug., 16 and 18 Oct. 1721.

15Townshend's complaint to Stanhope is in a private letter of 16/27 Oct. 1716: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 115–119; for the story spread in 1717 see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 12 Feb. 1717.

16Craggs to Stanhope 30 June 1717: Stanhope, History II, appendix.

17For Townshend's comment on Bothmer: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 119.

18Coxe, Robert Walpole I, 55, based on the reminiscences of lord Orford.

19P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5: unsigned, undated letter placed with post of 3/14 Sept. 1723 (possibly copy of an intercepted letter); and Tilson to Delafaye 13/24 Sept. 1723.

20Fabrice, Memoiren, 137.

21P.R.O., Probate: Robethon's will of 19 Feb. 1721/2.

22Ibid.: Bothmer's will of 8 Dec. 1723, at a time when his daughter was a widow (she remarried before the end of the year), with codicil 3/14 Dec. 1728: both translated into English 26 March 1732.

23Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 458 ff. for her will and the sale of her effects. The will of 3 Dec. 1723 was made and deposited in Hanover, with a codicil dated 18/29 April 1725 in London, where she died two days later. She was buried in Westminster Abbey and the cost of the burial service is recorded in the MS funeral books of the abbey as £100.

24Montague, Works I: ‘Account’, 128.

25Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 457–58, to which I am indebted for Sophia Charlotte's circumstances as a widow in London.

26Ibid., 458; for the real position see Barker, Chandos, 112 and note 1; Carswell, 115 and Dickinson, Financial Revolution II, both from JHC XIX, 425 ff. (For the misleading name used by both see below, ch. IX, n. 17.)

27Fabrice (Memoiren, 137) believed the rumours in respect of Kent's Garter, but has nothing to say of the gifts Melusine or young Melusine are assumed to have accepted from Newcastle and Bolingbroke (or his second wife). Kent has not attracted a biographer; but Nulle, Kelch and Browning for Newcastle, and Hart, Dickinson and Kramnick for Bolingbroke do not touch on the topic of the rumoured money-presents; one must therefore deduce that they have not come across material to substantiate contemporary talk. Support for Melusine's desire to influence (or at least of her habit of conveying that she might be able to influence) promotions is, however, found in Görtz Archive: 114/20, Norris' letter of 1 July 1725 (the duchess has promised to help him speed up his entry into the peerage); and HMC, Polwarth MSS IV, 139, her letter of 20 Aug. 1724 to March-mont: she regrets that the death of his father (for whom he had solicited an English peerage) has prevented her from being of service. This is in sharp contrast to George I's firm answer (ibid., 147, letter of 25 Aug. 1724, conveyed through Townshend) that he cannot grant the request ‘without putting his affairs in the House of Lords in the utmost confusion’.

28For the difficulty of tracing money-presents bordering on bribes see Hatton, Gratifications, 68 ff. Rumours in respect of the Hanoverians have been followed up, but can usually not be traced beyond the assertions of interested parties: e.g. the story in Cowper (Mary), Diary, 31, of Sophia Charlotte von Kielmansegg accepting 500 guineas in cash and the promise of an annual pension of £200 from Chetwynd for a place on the Board of Trade derives from a disappointed candidate; and the note that she has received from Chetwynd a pair of ‘fine Brilliant Ear-rings’ comes from an anonymous ‘another Hand’. In any case lady Cowper was biased against Sophia Charlotte because of the dislike which her mistress, the princess of Wales, felt for George's half-sister.

29Letter from Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg to Fabrice, from Venice, 12 March 1728, printed in Fabrice, Memoiren, 153–59 (cited portion from 156–57). An alternative interpretation of the phrase might be that the family had urged her to demand a morganatic marriage with George; but this would also have a bearing on her financial circumstances.

30Palm to Emperor, from London, 17 Dec. 1726: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 509.

31For the coinage affair see Plumb, Walpole II, 67 ff. Its aftermath gave a great deal of trouble. Townshend wrote to Delafaye on 20/31 Aug. 1724 of the king's relief when Wood surrendered the patent and Ireland became quiet once more: P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 7.

32Rudé, Hanoverian London, 40, listing holdings of 1721; Dickson, Financial Revolution, 279, listing holdings of 1723–24.

33Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 742: she bought the estate at Emkendorf for 116,000 Danish riksdaler and sold it in 1729 for 120,000 Rekhstaler.

34B.M., Add. MSS 36139 fols. 80–83: a copy of George's last will and testament of 25 May 1723 witnessed by Robert Walpole and Mehemet. This leaves Melusine all the stock in the South Sea Company of which George was possessed, namely £10,000; as well as a further £12,986 2s 2d of the same stock left in trust by the king with Robert Walpole on the understanding that the sum and all dividends, products and profit thereof should go to Melusine. A document to this effect, signed by Robert Walpole on 24 May 1723, is appended.

35The story derives from Horace Walpole and has several variants: some say that young Melusine was left £40,000 and that Chesterfield settled for half that sum; others that Chesterfield's demand was for £20,000 and that George II settled in full out of court. I have searched diligently for another private will, since Fabrice, Memoiren, 149 refers to George I's having laid down in his testament that his body should not be opened after death or embalmed. Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) III, 839, quotes queen Caroline that George's will ‘said nothing on bequests to individuals’ (and which may therefore refer to the political will now published by Drögereit). The last will and testament, hitherto unknown, cited in note 34 above and discussed on my text page 154 is, however, the only one I have found.

36For the demand see duchess of Kendal to Robert Walpole of 18 Feb. 1729/30: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 668; B.M., Add. MSS 36139 fol. 83 r and v, reveals that the £12,986 2s 2d kept in trust by Robert Walpole since 1723 fetched in 1730 only £6,493 1s 1d (made up of £6,103 9^s 6d for the stock and £389 11s 7d for the dividends): Melusine accepted this sum in full settlement from Walpole and his heirs.

37She did not immediately, as stated by the ed. of the Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters, 93 note 230, move to Twickenham; the intermediate move was to ‘a house here in London’ (ibid., letter of 2/13 Apr. 1728), probably No. 43 Grosvenor Square, which we know was her home at one time (Hibbert, London, 117), or possibly the house she owned in Portugal Row and which in 1728 had a rentable value of £90 a year (Rudé, Hanoverian London, 146).

38Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 742 mentions the will briefly, and notes her other charitable bequests: to the hospital at Hyde Park and to German orphans and widows.

39P.R.O., Probate: will of 1778.

40This daughter, Charlotte Sophie, had in 1705 married Joachim Engelche von Bernstorff (a cousin of her father's), and it was in the interest of Joachim and the sons of their marriage (Andreas Gottlieb, 1708–68, and Johann Hartwig Ernst, 1712–72) that Bernstorff in 1720 made his estate into a fideikommis (since he had by that date lost his five sons as well as one of his five daughters): Friis, The Bernstorffs I, 11 ff.

41See e.g. Panshanger MSS, for letters of Bernstorff to lady Cowper accompanying such gifts (F 198 and 199).

42See Hatton, Gratifications, 80 and Hatton, Charles XII, 224 for the significant distinction between a present divulged to the ruler and one that was kept secret.

43The Tory arrears amounting to £65,022 were paid, with other army debts, in Aug. 1715: Treasury Books XXIX, part I (1957), assent by George I 21 Aug. 1715.

44For the characterization of Kent and the rumoured bribe see Raby's ‘Caractères’: Wentworth Papers, 134. For Kent's career in Anne's reign see Holmes, 227–28.

45Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer to Bernstorff, 2/13 Oct. 1716; cp. Walpole to Stanhope 28 Sept./9 Oct. 1716: Coxe, Robert Walpole I (1816 ed.), 296–98, reporting conference with Bothmer.

46Schmidt, Schulenburgs, no. 860.

47For the Graf rank for Sophia Charlotte's sons (of 23 Feb. 1723) see Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 736–42. Her own Leinster title was in the Irish peerage, the Darlington one in the English peerage. Both peerages were, like those of Melusine, for life, an innovation by George I which is noteworthy since the public discussion of life peerages did not begin till the second half of the nineteenth century: Reginald Lucas, George II and his Ministers (1910), 14.

48P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: Townshend to Robert Walpole 12 July 1723; for the rivalry with Carteret see e.g. ibid., Townshend's private letters to Robert Walpole of 29 June and 6 Aug. 1723.

49Work on this will and its codicils (beyond Michael's deductions) has been done by Drögereit and published, with the relevant documents, in NJ 1937, 84–199; a brief summary in English, ‘The Testament of King George I and the Problem of the Personal Union between England and Hanover’, is in Research and Progress (Berlin 1939). What I have been able to supplement is the English dimension of the discussion, principally from the ‘Astle’ volume in Windsor, R.A.: 53017.

50George, Letters, 496: 29 Aug. [1714]. Cp. Panshanger MSS: lady Cowper's brother, John Clavering, from Hanover 28 Sept. 1716, tells of ‘the joy the king was in when he saw her [his daughter] first, everybody took notice of it, to see his Majesty who is commonly mighty grave and thoughtfull, as gay and merry as any young Fellow of twenty year old, running about the Drawing Room, jesting and laughing at everybody’ (F 196 and F 231, 67).

51For reports of the crossing and the arrival in Rye see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 7, Townshend to Newcastle 3 and 6 Jan. OS 1725/6 (informing us inter alia that Melusine and young Melusine are with George in Rye, and that the return journey will be slow because of the newly fallen snow); and Tilson to Delafaye of 4 Jan. OS 1725/6 giving the proposed stages of the king's journey to London. See the National Trust Guide, ed. R. Fedden and R. Joekes (1973), for Lamb House, Rye, and George's stay there; the house had been completed in 1723 and the owner, James Lamb, was the mayor of the town.

52For Liselotte's early impression of George see her Letters to Sophia: 15 March 1687, 20 Nov. 1692, 22 May 1695; her surprise at reports that he could be lustig are frequent, the first time e.g. ibid., letter of 21 May 1699.

53Fabrice, Memoiren, 134–35. His account of festivities in Hanover and Göhrde is confirmed by P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 3, letters between 2 May and 16 Nov. 1720 from Delafaye and Payzant to G. Tilson. Indeed, the correspondence of the men who went with the secretaries of state to Hanover at one time and another (Balaguier, Couraud, Delafaye, Payzant and Tilson) tells us a great deal about the daily routine, the entertainments laid on for George and his guests, and also of the work of the king, the secretaries of state and of the men themselves, who at times were too busy copying despatches and drafting documents to go to church, to say nothing of time for leisure pursuits.

54Ibid., 135–36.

55For the most recent and authoritative accounts of the 1722 crisis see Bennett's contribution to the Plumb Festschrift of 1974 and his 1976 study of Atterbury. Cp. Fritz, Jacobitism (thesis), 295 ff. The many progresses planned for George, several of which he undertook, indicates the seriousness of the situation; the king also reviewed the soldiers stationed in Hyde Park and visited encampments outside London.

56For George's mode of travelling fast and alone see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Townshend's letter of 28 Sept./9 Oct. 1723: the king ‘according to his custom’ had covered 18 German miles, ‘which is more than 100 English miles’, the previous day without stopping to eat or rest. There is evidence in this volume and in others of the series that the king's preference for speedy travel caused the British secretary (or secretaries) in attendance in Hanover to set out on journeys, even brief ones, well in advance of George.

57Ibid. 43 vol. 5: Townshend and Carteret's letters to Robert Walpole of 28 Sept./9 Oct. 1723 mention the ‘fainting-fit’ and deny apoplexie.

58For these plans see Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 214. As negotiations progressed Amalie, the second daughter of the prince of Wales, was more seriously considered as she was closer in age to Friedrich. The early negotiations can be followed in Wilhelmine, Mémoires, 33 ff., 60 ff., built on what she herself remembered and what she had been told by her mother. For the later negotiations see my text pages 280–81 and notes thereto.

59For Melusine's conversation with Townshend see his letter to Robert Walpole of 5 Oct. NS 1723: P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5. For Melusine's illness in 1724 (chest pains and fever) see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 12/23 June 1724.

60P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 8, Tilson to Delafaye, Göhrde, 1/2 Nov. 1725: after the hunt the king galloped home; ‘his strength of Constitution was wonderfull to see’. For George walking five hours every morning at Pyrmont see Tilson's letter of 9/20 July 1725 from the spa: ibid. 43 vol. 6. It is clear from vols 6, 7 and 8 that the king worked hard as well, once the Pyrmont cure was completed.

61Görtz Archive: 126/12, Görtz (draft) to baron Waldeck 15 Jan. 1717.

62For this petition of 25 Apr. 1716, signed Etienne de Bonnivet de Villiers, see Görtz Archive: 126/2; for other petitions see e.g. ibid.: 125/43, that of 31 March 1716 for a musician (François Venturini) who had served four years in Hanover.

63Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 8/19 and 12/23 March, 20 July, 10 and 17 Aug. 1717; and Görtz's draft to Schulenburg 8 Feb. 1718.

64Ibid.: Schulenburg's letters of 5/16 March and 6/17 Apr. 1717.

65This title fits the younger Hattorf better (for whom see my text page 96); he had the necessary discreetness as well as ability. He is the only Hanoverian who was not criticized by George's British ministers; indeed, he was even praised: see e.g. Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) II, 342–43.

66That British men in office who received these orders used some discretion in carrying them out is indicated by admiral Norris telling the Russians that in 1716 he had not acted on instructions received, since he was not ‘d'humeur de porter sa tête sur un échafaud pour l'amour de M. Bernstorff’: letter of 8 Aug. 1718 from G.H. Görtz (who had the story from the Russian diplomat Ostermann) cited by Nordmarnn, 175 note 15. Confirmation for this can be found in the Bernstorff Archive: AG 18, general Bothmer's letter from Copenhagen (undated but, from the context, of the autumn of 1716) accusing Norris of being a ‘veritable procureur pour le Czar’ and quoting the admiral to the effect that George could not order him to prevent tsar Peter quartering Russian troops in Mecklenburg ‘sans la connaissance de l'Engletaire’, adding for good measure that he, as a member of parliament, knew what he was talking about.

67Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 11 Feb. 1718. Robethon was not totally disgraced, however. The following year George granted him a pension for life of £600 a year (ibid.: letter of 9 May 1719); and in 1720 we find him entrusted with sending George's orders on high policy to Stanhope when need arose: Chevening MSS 84/11, letter of 3 Jan. 1720 (on northern affairs) with a postscript of 4 Jan. 1720 (on affairs in Italy).

68For the English desire to have Frederick come either to Oxford or Cambridge see e.g. B.M., Add. MSS 6117 fol. 40: William, bishop of Dublin to Wake from Bath, 26 June 1717.

69His courtier beginnings (for which see text page 49) may have had something to do with this: see his Mémoires for his early career.

70For Bernstorff's presence in England in 1720 and his influence with George, acting as a go-between between Wake and the king in the former's work for a reconciliation between Lutherans and Calvinists, see report of July 1720 cited in Syke, Wake II, 70. Bernstorff seems initially to have intended a return to London early in 1721: ibid., 72, for Bernstorff's secretary having arrived in February and Bernstorff being expected in April. In May 1721 Bernstorff wrote to lady Cowper that he would delay his return since he expected to find England ‘a sad place’ while the South Sea bubble agitation lasted: Panshanger MSS: F 233, 3. From Friis, The Bernstorffs I, ch. 1, it is clear that arrangements for the fideikommis and the composition of a general directive for his heirs occupied him greatly from the autumn of 1720 onwards.

71For Bothmer's letters from London after 1720 see Bernstorff Archive; AG 29 vol. iv; for those of Whitworth, mainly from Berlin, between 1722 and 1725 see AG 72. It is worth noting that in the summer of 1722, when Bernstorff was indisposed, Whitworth, then in Hanover, signalled his intention to visit Gartow to discuss foreign affairs and to give Bernstorff by word of mouth ‘delicate’ news of Prussian policies; for the moment he had to reserve it for the King's ear; letter of 22 June 1722.

72P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Townshend to Newcastle 27 Nov. 1723, reporting success after a long campaign (mirrored in earlier letters) for Hardenberg's candidature. Cp. Beattie, Court, 244 for Newcastle's approval.

73For Stanhope's and his colleagues' joy at their ‘complete victory’ over Bernstorff see Stanhope, History II, appendix, letter from Stanhope to Craggs of 10 July 1719 and Stair, Annals II, 405, private letter Craggs to Stair 1 Oct. 1719; cp. Williams, Stanhope, 366–72 and McKay, North 1718–1719, passim. For Townshend's report of the 1723 struggle, and his own victory, see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: his private letters to Robert Walpole of 6 Aug. and 2 Oct. 1723.

74For a slower procedure, lopping off one day every leap year (begun in Sweden in 1700, but abandoned in 1712 since the Great Northern War had made the administration ‘forget’ the procedure laid down for 1704 and 1708), see Hatton, Charles XII, 349.

75This idea is still entertained: Trench, George II, 52, regards George I's refusal to touch for the king's evil as at least ‘partial confirmation’ of the contention that he felt himself an usurper. For the history of touching see Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges (Strasbourg 1924), passim; for the post-1689 period in England and at the exiled Stuart courts, 388 ff.

76The reference to the Pufendorfian ‘the general good is the highest law’ in George's will has already been noted by Drögereit, Will, 107, 126. For George's enjoyment of the conversation of Karl Moritz and of Leibniz see my text pages 90–91, and for his support of Bucquoy and Voltaire see my text page 291 and ch. X notes 40 and 41.

77Liselotte, Selected Letters (Kroll translation), 181: to raugravine Louise 16 Feb. 1716.

78See Frederick's ‘Instructions for my son George, drawn by my-Self for His Good, that of the Family, and for that of his People, according to the ideas of my Grandfather, and best friend, George I’, dated 13 Jan. 1748/9. These instructions, usually called the political testament of Frederick, prince of Wales, are in Windsor R.A. and have been printed by Sedgwick in the editorial introduction to Hervey, Memoirs I, xxxiv ff. They have been reprinted by Young, Poor Fred, 172–76; but note that Young in his text, 184, reverses George I's intentions. Young, as well as Segwick, was handicapped in interpreting the will since both wrote before its discovery and publication by Drögereit, though Sedgwick was aware of Michael's assumption that a political will existed which envisaged separation of kingdom and electorate.

79For George's proposals and the answers to them see Windsor, R.A.: 53017 (‘Astle’ volume).

80George's persistence is, in part, explained by the Imperial Constitution: the Golden Bull did not preclude an elector abdicating of his own free will, though it was laid down that he could not be forced to do so.

81Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter 17/28 Apr. 1724.

82King, Notes: entry in his diary for 24 June 1725, based on what Robert Walpole had told him.

83Walpole (Horace), Memoirs III, 307–08: see Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) I, 27–28, for a slightly different version.

84For concessions to the emperor Charles VI in the form of an offer in Jan. 1731 for the guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, leading to the treaty of Vienna of May 1731, see Williams, Whig Supremacy, 192, and Drögereit, Will for this, as well as for success with Wolfenbüttel. For George II's intense preoccupation with the will see B.M., Add. MSS 32751 fols. 24, 26, 121 and 122, two drafts by Newcastle to Horatio Walpole of July [undated] 1727 marked ‘very private’ in which Walpole is asked to sound cardinal Fleury as to whether George II could count on French help to defeat ‘any attempt that may be made to enforce the Execution of it [the late King's will]’, which, it was stressed, George II's Hanoverian ministers held to be illegal and invalid. That at least the first of these letters was sent is clear from Horatio Walpole's acknowledgment of 31 July NS marked ‘secret’: ibid. fol. 125 r and v.

85See e.g. Charles Grant Robertson, The Hanoverians (13th ed. 1944), 56: ‘The father had been the only person in Great Britain to dispute the title of the son, George II, to the throne’; conversely Redman, Hanover, 54, who also stresses the hatred, assumes that George I attempted to deprive his son of the succession to Hanover.

Chapter VII: Three crises

The section on George's image is based on a systematic viewing of portraits, engravings, busts and statues. Those which proved to be posthumous (like Rysbrack's bust at Christ Church and the profile wax medallion by Isaac Gosset at Windsor) I have taken as less reliable than those which can be shown to have been done from life. I have received courteous help from the Queen's Librarian, Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, in respect of portraits and engravings, as also from the owners and custodians of the many collections which I have visited, in Britain, Germany and France. I owe much to the generous interest of H.R.H. the Princess of Hanover, who has permitted me to study the Marienburg, Calenberg and Herrenhausen collections with her as guide on three separate occasions. For the crises which form the main topics of this chapter the importance of the Schulenburg letters can hardly be exaggerated: they have added greatly to our knowledge both of the ministerial crisis and the quarrel in the royal family and have forced a reinterpretation of George's role in both. For the background material the many works on the 1715–16 Jacobite rebellion (referred to in note 16 below) and the biographies and other studies which cover the period of the ministerial crisis, both in its domestic and foreign aspects (especially Plumb, Walpole I, Williams, Stanhope, and Mediger) have been particularly useful.

1In the report of d'Arcy-Martel, printed by Schnath, Hannover I, 726.

2This derives from a superficial reading of Cowper (Mary), Diary, 12, in which she recounts the duchess of Shrewsbury's criticism of a medal (in which the king has ‘un Nez long comme le Bras’) in an attempt to persuade him to have his portrait painted. Profile medals show the shape of George's nose well, as do the statues (most easily observed in those in the Gartentheater at Herrenhausen and in the anteroom to the Public Record Office Museum).

3There is one piece of literary evidence which indicates corpulence: Saussure, Letters, 45 (17 Sept. 1725), but it is possible that the young man only intended to convey the undoubted stockiness of the king. For George making a good figure on horseback see Addison, Letters, 336: to Delafaye 7 June 1715.

4Sophia, Correspondence with her brother: her letter of 21 Jan. 1677 mentions both George's fair hair as a child and its present dark colour.

5Montagu, Works I, ‘Account’, 125.

6Görtz Archive: 121/6 Schulenburg letter of 12 Feb. 1717 (for the contemporary connotation of monter à cheval, see asterisk note, text page 57). For George's conversation when ladies were present see Cowper (Mary), Diary, 12: ‘He said a world of sprightly things.’

7For George's concern to keep promises made in this matter see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 2 April and 12 May 1717.

8For examples of this see Hatton, Charles XII, 11 and Hatton, Louis XIV, 41. For George's splendid reception in 1714 by the well-to-do both at Greenwich and in London (more than 200 carriages took part in the procession) see Bristol, Diary. 20 Sept. 1714; and for the huzzas, and people thronging to kiss the king's stirrup, see Addison, Letters, 336: letter of 7 June 1715.

9This is also the case in verses directed to or in commemoration of the king, and in letters which touch on plans for statues of him: see e.g. B.M., Add. MSS 38507 fol. 179 r and v, letter to Townshend from Paris 13 Dec. 1715, from a correspondent to whom Townshend has entrusted the discussion with the royal French sculptor-in-chief of an equestrian statue of George I. The suggestion is that the king's valour and heroic actions should be celebrated as well as his concern for justice and religion. The 1715 rebellion put a stop to this particular project.

10See The Character of Sultan Gaga, the present Cham of Tartary Drawn by a Walachian who had been his favourite for several years: ‘Not clear if he hath Personal Courage … [he and his troops] fled scandalously in the Beginning of a Battle, almost before they were attack'd.’

11For the Jacobite attempts to gain Swedish military support at this period see Hatton, Charles XII, 416–17; for Louis XIV's Swedish policy at this time see Sörensson, KFÅ 1910; for the proposed Stuart marriage see Edinburgh National Library, MS 5129.

12For Louis XIV's attitude towards the Jacobites see Nordmann, La Crise, 45 ff. and Gregg, Protestant Succession, 276 ff.; the money actually sent by Philip V has recently been investigated by L.B. Smith (for his London Ph.D. thesis, ‘Spain and Britain 1715–1719. The Jacobite Issue’). It amounted to £43,500 in English money, the largest pecuniary help given for the Jacobites in 1715–16. I am indebted to him for this information as also for the unravelling of the motives which prompted the Spanish support for James.

13Williams, Whig Supremacy, 149 ff.; for an analysis of impeachment processes in England see Clayton Roberts' study, 383 ff.

14For this imprisonment of 1712 and its resultant rancour see Plumb, Walpole I, 180–81, 213–17.

15P.R.O., SPF France vol. 160 for Stair's reports; for preparations at home by the purging of Jacobites from civil and army office, and military preparations in general, see Plumb, Walpole I, 213–14 (based i.a. on Townshend cabinet minute of 30 May 1715); Dalton, History of the British Army II, 10–16.

16For good studies of the 1715 rising see Alastair and Henrietta Tayler, The Story of the Rising (1936); Jones, Jacobitism (1954); Petrie, The Jacobite Movement (3rd ed. 1959); Thomas, ‘Jacobitism in Wales’, Welsh Historical Review 1963; Baynes, 1715 (1970) and Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, Inglorious Revolution (1971).

17Gregg, Protestant Succession, 272 ff. and 295 for the importance of Ormonde and Oxford, and the reinsurance policies of Marlborough and Shrewsbury.

18For the ‘Salvador’ epithet see Heinsius Archive: 1930, Duyvenvoorde's letters from London of 13 and 16 Aug. 1715; for the earlier vilification see Coombs' study of 1958, chs. x and xi. For the troops see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 81–86, 102.

19Ibid., 84 ff. for the barrier negotiations; for text of the Nov. 1715 Barrier treaty see Ö.S. Netherlands.

20Note that the battle of Sheriffmuir was on 13 Nov. according to the English calendar, but on 14 Nov. according to the Scottish (James V having dropped one day from OS in the year 1600). For the secret request of George's see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 94 based on Heinsius Archive: 1930.

21Williams, Whig Supremacy, 157.

22For Shrewsbury being forced to resign (5/16 July 1716) through pressure from the Whig ministers see Gregg, Protestant Succession, 275; for Nottingham's dismissal on 27 Feb. OS 1716 see Horwitz, 250. Somerset had resigned his position as Master of the Horse in Oct. 1715 when his son-in-law (Sir William Wyndham) was arrested for suspected Jacobite activities: Beattie, Court, 101.

23Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 22 Nov. 1715 and 13/24 Jan. 1716.

24For the London incidents see Rudé, Hanoverian London, 206–08 based on the unpublished Edinburgh Ph.D. thesis by D.C.G. Isaac, ‘A Study of Popular Disturbances in Britain, 1714–1754’; Ward, University Politics, 54 ff. deals with outbreak of violence and hooliganism in Oxford.

25Frederick's ‘Instructions for my son George’, cited in ch. VII note 78; cp. Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 13/24 Jan. 1716.

26See Wentworth Papers, 436 for George closely questioning a visitor who had recently measured the Dunkirk canals and pronouncing his verdict after consultation with lord Berkeley. For the Mardyk issue in Anglo-French relations at this time see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 63–64, 100, 118.

27For Townshend's argument see Heinsius Archive: 1972, cited in Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 100.

28See Fransen, Leibniz, passim.

29Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 98–99, 106 for the simul-et-semel policy and Townshend's interpretation of the Anglo-Imperial treaty.

30See Hatton, Charles XII, 395–96, 402 ff. and Mediger, Bremen and Verden, 42 ff.

31See, for the various treaties, Stoerk (Hanover), Danmark-Norges Traktater (Denmark), Loewe (Prussia) and Bantys-Kamensky (Russia).

32The former school derives from contemporary anti-George propaganda; the latter from ministerial defence of the king's northern policies.

33Mediger (1967), in his notes, has printed extensive extracts which prove that George made direct use of the British navy for electoral purposes in 1715, but concludes that it is not possible to say if the squadron of that year rendered any real help to the anti-Swedish alliance: I, 240. Murray (1953 and 1969), from Dutch and Danish sources, has been more positive for the 1715 squadron. Hatton, from a wide variety of material, has shown that the naval support, which was withheld or granted according to George's relations at any one time with individual members of the northern alliance, operated for the whole period of the Great Northern War, though within finely judged limits of what he could and could not manage to ‘get away with’ as king: see Charles XII, 403 ff., 424 ff., 463, 478 ff., 512–13. Cp. Lindeberg, 46–47, and Sörensson, KFÅ 1929, 196–97. During the whole 1714–21 period there was only one minor direct Anglo-Swedish skirmish, on 17 July 1717, when four British men-of-war attacked and captured a Swedish frigate; see E. Holmberg, KFÅ 1915, 1920. British tactics in the Baltic were to use their squadrons for blockades of Sweden and for junctions with Danish and Russian fleets to overawe the Swedes and prevent their navy from leaving port and risking battle.

34The decision to fit out a strong squadron in 1715 was indeed taken before the privateering edict of Charles XII; but—as a compromise—the British admiralty managed then, and in later years, to keep ammunition to peacetime rations in order to prevent large-scale battle involvement.

35Hatton, Charles XII, 416 ff., 460, 474–75, 493.

36Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 173–74, 201–03, 233–34, 241.

37This promise was on ‘Our Royal Faith and Troth’; it is frequently cited, e.g. by Williams, Stanhope, 232. Cp. from Russian archives Nikiforov (German ed.), 161, for promises of a strong British naval presence. The draft instructions for Norris and Hopson of 11/22 March to 25 Oct/5 Nov. 1715 are in the Hanover archives and have been analyzed by Mediger II, notes to ch. 5.

38For the Scania invasion plan see Hatton, Charles XII, 406, 417,420–28 and references there given.

39Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv: Bothmer's letter from Hampton Court of 25 Sept./6 Oct. 1716.

40For the Mecklenburg issue see Mediger I, ch. 2.

41HMC, Polwarth MSS I, 97: Robethon to Polwarth 1/12 Oct. 1716.

42Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 84–85, Stanhope to Townshend 25 Sept. NS 1716.

43Ibid., 86, Townshend to Stanhope 23 Sept./4 Oct. 1716.

44For Horatio Walpole explaining his difficult position, see his letter to Stanhope 12 Dec. 1716: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 146. For his mission in general see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 130 ff., supported by the private letters of Horatio Walpole to Townshend ed. by J. J. Murray (1955).

45For Townshend being kept informed see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 1: Stanhope's letters from The Hague and Hanover of 8 July, 14 and 21 Aug. NS 1716; for Townshend's argument see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 139–40, strengthened by Murray's edition of Horatio Walpole's private letters to Townshend.

46For Dubois' reports of the negotiations see his Mémoires secrets, 210 ff. Stanhope's reports to Townshend are in Wiesener I, 469 ff. For George's own share see Chevening MSS: 83/17, correspondence between the king and duc d'Orléans. For the negotiations see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 128–43, where reasons are given for not fully accepting the earlier versions by Bourgeois I, 116 ff. and Wiesener I, 312 ff. The treaty was formally signed at The Hague by Dubois and Cadogan on 28 Nov.; but both copies were burnt on 4 Jan. 1717 when the Dutch acceded to the Anglo-French alliance, which thus became the Triple Alliance.

47Townshend's letter to Stanhope of 16/27 Oct. 1716 is printed by Coxe, Robert Walpole I (1816 ed.), 302–05.

48Their correspondence and other relevant letters between 30 July OS 1716 and 16 Jan. NS 1717 were printed by Coxe, Robert Walpole II, in 1789; they fill pp. 285–321 in vol. I of the 1816 ed.

49Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 12 Feb. 1717.

50Ibid.: 124/1, Görtz (drafts) to Stanhope of 29 June and 2 July 1717, referring to conversations when Stanhope was in Hanover.

51For Horatio Walpole's visit to Hanover see his letter to Stanhope of 11 Dec. 1717: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 308.

52For Robert Walpole's letter to Stanhope of 2/13 Dec. 1716 see Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 192–94; for Stanhope's letters to Robert Walpole of 15 Dec. 1716 and 1 Jan. 1717 see ibid., 308, 314.

53Stanhope to Robert Walpole 16 Jan. 1717 from The Hague: Coxe, Robert Walpole I (1816 ed.), 319.

54Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg letters of 12 and 19 Feb. 1717.

55Ibid.: 121/6, letters of 23 Feb. and 2/13 and 5/16 March 1717. Cp. for diplomatic reports Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 147.

56Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 12/23 and 15/26 March and 2 April 1717.

57Ibid.: 121/6, letter of 12/23 March 1717.

58Ibid.: 121/6, letters of 2 March NS and, for the French court, of 12/23 March 1717.

59Ibid.: 121/6, letters of 12/23 and 15/26 March and 6 April NS 1717.

60It should be noted that in popular works the prince's position is usually misinterpreted: the title of guardian of the realm was traditional and was later used for queen Caroline during George II's absences from England. There was therefore no slight implied in Georg August not being named ‘regent’, though a grievance was assumed by the prince's officials and advisers. For the latest treatment of Argyll's dismissal see Dickson, Argyll, 148 ff.

61Robert Walpole to Stanhope, 30 July/10 Aug. 1717: Coxe, Robert Walpole I (1816 ed.), quote from p. 287.

62Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 2 and 6 Apr. 1717.

63Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 20 Apr. 1717. For the Gyllenborg plot see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 147 ff. and Hatton, Charles XII, 436 ff. with references to the contributions by Westin (1898), Jägerskiöld (1937), Murray (1956) and Nordmann (1962).

64Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 6 Apr. 1717; this letter is of crucial importance, proving that it was the prince of Wales, and not George, who absented himself from cabinet meetings.

65Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 6 Apr. 1717. For Stanhope's marriage to Pitt's daughter see Newman, Stanhope, 91 ff.; for the Pitt diamond being offered in 1714 successively to George and to the prince of Wales, but refused see HMC, Dropmore MSS I, 150: for its sale to the regent in 1717 see ibid., 62: Thomas Pitt to his son Robert Pitt 29 June 1717.

66Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 20 Apr. 1717; for further, equally vain, efforts by Bernstorff and Bothmer with the prince and princess see his letter of 23 July 1717. Owen, Country attitudes, estimates that there were 73 ‘country’ members, 50 of whom were Tories, in the 1715–22 House of Commons.

67Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 7, 23 and 29 Apr. 1717, which show the king as trying hard to achieve reconciliation both with his son and with Townshend and Walpole. Cp. Schulenburg's letters of 18 and 25 Nov. 1718 for the king being less tough with the prince than his ministers.

68Ibid.: 121/6, a loose list sent with letter of 12 Feb. 1717.

69Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 27 Apr. 1717.

70Plumb, Walpole I, 251 ff.; for the worry and subsequent relief of the court when supply was voted see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 20 Apr. 1718; for previous concern see letters of 26 Oct. and 19 Nov. 1717.

71Ibid.: 121/6: Schulenburg's letters of 1 June, 2, 5, 9, 11 and 20 July 1717. On the reasons for Oxford's discharge see Clayton Roberts' study, 414–19.

72Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 23 and 27 July 1717.

73Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 6 (Stanhope's visit) and 20 Apr. and 23 and 27 July 1717. For the differing attitude to Melusine of the prince and princess of Wales at this time, ibid., letter of 20 Aug. 1717. For respect and favours from both after George's death see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 2/13 Apr. 1728.

74Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 3 Aug. (from Hampton Court) and 24 Sept. (from Windsor) 1717. Beattie, Court, 264 ff., was the first to realize the political significance of George's spending so much money on entertainment in 1717 and 1718.

75Görtz Archive: 121/6; Schulenburg's letters of 3, 13, 17 Aug., 21 Sept. and 22 Oct. 1717. For Pope's comments see Letters IV, 395 (n.d.) (to lady Wortley Montagu), and ed. note for a slightly different wording dated 13 Sept. 1717.

76Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 11 and 20 July, 3 and 28 Sept. 1717, giving evidence which has necessitated revision of the accepted views on the king's attitude to his son.

77For the king's disappointment see Panshanger MSS: F 231, 89, Bernstorff to lady Cowper, Hanover, letter of 3 Dec. NS 1716. For George II's characterization of his father see Hervey, Memoirs (Sedgwick) I, 69; III, 918.

78Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 20, 27, 31 Aug. and 7, 9 and 10 Sept. 1717. At least one Englishman suspected that George was ill: HMC, Stuart MSS V, 44, letter to Mar of 15 Sept. 1717, reporting the duke of Shrewsbury as saying that the king was not in good health, indeed he thought him ‘agoing’.

79Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 20 Aug., 24 Sept., 22 Oct. and 7 Dec. 1717. While George did not go to the races often, he was keen on the breeding of horses and was interested in the studs both at Newmarket and Hampton Court: see Longrigg, The History of Horse Racing, 260. For his introduction of the famous cream Hanoverian carriage-horses to Britain see Campbell, Royalty on Horseback, 31. For Robert Walpole being ‘extrêmement animé’ at the king's treatment of him at Newmarket see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 7 Dec. 1717.

80Stair, Annals II, 38, Craggs to Stair, 5 Sept. 1717.

81For George's joy at the birth of the grandson, see Panshanger MSS: Bernstorff to lady Cowper from Hampton Court 3 Nov. 1717 (F 231, 287–88). For the ‘opposition’ threats see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 16 Nov. 1717.

82Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 16, 19, 23, 30 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1717.

83The report by Kingston, Kent and Roxburghe of their first meeting is in Chevening MSS: 84/10 and part of it is quoted verbatim in the note to my text page 215. For the second meeting see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 10 and 14 Dec. 1717. The correspondence subsequently exchanged between George and his son was widely circulated and is printed by Michael I, 309–10, from copies in the Vienna archives. For the king's disappointment at Caroline leaving see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 14 Dec. 1717.

84George's instructions (in his own hand) to his son, to be transmitted by Coke, the vice-chamberlain, have been printed from the Panshanger MSS by Plumb, Walpole I, 260. Schulenburg's letters in Görtz Archive: 121/6, are uniquely informative (and explain hints in the Schaumburg-Lippe Letters) on George's concern to ease the difficult position of the princess: on 28 Jan. 1718 he reports that the king has given Caroline permission to visit her children; and on 26 Apr. 1718 that she sees her daughters by royal connivance ‘every day’, usually in the late afternoon when she plays with them, stays for their supper and puts them to bed.

85The papers connected with this legal issue are in Windsor, R.A.: 53017 (‘Astle’ volume); see also Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 8 and 11 Feb. 1718.

86For their move to the house of Portman Seymour see ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 8 Feb. 1718.

87The notification was printed in the London Gazette for 24 Dec. OS 1717. For the problems created see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 4 Feb. 1718, and Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 24 Jan./4 Feb., 4/15 March, 27 May/7 June, 25 Nov./6 Dec. 1718 and 13/24 Jan. 1719, though she herself remained in a privileged position between the two courts. So did lady Cowper. Thanks to Melusine's intercession, following strong protests by both the Cowpers who blamed Sunderland for their dilemma, lady Cowper was told (via the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe) that she had ‘nothing to fear from Sunderland,’ and that George I ‘n'insistera pas sur cette article [i.e. Sunderland's letter of 2 Dec. 1717 forbidding lady Cowper to see the princess of Wales], mais qu'on laissera tout en status quo, jusqu'à un accomodement’: Panshanger MSS, ‘Family Books’, vol. 4, entered with other copies from pages 296 onwards. For the subterfuges by which Mrs Clayton and lady Cowper saw the princess even in public, see Windsor R.A.: Geo Add. MSS 28, nos. 32, 39 and Panshanger MSS: F 203, letters of Mrs Clayton to lady Cowper.

88For George and the Cowper resignation see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 11 and 29 Feb. and 19 April 1718. Schulenburg surmised that Cowper had been urged to resign by his wife who was ‘much loved by the young court’. The correspondence between Cowper and his wife, however, shows tension between him and his fellow ministers on a variety of issues throughout his period of office. Foord, Opposition, 74 has added a Jacobite element based on the Caesar papers, but these (if they can be trusted) date from the 1720–22 period.

89Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 28 Dec. 1717, 4 Jan., 8 March and 5 Apr. 1718. The Kneller portrait, stored at Marienburg, is not at present in a state to be reproduced.

90Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 23 Apr. 1717 and 10 March 1718.

91Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 10 March 1718.

92Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 4 March 1718; cp. letter of 1 Aug. 1718 (from Emden).

93Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters 2 Apr. 1717 (for marriage rumours) and 6 March 1718 (for George and Sunderland).

94Bothmer, Q.A., though noting that Sunderland was a good linguist and knew German well. For Sunderland's ‘great Ability in Parliament’ see HMC, Onslow MSS I, 509.

Chapter VIII: The watershed 1718–21

Where domestic affairs have been touched on, the correspondence printed either in the Historical Manuscript Commission volumes or in privately edited collections of letters have been important. Constitutional and political histories and biographies have been a great help. For foreign policy issues I have, over the years, gone through all the State Papers Foreign, instructions to diplomats and dispatches from diplomats for all the countries involved in the two ‘peace plans’ which occupied so much of George's time, supplemented by foreign archive material, especially French and Dutch. Indeed, my unpublished material is so rich that only the top of the iceberg emerges in the notes. The Austrian unprinted documents have been so well utilized for this period and for that of the following chapter by doctoral dissertations which – if they do not always sufficiently consider non-Austrian material – make independent research in the Vienna archives hardly worth while; though it is still necessary to use the university library there to consult the printed theses which do not seem to find their way to British libraries. Conversely, the Hanover archives have yielded material that has not been used before and, for the same reason, the Bernstorff archive has been invaluable.

1Scotland has in recent years been well served by excellent histories which give much space to the first half of the eighteenth century: Donaldson and Ferguson have been particularly useful to me.

2For the drawbacks of the Triennial Act of 1694 see Holmes, 218–19; Marshall, England, 85.

3Plumb, Stability, 173–74; Kemp, King and Commons, 37 ff.

4Foord, Opposition, 8–11, 54–77.

5For Anne's position in William III's reign see Baxter, William III, 296, 300; for George II's reign see the biography of Frederick by Edwards. Biographies of queen Anne (by E. G. Gregg) and of George II (by S. B. Baxter) are in the making and we can hope for further enlightenment.

6The standard accounts build on Cowper (Mary), Diary, 145, entry of 23 Apr. 1720 (to the effect that none of the Germans, apart from Melusine, knew of the reconciliation) ; and (from ibid., 52–53, 56, 59–61) the assumption that the close cooperation between the Cowpers and Bernstorff came to an end in Oct. 1715 when they took umbrage at Bernstorff's criticism that lord Cowper was trop vif and his wife beaucoup trop vive in promoting their own views. The correspondence in the Panshanger MSS, however, shows that Bernstorff's efforts (visible already in the Diary, 66, 69, 98, 101, 105 ff.) to restore the friendship were successful, and that all three worked together to reunite the royal family in late 1717 and early 1718: see the copies of letters sent and received in F 231 and 232 after 2 Dec. 1717, in particular Cowper's letters to George I, Bernstorff and the duchess of Munster (Melusine) with answers from Bernstorff and the countess of Schaumburg-Lippe (on Melusine's behalf). She refers to Bernstorff's efforts behind the scenes for the bon Accord they all strive for. There are also interesting letters from Caroline, princess of Wales, in which she appeals to lady Cowper to use as a go-between her Amy (most probably Bernstorff); and a letter from the archbishop of Canterbury (Wake) which openly refers to his seeing both the princess and Bernstorff in the hope of furthering reconciliation.

7Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 24 Jan./4 Feb., 4/15 March and 27 May/7 June 1718, 13/24 Jan. 1719. For the funeral from Kensington Palace of George William on 14 Feb. 1718/19, with the King's coaches and yeomen of the guard and horseguards, see London Gazette.

8Hervey, Memoirs. The Croker ed. (II, 478–79) has the original French; the Sedgwick ed. (III, 848–49) gives the French version and an English translation, and both are printed in his one-vol. selection of 1952, 309–10. Croker and Sedgwick alike read Hervey as giving ‘Earl Stanhope’ as the author of the first extract in my note page 214, though it is possible that Charles Stanhope (Sunderland's secretary) penned it. While Hervey mentions both James Stanhope and Sunderland as enemies of the prince at this time, our corroborative evidence shows Sunderland as the advocate of violent action; see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 28 Sept. 1717. Cp. letters of 3 Sept. and 16 Nov. 1717 for general ministerial pressure for firm measures against the prince.

9For joy at the birth of William see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 9/20 May 1721; for the christening of Trudchen's son, Georg August, 25 Sept./6 Oct. 1722; for family affairs in general, 26 Oct./6 Nov. 1722; 12/23 March 1723; 7/18 Jan., 21 Apr./4 May and 12/23 June, 1/12 Dec. 1724; 2/13 Feb. 1725; 24 June/5 July 1726. For Melusine's illness ibid.: letter of 12/23 June 1724; for Amalie's illness in 1726, see Windsor, R.A.: Geo Add. MSS 28, nos. 20–28. The dating of this illness is made possible by a marginal reference (in Mrs Clayton's transcripts) to Mary Toft, who claimed to have given birth to rabbits. For the sensation this caused, George I's disbelief and her being proved an impostor by one of the royal physicians sent by the king to examine her case, see article in DNB. Trench, George II, 125 assumes Amalie's illness to date from George II's reign and therefore attributes George I's attitude to his granddaughter's illness to George II.

10For the relevant quotation from Ernst August's letter to Friedrich August of 3/13 Apr. 1685 see my text page 44; for the sentence by George here cited see his letter to the prince of Wales printed in full as appendix D to Cowper (Mary), Diary, 191–92.

11The secret pleasure can be deduced from the tone of Caroline's letter to Mrs Clayton of 22 Apr. [1720]: Windsor, R.A.: Geo Add. MSS 28 no. 59; she expressed her pleasure openly to her sister-in-law, the queen of Prussia, and George judged her sentiment sincere: George, Letters, 497 (to Sophia Dorothea of 9 July 1720). For George's broken words, his being ‘dismayed and pale’, and the reconciliation in general see Cowper (Mary), Diary, 142 ff. For the extension of the reconciliation to ministers' wives see Jane Pitt to the Hon. Mrs Pitt 7 May [1720], commenting on ‘Townshend and Walpole's Ladys going to see lady Stanhope’: HMC, Dropmore MSS, 64–65.

12George, Letters, 497: to Sophia Dorothea of 9 July 1720.

13Bernstorff Archive: AG 62, Flemming to Bernstorff, Dresden, 27 Sept. 1717 (the resident was Vernon, for whom see DNB).

14Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 24 and 27 Aug., 9 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1718 compared with Fabrice, Memoiren, 117–22.

15Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 22 Oct. and 14 Dec. 1717 and 22 Feb. 1718 compared with Dubois, Mémoires secrets, Wiesener, and other secondary authorities based solely on French archives.

16Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 20 Apr. 1717 for the faux pas; cp. Williams, Stanhope, 249.

17Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 160–61.

18For the arrest, custody and release of Görtz see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 147–59.

19Ibid., 152–56 for the Dutch refusal to prohibit trade with Sweden and for the ‘lye-still’ of the Dutch navy; Lindeberg, 336 ff. for the great increase in Dutch-Swedish trade.

20For the protest made on behalf of the London diplomatic corps by the Spanish diplomat, Isidor de Cassado, marques de Monteleón, see Wiesener II, 4; for Whitehall's vigorous counter-propaganda see Murray, 337 ff.

21For Charles XII's disavowal and the regent's offices see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 157–58 and Hatton, Charles XII, 449; for the Swedish diplomatic initiatives see Jägerskiöld (1937), supplemented by Feigina from Russian archival material (1959), and Hatton, Charles XII, 425 ff., 451 ff.

22Ibid., for the Turkey period, 372–76; based i.a. on Charles' letter to his sister Ulrika Eleonora of 2 Sept. 1714 printed in Konung Karl XII:s egenhändiga bref, ed. E. Carlson (Stockholm 1893).

23See Hatton, Charles XII, 445–50 for the policy and the men employed.

24For their correspondence see Görtz Archive: 125/40; for Vellingk's role in the negotiations after 1716 see Fabrice, Memoiren, 117–18, 121, 125; and Hatton, Charles XII, 375, 449, 455.

25For Ranck being sent to Bender in 1713 by Friedrich of Hesse see Holst, Fredrik I, 31 ff.; for his role in the diplomacy here discussed see Hatton, Charles XII, 447–79.

26For Fabrice's stay with Charles XII in Turkey (and in Stralsund) see ibid., 319–21, 361, 376; and, more fully, in Fabrice, Letters, passim, for the period; cp. his Memoiren, 42–115. For Fabrice having met George in Hanover in 1707 and 1708 (in the latter instance in his capacity as a Holstein-Gottorp diplomat) and being well received at his court, see ibid., 25–26, 29–30.

27Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 27 Aug. 1717; Fabrice, Memoiren, 117–21.

28For the Russian decision to leave see Feigina, 115 ff., and Mediger I, 366 ff. Some years after George's death a Russian diplomat (who, in Vienna, had been instrumental in obtaining proofs of the king's strong commitment in this matter) had a conversation with viscount Percival in which he stressed that the tsar was sufficiently vexed to revenge himself by support for the Pretender; he eventually ‘cooled off’ since he admired George and was impressed by the fact that the king had ‘boldly maintained the share he had in that transaction’: HMC, Egmont Diary I, 114–16, entry for 5 Nov. 1730.

29For the negotiations between tsar Peter and the regent see Sörensson, Sverige och Frankrike 1715–1718 I, 91 ff.; Vicomte de Guichen, Pierre le Grand et le premier traité franco-russe (Paris 1908).

30Hatton, Charles XII, 449.

31Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 1 October 1717, reporting arrival two days earlier and the failure of his mission to the tsar.

32See Bruce, Jacobites; Jägerskiöld, 42 ff.; Feigina, 153 ff.

33For Fabrice's second visit (arrival in October 1717), see his Memoiren, 121–122, and Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 19 Nov. and 3 Dec. 1717.

34For his mission see Hatton, Charles XII, 453–55 and Fabrice, Memoiren, 122–25.

35Bernstorff Archive: AG 62, Flemming to Bernstorff 27 Sept. 1717 with (undated) draft answer in Robethon's hand. The ‘secretary’ sent to replace Richard Vernon was the James Scott who had been in disgrace in 1707 but who had, towards the end of queen Anne's reign and the early months of George's, been a regular diplomat in Saxony and Poland. He was, however, taken seriously ill after his arrival in Dresden (only one letter from him, Dresden 27 Oct. 1717, is on the file); and a variety of experienced Hanoverian diplomats were therefore brought on to the fringes of the negotiations. Their letters or copies of them are in AG 62. George's control is evident not only from expressions in the several draft answers and from Flemming's letter of 30 Dec. 1717 addressed directly to the king; but also from George's later use of the Saxon minister for secret negotiations: see Stair, Annals II, 397–98 for George's letter to the French regent, dated Hanover 7 Nov. 1719, in which he tells of his meeting and secret negotiations with Flemming. Scott, incidentally, recovered from his illness (though Flemming reported him dying at the end of 1717) and was later employed on an official mission to Saxony, Poland and Prussia.

36Ibid., Bernstorff's draft answers, especially those of 7 Jan. (with postscript of 8 Jan.) and 14 June 1718.

37Ibid., Flemming's letter to the king cited in note 35 above, and Bernstorff (draft) to Flemming of 7 Jan. 1718.

38Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 29 Dec. 1717.

39For Victor Amadeus' hint see Stanhope to Stair of 3 Feb. 1716: P.R.O., SPF France vol. 160, supported by Baraudon, Savoy, 124 ff. For the power and ambition of the emperor, see G. Quazza, ‘Italy's role in the European problems of the first half of the eighteenth century’, Studies in Diplomatic History. Essays in memory of David Bayne Horn, ed. Ragnhild Hatton and M.S. Anderson (1970), 140 ff. and authorities there cited.

40For the Hanover stage of the negotiations between Stanhope and Dubois see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 134–35; for Pentenrriedter's mission see Drodtloff's biography, 48 ff.

41For the plan, the project of settlement as it was at first called, see Stanhope's letters to Robert Walpole and Townshend of 6 and 9 Oct. 1716: Coxe, Robert Walpole II, 100–02, also Weber, Quadruple Alliance, 28 ff.; Baudrillart II, 269 ff.; Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 166 ff.

42For the influence of Pufendorf's ideas in general see Krieger, Pufendorf, 255 ff.; for his ideas on international relations and for the various editions and translations of his works see Hatton, War and Peace, 13 ff. See ibid., 7, 23–24 for Callières' work of 1716, translated into English in 1716 with the title, The Art of Negotiating with Princes. I have not been able to trace a direct link between this book and either George or Stanhope, but it seems certain (from phrases used in diplomatic instructions at the time) that Callières' development of Pufendorf's ideas and especially his slogan of reciprocal advantages and reciprocal sacrifices is significant for the period of Anglo-French close cooperation 1716–1731.

43Chevening MSS: library ms. catalogue lists Pufendorf's History, and the acquisition accounts note expenditure for the two Accounts.

44A copy of this letter in its original French, from George I to Philip V, dated St James's 1 June 1721 was sent to the regent of France and is now in AAE, Angleterre, Suppl. vol. 7 (1721–26); there is an English version in P.R.O., SPF Spain vol. 90. The letter remained secret in England till 1728; after that time it was frequently committed to paper, see e.g. HMC, Roxburgh et al., 196–97 (the MSS of the dowager countess of Seafield). For the Gibraltar issue in general see the pioneer work by Conn, Gibraltar, 31 ff.; Gibbs, Treaties, 125–29 and Hills, Gibraltar, 249 ff., based on Spanish material.

45See P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 7 for Townshend's letter (copy) to William Stanhope of 14/25 Sept. 1725; for his outspoken letter to Newcastle (quoted in the text) of 24 Sept./7 Oct. 1725; and for his letter to the same of 28 Oct./8 Nov. 1725, showing realization that a promise had been made and transmitting George's orders that a search for an entry on promises in respect of Gibraltar should be made in the secretary of state's office. Townshend suggests that Carteret ought to be consulted. For proof of verbal promises made see Williams, Stanhope, 307, and Martin, Spain and Italy, 417, based on British and Spanish documents; cp. Massini, Schaub, 26, for conditional promises in 1720.

46For the grievances, and rectifications and concessions, see McLachlan, 3–29, 46–67 and Williams, Stanhope, 207–08.

47B.M., Add. MSS 37364, Whitworth to Sunderland (draft, private) 18 May 1717; cp. Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 160.

48Harcourt-Smith, Alberoni, 159 ff. For the Austrian ambitions in Italy see K.O. von Aretin, ‘Der Heimfall des Herzogtums Mailand an das Reich im Jahre 1700’, Gedenkschrift Martin Göhring (Wiesbaden 1968); the same author's larger study on Joseph's reign in HZ 1972; and Huber's monograph covering the period from 1700 onwards.

49Martin, Spain and Italy, 412. For Patiño's work (he was particularly active in preparing the navy for the Italian descents 1717–1718) see the study by Béthencourt Massieu, passim.

50For the Molinez affair see Wiesener II, 89–90.

51B.M., Add. MSS 37364, Whitworth to Sunderland (draft, private) 3 Aug. 1717 from The Hague; cp. for context Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 163.

52B.M., Add. MSS 37365, Stair to Whitworth 30 July 1717.

53Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 3 and 10 Aug. 1717.

54Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 18 Jan. 1718.

55Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 3 Sept. 1717.

56The arrears claimed was £900,000; what George offered (it was accepted) was £130,000: P.R.O., SPF Foreign Entry Books, Empire vol. 42; for payment taking place on 11 Jan. 1718 see Wiesener II, 49; cp. for context Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 163.

57For Stanhope's illness see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 26 Oct. 1717; for Dubois' arguments to George, Melusine and Schulenburg see ibid., letters of 22 Oct. 1717 and 22 Feb. 1718.

58The regent, however, took a decision to support Great Britain if Philip V (as a consequence of Byng's orders in 1718) should declare war: Chevening MSS:88/7, Stair to Stanhope 26 July 1718 with assurance that Louis XV would in that case ‘faire cause commun’ with George. For the strength of British opposition to the sacrifice of Gibraltar, even against an equivalent, see Stair, Annals II 145, Craggs to Stair 18 February 1720: ‘And therefore tho' His Majesty were ever so much disposed to part with it [Gibraltar] it may well be doubted whether he would have it in his power so to do.’

59The citation is from the original preamble to the peace project, printed in French by Michael II, 626 and in English translation by Williams, Stanhope, 314. For the negotiations that followed see Weber, Quadruple Alliance, chs. i and ii; Baraudon, Savoy, livre 3; Bourgeois I, 241 ff.; Michael I, 787 ff.; Ö.S., England I, 352 ff.

60Chevening MSS: 81/8, Stanhope to Stair, 1 February 1717/18. For the secret English commitment referred to by Stanhope see Martin, Spain and Italy, 407–11.

61Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 22 Feb. 1718.

62Massini, Schaub, 20–27 (based on Schaub's papers from the autumn of 1717, when he became Stanhope's secretary, until Stanhope's death).

63Chevening MSS: 87/8, Stair to Stanhope, Paris, 7 July 1717, reporting assurances given, as ordered, to the regent.

64Victor Amadeus signed on 8 Nov. 1718, while the Dutch resolution to sign was not taken until 16 Dec. 1719 (repeated 31 Jan. 1720) and was then not accepted by Great Britain: Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 166–74, 176–205.

65Williams, Stanhope, 284–85.

66For Schaub's participation in the conferences see Chevening MSS: 81/8, Stanhope to Stair, 23 Jan. 1717/18; cp. ibid., Dubois to Schaub, London 1 March 1718, that the latter's task was to convince Charles VI and prince Eugène of the merits of ‘the plan’.

67Chevening MSS: 83/17, George's correspondence (copies and originals) with the regent between 1716 and 1719; cp. Windsor, R.A.: Geo Add. MSS 1/25, George's letter (in his own hand) to the regent of 21 Jan. 1718, assuring him that he can have ‘une foy entière’ in what Schaub shall tell him ‘de ma part’. The clinching proof that George was in control throughout the foreign policy negotiations also comes from the Chevening MSS: 84/11, George's orders to Stanhope via Robethon (of 3 and 4 Jan. 1720 at a time when the secretary of state was not in London) on what action to take both in Italian affairs and in those of the North.

68Bothmer, Q.A., passim.

69Görtz Archive: 121/6, e.g. Schulenburg's letters of 28 Dec. 1717, 31 March, 3, 15 and 18 Apr. 1718. In the event George had to stay at his post and Schulenburg, who had permission to visit his family in Germany, followed events closely from Emden (see e.g. his letters of 1, 11, 18, 28 Aug. and 15 Sept. 1718).

70Gibbs, Quadruple Alliance, 293 for Walpole's warning; for the court's relief at supply see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 31 March 1718 (for worry see ibid., letters of 26 Oct. and 19 Nov. 1717).

71Gibbs, Quadruple Alliance, 296 ff.

72Williams, Stanhope, 302.

73For Byng's orders of 26 May and 7 Aug. see T.C. [Thomas Corbett], Account of the Expedition of the British Fleet to Sicily (3rd ed. 1739, 91 ff.), and for his account of the Passaro incident HMC, Polwarth MSS I, 587–89; cp. for context Williams, Stanhope, 302 ff.

74The answer is printed (from the Chevening MSS) ibid., 452 dated the Escurial, 15 July 1718; it was signed by Alberoni and began ‘Sa Majesté Catholique m'a fait l'honneur de me dire que …’

75The fullest account of Stanhope's Madrid mission is in Williams, Stanhope, 306–08, with quotations also from The History of Alberoni (anon., published in Genoa in 1719 and translated into English the same year), a pamphlet which gives Alberoni's side of the story.

76According to this convention the final prolongation of grace for the Italian expectancies was to run from not later than 15 Oct. 1719 until not later than 25 Jan. 1720: Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 197. For the war in Spain see Williams, Stanhope, 329 ff.

77Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter from Emden of 11 Aug. 1718.

78Baraudon, 318 ff.

79Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 176 ff.

80Robethon to Polwarth 4 July 1719: HMC Polwarth MSS II, 1976–98; Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 198–205.

81Hatton, Louis XIV and Fellow Monarchs (London ed.), 39.

82Hatton, War and Peace, 21 ff.; Hatton, Europe in the Age of Louis XIV, 208–09.

83Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter from Emden of 11 Aug. 1718.

84Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 173–75.

85Ibid., 203–05.

86It is necessary to stress this, since modern Russian historians (Nikoforov, Feigina), tend to underestimate the importance of favourable conjunctures in tsar Peter's success. The tsar and George both used their opportunities well, but both also benefited from circumstances which they themselves had not been in a position to influence.

87HMC, Stuart MSS VII, 189 ff.: Jerningham's letters of Aug. 1718; Feigina, 325; Hatton, Charles XII, 459.

88For Jefferyes' mission (he left London on 15 Oct. 1718) see Hatton, Jefferyes, 26 and his instructions and dispatches in Sbornik, vol. 61, 451 ff. In the event Norris did not sail to meet the tsar, his instructions reaching him after he had already left the Baltic: BDR, Russia entry; for the negotiations with Augustus II and Charles VI, see Mediger I, 399 ff.

89Hatton, Charles XII, 461.

90Ibid., 474–77, 485–86.

91Ibid., 475.

92Ibid., 483–84.

93Ibid., 479; Bidrag, SNKH, 180 ff.

94For the alliance of 5 Jan. 1719 see Sörensson, KFÅ 1929; Mediger I, 410 ff., and McKay, North 1718–1719.

95For the operational plan envisaged against tsar Peter, dated Hanover 12 Nov. 1719, see B.M., Add. MSS 37385, Whitworth's private letter to Townshend of 16/27 July 1721.

96Cited by Williams, Stanhope, 377.

97The most balanced account of the ‘three villages’ issue is by Mediger I, 419–20: the Prussian king had undertaken in his Hanover treaty of 1715 to hand over the documents on which he based his claim (see my text page 95), but had failed to do so.

98For Bernstorff's prediction see his letter to Saint Saphorin of 15 Feb. 1719 cited by Michael II, 489.

99Williams, Stanhope, 343 for the ‘sharp practice’ judgment. The Prussian treaties of 1719 with Britain and Hanover are printed in Loewe, 210–22. For the negotiations which led to the peace treaties between Sweden and Hanover and Sweden and Prussia (21 Jan. 1720) as well as the commercial treaty between Britain and Sweden (2 Feb. 1720) see J. Rosén, Svensk Historia (Stockholm 1967), 610 ff.; Chance, Great Northern War, 340 ff.; and, more briefly, Hatton, Charles XII, 511–13 and 622 note 5 (the advantages for Britain) and 623 (the peace with Poland which was not signed until 1731). For the Dano-Swedish peace treaty, and the Sleswig guarantees (the British of 23 July and the French of 20 Oct. 1720) see ibid., 622, note 8.

100For the strategic and tactical difficulties in 1720 see Aldridge, Norris; for the religious tension see Naumann, passim and Duchhardt, Kaisertum, 273 ff.; for the genuineness (which has been doubted) of British and Prussian planning and negotiations in July 1720 see Mediger I, 425 ff.

101Bernstorff Archive: AG 70 contains papers and letters connected with the South Sea Company and Bernstorff's shares in it from Bothmer, Plessen and the banker Paul de la Tour from 28 June/9 July 1720 to 18/29 Apr. 1721; for the spectre of revolution see Bothmer's letter of 4/15 Oct. 1720.

102Claude Sturgill, ‘La Municipalité de Mende et la peste de 1721–1722’, Bulletin du centre d'études et de recherches littéraires et scientifiques de Mende 1974, 12–15.

103BDI, Sweden I, 146–50; cp. Williams, Stanhope, 427.

104Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 11 Apr. 1718.

105See e.g. Stanhope to Newcastle from Hanover 27 Oct. 1719 (B.M., Add. MSS 32686): ‘I may safely assure your Grace … the King will doe whatever shall be proposed to him.’

106Hann.: Cal. Brief 11 EI, 213 (Bremen and Verden investitures), unsigned letter from Vienna of 15 Apr. 1722 (possibly by Saint-Saphorin) reporting that the writer had told prince Eugène ‘un Roy de la Grande Bretagne trouveroit toujours les moyens de se conserver un lieu qu'il avoit si justement acquis, qu'oy qu'il n'en eut pas les Investitures.’ It is clear from the context of this and other (undated) letters in the same hand that this phrase had been authorized by George.

107Charles VI needed the guarantee of Great Britain for the Italian settlement: only its naval power kept Philip V quiescent.

108Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter from London of 17/28 Apr. 1724. Cp. ibid.: AG 63 vol. iv for Huldeberg's complaint of 17 Feb. 1720 that Saint-Saphorin objected to his dealing even with Reich matters; cp. his letters of 13 Sept. 1721 and 23 Jan. 1723.

109Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letters of 1 and 11 Aug. 1718 from Emden.

110Ibid.: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 20 July 1717 (after discussing with the king the prerogatives of the seigneurs in general).

111For the accusations against the Germans see e.g. Craggs' private letter to Stair of 1 Oct. 1719 in which he relates that Bernstorff ‘last year underhand gave out the king was against the peerage bill’: Stair, Annals II, 399; cp. Williams, Stanhope, 409. For the attitude of the prince and princess of Wales see Windsor, R.A.: Geo Add. MSS 28, Caroline's letters to Mrs Clayton, especially nos. 49, 50, 51, 52, 54.

112See Plumb, Walpole I, 283–84. For the peerage bill in general and its connection with relief of dissenters and university reform see Williams, Stanhope, 403–16 and Plumb, Walpole I, 266–82.

113Ibid., 264–65 printing extract from lady Cowper's letter to her husband of June 1718; for Walpole's knowing Hammerstein see Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 6 Apr. 1717 reporting that he and Hammerstein had dined with Walpole the previous Sunday.

114The newspaper accounts show that he went to bed in good health and died during the night; a note in HMC, Portland MSS II, 432 informs us that death was due to ‘apoplexie’. He is buried in Westminster Abbey where the plate (which has since disappeared) on his coffin is copied in the Burial book of expenses: its Libri Baronis (Freiherr) proves, incidentally, that Johann Matthias' half-brother was not comprised (as Schmidt, Schulenburgs no. 750 assumes) in the promotion to Reichsgraf.

115See e.g. Bernstorff Archive: AG 63, Huldeberg to Bernstorff, Vienna, 21 May 1720, reporting that Cadogan has told him how much Bernstorff had contributed with ‘advice and management’.

116Plumb, Walpole I, 208–85, listing three copies of the alleged letter. One of these, in HMC, Portland V, 594–96, has ibid., 596–97, the unsigned letter of 7 May 1720 to ‘Dear Sir’ (possibly Edward Harley), which explains the reason for the delay in sending the copy. It also relates what the writer has heard of events since Sunderland had received the letter: when that minister, after the reconciliation, charged Walpole, Townshend and the duke of Devonshire with responsibility for the plot, they all denied it, though they freely admitted they had had a project in mind for overturning the Sunderland-Stanhope ministry; they also maintained that the Germans were now engaged in a new project ‘deeper than this’.

117The original of the alleged letter was searched for by Michael in the Vienna archives but was not found: see Michael, Quadruple Alliance, 303. For Bernstorff's cooperation with the Gowpers, see note 6 above.

118Carswell, 128–31.

119The address is printed in Chandler, Proceedings VI, 214–15.

Chapter IX: Peace, its problems and achievements

While this chapter is fundamentally based on new material from the State Paper Domestic, Regencies volumes, the several correspondences of the Bernstorff Archive, and on a variety of documents from the Royal Archives at Windsor, it is also heavily indebted to the published works of other scholars. Older books, particularly on French diplomatic and political history (by Leclerq, Lémontey, Syveton, Dureng, Wilson), have retained their usefulness. More recent studies by Austrian, Danish, Spanish, Swedish and Russian historians on European issues have proved of great importance, notably those by Bagger, Berger, Drodtloff, and Wensheim. Of British scholars I have found Gibbs especially stimulating on the Hanover alliance, and I have benefited from talks with him and with my own present and former doctoral students (David Aldridge, Peter Barber, Hugh Dunthorne, Edward Gregg, Derek McKay, Stewart Oakley, Hamish Scott and L. B. Smith) on a variety of points connected with British relations to Europe. For the South Sea bubble Carswell's book and Dickinson, Financial Revolution, have been a great help. For British affairs in general the biographies by Plumb, Browning and Bennett have been most useful, as have works dealing with particular topics, such as Fisher's on Anglo-Portuguese trade and Naylor on the peerage bill, which brought significant newspaper articles by Steele and Addison to my attention. In connection with the latter bill, studies relating to the Anglican church and its bishops, to dissenters and to the universities and education in a wide sense, have proved important.

1Chandler, Proceedings vol. VI, 200.

2The king naturally left the details to those who knew the interests of specific manufactures and trades best, but did not hesitate to give advice. A typical example is in Stanhope's letter to Craggs from Hanover 22 May 1719, on two Russian memorials. He reports: ‘As they wholly relate to the British Trade, his Majesty leaves it to the Lords Justices to make what answer they shall think proper to them, tho' it is his opinion that the more steady and vigorous their Answer is, the better effect it will have touching the Freedom and Liberty of our Commerce in those parts’ (P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 2).

3P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4, letter of 28 July 1723; cp. ibid., Townshend's letter of 8 Sept. 1723: ‘I must again repeat to you that nothing will gain the King's heart more than the striking out of some good Plan for the benefit of Trade and Credit.’

4For such plans in general see Puster, 155 ff. There are many references to George's personal interest and orders to surveyors, etc., in unpublished correspondence, e.g. B.M., Add. MSS 37387, Tilson's letter of 5 Dec. 1721 from Whitehall and Whitworth's answer of 16/27 Dec. 1721; and P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5, Tilson's letter to Delafaye from Hanover of 26 Oct./6 Nov. 1723.

5Plumb, Walpole I, 246 ff.

6Carswell, 194 ff.

7For one example of capital going out (£40,000 of it coming from Chandos) see Ragnhild Hatton, ‘John Drummond of Quarrel’, The Scottish Genealogist 1970, 9, based on Scottish Record Office, Abercairney MSS: 487.

8For the growing economic prosperity and initiative of the Spaniards overseas see John Lynch, Spain under the Habsburgs II (Oxford 1969), 160 ff., 194 ff.

9Fisher, Portugal Trade, 92 ff.

10The mood of the English after the war with Spain is shown by two letters from Craggs to Stair of 18 Feb. 1720: the one in French – so that it might be read by the regent – argues, firstly, that the war had rendered null and void whatever promises had been made regarding Gibraltar before December 1718, and, secondly, that the nation was now clamouring for advantages to be gained at the peacemaking; the other letter (for Stair's eyes alone) stresses that ‘tho' his Majesty were ever so much disposed to part with it [Gibraltar], it may be doubted whether he would have it in his powers to do so’ (Stair, Annals II, 413–16, 145). For Anglo-Spanish tension over trade matters, see Gibbs, Quadruple Alliance, 296 ff.

11MacLachlan, 44–76; Carswell, 65 ff.

12For the most comprehensive accounts of the South Sea Company and the speculations that resulted in the bubble bursting, see Plumb, Walpole I, 295 ff.; Carswell, passim; and, from the financial point of view the most complete, Dickson, Financial Revolution, 90–109. I have also benefited from the unpublished London M.A. thesis (1934) by Eric Wagstaff, ‘The Political Aspects of the South Sea Bubble’.

13Evelyn MSS: journal entries for 17 Feb., 3, 7, 11, 17 March 1719/20; 28, 29 March, 15, 29 Apr. 1720. For his decision not to take up the third subscription ibid.: entry for 16 June 1720, and for a desire to sell but persuaded otherwise, 8 July 1720.

14Evelyn successfully used lord Harcourt as a go-between for the second subscription (journal entry for 15 Apr. 1720). Cp. my text pages 253–54 for the difficulty Bernstorff's banker had in obtaining stock for him for the last two subscriptions.

15Of late investors, apart from Evelyn, we can note Robert Moles worth, who borrowed £2,000 and found to his horror that the shares fell two days after he had secured them: HMC, Various VIII, 150, letter to his son John 20 Oct. 1722 (in a summary of his 1720 experiences).

16See Carswell, 216–17, 229–31 (Sunderland), 115, 217, 231 (Craggs), 217, 224–25, 240 (Aislabie), 212, 217, 229, 232, 240 (Charles Stanhope); and, more generally, Dickson, Financial Revolution, 109–11, 171 ff.

17Carswell, 115, 128–29, 231, 240. Note that Carswell and Dickson name Sophia Charlotte ‘countess von Platen’ or ‘Madame von Platen’, based on JHC XIX, 426–28 (though Carswell correctly identifies her in the index as Platen, Sophia Charlotte Kielmansegg, Countess von). The contemporary use of Sophia Charlotte's maiden name in the period of her widowhood from 1717 to her naturalization and creation as countess of Leinster in the Irish peerage (1721) and countess of Darlington (1722) is curious: it may have come into use because of its higher rank, since strictly speaking she was Freiin von Kielmansegg. To avoid confusion with her sister-in-law I have in my text, when touching on her connection with the South Sea Company, used, a little prematurely, the Darlington title (a contemporary was indeed misled: HMC, Portland MSS V, 615, Thomas Harley to the earl of Oxford 17 Feb. 1720/21).

18Carswell, 126.

19For a categorical statement that George received ‘a large sum’ from the company see Redman, Hanover, 57; for a surmise that he did so see Carswell, 126. The real state of affairs can be studied in Windsor, R.A.: 52538–52548 in papers which were presented to George II on 23 Aug. 1742 by the son of Aislabie, to justify his father: ‘making him speak as from the grave’.

20For the belief that George made ‘a very tidy profit’, see e.g. Trench, George II, 100. The true state of affairs, deduced from the Windsor papers 52841–47, is confirmed by a memorandum in Robert Walpole's own hand dated 16 Sept. 1721 in which he notes that George had told him that tallies were bought for £35,950, but that for the rest of the £106,400 Mr Aislabie was (under his own signature) accountable to the king ‘for ye South Sea stock and ye money paid to ye third Subscription’: Cholmondeley (Houghton) Papers 36 a/1. Ibid, a/2 consists of the copies made from George I's originals by Walpole (at the king's request on 16 Sept. 1721) of the receipt of 13 June 1720 for the £106,400 paid by Robert Knight and the reallocation of that sum on 16 June 1720.

21Windsor, R.A.: 52844, copy of the duchess of Kendal's letter of 27 Sept. NS 1720, marked rec. 29 Sept. OS.

22Ibid.: 52538–40, Aislabie's memorandum and 52837, William Aislabie's letter of 23 Aug. 1742.

23Görtz Archive: 121/2, drafts of 30 Aug. 1720 and 21 Feb. 1721 to Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg.

24For the contemporary belief see Bernstorff Archive: AG 70, Plessen's letter from London of 17/28 March 1721: cp. quotation from this letter in my text pages 254–55.

25P.R.O., Probate: Robethon's will of 1721/22.

26Bernstorff Archive: AG 70, Plessen's letters of 12/23 July, 2/13 Aug. and 24 Aug./3 Sept. 1720.

27Ibid., Plessen's letters of 5/16, 8/19, 12/23 July and 2/13 Aug. 1720; the newsletter in French of 9/20 Sept. is enclosed with Bothmer's letter of that date.

28Ibid., de la Tour's letters of 27 Sept. and 18 Oct. 1720; Plessen's letters of 16/27 Sept. and 20 Sept./1 Oct. 1720.

29Ibid., Bothmer's letter of 4/15 Oct. 1720.

30For George's concern see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 3, Stanhope's letters to Delafaye 1, 8 and 18 Oct. 1720 from Hanover; for the eleven-days' delay at Helvoetsluys see Fabrice, Memoiren, 135–36.

31Bernstorff Archive: AG 70, Plessen's letter of 17/28 March 1720.

32I owe this information to Peter Barber. In public the British government insisted on its desire to have Knight brought to justice: see Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 218, for Gadogan asking for Dutch help once Knight had escaped from his prison in the castle of Antwerp.

33This appeal, via the French diplomat Destouches, came after it was known that Knight had fled to France: see Carswell, 266.

34For Stanhope's illness and death see JHL XXI, 417–18 and Pari. History VII, 705–06. Contemporaries noted down Stanhope's exchange of words with Wharton: e.g. Evelyn MSS, journal entry for 5 Feb. 1720/21.

35See Windsor R. A.: Wardrobe acount volume for Stanhope being issued on 29 Sept. with all the appurtenances (cloth of state and state bible among them) as ambassador to the congress of Cambrai. See also Stanhope asking that his wife's advice should be taken on the ambassadorial plate: his letter to Delafaye of 7 Sept. 1720 in P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 3.

36My quotation is from B.M., Add. MSS 47209, Percival to Charles Dering, 17 Feb. 1720/21. Cp. for George I's grief Williams, Stanhope, 442 and Newman, Stanhopes, 99.

37House of Commons, 1715–54 II: entries for Sir Joseph Jekyll and Robert Molesworth based on unpublished Stuart MSS. A third member, William Sloper (like these two a member of the committee of inquiry and strongly opposed to the ministry), also abstained, though in his case no evidence has come to light which indicates intervention by George. Since the Commons found Charles Stanhope not guilty by three votes only, these three abstentions created a sensation. See e.g. HMC, Various VIII, 300, letter to John Molesworth of 2 March OS 1721.

38Bernstorff Archive: AG 70, Plessen's letter 17/28 March 1721.

39Plumb, Walpole I, 325 ff.

40Evelyn MSS: journal entry for 3 Apr. 1721.

41For the most authoritative account of this period see Bennett, Atterbury, passim. An interesting newsletter of 22 May 1722 was sent to John Molesworth, who was accredited to several Italian courts 1720–25. He was one of the diplomats who had informed Whitehall of the plot to kill the king. The newsletter lists the countermeasures taken to safeguard George; among them was the closure of the backstairs in St James's Palace to visitors: HMC, Various VIII, 342. For Walpole's spying and the use he made of it see Plumb, Walpole II, 40 ff.

42House of Commons, 1715–54. I: entry for Charles Caesar; and Fritz, Jacobitism (thesis), using Caesar's papers from 1716 onwards,

43For economic policy in general see Plumb, Walpole II, 234 ff., based largely on unpublished material, Brisco's study having proved misleading. Dickson, Financial Revolutwn, is also critical of Brisco's work but values Walpole's initiatives in economic and financial matters more highly than Plumb. Evelyn, after his appointment in 1721, took a keen interest in the customs; see e.g. his brief but good summary of the changes in Evelyn MSS: journal entry of 8 Jan. 1721/22.

44For the 1724 Baltic squadron see the chapter in Aldridge, Norris.

45Walpole, though he had much influence on ecclesiastical appointments, working closely with Gibson, bishop of London, found even here that the king kept a watchful eye: many examples of this in P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43.

46See Swift, Correspondence III, 181, letter from Pope of 16 Nov. 1726. Kramnick, Bolingbroke, 140 ff. and Skinner, passim, have shown that the concerted attacks on Robert Walpole belong to the next reign.

47See e.g. P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: Bolingbroke to Townshend 28 June 1723 and 43 vol. 5: Bolingbroke's letter to the same of 17 Sept. 1723.

48Anti-Hanoverian poems, most of them not in print, abound in a variety of manuscript collections in the B.M., and there are some also in the Portland Papers deposited in Nottingham University Library; the ditty cited is printed by Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, 200, from evidence of 4 Jan. 1725 by a tailor (William Preston).

49Paulson, Hogarth I, 85 ff. has an excellent chapter on Thornhill (Hogarth's father-in-law) entitled ‘The presence of Sir James Thornhill’.

50Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 11 Nov. 1718: for Benson's success see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: Tilson to Delafaye 18/29 June 1723, informing him that the forty pumps and five wheels of the Herrenhausen engine produced a water height of 120 feet for the big fountain. For George's early interest see his letter to Sophia of 15 Nov. [1704] (Hann.: 91, Kurfürstin Sophie, 19a) in which he light-heartedly links his belief in progress to news of a good English mining pump, hoping that it could be used to perfect the Herrenhausen fountains.

51For Benson's period as surveyor-general see Colvin et al., The History of the King's Works V, 59 ff.

52For the paintings as rearranged by George I in the grand gallery see Evelyn MSS: entry of 11 Oct. 1729; cp. his entries of 8 May and 3 Sept. 1721 for the Kensington pictures in general. For the dyeing of curtains see Windsor R.A.: Wardrobe account volume (1724). For general information about the rebuilding of Kensington Palace see Colvin, Royal Buildings; Jourdan, Kent; Hudson, Kensington Palace; and Christopher Hussey's three articles in Country Life (1928) which are especially useful for the duchess of Kendal's apartments. For George's enjoyment of Kensington there is much evidence in Vanbrugh, Works IV: e.g. letter of 19 July 1722.

53For Johann Matthias' walks with George I see Schulenburg, Leben II, 256: letter of 26 July 1726. For the gardens in general see Green, Henry Wise. George's failure to restart the Hanoverian opera after the customary year of discontinuation on his father's death was caused not only by the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession and his later preoccupation with the Great Northern War, but also (as Schnath, Hannover II, 392, has shown) by the fact that from 1698 the Osnabrück income which Ernst August had enjoyed, and from which he had defrayed the expenses of the Hanover opera, ceased.

54See Kielmansegg, Familien-Chronik, 447 for the circumstances under which Handel obtained his post at Hanover. For Handel's London operas in the reigns of Anne and George I see the biographies by Deutsch (1955), Lang (1966), and Sadie (1968). For the Academy of Music and George's strong appreciation of opera see Fabrice, Memoiren, 129–33.

55Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 4 March 1718.

56Paulson, Hogarth I, 111 ff. For the ecclesiastical opposition to masquerades and the king's support of them see Vanbrugh, Works IV, letter of 18 Feb. 1724.

57Hatton, Diplomatic Relations, 221.

58Ibid., 250–57, the Relation printed from P.R.O., SPF Holland vol. 274 fols. 235– 51.

59For the Ostend Company during George I's reign see Huisman's indispensable study.

60For the early agitation see Schrijver, Bergeyck, 155 ff.

61The Ostend Company caught the imagination of Charles VI, who, from his ten years in Spain, had become interested in trade and shipping; see Stoye, Charles VI for innovations in the early years of his reign.

62Jacobites were also active in promoting the Ostend Company; Fritz, Jacobitism (thesis), 33 ff.

63The Dutch were more alarmed by the Ostend Company than the English: for their pamphlets against it see Gibbs, Hanover Alliance, 264 note 5 in collected EHR volume. Robert Walpole kept an early warning that the company ‘ought to be ruined’ among his papers: Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS, Corr. 1147, extract from a letter to Bothmer by Renard of Amsterdam dated 7 July 1724. For the Vienna treaties of 1725 see Armstrong, Elisabeth Farnese, 169 ff.; Arneth, Eugen III, 170 ff.; Syveton, Ripperda, 52 ff.; Baudrillart III, 130 ff.; Dureng, 235 ff.; and Michael III, 410 ff.

64See, for a recent valuable treatment of Russian policies, Bagger, ch. 7, which covers the period 1724–32. Cp., briefly, for the Swedish party in favour of the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Ragnhild Hatton, New Cambridge Modern History VII (1957), 355 ff. For George's desire to do something for the duke see B.M., Add. MSS 37377, extract of letter from Stanhope to Carteret of 17 Nov. 1719.

65For Townshend's expression see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol 8: letter to Poyntz 22 Oct./2 Nov. 1725.

66Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter, marked secret, of 14/25 April 1725, conveying Charles VI's terms as proposed by Starhemberg to Bothmer and Townshend, and reporting their answers.

67See ch. VIII note 106 above.

68Bernstorff Archive: AG 29 vol. iv, Bothmer's letter of 14/25 Apr. 1724; cp. letter of 17/28 Apr. 1724 in which Bothmer expresses his regret that the opportunity to obtain speedy investitures for Bremen and Verden will not be taken. For the desire to obtain Hadeln and negotiations on this issue see ibid: AG 63 vol. ii, Huldeberg's letters of 9 Jan. 1715, 24 Apr. 1717; vol. iv, 17 Feb., 15 and 29 May, 27 July and 31 Aug. 1720. Huldeberg had authorization to give liberal gratifications for the Hadeln investiture (as for those of Bremen and Verden), but Hanoverian efforts were not crowned with success in George I's reign.

69P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 5: Townshend to Robert Walpole 7/18 Oct. 1723. His joy at the Prussian alliance is reminiscent of Stanhope's in 1719 as expressed in his letter to Newcastle of 27 Oct. 1719: B.M., Add. MSS 32686 fol. 156.

70For Townshend's approval of the gratifications see the letter of 7/18 Oct. 1723 cited in note 69 above; for the present of politeness to Pecquet in 1718, a ring (given by queen Anne to lady Masham who had subsequently sold it) which ‘His Majesty desires him to wear for his sake, as a small token of His Majesty's sense of the great pains and trouble he has had in all this affair’, see Chevening MSS: 86/6, Craggs to Stanhope and Stair 10 July 1718 and Craggs to Stanhope 17 July 1718.

71See also Görtz Archive: 121/4, Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg's letter of 10 June 1724, ‘Le Congres de Cambrai paroit encore absent, et au lieu d'une paix il pourroit bien nous produire une guerre.’ Historians have until recently judged these congresses useless: see e.g. Williams, Stanhope 185; but for more positive views see the article by J. H. Plumb, ‘In Defence of Diplomacy’, The Spectator, 11 Apr. 1969; Hatton, Europe, 209; and Hatton, War and Peace, 22.

72There is a good treatment of the congress, as seen from the Austrian point of view, in Drodtloff's work on Pentenrriedter, 133 ff. Starkey's brief article in RHD 1971 on the British side is very slight; and the rich material in the Whitworth and Polwarth papers will be further exploited by Peter Barber in his study of the congress.

73For the considerations which led to the marriage see Paul de Raynal, Le Mariage d'un Roi, 1721–1725 (Paris 1887), and Wilson, Fleury, 29 ff.

74For the Dutch position (they finally acceded on 9 Aug. 1726) see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 7, Townshend to Horatio Walpole 23 Aug./3 Sept. 1725; cp. Goslinga, Stingelandt, 95 ff, and G. J. Rive, Schets der staatkundige betrekkingen tusschen de Republiek der Vereenigde Nederlanden en het koningrijk Pruissen, 1701–1767 (Amsterdam 1873), passim. For the religious issues see Naumann, 31 ff., and Recueil, Diète Germanique, ed. B. Auerbach (Paris 1912), 127 ff. For the Hanover Alliance in general see Chance, Hanover Alliance, and Gibbs, Hanover Alliance; and for its text Rousset II, 189 ff. For the accession of Sweden and Denmark in 1727 see Ragnhild Hatton, New Cambridge Modern History VII (1957), 347, 355.

75This has been shown in the perceptive study by Gibbs, Hanover Alliance, passim.

76Parl. History VII, 492, cited by Williams, Whig Supremacy, 188.

77For the origins of the de Vrillière affair see my text pages 137–38.

78See Coxe, Horatio Walpole I, 132 ff. For George I's permission that Horatio Walpole should investigate the role played by Schaub in Paris see B.M., Stowe MSS vol. 251, Townshend to Robert Walpole 24 Sept. 1713 marked ‘Most secret’. For the ensuing struggle and the changes that followed the Townshend-Walpole victory see Plumb, Walpole II, 74 ff.; Browning, Newcastle, 25 ff.; Kelch, Newcastle, 69 ff.; and J. B. Owen, The Rise of the Pelhams (1957), 46 ff. for Henry Pelham rising with his brother.

79Craggs to Stair 31 March 1719: Stair, Annals II, 105–06.

80For George I's continued friendly relations with Carteret see Ballantyne, Carteret, 98, 101; and for Carteret's six years of service in Ireland ibid., 89 ff. and Williams, Carteret and Newcastle, 75 ff.

81His initiatives in all these matters are amply illustrated in P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 for the whole time he spent outside Britain. For policy decisions in 1725 see vols. 7 and 8: e.g. vol. 7, Townshend's letter to Newcastle of 31 Aug./11 Sept. on relations with Portugal; of 3/14 Sept. for insistence not only that Roxburghe shall have a pension but that he shall be told of the king's ‘regard and tenderness’ for him; vol. 8, of 31 Nov./11 Dec. on three Russian ships that are wintering in Ireland; and Townshend to Poyntz 22 Oct./2 Nov. on relations with the Russian tsaritsa and the duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

82For growing tension between Walpole and Townshend see Plumb, Walpole II, 132 ff.; for Bernstorff's continued influence see Sykes, Wake II, 70 ff. quoting letters of May 1720 to July 1721; and P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 4: Tilson to Robert Walpole of 26 June/7 July 1723; for Bernstorff's memorandum to George I dated 6 Nov. 1723, see Hann.: Cal. Brief 11 EI, 3.

83Gibbs, Hanover Alliance, 280 ff. in collected EHR volume.

84B.M., Add. MSS 32744, Newcastle to Horatio Walpole 19/30 Nov. 1725.

85For Friedrich Wilhelm moving closer to Charles VI in 1726 see Berger's study, which covers 1716 to 1730.

86I am indebted for information about Townshend's general bellicosity to Hugh Dunthorne, whose doctoral thesis ‘The Alliance of the Maritime Powers 1721–1740’ will deal with Townshend's energetic contingency plans for war in 1726; for George's attitude to the Prussian marriage negotiations see my text pages 280–81 and ch. X, note 4.

87For the risk to Hanover in 1726–27 see Gibbs, Hanover Alliance (EHR collected ed.), 281, 284 and Gibbs, Parliament, 330 note 1; for the situation in the 1740s and 1750s see Mandrou, 320 ff.

88Pelham cited from Boyer XXXI, 204 in Gibbs, Hanover Alliance (EHR collected ed.), 284.

89Fleury's mediation (for which see Wilson, Fleury, 164–69) was essential, given Spain's indignation at Hosier's blockade of the Spanish-American coast and islands (well explained in Richmond, 382 ff.) and the impasse reached in Anglo-Austrian relations: accusations in George's speech from the throne that Charles VI gave support to the Pretender provoked the publication of an Austrian memorial in. London deemed offensive enough to cause the expulsion from Britain of Palm, the emperor's diplomatic representative. The peace preliminaries are printed in Ö.S. England I, 457–64, with a good introduction by the editor. For the Aix-la-Chapelle meeting place see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 9, Townshend's letter to Newcastle from The Hague 8/19 June 1727.

Chapter X: Death of George I

The first part of this chapter is based on Fabrice's memoirs and on two letters which he wrote to George II in June 1727 printed with the Memoiren by R. Grieser. The ‘Balance sheet’ draws on a wide variety of material, both unpublished and published, in which I have attempted a summing-up of George as a ruler of the Early Enlightenment, influenced by the intellectual climate of the age, and also of George as a person. I was tempted, because of the abundant documentation, to extend this chapter but resisted temptation in order to preserve the balance of a relatively brief biography. Much material has been destroyed, by George himself, by his son and successor, by request of those who had written letters to him (e.g. his daughter, the queen of Prussia), and by damage to Hanover archives during the Second World War. More will certainly be learnt about George as the ruler of Hanover when the third volume of Schnath's Geschichte Hannovers is published, at least up to 1714 which is the terminal date for Professor Schnath's great venture. There is other material that ought to be examined for the post-1714 period both in Hanover and in Britain: further analysis of the Schatullrechnungsbeläge, of entries for expenditure of many kinds in the treasury collections of the Public Record Office and in various Additional Manuscript volumes of the British Museum, and in the Sunderland treasury papers (now with the Blenheim archive in the British Museum) might prove worth while.

I derived stimulus, as well as information, from the specialist works and the biographies I read to throw light on George I's cultural interests and musical tastes. To walk round Kensington Palace and its gardens with George and his family in mind, and to be permitted to view the various courts and rooms he built or redecorated was a special delight, as were the small discoveries I made through my own researches which added to our knowledge of the physical surroundings of the king and court. The two that pleased me most were the finely drawn and coloured design which I came across in the Wardrobe account volume at Windsor for Vanbrugh's tabard as Clarenceaux king of arms in George I's reign, showing – for the first time – the Saxon horse; and the comment which Evelyn penned in his journal when he noticed the coal fires at court in the next reign (entry of 22 Nov. 1728): in George I's time the king had insisted on wood fires in all his palaces.

1See e.g. Jordan, Sophia Dorothea, 267 and 271–73; and Trench, George II, 127. Cp. Young, Poor Fred, 27 for misinformation about the place and cause of death: ‘George had a happy end on his return to Herrenhausen and Madame von Platen, as a result of his first repast of gherkins and pickled herring.’

2For Maximilian suffering a serious stroke (in Vienna in 1725) see Bernstorff Archive: AG 63 vol. iv, Huldeberg's letters of 3 and 7 Feb. 1725.

3The relaxation of tension was in part due to the fact that Friedrich Wilhelm, in his alliance with Russia of 10/21 Aug. 1726, went no further than a promise of strict neutrality if Russia and Austria should use force to restore the duke of Holstein-Gottorp: Bagger, 233–35.

4From Wilhelmine's Mémoires, 67 ff., 73ff, it is clear that in 1725 George had told his daughter that she must be patient a while before the first half of the plan (the match between Frederick and Wilhelmine, who were now of a suitable age to marry) could be realized. Interestingly, he used the excuse that he ‘needed time to inform parliament’. But before starting his journey in 1727 George let Sophia Dorothea know that ‘everything was now in order’ and that the marriage would be solemnized in Hanover during his stay. On the memoir evidence the disappointment of Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmine was intense; and Frederick's biographers have stressed both his keenness on the match and his prolonged if unsuccessful efforts, after George I's death, to obtain permission from his father to marry Wilhelmine.

5The fullest account of the king's last journey and illness is in Fabrice, Memoiren, 146–49 and in his letters to George II of 22 June NS and 12/23 June 1727 printed ibid., 150–53; cp. P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 9: ‘Documents concerning the King's last journey and death June 8/19 — 13/24 1727.’ For George's feeling for Osnabrück see Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 1 Jan. 1708: George recognized ‘everything’ in the Schloss on his visit in 1707, the first since the family's move to Hanover.

6Fabrice, Memoiren, 149. For Townshend's movements see also his letters to Newcastle of 8/19 June 1727 (from the Hague) and of 11/22 June (from Bentheim): P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43, vol. 9.

7Fabrice, Memoiren, 150 ff. For his disappointment that Johann Ludwig was not appointed a Geh. Rat in the new reign, see ibid., 153, letter from Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg of 12 March 1978.

8Fabrice, Memoiren, 148–49.

9Ibid., 151.

10Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 14/25 July 1727 from St James's.

11After 1714 Frederick had never seen his parents, but had been much in his grandfather's company during all George I's visits to Hanover. The king had supervised his education; and it is typical of their relationship that when George in 1725 hoped to have his grandson inoculated against smallpox he left the decision to Frederick, since he was ‘now of an age to make his own decision’. He let him know, however, of the successful inoculation of two of his sisters (Anne had suffered a relatively light attack of smallpox in 1722 and therefore needed no inoculation).

12Caroline, now queen, acknowledged in a letter dated Kensington 23 June OS 1727 Melusine's strong attachment to George: Schulenburg, Leben II, 290; for Melusine's grief see Schaumburg-Lippe, Letters: 2/13 Apr. 1728; for her house at Twickenham see Michael II, 513 and Victoria County History III: Middlesex (1962), 91–92.

13Horace Walpole, Memoirs III, 3/5 has ‘a large bird, I forget what sort’. For the east European folklore on the raven see Galina von Meek, As I remember them (1973), 369. For Handel's frequent use of birdsong themes see Lang, Handel, 266–67.

14Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 18 Jan. 1718; cp. his letter of 2 July 1717.

15Cp. the similar obsession of the Swedish king Charles XII who was fourteen years old at the time of his father's death: Hatton, Charles XII, 522.

16For this tradition see Hatton, Louis and Fellow Monarchs (London ed.), 21 ff. The frustration suffered in the post-George II generations is well documented: for Frederick in 1743, see e.g. Walters, Frederick, 185–86; for George III as prince of Wales in 1759 see e.g. Ayling, George the Third, 51; and for George IV when prince of Wales see e.g. C. Hibbert, George IV as Prince of Wales 1762–1811 (1972), 117.

17Macalpine and Hunter, Mad Business, 195 ff., 250 ff., discuss the incidence of porphyria transmitted via Elizabeth of Bohemia and Sophia. They are convinced that George III and ‘all his children’ had the illness, and surmise that George II and Frederick, prince of Wales, were sufferers as also were Friedrich Wilhelm I and several of his children by George's daughter, among them Wilhelmine and Friedrich (later der Grosse).

18It has been reproduced, though without the key to all the figures, from a photograph in the Bomann Museum in Prüser, Göhrde, ill. no. 9. The full key to the numbered figures is painted at the bottom of the picture (and is printed in Millar, Royal Collection, no. 661). The painting is inscribed ‘Göhrde anno 1725’ and is now at Windsor Castle, having been sent to England from Hanover in 1819; however, Prüser, p. 69, has shown conclusively that the hunt in question took place in 1723. Unfortunately it does not reproduce well, but it might be mentioned that of the characters that appear in my text (apart from those mentioned on page 287) the following are represented: George's grandson prince Frederick; Hardenberg; Fabrice; ‘Buckeburg’, i.e. Schaumburg-Lippe, Gertrude's husband; Mehemet, Mustafa, and Jorry; ‘Finsch’ (Edward Finch, groom of the bedchamber) and ‘Albemarle’, called lord of the bedchamber, though gentleman of the bedchamber would be correct.

19Sophia, Letters to the raugravines: to Louise 6 May 1709.

20Ibid.: to Amalie 19 Dec. 1708.

21A copy of this decision of 1 July 1718 is in B.M., Add. MSS 35886 fols. 398 ff.; and a report of the discussion on the issue in Windsor, R.A.: 53017. Schulenburg, in a letter of 18 Nov. 1718 (Görtz Archive: 121/6), surmised that this decision might bring back to the king's party at least some of those who had sided with the prince on this matter only.

22Schnath, A.B., Sophie Dorothea, 244. The long-drawn legal tussle about her will (ibid., 241–42) had no connection with George I.

23Examples: a yearly pension of £1,600 to Addison when he had to leave his office as secretary of state (House of Commons I, 408); of £600 a year for life to Robethon when he was asked to retire (Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 9 May 1719); provision was also made for Bernstorff after 1719; he was naturalized in Ireland and arrangements made so that he and his family could enjoy for a period of 31 years an annual pension of £2,500 on the Irish civil list: Friis, The Bernstorffs I, 9.

24Campbell, Lord Chancellors IV, 70 ff. and Foss Judges VIII, 47 ff.; the king's sympathy was well known in informed circles; see e.g. HMC, Various VIII, 382 and 387, letters to John Molesworth of 28 Jan. and 15 March 1724/25: ‘It is hard to judge of his [Macclesfield's] fate as yet, although the Court love that man; we have seen guiltier men find out a back door’. It is worth noting that after Macclesfield had been found guilty George contributed to the fine imposed on him.

25Görtz Archive: 125/8, letter from David de Vaux of 17 May 1724, and Görtz's draft answer 30 May 1724.

26K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge for 1723: the debts amounted to £2,200.

27Ibid.: passim for 1714–26.

28His words are cited in my text page 255.

29Görtz Archive: 121/6, Schulenburg's letter of 21 March 1719.

30Sykes, Wake II, 80–88.

31For the ‘deal’ element in peerage bill see Williams, Stanhope, 403–15.

32For the position of the Catholics see the studies by Leys (1952) and Bossy (1975).

33For the position of the Jews see the history by Hyamson of 1908 and the study by Perry of 1962; and, for the legal issues, Henriques' monograph of 1905.

34For the Hoadley controversy see Williams, Whig Supremacy, 386 ff.; Bennett, Kenneth, 83 ff., 132 ff. The fact that Hoadley, bishop of Bangor, had expressed his latitudinarian views in a sermon (subsequently published ‘by authority’) preached before George I in March 1717, involved the king in some measure; Schulenburg notes specifically that the king was blamed for the prorogation of convocation (Görtz Archive: 121/6, letter of 12 May 1717).

35Plans to reform the universities started early in George I's reign: see the interesting letter to Townshend in 1715 from Humphrey Prideaux: Prideaux, Life, 188 ff., discussing, at Townshend's suggestion, the situation in Oxford. By 11 March 1717, however, Schulenburg reports Townshend as no longer keen on tackling the university problem while George still desires reform (Görtz Archive: 121/6).

36See Sykes, Wake II, 115 ff.

37The documents between 1720 and 1725 dealing with the foundation of the professorships in modern history and modern languages are conveniently found in B.M., Add. MSS 5843 (Rev. W. Cole copies) fols. 255 ff. For the special efforts made to welcome and entertain the Oxford University delegation that came to London to give thanks for the establishment of the regius chair see the letters in HMC, Portland MSS VII, 389–90, from Dr William Stratford to Edward, Lord Harley of 12 and 17 Nov. 1724. He stressed that faction and parties were not mentioned and George I's speech was ‘full of grace and favour’. For George's continued close interest in professorships see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 8; Townshend's letters to Newcastle of 22 Oct./2 Nov. and 8/19 Nov. 1725. For the French experiment see Keens-Soper's article, ESR 1972.

38For the reforms and innovations in Hanover see the older histories of the electorate, most succinctly in Rothert, Hannover. A modern treatment can be expected in Schnath's continuation of his Geschichte Hannovers. The bronze plaque with the Herrenhausen instructions is still in situ at the garden entrance.

39K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge between 1699 and 1714. George I was often presented with books, especially those dedicated to him, when he invariably made a present to the author; Motraye, for example, received a gift of £200. Among the many volumes dedicated to the king it is interesting to note Giacomo Leone's edition of Palladio: Rudolf Wittkower, Palladio and English Palladianism (1974).

40For George's familiarity with the works of Molière, Corneille and Racine there is evidence in his own letters to his mother and in his brother Ernst August's letters to Wendt; cp. also Wallbrecht, Theatre, 135 ff. For his partiality for and financial support of the French writer Bucquoy, a skilled conversationalist who had been brought to Hanover in 1711 by Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, there is also evidence in Ernst August's letters and Sophia's correspondence: he was reckoned so much a favourite with George that Villiers, in a letter to Görtz of 8 July 1715 asked the king's pardon for having written a satire on the ‘abbé Bucquo’: Görtz Archive: 126/2.

41For George's relationship with and presents to Voltaire from 1718 onwards see Theodore Besterman, Voltaire (1969), 79–82, 104, 110 ff. and Voltaire's ‘Autobiography’, printed, in English translation, ibid., 548–49. I have come across an earlier reference, P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 11: Stanhope to Townshend of 21 Aug. NS 1716, in which he conveys George I's request that Voltaire be assisted with money. For Voltaire being received by George at court during his stay and writing an ode in his honour see Ballantyne, Voltaire, 61 ff. George's donation of money to buy specific libraries for Cambridge University should also be noted: see e.g. Wake II, 132 for 600 guineas to buy the late bishop of Ely's library.

42Anecdotes to this effect abound in the memoir literature; a much-quoted one is of George entering a house (without previous warning), noticing a picture of the Pretender, examining it closely and remarking politely and pleasantly on the strong Stuart family likeness, much to his host's relief.

43B.M., Add. MSS 47028 fol. 156: letter to Charles Dering of 4 June 1716.

44Stevens, 28 has reckoned out that during the reign of George I ‘there were only thirty-six cases of people held to bail for libels’.

45For these see the works of George and Wright. Some of these lampoons have been frequently reprinted, see e.g. Trench, George II, 155, 184, 187–89, 203, 205.

46For the contemporary version see Rubinstein, 215:

The King of Great Britain was reckoned before,

The ‘Head of the Church’ by all Christian People,

But this brewer has added still one title more

To the rest, and has made him the ‘Head of the Steeple’.

47B.M., Add. MSS 47028 fol. 7, lord Percival's journal entry (undated) on current gossip about George's incognito visits to chocolate and coffee houses.

48B.M., Add. MSS 47028 fol. 182, lord Percival's journal entry for 1 March 1717/18.

49Ryder, Diary, 356, entry 30 Oct. 1716 for giving a servant a shilling to watch the ball at court; ibid., 66, entry 1 Aug. 1715 for gate-crashing at George's annual accession celebrations.

50K.G., Schatullrechnungsbeläge regularly lists sums after 1714 given to the poor, to poor students and similar. The highest sum given, £1,000 to ‘poor prisoners’, was on the occasion of George's first ceremonial dinner in the City: see Verney Letters, 19.

51For British appreciation see P.R.O., SPD Regencies 43 vol. 3: Townshend to Robert Walpole 3/14 Sept. 1723, pointing out that the king's plan for a new port at the mouth of the Elbe was very useful ‘not only to his dominions here, but also to the Trade of his Kingdoms’.

52Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, passim, for poaching; for the criminal law see the works of Radzinowicz and of Beattie.

53See Paulson, Hogarth I, 251–52.

54For the churches see e.g. Young, London Churches, and Rudé, Hanoverian London, 100 ff.

55For the London squares laid out during George I's reign see Hibbert, London, 113 ff., and Rudé, Hanoverian London, 13 ff. For Melusine's London houses see above, ch. VI note 37.

56Davies, German Thought and Culture, 64 ff.

57For the growth in the navy and improvement in naval administration in George's reign see Baugh, 495 ff. Though detailed work still remains to be done, much can be gathered from tables published in books dealing with the reign of queen Anne and on the navy in general.

58For the countess see Schazmann, The Bentincks, 127 ff.

59Both points have been made by Mandrou, 213 ff. and 328 ff.; Schaer, in his editorial work for the Schaumburg-Lippe Letters, has stressed the intellectual impact made by those, who like the countess, returned to Germany after the end of George I's reign.

60For the history of the Canons statue see Gunnis, Dictionary, 70 ff.

61This statue was unveiled in 1722 at Essex bridge in Dublin: see B.M., Add. MSS 47029 fol. 27, letter to lord Percival from Dublin 22 July 1722: ‘On Thursday next the king's Equestrian statue is to be uncovered and exposed to view. The Several Companys will ride the fringes on that day and our Magistrates appear in their utmost magnificence. I hear 6 guineas are given for a floor to see the show.’

62See Christopher Goodwin, ‘Kent and the Eastern Gardens’, The History of Stowe XIII, 266. A third surviving statue which I have not had the opportunity to see is at Hackwood Park, Northumberland, put up by the 2nd duke of Bolton, who had been made a knight of the Garter by George I in Dec. 1714. One, listed in Gunnis as ‘still in the Royal Exchange’, I have failed to gain access to and have therefore not been able to ascertain if it is from life. The Rysbrack bust in Christ Church by Hogarth is very fine and justly admired, but it should be noted that George did not sit for it: see W. G. Hiscock, A Christ Church Miscellany 1946, 83.

63Albert van der Meer to Heinsius, from Frankfurt 30 March 1702: Heinsius, Briefwisseling I, 55.