When in my Europe in the Age of Louis XIV I put George I on a list of rulers from the early modern period in need of biographical treatment based on recent scholarship, I had no intention of taking on the task myself. Indeed, I hoped to tempt one of the young historians who had done research on aspects of George's reign in Britain, most of them pupils of Professor Plumb and all of them indebted to his pioneering work, to embark on a full-scale study. Alternatively, if none of these could be enticed to cope with the Schrift of the German archives and with the masses of monographic research published on Hanoverian history, might not one of the pupils of Professor Schnath – himself the acknowledged expert on the pre-1714 period – be willing to write of George as elector and king? For one thing seemed essential: George would have to be studied without the usual division between English and European history. On the personal side it would be hard to understand him without knowing his family background and the tasks he had faced as elector; on the political side it would be impossible to evaluate him as a European figure without considering him as king of Great Britain as well as elector of Hanover. I found no takers. Instead it was suggested that I, who had for a great many years concerned myself with George I's foreign policy in Europe, might find it easier to fill the gap.
Encouraged by Professors Schnath and Plumb, I decided to assess George in his dual role within the framework of a biography. The expansion of my research and reading which this necessitated has brought me much pleasure in the last seven years. The rereading of published documents, memoirs and letters with a new objective in mind is always valuable and at times more rewarding than anticipated; and familiar British and continental official archives proved happy hunting-grounds for information about a character which had not before been at the centre of my interest. Moreover, I was fortunate enough to be given access to the hitherto unused private collections of two of George I's most important Hanoverian advisers: Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff and Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz. Both sets of papers yielded important and even exciting new material. I wish to express my gratitude to Graf Andreas von Bernstorff of Gartow for permission to use the Bernstorff archives and to the Görtz von Schlitz family for permission to consult the papers of their ancestor now deposited in the Darmstadt archives. In Great Britain the gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen and of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales enabled me to search, with some success, for new material in, respectively, the Royal Archives at Windsor and the Stanhope papers at Chevening. I am further indebted to Her Majesty the Queen for permission to reproduce paintings and engravings from the Royal Collection. For permission to reproduce paintings I wish also to thank Prince Philipp Ernst of Schaumburg-Lippe and Carl Graf von Kielmansegg. I gratefully acknowledge permission to use the Cowper (Panshanger) papers, now in the Hertford County Record Office, the Portland papers deposited at Nottingham University Library, and the Sir John Evelyn manuscript journal at Christ Church, Oxford. I owe a special debt to Their Royal Highnesses Prince and Princess Ernst August of Hanover. The Prince permitted me to use the family archives of the house of Hanover deposited in the Staatsarchiv; and the Prince and Princess gave generously of their time to guide me through their collections at Marienburg, Calenberg and the Fürstenhaus at Herrenhausen when I was choosing illustrations for this book. The courtesy and help of officials of museums, archives and libraries in Great Britain, France and Germany have been greatly appreciated. My debt to fellow-historians will be demonstrated in the notes to my text. I pay tribute to the historians of the past and thank those of the present: without their work mine could not have been undertaken.