George I (George Louis; 28 May 1660 – 11 June 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1 August 1714 until his death. He was also a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.

Born in Germany, he eventually inherited control of a large swathe of Lower Saxony, and his domains expanded during his lifetime as the result of a succession of European wars. At the age of 54, he ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Though many aspirants to the throne bore a closer relationship to his predecessor, Queen Anne, his mother, Sophia, had been designated heir by the Act of Settlement 1701 because of her Protestant faith. Sophia predeceased Anne by a matter of weeks, leaving the Protestant succession to George. The Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James, but their attempts failed.

During George's reign in Britain, the powers of the monarchy diminished and the modern system of Cabinet government led by a Prime Minister underwent development. Towards the end of his reign, actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole. George died on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried.

George was born on 28 May 1660 in Osnabrück, Germany. He was the oldest son of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a German prince, and his wife, Sophia of the Rhineland Palatinate. Sophia was the daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the granddaughter of King James I of England.

For the first year of his life, he was the only heir of his father's and three childless uncles' German territories. In 1661, George's brother, Frederick Augustus, was born, and the two boys (known as Görgen and Gustchen within the family) were brought up together. Their mother was absent for almost a year, 1664–5, during a long and convalescent holiday in Italy, but she corresponded regularly with her sons' governess and took a great interest in her sons' upbringing, even more so on her return. After Sophia's tour, she bore Ernest Augustus another four sons and a daughter. In her letters, Sophia describes George as a responsible, conscientious child who set an example to his younger brothers and sisters.

By 1675, George's eldest uncle had died without issue, but his remaining two uncles had married, putting George's inheritance in jeopardy as his uncles' estates might pass to their own sons, if they had any, instead of to George. George's father had taken him hunting and riding, and introduced him to military matters; mindful of his uncertain future, Ernest Augustus took the fifteen-year-old George on campaign in the Franco-Dutch War with a deliberate purpose of testing and training his son in battle.

In 1679, another uncle died unexpectedly without sons, and Ernest Augustus became reigning Duke of Calenberg-Göttingen, with his capital at Hanover. George's surviving uncle, George William of Celle, had married his mistress in order to legitimize his only daughter, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, but looked unlikely to have any further children. Under Salic law, where inheritance of territory was restricted to the male line, the succession of George and his brothers to his father's and uncle's territories now seemed secure. In 1682, the family agreed to adopt the principle of primogeniture, meaning George would inherit all the territory, and not have to share it with his brothers.

The same year, George married his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea, thereby securing additional incomes that would have been outside Salic laws requiring male inheritance. The marriage of state was arranged primarily as it ensured a healthy annual income, and assisted the eventual unification of Hanover and Celle. Sophia was at first against the marriage, looking down on Sophia Dorothea's mother (who was not of royal birth) and concerned by Sophia Dorothea's legitimated status, but was eventually won over by the advantages inherent in the marriage.

In 1683, George and his brother, Frederick Augustus, served in the Great Turkish War at the Battle of Vienna, and Sophia Dorothea bore George a son, George Augustus. The following year, Frederick Augustus was informed of the adoption of primogeniture, meaning he would no longer receive part of his father's territory as he had expected. It led to a breach between father and son, and between the brothers, that lasted until Frederick Augustus's death in battle in 1690. With the imminent formation of a single Hanoverian state, and the Hanoverians continuing contributions to the Empire's wars, Ernest Augustus was made an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire in 1692. George's prospects were now better than ever, as the sole heir to his father's Electorate and his uncle's duchy.

Sophia Dorothea had a second child, a daughter named after her, in 1687 but there were no other pregnancies. The couple became estranged—George preferred the society of his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg, by whom he had two daughters in 1692 and 1693, respectively; and Sophia Dorothea, meanwhile, had her own romance with the Swedish Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. Threatened with the scandal of an elopement, the Hanoverian court, including George's brothers and Sophia, urged the lovers to desist, but to no avail. According to diplomatic sources from Hanover's enemies, in July 1694, the count was killed, possibly with the connivance of George, and his body thrown into the river Leine weighted with stones. The murder was claimed to have been committed by four of Ernest Augustus's courtiers, one of whom (Don Nicolò Montalbano) was paid the enormous sum of 150,000 thalers, which was about one hundred times the annual salary of the highest-paid minister. Sources in Hanover itself, including Sophia, denied any knowledge of Königsmarck's whereabouts.

George's marriage to Sophia Dorothea was dissolved, not on the grounds that either of them had committed adultery, but on the grounds that Sophia Dorothea had abandoned her husband. With the concurrence of her father, George had Sophia Dorothea imprisoned in the Castle of Ahlden in her native Celle. She was denied access to her children and father, forbidden to remarry and only allowed to walk unaccompanied within the castle courtyard. She was however endowed with an income, establishment and servants, and was allowed to ride in a carriage outside her castle, albeit under supervision.

Ernest Augustus died on 23 January 1698, leaving all of his territories to George, with the exception of the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück, an office he had held since 1661. George thus became Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (also known as Hanover, after its capital) as well as Archbannerbearer and a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. His court in Hanover was graced by many cultural icons, such as the mathematician Gottfried Leibniz and the composer Georg Friederich Händel.

Shortly after George's accession to his paternal dukedom, the second-in-line to the English and Scottish thrones, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester died. The Parliament of England passed the Act of Settlement 1701, whereunder George's mother, Sophia, was designated heir to the English Throne if the then-reigning monarch (William III) and his sister-in-law, Princess Anne of Denmark (later Queen Anne), died without surviving issue. The succession was so designed because Sophia was the closest Protestant relative of the British Royal Family; over fifty Catholics with superior hereditary claims were bypassed. The likelihood of any of them converting to Protestantism for the sake of the succession was remote, and some had already refused.

In August 1701, George was invested with the Order of the Garter, and, within six weeks, the nearest Catholic claimant to the throne of England, ex-king James II, died. William III died the following March, and Sophia became immediate heir to the new Queen of England, Anne. Sophia was in her seventy-first year, older than Anne by thirty-five years, but she was very fit and healthy, and invested time and energy in securing the succession either for herself or her son. However, it was George who understood the complexities of English politics and constitutional law, which required further acts in 1705 to naturalize Sophia and her heirs as English citizens, and detail arrangements for the transfer of power through a Regency Council. The same year, George's surviving uncle died and he inherited further German dominions, Lüneberg-Grubenhagen, centred on Celle.

Shortly after George's accession in Hanover, the War of the Spanish Succession broke out. At issue was the right of Philip, the grandson of the French King Louis XIV, to succeed to the Spanish Throne under the terms of the will of the Spanish King Charles II. The Holy Roman Empire, the United Provinces, England, Hanover and many other German states opposed Philip's right to succeed because they feared that France would become too powerful if it also controlled Spain. As part of the war effort George invaded his neighbouring state, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, which was pro-French, writing out some of the battle orders himself. The invasion succeeded with few lives lost, and as a reward, the Hanoverian claim to Saxony-Lauenburg, which George's uncle had invaded and annexed on the death of its ruler several years before, was recognised by the British and Dutch.

In 1706, the Elector of Bavaria was deprived of his offices and titles for siding with France against the Empire. The following year, George was made Imperial Field Marshal, in command of the Empire's Army stationed along the Rhine. His tenure was not altogether successful, partly because he was deceived by his ally John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough into a diversionary attack, and partly because the Emperor Joseph appropriated the funds necessary for George's campaign for his own use. Despite this, the German princes knew, or at least thought, that he had acquitted himself well. In 1708, in recognition or because of his service, George's position as a Prince-Elector was formally confirmed. George did not hold Marlborough's actions against him, which he appreciated were part of a plan to lure French forces from the main attack.

In 1709, George resigned as Field Marshal, never to go on active service again, and in 1710 was conferred the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Empire, formerly held by the Elector Palatine—the absence of the Elector of Bavaria allowed a re-shuffling of offices. In 1711, the Emperor Joseph died, which threatened to destroy the balance of power in the opposite direction, and the war ended in 1713 with the ratification of the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip was allowed to succeed to the Spanish Throne, but he was removed from the line of succession to the French Throne, and the Elector of Bavaria was restored.

Though both England and Scotland recognised Anne as their Queen, only the English Parliament had settled on Sophia, Electress of Hanover, as the heir. The Estates of Scotland (the Scottish Parliament) had not yet formally settled the question over who would succeed to the Scottish throne on Anne's death. In 1703, the Estates passed a bill that declared that their selection for Queen Anne's successor would not be the same individual as the successor to the English Throne, unless England granted full freedom of trade to Scottish merchants in England and its colonies. Royal Assent was originally withheld, which caused the Scottish Estates to threaten to withdraw troops from the army fighting in the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1704, Anne capitulated, and her Assent was granted to the bill, which became the Act of Security 1704. In response, the English Parliament passed measures which threatened to restrict Anglo-Scottish trade and cripple the Scottish economy. Eventually, in 1707, both Parliaments agreed an Act of Union, creating the largest free trade area in eighteenth-century Europe. It united England and Scotland into a single political entity, the Kingdom of Great Britain, and established the rules of succession as laid down by the Act of Settlement.

George's mother, the Electress Sophia, died on 28 May 1714 at the age of 83. She had collapsed after rushing to shelter from a shower of rain in Herrenhausen gardens. George was now Queen Anne's direct heir. He swiftly revised the membership of the Regency Council, that would take power after Anne's death, as it was known that Anne's health was failing and politicians in Britain were jostling for power. She suffered a stroke, which left her unable to speak, and died on 1 August. The list of regents was opened, the members sworn in, and George was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland. Partly due to contrary winds, which kept him in The Hague awaiting passage, he did not arrive in Britain until 18 September. George was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 20 October.

George primarily resided in Great Britain after 1714, though he visited his home in Hanover in 1716, 1719, 1720, 1723 and 1725; in total George spent about one fifth of his reign as King in Germany. A clause in the Act of Settlement that forbade the British Monarch from leaving the country without Parliament's permission was unanimously repealed in 1716. During all but the first of the King's absences, power was vested in a Regency Council rather than his son, George Augustus, Prince of Wales.

Within a year of George's accession, the Whigs won an overwhelming victory in the general election of 1715. Several members of the defeated Tory Party sympathised with the Jacobites, and some disgruntled Tories sided with a Jacobite Rebellion, which became known as "The Fifteen". The Jacobites sought to put Anne's Catholic half-brother, James (whom they called "James III", and who was known to his opponents as the "Pretender") on the Throne. The Pretender's supporters, led by John Erskine, 22nd Earl of Mar, an embittered Scottish nobleman who had previously supported the "Glorious Revolution", instigated rebellion in Scotland, where support for Jacobitism was stronger than in England. The Fifteen, however, was a dismal failure; Lord Mar's battle plans were poor, and the Pretender arrived late with too little money and too few arms. By the end of the year, the rebellion had all but collapsed. Faced with impending defeat, Lord Mar and the Pretender fled to France in February 1716. After the rebellion was defeated, although there were some executions and forfeitures, George acted to moderate the government's response, showed leniency, and spent the income from the forfeited estates on schools for Scotland and paying off part of the national debt.

George's distrust of the Tories aided the passing of power to the Whigs. Whig dominance would grow to be so great under George that the Tories would not return to power for another half-century. After the election, the Whig-dominated Parliament passed the Septennial Act 1715, which extended the maximum duration of Parliament to seven years (although it could be dissolved earlier by the Sovereign). Thus, Whigs already in power could remain in such a position for a greater period of time.

After his accession in Great Britain, George's relationship with his son (which had always been poor) worsened. George Augustus, Prince of Wales, encouraged opposition to his father's policies, including measures designed to increase religious freedom in Britain and expand Hanover's German territories at the expense of Sweden. In 1717, the birth of a grandson led to a major quarrel between George and the Prince of Wales. The King, supposedly following custom, appointed the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Newcastle, as one of the sponsors of the child. The King was angered when the Prince of Wales, disliking Newcastle, verbally insulted the duke at the christening, which the duke misunderstood as a challenge to a duel. The Prince was told to leave the royal residence, St. James's Palace. The Prince's new home, Leicester House, became a meeting place for the King's political opponents. George and his son were later reconciled, at the insistence of Walpole and the desire of the Princess of Wales, who had moved out with her husband but missed her children who had been left in the care of the king. Father and son would never again be on cordial terms.

George was active in directing British foreign policy during his early reign. In 1717, he contributed to the creation of the Triple Alliance, an anti-Spanish league composed of Great Britain, France and the United Provinces. In 1718, the Holy Roman Empire was added to the body, which became known as the Quadruple Alliance. The subsequent War of the Quadruple Alliance involved the same issue as the War of the Spanish Succession. The Treaty of Utrecht had recognised the grandson of King Louis XIV of France, Philip, as the King of Spain on the condition that he gave up his rights to succeed to the French Throne. Upon the death of Louis XIV, however, Philip sought to overturn the treaty.

Spain supported a Jacobite-led invasion of Scotland in 1719, but stormy seas allowed only about three hundred Spanish troops to arrive in Scotland. A base was established at Eilean Donan Castle on the west Scottish coast, only for it to be destroyed by British ships a month later. Attempts by the Jacobites to recruit Scottish clansmen yielded a fighting force of only about a thousand men. The Jacobites were poorly equipped, and were easily defeated by British artillery at the Battle of Glen Shiel. The clansmen dispersed into the Highlands, and the Spaniards surrendered. The invasion never posed any serious threat to George's Government. With even the French fighting against him in the War, Philip's armies fared poorly. As a result, the Spanish and French Thrones remained separate.

Simultaneously, Hanover gained from the resolution of the Great Northern War, which had been caused by rivalry between Sweden and Russia for control of the Baltic. The Swedish territories of Bremen and Verden were ceded to Hanover in 1719, with Hanover paying Sweden a money compensation for the loss of territory.

In Hanover, the King was absolute monarch. All government expenditure above 50 thalers (between 12 and 13 British pounds), and the appointment of all army officers, all ministers, and even government officials above the level of copyist, was in his personal control. In contrast, in Great Britain, George had to govern through Parliament.

In 1715, when the Whigs came to power, George's chief ministers included Sir Robert Walpole, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend (Walpole's brother-in-law), James Stanhope, 1st Viscount Stanhope (afterwards 1st Earl Stanhope) and Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland. In 1717, Lord Townshend was dismissed and Walpole resigned from the Cabinet over disagreements with their counterparts; Lord Stanhope became supreme in foreign affairs, and Lord Sunderland the same in domestic matters.



Lord Sunderland's power began to wane in 1719. He introduced a Peerage Bill, which attempted to limit the size of the House of Lords by restricting new creations. The measure would have solidified Sunderland's control of the House by preventing the creation of opposition peers but the bill was defeated after Walpole led the opposition to the bill by delivering what was considered "the most brilliant speech of his career". Walpole and Townshend were reappointed as ministers the following year and a new, supposedly unified, Whig government formed.

Greater problems arose over financial speculation and the management of the national debt. Certain government bonds could not be redeemed without the consent of the proprietor and had been sold when interest rates were high; consequently, each bond represented a long-term drain on public finances, as bonds were hardly ever redeemed. In 1719, the South Sea Company proposed to take over £31 million (three fifths) of the British national debt by exchanging government securities for stock in the company. The Company bribed Lord Sunderland, Melusine von der Schulenburg and Lord Stanhope's cousin, Charles Stanhope, who was Secretary of the Treasury, to support their plan. The Company enticed bondholders to convert their high-interest, irredeemable bonds to low-interest, easily-tradeable stocks by offering apparently preferential financial gains. Company prices rose rapidly; the shares had cost £128 on 1 January 1720, but were valued at £500 when the conversion scheme opened in May; on 24 June the price reached a peak of £1050. The company's success led to the speculative flotation of other companies, some of a bogus nature, and the Government, in an attempt to suppress these schemes and with the support of the Company, passed the Bubble Act. With the rise in the market now halted, uncontrolled selling began in August, which caused the stock to plummet to £150 by the end of September. Many individuals—including aristocrats—lost vast sums and some were completely ruined. George, who had been in Hanover since June, returned to London in November—sooner than he wanted or was usual—at the request of the ministry.

The economic crisis, known as the South Sea Bubble, made George and his ministers extremely unpopular. In 1721, Lord Stanhope, though personally innocent, collapsed and died after a stressful debate in the House of Lords, and Lord Sunderland resigned from public office. Lord Sunderland retained a degree of personal influence with George until his sudden death in 1722 allowed the rise of Sir Robert Walpole. Walpole became de facto Prime Minister, although the title was not formally applied to him (officially, he was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer). His management of the South Sea crisis, by rescheduling the debts and arranging some compensation, helped the return to financial stability. Through Walpole's skillful management of Parliament, George managed to avoid direct implication in the Company’s fraudulent actions. Claims that George had received free stock as a bribe, are not supported by evidence, indeed receipts in the Royal Archives show that he paid for his subscriptions and that he lost money in the crash.

As requested by Walpole, George revived The Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 1725, which enabled Walpole to reward or gain political supporters by offering them the honour. Walpole became extremely powerful, and was largely able to appoint ministers of his own choosing. Unlike his predecessor, Queen Anne, George rarely attended meetings of the Cabinet; most of his communications were in private. George only exercised substantial influence with respect to British foreign policy. He, with the aid of Lord Townshend, arranged for the ratification by Great Britain, France and Prussia of the Treaty of Hanover, which was designed to counter-balance the Austro-Spanish Treaty of Vienna and protect British trade.

George, although increasingly reliant on Walpole, could still have replaced his ministers at will. Walpole was actually afraid of being removed towards the end of George I's reign, but such fears were put to an end when George died during his sixth trip to his native Hanover since his accession as King. George suffered a stroke on the road between Delden and Nordhorn on the 9 June 1727. He was taken by carriage to the prince-bishop's palace at Osnabrück where he died in the early hours of 11 June 1727. He was buried in the Chapel of Leine Castle but his remains were moved to the chapel at Herrenhausen after World War II.

George was succeeded by his son, George Augustus, who took the throne as George II. It was widely assumed, even by Walpole for a time, that George II planned to remove Walpole from office but was prevented from doing so by his wife, Queen Caroline. However, Walpole commanded a substantial majority in Parliament and George II had little choice but to retain him or risk ministerial instability. In subsequent reigns, the power of the Sovereign further deteriorated, and the power of the Prime Minister increased.

George was ridiculed by his British subjects; some of his contemporaries, such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, thought him unintelligent on the flimsy grounds that he was wooden in public. Though he was unpopular due to his supposed inability to speak English, such an inability may not have existed later in his reign, as documents from that time show that he understood, spoke and wrote English. He certainly spoke fluent German and French, good Latin, and some Italian and Dutch. His treatment of his wife, Sophia Dorothea, became something of a scandal. The British perceived him as too German, and, in the opinion of historian Ragnhild Hatton, wrongly assumed that he had a succession of German mistresses. However, in Europe he was seen as a progressive ruler supportive of the Enlightenment, who permitted his critics to publish without risk of severe censorship, and provided sanctuary to Voltaire, when the philosopher was exiled from Paris in 1726. European and British sources agree that George was reserved, temperate and financially prudent; George disliked to be in the public light at social events, would avoid the royal box at the opera and often travelled incognito to the house of a friend to play cards.

Despite some unpopularity, the Protestant George I was seen by most of his subjects as a better alternative to the Roman Catholic Pretender James. William Makepeace Thackeray indicates such ambivalent feelings when he writes, "His heart was in Hanover. He was more than fifty-four years of age when he came amongst us: we took him because we wanted him, because he served our turn; we laughed at his uncouth German ways, and sneered at him…I, for one, would have been on his side in those days. Cynical, and selfish, as he was, he was better than a King out of St Germains [James the Pretender] with a French King's orders in his pocket, and a swarm of Jesuits in his train."

Writers of the nineteenth century, such as Thackeray, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Mahon were reliant on biased first-hand accounts published in the previous century, such as Lord Hervey's memoirs, and looked back on the Jacobite cause with romantic, even sympathetic, eyes. They, in turn, influenced British authors of the first-half of the twentieth century, such as G. K. Chesterton, who introduced further anti-German and anti-Protestant bias into the interpretation of George's reign. However, in the wake of World War II, continental European archives were opened to historians of the later twentieth century, and nationalistic anti-German feeling subsided. George's life and reign were re-explored by scholars, such as Beattie and Hatton, and his character, abilities and motives re-assessed in a more generous light. As John H. Plumb noted, "Some historians have exaggerated the king's indifference to English affairs and made his ignorance of the English language seem more important than it was. He had little difficulty in communicating with his ministers in French, and his interest in all matters affecting both foreign policy and the court was profound." Yet the character of George I remains elusive—he was in turn genial and affectionate in private letters to his daughter, and then dull and awkward in public. Perhaps his own mother summed him up when "explaining to those who regarded him as cold and overserious that he could be jolly, that he took things to heart, that he felt deeply and sincerely and was more sensitive than he cared to show."

Whatever his true character, he ascended a precarious throne, and either by political wisdom and guile, or through accident and indifference, he left it secure in the hands of the Hanoverians and of Parliament.

*28 May 1660 – 18 December 1679: His Highness Duke Georg Ludwig of Brunswick-Lüneburg () *18 December 1679 – October 1692: His Highness The Hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg *October 1692 – 23 January 1698: His Serene Highness The Electoral Prince of Hanover and Brunswick-Lüneburg *23 January 1698 – 1 August 1714: His Most Serene Highness George Louis, Archbannerbearer of the Holy Roman Empire and Prince-Elector, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg ( :*until 1705, when the principalities of Calenberg and Lüneburg were united: Reining Prince of Calenberg at Hanover *1 August 1714 – 11 June 1727: His Majesty The King

The legally correct name of the Hanoverian state was "Electoral Principality of Brunswick and Lüneburg". "Electorate of Hanover" () was used more often, though legally incorrect. The same is true for the name of the House (family).

In Great Britain, George I used the official style "George, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." In some cases (especially in treaties), the formula "Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Archtreasurer and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire" was added before the phrase "etc."

George I's arms were: Quarterly, I Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England) impaling Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lys Or (for France); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland); IV tierced per pale and per chevron (for Hanover), I Gules two lions passant guardant Or (for Brunswick), II Or a semy of hearts Gules a lion rampant Azure (for Lüneburg), III Gules a horse courant Argent (for the medieval Duchy of Saxony, which was divided into the three parts of Eastphalia, Angria and Westphalia), overall an escutcheon Gules charged with the crown of Charlemagne Or (for the dignity of Archtreasurer of the Holy Roman Empire).

*List of British monarchs *Succession to the British Throne

* * * *"George I" (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. London: Cambridge University Press. * * * * *

* * * * *"George I." (1997). Harvester's Encyclopedia, 252nd ed. Philadelphia: Ben Franklin Press.