GKOUGK II. 



OKOKCSK III. 



159 



int<> Kn-l.tii'l, proclaimed James king at IVmith, 

 mill, being surrounded tifter reaching Preston, laid 

 ,li.\\n iln-ir anus on the day of the battle at 

 SheriH'muir. Tin- Karl of Derwentwater and 



nut Kemmire were executed an Tower Hill ; 

 many others \\ere shot. and many were transported. 



ifter tlii- abortive rebellion, parliament 

 passed tin- Septennial Act, in order that by pro- 

 i. inking its own existence for four years the acces- 



if the Tories to power migfit he hindered. 

 MOM- >erious than any retallion was the rise and 

 fall of the South SIM' Scheme (q.v.), the English 

 oimterpjirt of the Mississippi Scheme (q.v.), which 



nei| France. The king's personal part in the 

 history of the r.-;;,ii w;i> hut slight, the actual ruler 

 r! Walpole. George I. could not 



Holier! 



k Knglish ; Lord Granville WOK the only one of 

 his ministers who could converse with him in 

 German: the king and Walpole interchanged 

 \ie\\s in had Latin. On this account the king 

 diil not preside at meetings of the cabinet. Queen 

 Anne is the last sovereign of Great Britain who 

 \\ as present at a cabinet council. It was the 

 delight of George I. to live as much as possible in 

 Hanover, and to obtain as much money as possible 

 from Great Britain. He died suddenly at Osna- 

 briick, on his return from Hanover, on 9th June 

 17'JT. Lady Wortley Montagu styles George I. 'an 

 honest blockhead.' 'if he had been an abler man 

 he might have proved a worse sovereign. He was 

 a useful figure-head in a constitutional government, 

 and rendered greater service than he may have 

 intended to the country which adopted him. 

 See the Histories of England by Stanhope, Hallain, and 



v ; the Stuart Papers; the Life of Walpole, by Coxe ; 

 tin- /li.ft'irirnt Ret/inter. 



t.eorge II. succeeded his father as Elector of 

 Hanover and king of Great Britain and of Ireland. 

 I'mrn in Hanover on 30th October 1683, he was 

 created Duke of Cambridge in 1706, and declared 

 Prince of Wales in council in 1714. In 1705 he 

 married Caroline of Anspach, a woman of many 

 attainments and j^reat force of character. She exer- 

 cised great influence over her husband, and winked 

 at his infidelities. When on her deathbed in 

 N"\ "inher 1737 she implored him to marry again, he 

 replied, with tears in his eyes, that he would rather 

 keep a mistress. Though George interfered more in 

 the government than his father had done, the policy 

 pursued during his reign was first that of Walpole 

 and second that of Pitt. During the greater part 

 of Walpole's administration of the government 

 peace was preserved ; during the period that Pitt was 

 almost supreme wars were fougnt and much glory 



..aineii. In 1743 George II. was present and 

 showed courage at the battle of .Dettingen, the 

 last occasion this on which an English sovereign 

 has ]. laved a part in actual warfare. The rebellion 

 in 174") was ended at Culloden, where the adherents 

 ot the Young Pretender made their last stand. The 

 Pretender had defeated General Cope at Preston- 

 pans, and marched as far as Derby before succumb- 

 ing to the royal forces under the command of the 

 king's second son, the Duke of Cumberland, whose 

 cruelty in dealing with the rebels caused him to 

 ' sti^, M;l tised as 'the Butcher.' The country 

 prospered so well that in 1749 the funds rose above 

 par. Pel ham, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 

 etlected a saving by reducing the interest on the 

 national debt from 4 to 3$, and then to 3 per cent. 

 Among the victories which made this reign glorious 

 w is t| 1;l t O f Clive at Plassey and that of Wolfe at 

 Quebec. The earlier years of the reign are pro- 

 nounced by Hallain to \te 'the most prosperous 

 season that England had ever experienced.' 

 George II. died suddenly on 25th October 1760. 

 He had no conspicuous virtues. He may be 

 credited, however, with a few pointed sayings. 



One wa.-, ' What a strange country is this : I have 

 never known but two or three men in it who under- 

 stood foreign affairs.' Another wan, ' Confidence U 

 a plant of slow growth in an aged bottom.' 



Sec the Histories of England by .Stanh<>|><- and by 

 Lecky; Mewoirt of the Reiyn of (Jeoryt II., or 

 Harvey; Dodington's Diary; and Horace Walpole 

 Memoirs of the last Ten Yeart of the Reign of fjeorye II. 



(eorge III* wan the eldest son of Frederick 

 Lewis, Prince of Wales, and was Itorn in London, 

 at Norfolk House, st James's Square, on 4th June 

 1738. Being a seven-months' child, and very 

 weakly, the IM>V was not expected to survive, and 

 at eleven at night he was privately baptised by l)r 

 Seeker, who was Bishop of Oxford and rector of the 



Earish of St James. On 2d July the bishop per- 

 irined the ceremony publicly, the l>oy being named 

 George William Frederick, and his sponsors being 

 the King of Sweden, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and 

 t he (,ueen of Prussia. On 25th Octol>er 1760 George 

 II. died suddenly, and his grandson ascended the 

 throne. The new king was the first member of the 

 House of Brunswick who commanded general re- 

 spect on becoming the sovereign over Great Britain 

 and Ireland. At the same time he became Elector 

 of Hanover, a title which was exchanged for that 

 of king in 1815, when he was incapacitated for 

 performing his duties, and unconscious of what 

 passed in the world. He was the only one of 

 the four Georges who never visited his German 

 dominions. In his first speech to parliament he 

 said : ' Born and educated in this country, I glory 

 in the name of Briton, and the peculiar nappineM 

 of my life will ever consist in promoting the welfare 

 of a people whose loyalty and warm affection to me 

 I consider the greatest and most permanent security 

 of my throne.' These words were inserted by him- 

 self in the speech composed by the Earl of Hard- 

 wieke and approved by the ministry. At the outset 

 George III. conciliated all classes of his subjects. 

 Horace Walpole thus describes from personal obser- 

 vation the nature of the change : ' For the king him- 

 self, he seems all good nature and wishing to satisfy 

 everybody. All his speeches are obliging. 1 saw 

 him yesterday, and was surprised to find the levee- 

 room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. 

 The sovereign does not stand in one spot with his 

 eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits 

 of German news. He walks about and speaks 

 freely to everybody. I saw him afterwards on the 

 throne, where he is graceful and genteel, sits with 

 dignity, and reads his addresses well.' On 8th 

 September 1761 he married Charlotte Sophia, 

 Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitx, his bride being 

 in her eighteenth and he in his twenty-third 

 year. A fortnight after their marriage they were 

 crowned. As a younger man he was supposed to 

 have had children by Hannah Lightfoot, a beauti- 

 ful Quakeress, and to have married her, but no 

 Froof of this marriage has ever been advanced, 

 t is less open to doubt that, after ascending 

 the throne, he wished to marry Lady Sarah Lennox, 

 and that his mother used her influence to bring 

 about a marriage with one who, like herself, was a 

 German princess. 



George III. owed it to his mother that he was 

 strongly imbued with a desire to govern as well 

 as reign. ' George, be king,' was the phrase which 

 she repeated, and the training which he had re- 

 ceived made him give heed to it. Bolingbroke, in 

 writing the Idea of a Patriot Kincj, had the expecta- 

 tion of persuading Frederick, Prince of Wales, and 

 father of ( ieorge III. , to act the part. The sukstance 

 of Bolingbroke's teaching was that a king should l>e 

 the father of his people, that he was the man best 

 qualified to know what would be for their good, 

 and the one best entitled to make them do us he 

 deemed right. Thus George III. felt certain that 



