On August 1st, 1714, George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, and
great-grandson of James I., of England, succeeded to the throne; but
being apparently rather doubtful as to the reception he would meet in
this country, he delayed visiting his new dominions until the month of
October. In April, 1714, there was so little disposition in favor of the
newly-chosen dynasty, that the Earl of Oxford entreated George not to
bring any of his family into this country without Queen Anne's express
consent. It seems strange to read in the correspondence of Madame
Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans, her hesitation "to rejoice at
the accession of our Prince George, for she had no confidence in the
English;" and her fears "that the inconstancy of the English will in the
end produce some scheme which may be injurious to the French monarchy."
She adds: "If the English were to be trusted, I should say that it is
fortunate the Parliaments are in favor of George, but the more one reads
the history of English revolutions, the more one is compelled to remark
the eternal hatred which the people of that nation have had towards
their kings, as well as their fickleness." To-day it is the English who
charge the French with fickleness. Thackeray says of George I. that "he
showed an uncommon prudence and coolness of behavior when he came into
his kingdom, exhibiting no elation; reasonably doubtful whether he
should not be turned out some day; looking upon himself only as a
lodger, and making the most of his brief tenure of St. James's and
Hampton Court, plundering, it is true, somewhat, and dividing amongst
his German followers; but what could be expected of a sovereign who at
home could sell his subjects at so many ducats per head, and make no
scruple in so disposing of them?" At the accession of George I. the
national debt of this country, exclusive of annuities, was about
L36,000,000; after five Brunswicks have left us, it is L800,000,000 for
Great Britain and Ireland, and much more, than L110,000,000 for India.
The average annual national expenditure under the rule of George I.
was L5,923,079; to-day it is more than L70,000,-000, of which more than
L20,000,000 have been added in the last twenty years. During the reign
of George I. land paid very nearly one-fourth the whole of the taxes;
to-day it pays less than one-seventieth part; and yet, while its
proportion of the burden is so much lighter, its exaction from labor in
rent is ten times heavier.
George I. came to England without his wife, the Princess of Zelle.
Years before, he had arrested her and placed her in close confinement in
Ahlden Castle, on account of her intrigue with Philip, Count Konigsmark,
whom some say George I. suspected of being the actual father of the
Electoral Prince George, afterwards George II. To use the language of
a writer patronized by George, Prince of Wales, in 1808, "The coldness
between George I. and his son and successor, George II., may be said to
have been _almost coeval with the existence_ of the latter." Our King,
George I., described by Thackeray as a "cold, selfish libertine," had
Konigsmark murdered in the palace of Heranhausen; confined his wife, at
twenty-eight years of age, in a dungeon, where she remained until she
was sixty; and when George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover, tried
to get access to his mother, George Lewis, then Elector of Hanover,
arrested Prince George also, and it is said, would have put him to
death if the Emperor of Germany had not protected him as a Prince of
the German Empire. During the reign of George II., Frederick, Prince of
Wales, whom his father denounced as a "changeling," published an account
of how George I. had turned Frederick's father out of the palace. These
Guelphs have been a loving family. The _Edinburgh Review_ declares that
"the terms on which the eldest sons of this family have always lived
with their fathers have been those of distrust, opposition, and
hostility." Even after George Lewis had ascended the throne of England,
his hatred to George Augustus was so bitter, that there was some
proposition that James, Earl Berkeley and Lord High Admiral, should
carry off the Prince to America and keep him there.
Thackeray says: "When George I. made his first visit to Hanover, his son
was appointed regent during the Royal absence. But this honor was never
again conferred on the Prince of Wales; he and his father fell out
presently. On the occasion of the christening of his second son, a
Royal row took place, and the Prince, shaking his fist in the Duke of
Newcastle's face, called him a rogue, and provoked his august father. He
and his wife were turned out of St. James's, and their princely children
taken from them, by order of the Royal head of the family. Father and
mother wept piteously at parting from their little ones. The young ones
sent some cherries, with their love, to papa and mamma, the parents
watered the fruit with their tears. They had no tears thirty-five years
afterwards, when Prince Frederick died, their eldest son, their heir,
their enemy."
A satirical ballad on the expulsion of Prince George from St. James's
Palace, which was followed by the death of the newly-christened baby
Prince, is droll enough to here repeat:--
The King then took his gray goose quill,
And dip't it o'er in gall;
And, by Master Vice Chamberlain,
He sent to him this scrawl:
"Take hence yourself, and eke your spouse,
Your maidens and your men;
Your trunks, and all your trumpery,
Except your chil-de-ren."
The Prince secured with nimble haste
The Artillery Commission;
And with him trudged full many a maid,
But not one politician.
Up leapt Lepel, and frisked away,
As though she ran on wheels;
Miss Meadows made a woful face,
Miss Howe took to her heels.
But Belenden I needs must praise,
Who, as down stairs she jumps,
Sang "O'er the hills and far away,"
Despising doleful dumps.
Then up the street they took their way,
And knockt up good Lord Grant-ham;
Higgledy-piggledy they lay,
And all went _rantam scantam_.
Now sire and son had played their part,
What could befall beside?
Why, the poor babe took this to heart,
Kickt up its heels, and died.
Mahon, despite all his desire to make out the best for the Whig
revolution and its consequences, occasionally makes some pregnant
admissions: "The jealousy which George I. entertained for his son was no
new feeling. It had existed even at Hanover, and had since been
inflamed by an insidious motion of the Tories that out of the Civil List
L100,-000 should be allotted as a separate revenue for the Prince of
Wales. This motion was overruled by the Ministerial party, and its
rejection offended the Prince as much as its proposal had the King....
In fact it is remarkable.... that since that family has reigned, the
heirs-apparent have always been on ill terms with the sovereign. There
have been four Princes of Wales since the death of Anne, and all four
have gone into bitter opposition." "That family," said Lord Carteret one
day in full Council, "always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel,
from generation to generation."
"Through the whole of the reign of George I., and through nearly half
of the reign of George II.," says Lord Macaulay, "a Tory was regarded as
the enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the favors
of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were Tories, none
but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every County, opulent and
well-descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out
of the Commission of the Peace, while men of small estate and of mean
birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments
and standing armies, presided at Quarter Sessions, and became
deputy-lieutenants."
In attacking the Whigs, my object is certainly not to write in favor of
the Tories, but some such work is needful while so many persons labor
under the delusion that the Whigs have always been friends to liberty
and progress.
Although George I. brought with him no wife to England, he was
accompanied by at least two of his mistresses, and our peerage roll
was enriched by the addition of Madame Kielmansegge as Countess of
Darlington, and Mademoiselle Erangard Melosine de Schulenberg as
Duchess of Kendal and Munster, Baroness of Glastonbury, and Countess
of Feversham. These peeresses were received with high favor by the Whig
aristocracy, although the Tories refused to countenance them, and "they
were often hooted by the mob as they passed through the streets." The
_Edinburgh Review_ described them as "two big blowsy German women."
Here I have no room to deal fairly with Charlotte Sophia, Baroness of
Brentford and Countess of Darlington; her title is extinct, and I can
write nothing of any good or useful act to revive her memory. Lord
Chesterfield says of George I.: "No woman came amiss to him, if she were
only very willing and very fat." John Heneage Jesse, in his "Memoirs of
the Court of England"--speaking of the Duchess of Kendal, the Countess
Platen (the co-partner in the murder of Konigsmark), afterwards Countess
of Darlington, and many others less known to infamy--says that George
I. "had the folly and wickedness to encumber himself with a seraglio of
hideous German prostitutes." The Duchess of Kendal was for many years
the chief mistress of George, and being tall and lean was caricatured
as the Maypole or the Giraffe. She had a pension of L7,500 a year, the
profits of the place of Master of the Horse, and other plunder. The
Countess of Darlington's figure may be judged from the name of Elephant
or Camel, popularly awarded to her. Horace Walpole says of her: "I
remember as a boy being terrified at her enormous figure. The fierce
black eyes, large and rolling, between two lofty-arched eyebrows, two
acres of cheeks spread with crimson, an ocean of neck that overflowed,
and was not distinguished from the lower part of her body, and no part
restrained by stays. No wonder that a child dreaded such an ogress."
She died 1724. Mahon says: "She was unwieldy in person, and rapacious in
character."
Phillimore declares that "George I. brought with him from Hanover
mistresses as rapacious, and satellites as ignoble, as those which drew
down such deserved obloquy on Charles H., Bothman, Bernstoff, Robethon,
and two Turks--Mustapha and Mahomet,--meddled more with public affairs,
and were to the full as venal as Chiffin, Pepys and Smith." Mahon, who
calls Robethon "a prying, impertinent, venomous creature," adds that
"coming from a poor electorate, a flight of hungry Hanoverians, like
so many famished vultures, fell with keen eyes and bended talons on the
fruitful soil of England."
One of the earliest acts of the Whig aristocracy, in the reign of George
I., was to pass a measure through Parliament, lengthening the existence
of that very Parliament to seven years, and giving to the King the power
to continue all subsequent Parliaments to a like period. The Triennial
Parliaments were thus lengthened by a corrupt majority. For the
committal of the Septennial Bill there was a majority of 72 votes, and
it is alleged by the _Westminster Review_, "that about 82 members of
the honorable house had either fingered Walpole's gold, or pocketed
the bank-notes which, by the purest accident, were left under their
plates.... In the ten years which preceded the Septennial Act, the sum
expended in Secret Service money was L337,960. In the ten years which
followed the passing of the Septennial Act, the sum expended for Secret
Service was L1,453,400." The same writer says: "The friends and framers
of the Triennial Bill were for the most part Tories, and its opponents
for the most part Whigs. The framers and friends of the Bill for long
Parliaments were all Whigs, and its enemies all Tories." When the
measure came before the Lords, we find Baron Bernstoff, on the King's
behalf, actually canvassing Peers' wives, with promises of places for
their relatives, in order to induce them to get their husbands to vote
for the Bill. Another of the early infringements of public liberty by
the Whig supporters of George I., was the passing (1 George I., c. 5)
the Riot Act, which had not existed from the accession of James I. to
the death of Queen Anne. Sir John Hinde Cotton, a few years afterwards,
described this Act, which is still the law of England, as "An Act by
which a little dirty justice of the peace, the meanest and vilest tool
a minister can use, had it in his power to put twenty or thirty of the
best subjects of England to immediate death, without any trial or form,
but that of reading a proclamation." In order to facilitate the King's
desire to spend most of his time in Hanover, the third section of the
Act of Settlement was repealed. Thackeray says: "Delightful as London
city was, King George I. liked to be out of it as much as ever he could,
and when there, passed all his time with his Germans. It was with them
as with Blucher one hundred years afterwards, when the bold old Reiter
looked down from St. Paul's and sighed out, 'Was fur plunder!' The
German women plundered, the German secretaries plundered, the German
cooks and intendants plundered; even Mustapha and Mahomet, the German
negroes, had a share of the booty. Take what you can get, was the old
monarch's maxim."
There was considerable discontent expressed in the early years of
George's reign. Hallam says: "Much of this disaffection was owing to
the cold reserve of George I., ignorant of the language, alien to
the prejudices of his people, and continually absent in his electoral
dominions, to which he seemed to sacrifice the nation's interest....
The letters in Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole, abundantly show the German
nationality, the impolicy and neglect of his duties, the rapacity and
petty selfishness of George I. The Whigs were much dissatisfied, but the
fear of losing their places made them his slaves." In order to add the
duchies of Bremen and Verden to Hanover, in 1716, the King, as Elector,
made a treaty with Denmark against Sweden, which treaty proved the
source of those Continental wars, and the attendant system of subsidies
to European powers, which have, in the main, created our enormous
National Debt. Bremen and Verden being actually purchased for George I.
as the Elector of Hanover, with English money, Great Britain in addition
was pledged by George I. to guarantee Sleswick to Denmark. Sweden and
Denmark quarrelling--and George I. as Elector of Hanover having, without
the consent of the English Parliament, declared war against Sweden--an
English fleet was sent into the Baltic to take up a quarrel with which
we had no concern. In addition we were involved in a quarrel with
Russia, because that power had interfered to prevent Mecklenburg being
added to George's Hanoverian estates. The chief mover in this matter
was the notorious Baron Bernstoff, who held some village property in
Mecklenburg. In all these complications, Hanover gained, England lost.
If Hanover found troops, England paid for them, while the Electorate
solely reaped the benefit. Every thoughtful writer admits that English
interests were always betrayed to satisfy Hanoverian greed.
The King's fondness for Germany provoked some hostility, and amongst
the various squibs issued, one in 1716, from the pen of Samuel Wesley,
brother of John Wesley, is not without interest. It represents a
conversation between George and the Duchess of Kendal:--
"As soon as the wind it came fairly about, That kept the King in and his
enemies out, He determined no longer confinement to bear, And thus to
the Duchess his mind did declare:
"Quoth he, 'My dear Kenny, I've been tired along while, With living
obscure in this poor little isle, And now Spain and Pretender have no
more mines to spring, I'm resolved to go home and live like a King."
The Duchess approves of this, describes and laughs at all the persons
nominated for the Council of Regency, and concludes:--
"On the whole, I'll be hanged if all over the realm There are thirteen
such fools to be put to the helm; So for this time be easy, nor have
jealous thought, They ha'n't sense to sell you, nor are worth being
bought."
"'Tis for that (quoth the King, in very bad French), I chose them for my
regents, and you for my wench, And neither, I'm sure, will my trust e'er
betray, For the devil won't take you if I turn you away."
It was this same Duchess of Kendal who, as the King's mistress, was
publicly accused of having received enormous sums of money from the
South Sea Company for herself and the King, in order to shield from
justice the principal persons connected with those terrible South Sea
frauds, by which, in the year 1720, so many families were reduced to
misery.
In 1717, Mr. Shippen, a member of the House of Commons, was committed
to the Tower, for saying in his place in the House, that it was the
"infelicity of his Majesty's reign that he is unacquainted with our
language and constitution." Lord Macaulay tells us how Lord Carteret,
afterwards Earl Granville, rose into favor. The King could speak no
English; Carteret was the only one of the Ministry who could speak
German. "All the communication that Walpole had with his master was in
very bad Latin." The influence Carteret wielded over the King did
not extend to every member of the Royal Family. The Princess of Wales
afterwards described the Lords Carteret and Bolingbroke as two she had
"long known to be two as worthless men of parts as any in the country,
and who I have not only been often told are two of the greatest liars
and knaves in any country, but whom my own observation and experience
have found so."
Under George I. our standing army was nearly doubled by the Whig
Ministry, and this when peace would rather have justified a reduction
than an increase. The payments to Hanoverian troops commenced under
this king, a payment which William Pitt afterwards earned the enmity of
George II. by very sharply denouncing, and which payment was but a step
in the system of continental subsidies which have helped to swell our
national debt to its present enormous dimensions.
In this reign the enclosure of waste lands was practically commenced,
sixteen enclosure Acts being passed, and 17,-660 acres of land enclosed.
This example, once furnished, was followed in the next reign with
increasing rapidity, 226 enclosure Acts being passed in the reign of
George II., and 318,778 acres of land enclosed. As Mr. Fawcett states,
up to 1845, more than 7,000,000 acres of land, over which the public
possessed invaluable rights, have been gradually absorbed, and
individuals wielding legislative influence have been enriched at the
expense of the public and the poor.
Within six years from his accession, the King was about L600,000 in
debt, and this sum was the first of a long list of debts discharged
by the nation for these Brunswicks. When our ministers to-day talk of
obligations on the part of the people to endow each additional member of
the Royal Family, the memory of these shameful extravagances should have
some effect. George I. had a civil list of L700,000 a year; he received
L300,000 from the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, and L300,000 from
the London Assurance Companies, and had one million voted to him in 1726
towards payment of his debts.
When the "South Sea Bill" was promoted in 1720, wholesale bribery was
resorted to. Transfers of stock were proved to have been made to persons
high in office. Two members of the Whig Ministry, Lord Sunderland and
Mr. Aislabie, were so implicated that they had to resign their
offices, and the last-named, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was
ignominiously expelled the House of Commons. Royalty itself, or at
least, the King's sultanas, and several of his German household, shared
the spoil. L30,000 were traced to the King's mistresses, and a select
committee of the House denounced the whole business as "a train of
the deepest villany and fraud with which hell ever contrived to ruin a
nation." Near the close of the reign, Lord Macclesfied, Lord Chancellor
and favorite and tool of the King, was impeached for extortion and abuse
of trust in his office, and, being convicted, was sentenced to pay a
fine of L30,000. In 1716, Mademoiselle Schulenberg, then Duchess of
Munster, received L5,000 as a bribe for procuring the title of Viscount
for Sir Henry St. John. In 1724, the same mistress, bribed by Lord
Bolingbroke, successfully used her influence to pass an act through
Parliament restoring him his forfeited estates. Mr. Chetwynd, says my
Lady Cowper, in order to secure his position in the Board of Trade, paid
to another of George's mistresses L500 down, agreed to allow her L200 a
year as long as he held the place, and gave her also the fine, brilliant
ear-rings she wore.
In 1724 there appeared in Dublin, the first of the famous "Drapier
Letters," written by Jonathan Swift against Wood's coinage patent. A
patent had been granted to a man named Wood for coining half-pence
in Ireland. This grant was made under the influence of the Duchess of
Kendal, the mistress of the King, and on the stipulation that she should
receive a large share of the profits. These "Drapier Letters" were
prosecuted by the Government, but Swift followed them with others; the
grand juries refused to find true bills, and ultimately the patent
was cancelled. Wood, or the Duchess, got as compensation a grant of a
pension of L3,000 a year for eight years.
George died at Osnabruck, on his journey Hanover-wards, in June, 1727,
having made a will by which he disposed of his money in some fashion
displeasing to his son George II.; and as the _Edinburgh Review_ tells
us, the latter "evaded the old king's directions, and got his money by
burning his will." In this, George II. only followed his royal father's
example. When Sophia Dorothea died, she left a will bequeathing her
property in a fashion displeasing to Greorge I., who, without scruple,
destroyed the testament and appropriated the estate. George I. had also
previously burned the will of his father-in-law, the Duke of Zell. At
this time the destruction of a will was a capital felony in England.
In concluding this rough sketch of the reign of George I., it must not
be forgotten that his accession meant the triumph of the Protestant
caste in Ireland, and that under his rule much was done to render
permanent the utter hatred manifested by the Irish people to their
English conquerors, who had always preferred the policy of extermination
to that of conciliation. Things were so sad in Ireland at the end of
this reign, that Dean Swift, in bitter mockery, "wrote and published his
'Modest Proposal' for relieving the miseries of the people, by cooking
and eating the children of the poor;" "a piece of the fiercest sarcasm,"
says Mitchell, "steeped in all the concentrated bitterness of his soul."
Poor Ireland, she had, at any rate, nothing to endear to her the memory
of George I.