Another of Queen Anne's ministers, the earl of Mar, secretary of state for Scotland, had made fulsome offers of devotion to the new king, which he did not reciprocate. Mar had in his possession a memorial signed by a number of the chiefs of the Highland clans, in which they authorized him to offer their duty and allegiance to the king appointed by parliament. George, however, appears to have so sternly repulsed him that he never had a suitable opportunity of presenting the document. He still clung for some time about the court, and so late as the 1st of August, 1715, nearly a year after he had been dismissed, he attended a levee, where his reception seems to have extinguished his last hope. On the following day he went by sea to Scotland in disguise, and raised the well-known insurrection of 1715. As the outbreak did not happen at the time when it was natural to expect such an event—immediately on the queen's death; and as it waited, indeed, until the nation had experienced a year of the new dynasty, it has often been maintained that it is to the personal conduct and demeanour of George I., that the civil war and various other difficulties during his reign must be attributed. He was personally reserved, or as it was termed, ungracious; disliking popularity and repressing, rather than courteously receiving, demonstrations of loyalty. He never acquired the English language, and as French was not then universally used, as it afterwards was at all the European courts. Sir Robert Walpole, according to his son's account, transacted his business with the king in bad Latin. He had of course no knowledge or appreciation of the British constitution, nor could the sovereign of a petty despotism have formed distinct notions of the constitutional liberty which was typified in the fact of his promotion to the British throne. But what really gave its prevailing character to the Hanover succession was, that George I. and his son were unable personally to influence the current of political events. Supposing them to have been as willing as the Stewarts were to reign despotically, they could not have carried out such a project from ignorance of the machinery of the British constitution.
It is thus that the Revolution, which placed them on the throne, was the greatest step towards investing parliament with its present predominant control. The influence which had passed from the crown naturally fell to the body next in power, and this was the whig aristocracy. In them it was vested until the accession of George III. It then changed hands, without widening its base; but in later times the change begun by the accession of George I., has been consummated by the extension of the basis of political power.
It has ever been a complaint against the reign both of George I. and his son, that British interests were rendered subservient to those of Hanover. It was scarcely possible that one man could reign over the two states, without their being in some measure involved with each other. When the disasters of Charles XII. of Sweden began, and his empire was falling to pieces, the European powers of the north took possession of such portions of it as lay most conveniently to their hands. Hanover took that opportunity to assert a right to Bremen and Verdun, which Charles XII. determined to dispute, and he prepared to retaliate by aiding the Stewarts in a descent on Britain. A step very unusual was taken on this occasion. Sweden was nominally in alliance with Britain, and a Swedish ambassador, Count Gyllenberg, resided in London. In January, 1716, a detachment of footguards was sent to apprehend him and secure his papers. This would have been deemed a flagrant violation of the law of nations, if it had not been established that Gyllenberg was using his privileges in plotting against the throne of King George. The death of Charles XII. soon afterwards removed the source of danger in that quarter.
On the other hand, the dynasty of Hanover owed its secure possession of the throne in a great measure to the position of affairs in France. Louis XIV., in his humbled condition, acknowledged the title of George I.; but it was obvious that he was no sincere friend of the new settlement. His death, which occurred during the insurrection in Scotland, greatly discouraged its promoters. The duke of Orleans, who governed for his nephew as regent, became a warm supporter of the Hanover succession. It is believed, indeed, that he felt a personal interest in the success of an arrangement, which afforded a precedent for departing from the strict hereditary system in the selection of a monarch, since he indulged the prospect of securing the throne of France in the same manner for his own dynasty. It is a curious fact indeed, that this prospect was fulfilled, though long after his day, in the person of Louis Philippe, the late king of the French, his descendant, who was raised to the throne by a sort of imitation of the English settlement on the house of Hanover.
Parliaments being triennial, the house of commons elected on the accession of George I. would have come to a close in 1718. There had at that time, however, grown so much personal dislike of the king, and general discontent, that it was thought the settlement of the crown would be endangered by a general election. The existence of the parliament was consequently prolonged for four years more, and the act passed for that purpose established the system of septennial parliaments which has since continued. When the seven years were about to elapse there were various proposals for a further continuation of the existence of the parliament; but fortunately no attempt was made to carry them into effect. In the year 1722 the Hanover settlement was considered to be endangered by the active intrigues of the jacobites. The able and restless Bishop Atterbury was the sacrifice to these suspicions, the justice of which has been confirmed by a late publication of the letters of his party. While there existed a large body of men like the highlanders idle and impoverished, with arms in their possession, outbreaks were inevitable. To obviate them, there was a systematic disarming of the clans, which, however, the insurrection of 1745 showed to have been very imperfectly carried out. A far more effective step was taken in the construction of military roads throughout the highlands. The secret, however, of securing the attachment of the mountaineers by employing them as soldiers had not been discovered, or at least, though it had been pointed out by their neighbour Forbes of Culloden, had not been adopted by government; and to the end of his reign the greater portion of them were disaffected to the first Hanoverian king, and only watched an opportunity of outbreak. In pursuance of the same policy an act was passed, which became very offensive in Ireland by declaring that the Irish parliament was subordinate to the parliament of Great Britain.
The king was accused of again sacrificing Britain to the interests of his hereditary dominions by the treaty of Hanover in 1726. It was adopted in consequence of the alliance between Spain and the empire adjusted at Vienna in the year preceding, and there is no doubt that the apprehensions for the safety of the Hanover succession suggested by that alliance were well founded; as Cardinal Alberoni, the prime mover in it, was in communication with the jacobite leaders, and prepared to take advantage of the first opportunity for raising commotions in Britain. In following up the policy of the treaty of Hanover, an expedition was sent under Admiral Hosier to the West Indies. It was unfortunate, and became memorable by the terrible mortality which swept away the troops engaged in it. Like all unsuccessful expeditions, it created great discontent at home, and it was asserted with enhanced bitterness, that the poor soldiers and sailors of Britain were sent to rot in the tropics for the sake of the German king's dukedom of Hanover.
It was in little more than a year after his accession, that Walpole obtained that influence ever George I., which he maintained to the end, and greatly strengthened by the adroitness with which he brought order out of the chaos created by the South Sea scheme. The policy and history of the country, during the greater part of the reign of George I., belong indeed to the biography of that minister, who established the sinking fund and followed out the two ruling principles, of parliamentary influence—or corruption, as it was called by his opponents—and external peace.
George I. is reputed to have had no taste for literature or art; but it deserves to be remembered that he founded a chair of history in each of the English universities. His court was considered decorous, compared with the example set by the later Stewarts. He brought with him two female favourites or mistresses from Germany—both of them remarkable for the want of all attractions. It was believed, indeed, that they were retained more as state appendages than as objects of personal affection—a mistress being almost a part of the regular establishment of a German court. To one of them, Erengard Melosine von Schulenberg, created Duchess of Munster, he is said to have been united by a morganatic or left-handed marriage. An anecdote of the day states that this lady was once in considerable danger from a London mob, who surrounded her carriage, charging her with impoverishing the people. She who
