ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.
xxxi—GEORGE I.
LORD STANHOPE introduces his notice of the reign of George I. with the following remark :—" A hard fate that the enthronement of a stranger should have been the only means to secure our liberties and laws ! Almost a century of foreign masters! Such has been the indirect, but the undoubted effect of the Great Rebellion. Charles and James, driven abroad by the tumults at home, received a French education and pursued a French policy. Their Government was overthrown by a Dutch- man ; George I. and George II. were entirely German; and thus, from 1660 to 1760, when a truly English monarch once more ascended the throne, the reign of Queen Anne appears the only exception to a foreign dominion." The foreign birth and feelings of the first two Georges presented themselves to the mind of the greatest of English satirists of the present age in a somewhat different point of view. "It was lucky for us," says Mr. Thackeray, "that our first Georges were not more high .minded men; especially fortunate that they loved Hanover so much as to leave England to have her own way. Our chief troubles began when we got a king who gloried in the name of Briton, and being born in the country, proposed to rule it. He was no more fit to govern England than his grandfather and great-grandfather, who did not try. It was righting itself during their occupation. The dangerous, noble old spirit of Cavalier loyalty was dying out ; the stately old English High Church was emptying itself ; the questions dropping which, on one side and the other—the side of loyalty prerogative, Church and King : the side of right, truth, civil and religious freedom—had set generations of brave men in arms. By the time when George III, came to the throne the combat between loyalty and liberty was come to an end, and Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying in Italy." There is much truth in both these views of the position, though we can hardly commit ourselves unreservedly to either. It very far from follows that had the House of Stuart escaped its first exile, the English character of the Monarchy would have been secured in anything but the mere name. Charles II., in accordance with his father's marriage- articles, would have been placed for education at an early age in the hands of his French mother and her foreign priests and Frenchified counsellors and Court ; the influence of France, not only of her policy, but of her social habits and national stamp, would have shaped the future not only of the King, but of the peo- ple of England, and a divergence of sentiment between the two would have been avoided, not by the King being more English, but by the Nation becoming more French. From this, at any rate, with its probable consequences, the Great Rebellion saved us ; and while the nationalism of the dynasty was suspended for a century, the continuity of English feelings in the nation remained unbroken. On the other hand, it can only be looked upon as a poor consola- tion that a civil conflict between King and People was avoided during the reigns of the two first Princes of the House of Hanover only by the absence of a common interest.
But whatever may be our judgment as to the national balance- sheet of gain or loss involved in the accession of the House of Hanover, there can be no doubt as to the very trying and invidioua
position which that family was called upon to occupy in ascend- ing the Throne of England.
To begin with, its connection with the dynasty which it suc- ceeded was too remote to exercise any perceptible influence on the sympathies of the nation. The associations in the English popular mind which had, in the early part of the seventeenth century, gathered round the name and cause of the beautiful Queen of Bohemia—the representative of the Protestant cause on the Con- tinent of Europe—had been much weakened by the more recent memories of her younger sons Rupert and Maurice ; nor had the conduct of their elder brother Charles been such as to remove the prejudice thus engendered. The Englishmen of the early part of the eighteenth century were called upon to renew, if they could, these faded impressions of an old attachment in favour of the son of the youngest sister of these Princes of the Civil-War period, a man of fifty-four years of age, who had not visited England since the reign of Charles II. ; whose father, whose education, whose associates, and whose habits were all German, who could not speak English, and if he understood anything of English politics was entirely ignorant of English feelings and modes of thought. Nor was there anything in his previous career, as there was in that of William HI., to command the admiration of Englishmen, in default of their affections. He had been merely known as a petty electoral prince, whose only public appearances, in the European contest against Louis XIV., had indicated his courage and sense of honour rather than his capacity. William—if a foreigner and unpopular himself—bad at his side a devoted wife, who was both English and popular, and who seemed to continue rather than to break the dynas- tic associations of Englishmen. But Sophia of Hanover, the mother of George L, was almost as completely a foreigner in habits and feel- ings as himself, and if she had achieved a European reputation as a highly accomplished woman, and a liberal and wise patron of learned men, seemed from her advanced age a relic of the past rather than a hope of the future. Nor, while herself both a statesman and a scholar, did she take common pains to give her son a decent education. In short, George I. landed in this country as its recognized King, deficient in almost every qualification which could prospectively recommend him to the sympathies of his new subjects. Nor were his own prepossessions with respect to them more favourable. His only personal experiences of England had been gathered dur- ing the most profligate and corrupt period of English history, and his more mature impressions of English principles and honour had been drawn from his experiences of such men as Churchill and Harley. Can it be wondered at that George of Hanover received the news of his accession to the English Crown without any mani- festation of pleasure, and showed little alacrity in seeking the shores of a country of whose inhabitants he had so indifferent an opinion, and which, he had reason to believe, welcomed him only as a necessary pis-aller, and from a cold calculation of its own interest alone, without the smallest consideration for his per- sonal predilections? This relative position of King and People at the accession of the House of Hanover must be borne in mind, if we would judge fairly of the conduct of both during the years that followed. But for this, on the one hand, the King might appear to be inexcusably wrapt up in his own personal preferences for Hanover, and ungratefully blind to his responsibilities as King of England ; and on the other hand, the English nation might be justly subject to a charge of indifference to their own cause and failure of duty to one who had assumed his difficult position only at their express call. As it was, neither King nor People can escape from just blame for their respective conduct, but this conduct is explained, and the blame to some degree lightened by the complete want of mutual sympathy. The character, indeed, of George would have been a very exceptional one, and he would have been peculiarly happy in the qualities of his mind, if he had over- come the inherent difficulties of his position, and obtained the hearts instead of merely the sufferance of his English subjects. But such was not the case.
George Louis, Elector of Hanover, or (more correctly) of Brunswick and Luneburg, was the representative of a branch of the Guelph family, which had already blended with the royal blood of England by the marriage of Henry the Lion with Matilda, daughter of Henry II. of England. So far as blood, therefore, was concerned, he represented on his father's as well as on his mother's side both the Norman and Saxon royal families of this century. He was born at Hanover on the 28th of May, 1660—the day before Charles IL made his triumphal entry into London at the Restoration — significant dates in the his- tory of the fortunes of the elder line of the House of Stuart. His subsequent visit to England is said to have been connected with
some project for marrying him to the Princess Anne, whose suc- cessor he was destined to become, instead of her husband. He was ac- tually married to his cousin Sophia Dorothea of Zell, a match, it would' seem, in which the inclinations of both bridegroom and bride were- sacrificed to considerations of family policy. Sophia Dorothea appears to have been a volatile, excitable woman, of small principle and strong passions. These she indulged, there can be little rea- sonable doubt, criminally with an early favourite, the unprincipled adventurer, Count Philip von Konigsmarck, whose elder brother had become notorious in England for the murder of Mr. Thynne. The intrigue was detected—through the jealousy of a. mistress of Konigsmarck—by the Elector Ernest Augustus, father of George, during his son's absence from Hanover, and the assassination of Kiinigsmarck, and the imprisonment of Sophia. Dorothea which followed, were the acts of the old Elector alone,. though the restraint to which his wife was subjected was continued. by George after his accession to the Electorate. His wife's-. ffighty and violent disposition had long disgusted him with her, and he had no sentiment in him to mitigate his sense of justice. There appear to have been at least two types. of character in the House of Brunswick, — both strongly marked, and alternating in the members of the family. The. one was a gay, jovial, somewhat boisterous, but affable and genial temperament, much liked, but little respected and little trustworthy. To this type the father of George approxi- mated. Had he, instead of his son, been the Parliamentary heir to the English Crown, he would probably have misgoverned England not a little, and been a reckless waster of her wealth, but infinitely more popular than either of the first two Georges. The other- type was that of a quiet, precise, frugal, and homely disposition,. with a strong sense of duty, a strict regard for truth, and a tend- ency to the insufferable martinet. To this latter type the char- acter of George L was assimilated. Self-will was the salient point of the former type,—obstinacy of the latter. Thoughtless. injustice was the besetting failing of the one,—cold and rigid justice carried to the verge (if not beyond) of brutality the- accompaniment of the other. The less the truth was known. about the one the more it was liked ; the less the other was really known the more it was disliked. The one in- spired incautious sympathy, the other extorted unwilling respect- George I. had a clear head, and even a strong head within the- range to which his mental capacity limited his powers of observa- tion and decision. He was an extremely well-intentioned man. within the compass of his idea of his duty. He was an excellent. man of business also on the same scale and under the same con- ditions. The same was true of his ideas of justice and clemency; there was no feeling of revenge about the one or of'. generosity about the other. The range of his understanding was. very limited. His mind was thoroughly unanalytical in its reasoning; he saw everything in its simple concrete form. He- lms a true pre-Raffaellite in the absence of atmosphere and visual proportion in the pictures which he drew in his own mind of men and things ; he hated such and such men and such and such things,. —he strongly preferred such and such others. Their respective- greatness or insignificance made no difference in the intensity of his feelings. Habit had over such a • character immense influence. The unaccustomed freshness of the English oysters- afflicted him, perhaps, quite as much as the unaccustomed forms. of English loyalty and disloyalty. His politics were those of a man of habit, crystallized by a life of half a century. Both the- peculiar virtues and peculiar vices of the English people were- strange to him and incomprehensible. Yet he had no irritable- desire to reform them to his own esteemed pattern ; he felt it no. part of his duty to turn England into a Hanover. All that he wanted to do was to perform such functions of government as- were considered essential to the position of King of England,, which he had undertaken ; and in other respects to see and know' as little of England and the English as possible, and get away. from England to Hanover whenever he could find a legitimate. excuse. He acquiesced in most of the measures submitted to his- approbation by the Walpoles and Townshends and Stanhopes, who, he thought, had the most common sense and the beat- apology for principle among English statesmen ; but he did so in the spirit of one who sees no particular harm in a Bug. gestion made by others better acquainted with the subject matter rather than of one who is sufficiently interested to give the matter much thought. He initiated nothing himself except where the interests or supposed interests of Hanover were concerned. On that subject he had a strong opinion, and was almost immovably obstinate in his adherence to it. In other things he was an intelli- gent and well-meaning roi fainéant. His original choice of the Whig
'statesmen had been based partly on his knowledge of them, gained during the various negotiations while he was still in Hanover, partly on his deep conviction that had it not been for the exertions of them and of their party, he would still have been merely Elector :of Hanover. And little as he cared for England in itself, he had a sense of property in his succession to its Crown which equalled in tenacity the most intense theory of right. 'divine. No Norman and no Plantagenet could have kept a closer grip (in reality) on the sceptre of England, and no Anglo- :Saxon could have displayed the strength of immobility more clearly than the first two Georges. This resolution not to be expelled, :coupled oddly with a strong desire to go, would probably have sustained the first George on the throne, even had Mar and Der- wentwater's enterprises become much more formidable than they :did, as it alone kept the second George on his throne when Charles Edward reached Derby.
The temperament of George I., as we have already intimated, was phlegmatic. His temper was generally calm and equable, but his occasional fits of passion were in proportion violent and 'ungovernable. Without being niturally implacable, he required to have a good reason given for forgiving any one, just as he believed it impossible he could have become obnoxious to him without real provocation received. One of his least reputable quarrels was with 'his own son, George Augustus, Prince of Wales, not very long :after his own accession to the English Crown. The ostensible -cause of the quarrel was trivial enough ; probably the seeds of estrangement had been sown for some time. Jealousy of the :comparative popularity of his son in England during his Regency -for his father may have contributed to the breach, and possibly the recollection that he was Sophia Dorothea's son, who was teen in defending his mother's reputation, may have inspired dis- trust. During the continuance of the quarrel the conduct of neither father nor son was very seemly, but at length, in 1720, through the mediation of counsellors and friends, the breach was 'at least outwardly healed, all England took the opportunity of :getting drunk for joy, and the officers of the two Courts, -according to one of the contemporary newspapers, publicly -" kissed, embraced, and congratulated one another upon this Auspicious reconciliation."
The features of King George were heavy and rather uninteresting, but not unintelligent—the intelligence of a shrewd but narrow- minded cynic. He had little dignity either in his person or bear- ing, and his dislike of display and public ceremonial did much to ;impair his popularity. He had been a kind, considerate ruler in Hanover, and was much beloved and respected by all classes in that part of his dominions; but though he wished well to the English people, he neither understood nor liked them, and sought refuge from them in the society of Germans of a low social class And tastes. The proportion which the grossness of the 'tastes and habits which George brought with him from Hanover 'bore to that which was sanctioned by the contemporary standard of English society has probably been somewhat exaggerated by writers of the present day. The society was not very refined 'which produced and tolerated the writings of Swift. The French 'varnish indeed under which vice appeared in the reign of -Charles II. had worn off, and they who were accustomed to what -was talked and done in England in " good society" during the reigns of William and Anne had little pretence for lifting nip their hands and eyes at the grossness of George of Hanover :and his courtiers. But it is the characteristic of all social offenders to hate exaggerations of their own offences, and the :somewhat coarser daub presented by the foreign artist offended the 'moral astheticiam of the English fine-gentleman. The conven- tional reticences and proprieties were not the same in the two countries, and a transgression on such a point as this was more keenly felt than the substantial delinquency. George had the 'conventional morality as well as the conventional ideas of good- breeding of his own country. The Hanoverian Court version of the -Commandments agreed pretty much with that which had been /long established in England, in viewing with indulgence the sins of seduction and adultery in its princes and great men ; tut then George brought over to England two foreign (mistresses, one of whom was uncomely in English eyes ,for her height, and the other for her breadth, and both of whom loved the English money of their royal patron as if they bad had a right to it as Englishwomen. So both they and their patron were ridiculed and hated and vilified by the advocates of legitimate English immorality. In truth, the conduct and Courts of the first Georges may have fostered the grossness of English society, but they certainly did not originate it.
Some qualities at least George I. had which recommend him to our respect as an English sovereign. He desired to do justice, he kept his word sacredly, he had unquestionable physical courage, and he was morally brave so far as his lights allowed him to see wherein moral courage lay. If his understanding was limited and his education sadly deficient, he had the sense to choose able and well- meaning councillors, and wisdom enough to seek their advice, and generally to act on it when given. If he was but an indifferent Christian, he was at any rate an honest King.
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