Who was King George II of Great Britain. What were his major accomplishments during his reign. How did he impact British history and politics. What challenges did he face as monarch. How did his reign compare to other British monarchs.
The Early Life and Ascension of King George II
Born on November 10, 1683, in Hanover, Germany, George Augustus would later become King George II of Great Britain and Ireland. As the only son of the Elector of Hanover, his path to the British throne was set in motion by the Act of Settlement 1701, which established the Hanoverian succession.
In 1705, George married Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, a union that would produce nine children and prove influential throughout his reign. Their relationship was marked by mutual affection and respect, with Caroline often serving as a mediator in political matters.
The Transition to British Royalty
George’s life took a significant turn in 1714 when his father, George I, ascended to the British throne. This event catapulted the young prince into the role of heir apparent, and he was subsequently created Prince of Wales. However, the relationship between father and son was notoriously strained, setting the stage for political tensions that would persist throughout their lives.
Political Landscape and Key Relationships
The political climate during George II’s time as Prince of Wales and later as king was complex and often tumultuous. His residence, Leicester House, became a focal point for opposition to his father’s rule, attracting dissident Whigs and creating a rival court.
The Walpole Factor
Robert Walpole, a key political figure of the era, played a pivotal role in the relationship between George I and his son. Initially aligning himself with the Prince of Wales, Walpole later orchestrated a reconciliation between father and son. This maneuver, while temporarily costing him the prince’s favor, ultimately secured Walpole’s position in the administration.
When George II ascended to the throne in 1727, it was Caroline’s influence that kept Walpole in office, demonstrating the Queen’s significant political acumen and impact on governmental affairs.
Challenges and Triumphs of George II’s Reign
George II’s reign was marked by both domestic and international challenges, as well as notable achievements that would shape British history.
The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745
One of the most significant threats to George II’s rule came in the form of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Led by Charles Edward Stuart, known as the “Young Pretender,” this uprising sought to restore the Stuart dynasty to the British throne. Despite initial successes in Scotland, the rebellion was ultimately crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, solidifying George II’s position and weakening Jacobite claims to the throne.
Military Engagements and the Last Fighting King
George II holds the distinction of being the last British monarch to personally lead troops into battle. In 1743, at the Battle of Dettingen during the War of the Austrian Succession, the king demonstrated his military prowess and personal courage. This event, while perhaps anachronistic in the context of evolving warfare, served to bolster George’s reputation and reinforce the monarchy’s connection to military leadership.
Foreign Policy and Continental Interests
George II’s reign saw Britain increasingly involved in European affairs, often influenced by the king’s dual role as Elector of Hanover.
The War of the Austrian Succession
Britain’s entry into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) under George II’s guidance drew criticism from those who believed the king was prioritizing Hanoverian interests over those of Britain. This perception highlighted the ongoing tension between George’s responsibilities as British monarch and his attachment to his German homeland.
The Seven Years’ War
While George II took a less active role in politics during the latter part of his reign, Britain’s involvement in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) proved to be a defining period. Overseen largely by William Pitt the Elder, this conflict saw significant expansion of British influence globally, particularly in India and North America.
Domestic Politics and the Role of Parliament
George II’s reign witnessed the continued evolution of the British parliamentary system and the balance of power between the monarchy and elected officials.
The Civil List and Financial Arrangements
Upon George II’s accession, Robert Walpole secured a Civil List allowance of £800,000 from Parliament, a sum considerably larger than previous monarchs had received. This financial arrangement underscored the growing influence of Parliament in controlling royal finances and, by extension, royal power.
The Rise of the Prime Minister
While the office of Prime Minister was not yet formally established, figures like Robert Walpole and later William Pitt the Elder wielded significant influence during George II’s reign. This period saw the gradual shift towards a system where the monarch increasingly relied on ministers to manage the day-to-day affairs of government.
Cultural and Scientific Advancements
Despite George II’s reputation for being less interested in intellectual pursuits than his wife Caroline, his reign coincided with significant cultural and scientific developments in Britain.
The Enlightenment in Britain
The mid-18th century saw the flowering of Enlightenment thought in Britain, with advancements in philosophy, science, and the arts. While George II may not have been a direct patron of these endeavors, the stable political climate of his reign provided a fertile ground for intellectual progress.
Expansion of British Influence
The military successes of figures like Robert Clive in India and James Wolfe in Canada during George II’s reign laid the groundwork for the expansion of British imperial power. These developments would have far-reaching consequences for global geopolitics in the centuries to come.
Legacy and Historical Assessment
George II’s reign, lasting from 1727 to 1760, left a complex legacy that continues to be debated by historians.
Stability and Continuity
Despite personal conflicts and political challenges, George II’s reign provided a period of relative stability for Britain. The Hanoverian succession was firmly established, and the threat of Jacobite restoration was effectively neutralized.
The Foundation of Empire
The territorial gains and military successes of George II’s reign, particularly in the latter years, set the stage for Britain’s emergence as a global superpower. The expansion in North America and India would shape the course of British history for centuries to come.
Personal Life and Family Dynamics
George II’s personal life was marked by both strong relationships and bitter rivalries, often mirroring the political landscape of his time.
The Influence of Queen Caroline
Queen Caroline’s role in George II’s reign cannot be overstated. Her intelligence, political acumen, and ability to mediate between the king and his ministers were crucial in maintaining political stability. Her death in 1737 was a significant personal and political loss for George II.
The Rift with Prince Frederick
Mirroring his own relationship with his father, George II had a strained relationship with his eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales. This family discord had political implications, with Frederick becoming a focal point for opposition to his father’s policies. Frederick’s premature death in 1751 meant that George II was succeeded by his grandson, who would become George III.
King George II’s reign spanned a crucial period in British history, marked by significant political, military, and cultural developments. While often overshadowed by the reigns of his predecessor and successor, George II’s time on the throne saw the consolidation of Hanoverian rule, the expansion of British global influence, and the continued evolution of the constitutional monarchy. His legacy, complex and multifaceted, continues to influence our understanding of 18th-century Britain and its place in world history.
BBC – History – George II
George II
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George was elector of Hanover and second Hanoverian king of Great Britain and Ireland.
George was born in Hanover, Germany on 10 November 1683, the only son of the elector of Hanover. In 1705 he married Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach, and they had nine children.
In 1714, George’s father succeeded to the British throne, and created George prince of Wales. The relationship between father and son was already poor and the prince’s London residence, Leicester House, became a rival court and focus for a dissident Whig group which included Robert Walpole. He encouraged a reconciliation between father and son. This led to Walpole’s inclusion in George I’s administration, whereupon he lost the prince’s favour. Only Caroline’s intervention kept Walpole in office when the prince succeeded to the throne in 1727. He cemented his position by securing George a Civil List (allowance) from parliament of £800,000, considerably more than previous monarchs had received.
Walpole also won acknowledgement of George’s legitimacy from many influential Tories who supported the exiled Stuart pretender to the English throne. As a result, no senior politician deserted George’s cause during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Charles Edward Stuart, the ‘Young Pretender’ landed in Scotland but, after some initial success, was defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
George seemed destined to imitate his father, quarrelling with his son Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, who in turn became a leader of an anti-administration faction. War broke out with Spain in 1739. In 1742 Walpole, who had dominated government since 1721, resigned. George quickly found another mentor in John Carteret who, with George, brought England into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), prompting accusations that he was subordinating English interests to those of George’s German possessions. In 1743, George led his troops into battle against the French at Dettingen, the last British king to fight in battle.
During the last decade of his life George took little interest in politics. Britain’s involvement in the Seven Years’ War (1756 – 1763) was largely overseen by William Pitt the Elder. This period also saw the expansion of British influence in India and Canada with the military successes of Robert Clive and James Wolfe respectively.
George died on 25 October 1760. Frederick had died in 1751, leaving George’s grandson to inherit the throne.
Columbia University in the City of New York
In 1897, the university moved from Forty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where it had stood for forty years, to its present location on Morningside Heights at 116th Street and Broadway. Seth Low, the president of the University at the time of the move, sought to create an academic village in a more spacious setting. Charles Follen McKim of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White modeled the new campus after the Athenian agora. The Columbia campus comprises the largest single collection of McKim, Mead & White buildings in existence.
The architectural centerpiece of the campus is Low Memorial Library, named in honor of Seth Low’s father. Built in the Roman classical style, it appears in the New York City Register of Historic Places. The building today houses the University’s central administration offices and the visitors center.
A broad flight of steps descends from Low Library to an expansive plaza, a popular place for students to gather, and from there to College Walk, a promenade that bisects the central campus. Beyond College Walk is the South Campus, where Butler Library, the university’s main library, stands. South Campus is also the site of many of Columbia College’s facilities, including student residences, Alfred Lerner Hall (the student center), and the College’s administrative offices and classroom buildings, along with the Graduate School of Journalism.
To the north of Low Library stands Pupin Hall, which in 1966 was designated a national historic landmark in recognition of the atomic research undertaken there by Columbia’s scientists beginning in 1925.
To the east is St. Paul’s Chapel, which is listed with the New York City Register of Historic Places.
Many newer buildings surround the original campus. Among the most impressive are the Sherman Fairchild Center for the Life Sciences and the Morris A. Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Science Research. Two miles to the north of Morningside Heights is the 20-acre campus of the Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, overlooking the Hudson River. Among the most prominent buildings on the site are the 20-story Julius and Armand Hammer Health Sciences Center, the William Black Medical Research Building, and the 17-story tower of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1989, The Presbyterian Hospital opened the Milstein Hospital Building, a 745-bed facility that incorporates the very latest advances in medical technology and patient care.
To the west is the New York State Psychiatric Institute; east of Broadway is the Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park, which includes the Mary Woodard Lasker Biomedical Research Building, the Audubon Business Technology Center, Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion, and the Irving Cancer Research Center as well as other institutions of cutting-edge scientific and medical research.
In addition to its New York City campuses, Columbia has two facilities outside of Manhattan. Nevis Laboratories, established in 1947, is Columbia’s primary center for the study of high-energy experimental particle and nuclear physics. Located in Irvington, New York, Nevis is situated on a 60-acre estate originally owned by the son of Alexander Hamilton.
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory was established in 1949 in Palisades, New York, and is a leading research institution focusing on global climate change, earthquakes, volcanoes, nonrenewable resources, and environmental hazards. It examines the planet from its core to its atmosphere, across every continent and every ocean.
George III (1738–1820) – Encyclopedia Virginia
Early Years and Education
George William Frederick was born in London on June 4, 1738, the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Frederick died on March 20, 1751, and George II, George’s grandfather, bestowed Frederick’s title upon twelve-year-old George a month later.
On October 25, 1760, he succeeded George II as king of Great Britain and Ireland, duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and prince-elector of Hanover. He was the third ruler in the royal British house of Hanover, a Germanic dynasty that had come to the English throne in 1714, but the first to be born in England. “Born and educated in this country I glory in the name of Britain,” he exclaimed in his first speech from the throne.
Prior to George’s accession, John Stuart, earl of Bute, had served as his tutor, schooling him in the same Whig principles that would nurture America’s Founding Fathers. The goal was to end factionalized politics by encouraging the monarch to act in the national interest, above the partisan fray, thereby avoiding reliance on oligarchic political parties. But Bute also may have nurtured the prince’s natural tendency to be suspicious, hypercritical, and self-righteous: George’s governor noted “a kind of unhappiness in his Temper” that made the young prince “Sullen & Silent.
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On September 8, 1761, at age twenty-three, George III married seventeen-year-old Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; his coronation took place two weeks later on September 22. That year he purchased Buckingham House for Charlotte, which in time became the royal palace of choice when they were in London. Theirs was an affectionate and fruitful union, resulting in fifteen children.
Like his wife, George III was of average intellectual capability. He compensated for this by being thorough, at times obsessively so, in whatever he turned his mind to: book and art collecting, music, astronomy, botany, and clocks and other technology. Such pursuits suggest the importance to him of order and regularity. Unlike his predecessors, who had been born in Hanover and raised as Lutherans, George III was a devout and sincere Anglican. His Christian faith shaped a strong sense of duty and high moral standards to which he held his friends and family members.
Seven Years’ War
During George III’s reign, Britain was a constitutional monarchy.
As such, it was ruled by a cabinet or ministerial government. The term “the Crown” functionally referred to powerful men, acting in the name of king, who controlled parliamentary factions. Throughout the eighteenth century the direct political power of the monarch declined, a development at work since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the passage of the English Bill of Rights, which limited monarchical power, in 1689.
When he came to the throne, George III inherited a ministry that had started the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict with France and Spain, among other powers (the fighting in North America was known as the French and Indian War). The government had borrowed huge sums of money to finance the conflict, which provoked discomfort among the English about the unprecedented level of government debt. Part way through the war, in 1757, a Whig ministry formed under Thomas Pelham-Holles, the duke of Newcastle. Guided by William Pitt (the elder), the king’s first government won the war, but at a high fiscal and political cost.
It was Pitt, seeking the opposing party’s support for the Whig ministry, as much as George III, who drew the Tories—Royalist supporters—into the political center after the king’s accession. But rather than contributing to the goal of eradicating the dominance of politics by the political parties, this development led to increased ministerial instability, which was exacerbated when George III appointed his friend and former tutor Bute prime minister in 1762.
Though he was a dear friend of the king’s, Bute was wildly unpopular with the public, in part because of his rumored (but unlikely) affair with the dowager princess of Wales. His poor health made it difficult for him to focus on his position, and he found it stressful to be in the public eye. He was replaced in 1763 by George Grenville, who introduced the Stamp Act (1765). The act taxed printed materials used in the colonies and was meant to help offset the large cost of the war and of maintaining peace in its aftermath.
Grenville and the king saw eye-to-eye on many issues, including American policy and the prosecution of John Wilkes, a member of Parliament who had repeatedly insulted the king in his radical newspaper, The North Briton. But their personalities clashed, and Grenville fell from power in 1765. His administration gave way to a ministry led by Charles Watson-Wentworth, marquess of Rockingham.
The king firmly believed in choosing his own chief ministers, and it was his practice to let his cabinet formulate policy while counseling his ministers to be firm and resolute. But George III was ambivalent regarding the political firestorm provoked by the Stamp Act. Three American colonies, including Virginia, had sent petitions protesting the legislation; the House of Commons rejected them all, an action that was in turn condemned by the House of Burgesses in the Virginia Resolves (1765). The king favored modifying the act rather than enforcing or completely repealing it, which left parliamentarians who looked to him for their cue perplexed.
To resolve the imbroglio, Rockingham forced the king to choose between repeal and enforcement, and, indeed, George III then urged wavering members of the House of Lords to support repeal. The colonists rejoiced at the news, even erecting a statue of the king in a New York City park. After war with the Americans broke out he was to regret his decision, opining in 1779 that this initial capitulation to American resistance was the first step down the path to revolution.
American Revolution
Rockingham’s tenure, like that of his predecessors, was brief. The king dismissed him in 1766 and replaced him with Pitt, who had accepted a peerage and rose from the House of Commons to the House of Lords as the earl of Chatham. George III’s choice of Pitt, a critic of British taxation of Americans, to lead his government suggests the American problem did not yet loom large in royal calculation. His appointment did not result in the unified government for which George III had hoped: in the move to the House of Lords, Pitt lost the popularity and political influence he’d enjoyed as a member of the House of Commons, became ill, and suffered a nervous breakdown.
The Pitt government marked a turning point in the king’s posture during the American crisis. Prior to 1767 George III had been fundamentally passive, informed about policy by prime ministers rather than helping form it; now he became more involved. In 1767 the Revenue Act, drawn up by Charles Townshend, chancellor of the exchequer, proposed duties on various goods, in particular, tea imported by the East India Company. Several colonies, including Virginia, boycotted the trade goods enumerated in the Townshend duties. The cabinet responded to the crisis by proposing to delete the Townshend duties for colonies like Virginia, which provided revenue for colonial administration, but the king commented that it “would not be proper” given the offensive criticism of the British government in the Virginia Resolves. After Augustus FitzRoy, duke of Grafton (1735–1811), replaced Pitt in 1768, George III encouraged Grafton’s cabinet to reject the prime minister’s proposal to repeal American taxes completely.
From the British metropolitan perspective, a financially sound imperial policy would maintain the fragile peace with France and Spain secured in 1763. But the move toward imperial centralization as the solution to both European and global situations came at just the moment many influential Americans wanted more freedom from Britain, not less, and the shifting British policies alienated the colonists further. In 1768 a new office, Secretary of State for the Colonies, was created to focus on American issues.
It was in this context that in 1770 the king asked Frederick North, earl of Guilford to form a government. Lord North’s ministry, as measured by longevity, was better than any during the previous decade. He remained prime minister for twelve years, both because he and George III remained on good terms, but also because divisive issues such as the Wilkes affair and the Falklands crisis with Spain had faded away. During North’s tenure George III moved away from the more active role he had assumed earlier.
North would have preferred a complete repeal of the Townshend duties, but Parliament pushed for a firm hand. The Boston Tea Party, one response to the Tea Act of 1773, led to further hardening of the parliamentary opposition regarding a compromise with the American colonists: the series of laws known as the Coercive or Intolerable Acts. The king supported taking a tough stand toward the colonists, especially in light of the First Continental Congress‘s intransigence regarding Parliament’s right to legislate for the colonies: “The dye is now cast,” he wrote to North in 1774. “The colonies must either submit or triumph. I do not wish to come to severer measures, but we must not retreat.”
Some historians believe that the king was unable to recognize the impact the Intolerable Acts would have on the colonists. George III was hardly a belligerent; his desire for a quick end to the Seven Years’ War had established his reputation as a peacemaker, and he believed throughout the American Revolution that “a majority of the people of America” still wanted to be British subjects.
He ultimately accepted the North cabinet’s more conciliatory policy to exempt colonies that provided revenues for their civil and military affairs from British taxation. But after the outbreak of armed conflict at the battles of Lexington and Concord, George III entered into the cabinet’s discussion of strategy and played a critical role in encouraging North to remain in office when the prime minister repeatedly wished to resign.
In July 1775, the conservative Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson persuaded the Second Continental Congress to send George III what became known as the Olive Branch Petition, asking him to intervene in Parliament on the colonists’ behalf. The king refused to receive the petition and in August proclaimed that the Americans “were engaged in open and avowed rebellion.” His announcement solidified the growing perception among rebelling colonists that their enemy was not Parliament or the king’s ministry, but rather the king himself. When Congress issued the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the document charged George III with violating the colonists’ rights, calling him “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
” Upon hearing the Declaration read aloud, George Washington‘s troops and a group of civilians tore down the statue of George III that had been erected in New York City after the Stamp Act repeal.
Policy and personality combined to form the king’s attitude toward the American conflict. In 1777 he wrote to Lord North that “the too great leniency of this country increased their pride and encouraged them to rebel,” a stance that reflects his unwillingness to compromise and inability to see things from another’s point of view. But he also deeply believed that if one part of the empire “cast off its dependency then the others will infallibly follow,” and that failing to take a strong stand against the Americans would weaken Britain in the eyes of her European competitors—so his understanding of his nation in the context of global affairs cannot be discounted.
Following the British surrender at the Battles of Saratoga, France and then Spain entered the war in support of America. This prompted heated debate in Parliament over whether to increase troop strength overseas, move the fighting from land to sea, or withdraw from the conflict altogether.
George III still hoped for victory until the debacle at Yorktown in October 1781. Following a House of Commons vote to suspend military operations in North America, Lord North almost lost a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons. On March 20, 1782, he announced his resignation.
George reluctantly accepted the new government of Lord Rockingham and William Petty, earl of Shelburne, which made peace with the American rebels. But the administration collapsed over the terms of the Treaty of Paris, which granted the Americans more territory than had been fought over and failed to protect Loyalists. Rockingham died suddenly on July 1, 1782, and in 1783 North returned in alliance with the duke of Portland and Charles James Fox. The king despised Fox, even drafting an abdication speech in protest of the current government, but he never delivered it. Instead he dismissed Fox and North and appointed William Pitt (the younger) as prime minister. Pitt’s victory in the 1784 general election strengthened the government’s position in Parliament; simultaneously, the end of the American conflict removed a divisive political issue.
Even the king accepted the outcome of events, telling John Adams, the first ambassador of a sovereign America, that he desired to “meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.”
Later Years
In the 1780s George III experienced the first signs of an illness—possibly porphyria, a genetic disease that can cause mental disturbances—that would plague him for the remainder of his days. During this decade political lines were redrawn between moderate Whigs and Tories, who together supported Pitt, and the more radical Whig opposition, led by Fox. In 1788 and 1789 the king’s mental condition and health were so unstable that the parties fought over whether his son the Prince of Wales should become regent; the king’s recovery put an end to the crisis.
Early in the 1790s war with revolutionary France broke out; this in turn encouraged the Irish Rebellion of 1798. George III played an important role in shaping the outcome of the latter crisis, advocating suppression of the rebellion and then unification of the parliaments of Britain and Ireland.
The Acts of Union of 1800 did just that, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Shortly thereafter, Pitt resigned because of a disagreement with the king over the political emancipation of Roman Catholics. Pitt had supported emancipation as a concession to Ireland; the king felt that granting it would be in violation of his coronation oath to protect the Church of England.
Earlier historians have argued that George III was trying to turn the clock back and reestablish monarchical authority lost to Parliament following the Glorious Revolution. Examining his role in determining policy regarding the American colonies, it is now clear that until the revolution the king backed his governments rather than dictating to them. George III defended parliamentary authority over the British empire by pushing his leading ministers to win the war. In both cases he had deep support in Parliament for his actions. Although he wished to restore the monarch’s power to determine his ministers, once he chose them they were allowed a free hand to govern the kingdom.
From 1780 to 1810 the king became the symbol for a national revival and robust patriotism that only deepened following the loss of America and the rise of conflict with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. In these years “God Save the King” (ca. 1745) pushed out “Rule Britannia” (1740) as the national anthem. The public saw him as Farmer George, a devout family man with simple tastes and a keen interest in agriculture. In reality, his strict morals and asceticism were often a source of conflict between the king and his family, especially his son George, Prince of Wales, whom he viewed as a profligate.
The king’s Golden Jubilee (the fiftieth year of his reign) was popularly celebrated in 1809, but soon afterward George III’s mental state collapsed. This was probably provoked by the death of his favorite daughter, Amelia, from tuberculosis in 1810. He completely lost his sight and hearing; one of his doctors commented that “he appears to be living in another world and has lost almost all interest in the concerns of this.
” On February 5, 1811, he was declared unfit to rule and his son George was appointed as regent. George III died—deaf, blind, and lame—on January 29, 1820; he was buried two weeks later in a private ceremony in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle.
King George II – Historic UK
In October 1727, a second Hanoverian king was crowned at Westminster Abbey, George II, succeeding his father and continuing the battle of establishing this new dynastic royal family in British society.
George II’s life, like that of his father, began in the German city of Hanover, where he was born in October 1683, the son of George, Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later King George I) and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Celle. Sadly for young George, his parents had an unhappy marriage, leading to claims of adultery on both sides and in 1694, the damage proved irrevocable and the marriage was terminated.
His father, George I did not however simply divorce Sophia, instead he confined her to Ahlden House where she lived for the rest of her life, isolated and unable to see her children ever again.
Whilst his parents acrimonious parting led to the imprisonment of his mother, young George received a well-rounded education, learning French first, followed by German, English and Italian. He would in time become well-versed in the subject of all things military as well as learning the ins and outs of diplomacy, preparing him for his role in the monarchy.
He also went on to find a happy match in love, much unlike his father, when he was betrothed to Caroline of Ansbach whom he married in Hanover.
Having received an education in military affairs, George was more than willing to participate in the war against France, however his father was reticent in allowing his participation until he produced his own heir.
In 1707, his father’s wishes were met when Caroline gave birth to a baby boy named Frederick. Following the birth of his son, in 1708 George participated in the Battle of Oudenarde. Still in his twenties, he served under the Duke of Marlborough, on whom he left a lasting impression.
His valour would be duly noted and his interest in war would be replicated once more when he assumed his role as King George II in Britain and participated at the Battle in Dettingen at the age of sixty.
Meanwhile back in Hanover, George and Caroline had three more children, all of whom were girls.
By 1714 back in Britain, Queen Anne’s health took a turn for the worst and through the Act of Settlement in 1701 which called for a Protestant lineage in the royal family, George’s father was to be next in line. Upon the death of his mother and second cousin, Queen Anne, he became King George I.
With his father now king, young George sailed to England in September 1714, arriving in a formal procession. He was granted the title Prince of Wales.
London was a complete culture shock, with Hanover much smaller and much less populated than England. George immediately became popular and with his ability to speak English, rivalled his father, George I.
In July 1716, King George I briefly returned to his beloved Hanover, leaving George with limited powers to govern in his absence.
In this time, his popularity surged as he travelled around the country and allowed the general public to see him. Even a threat against his life by a lone assailant at the theatre in Drury Lane led to his profile being raised even further. Such events divided father and son further, leading to antagonism and resentment.
Such animosity continued to grow as father and son came to represent opposing factions within the royal court. George’s royal residence at Leicester House became a bedrock for opposition to the king.
Meanwhile, as the political picture began to change, the rise of Sir Robert Walpole changed the state of play for both parliament and the monarchy. In 1720, Walpole, who had previously been allied with George, Prince of Wales, called for a reconciliation between father and son. Such an act was merely done for public approval as behind closed doors, George was still not able to become regent when his father was away and neither were his three daughters released from his father’s care.
In this time, George and his wife chose to remain in the background, waiting for his chance to take the throne.
In June 1727, his father King George I died in Hanover, and George succeeded him as king. His first step as king was his refusal to attend his father’s funeral in Germany which actually won high praise back in England as it showed his loyalty to Britain.
George II’s reign began, surprisingly, much like a continuation of that of his father, especially politically. At this time, Walpole was the dominant figure in British politics and led the way in policy-making. For the first twelve years of George’s reign, Prime Minister Walpole helped to keep England stable and secure from threats of international warfare, however this was not to last.
By the end of George’s reign, a very different international picture had unfolded leading to global expansion and involvement in almost continuous warfare.
After 1739, Britain found itself embroiled in various conflicts with its European neighbours.
George II, with his military background was keen to engage in war, which stood in direct contrast to Walpole’s position.
With politicians exercising more restraint in the matter, an Anglo-Spanish truce was agreed, however it did not last and soon conflict with Spain escalated. The unusually named War of Jenkins’ Ear took place in New Granada and involved a stand-off in trading ambitions and opportunities between the English and Spanish in the Caribbean.
By 1742 however, the conflict had become incorporated into a much larger war known as the War of the Austrian Succession, embroiling almost all of the European powers.
Emerging from the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740, the conflict essentially broke out over the right of Maria Theresa, Charles’s daughter, to succeed him.
George was keen to involve himself in the proceedings and whilst spending the summer in Hanover, became involved in the ongoing diplomatic disputes. He involved Britain and Hanover by launching support for Maria Theresa against the challenges from Prussia and Bavaria.
The conflict reached its conclusion with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which largely led to discontent from all those involved and eventually would precipitate further violence. In the meantime, the terms of the agreement for Britain would include an exchange of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia for Madras in India.
Furthermore, after exchanging territory, France and Britain’s competing interests in acquiring overseas possessions would require a commission in order to resolve the claims in North America.
Whilst war dominated the European continent, back at home George II’s poor relationship with his son Frederick began to manifest itself in much the same manner as he and his father’s not too long ago.
Frederick was made Prince of Wales when he was twenty years of age, however the rift between him and his parents continued to grow. The next step in this divisive chasm between father and son, was the formation of a rival court which allowed Frederick to focus on politically opposing his father.
In 1741 he actively campaigned in the British general election: Walpole failed to buy off the prince, leading the once politically stable Walpole to lose the support he needed.
Frederick, Prince of Wales
Whilst Prince Frederick had succeeded in opposing Walpole, the opposition which had garnered the support of the prince known as the “Patriot Boys” quickly switched their allegiance to the king after Walpole was ousted.
Walpole retired in 1742 after an illustrious twenty year political career. Spencer Compton, Lord Wilmington took over but only lasted a year before Henry Pelham took over as the head of government.
With Walpole’s era coming to an end, George II’s approach would prove more aggressive, particularly in dealing with Britain’s biggest rival, the French.
Meanwhile, closer to home the Jacobites, those who supported the Stuart succession claims, were about to have their swan song when in 1745, the “Young Pretender”, Charles Edward Stuart, also known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie” made one final bid to depose George and the Hanoverians.
Sadly for him and his Catholic supporters, their attempts to overthrow ended in failure.
Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie”.
The Jacobites had made persistent efforts to reinstate the usurped Catholic Stuart line, however this final attempt marked the end of their hopes and dashed their dreams once and for all. George II as well as parliament had been suitably strengthened in their positions, now was the time to aim for bigger and better things.
In order to engage as a global player, Britain immediately drew itself into conflict with France. The invasion of Minorca, which was being held by the British, would lead to the outbreak of the Seven Years War. Whilst there were disappointments on the British side, by 1763 harsh blows to French supremacy had forced them to cede control in North America as well as lose important trading posts in Asia.
As Britain ascended the ranks in the international sphere of power, George’s health declined and in October 1760 he died at the age of seventy-six.
Prince Frederick had predeceased him nine years earlier and so the throne passed to his grandson.
George II had reigned during a turbulent time of transition for the nation. His reign saw Britain take a path of international expansion and outward looking ambition, whilst finally putting to rest the challenges to the throne and parliamentary stability. Britain was becoming a world power and it looked as if the Hanoverian monarchy was here to stay.
Jessica Brain is a freelance writer specialising in history. Based in Kent and a lover of all things historical.
Published: April 27, 2021.
King’s College · George Washington’s Mount Vernon
King’s College in New York City (today Columbia University), was created in 1754 by a Royal charter from King George II as an Anglican college, headed by the Church of England. At its founding King’s was the only college in New York. John (“Jackie”) Parke Custis, George Washington’s stepson, attended King’s College from May to December 1773.
Controversy surrounded the college from its founding. The Church of England established King’s in response to the challenges posed by other Protestant institutions of higher learning, such as the Presbyterian College of New Jersey (today Princeton University) and the Congregationalist colleges of Harvard and Yale. Non-Anglicans perceived King’s College as a threat to religious freedom because of its connections to Britain’s state church. This fear persisted for years after the college opened. In March 1773, Samuel Cooper (President of the College 1763-1775) wrote to Jonathan Boucher (a prominent Anglican minister in America) that “many of their Missionaries, from northern into the southern provinces, make it their Business. . . to decry this Institution by all possible Means; because they are convinced, from its very Constitution – (being in the hands only of Churchmen, which is very far indeed from being the Case of any other College to the northward of Virginia – and I know of none to the southward of it – they are convinced) that it must eventually prove one of the firmest Supports to the Church of England in America.
”1 The college combated its reputation by taking special measures to welcome non-Anglicans such as assuring parents that teaching would include ideas from all accepted Protestant denominations and that prayer would be directly from Holy Scripture.
King’s College struggled in its early years with consistently low numbers of enrolled students. In 1774, Harvard had eight times as many pupils, and Yale four. The location of the college was one factor limiting enrollment. At the time the college’s founding, New York was surrounded to the north and west by forest which was still inhabited by Native Americans. In addition, King’s College had to compete for students with several surrounding colleges in neighboring colonies.
John Parke Custis attended King’s College at the will of his stepfather George Washington, who placed a high value on a formal education, not having received one himself. Washington took the decision of choosing a college for the primary heir to his estate very seriously, and consulted Boucher, who was also Custis’s childhood tutor.
After ruling out the College of William and Mary in Virginia, Washington deliberated between the College of Philadelphia (today the University of Pennsylvania) and King’s College. Boucher recommended King’s College for social reasons and to answer George Washington’s desire for Jackie to broaden his perspective. According to Boucher, New York City offered Custis better opportunities to mix in elite military and social circles.2
On May 10, 1773, Custis and Washington left Mount Vernon for King’s College. Upon his arrival, Custis received special treatment, including a greeting from the principle and an invitation to eat with the professors. He wrote home pleased with “how agreeably everything is settled.”3 However, Jackie did not stay at the college for long. On December 15, 1773, Washington wrote to Cooper explaining that his stepson would not be returning.4 A number of factors led to the decision. First, Custis had become engaged to Eleanor Calvert, a member of a prominent family in Maryland.
While Washington was not entirely supportive of the engagement because the couple was so young, Martha Washington supported it enthusiastically. Second, Jackie’s sister, Martha (“Patsy”) Parke Custis, died suddenly while he had been away at King’s College, so he, understandably, wanted to be with his family at that difficult time. Finally, Jackie had struggled in school, often choosing to skip lessons to ride or shoot.
During the American Revolution, King’s College was the only American college to stay loyal to the Crown. Still, the college did produce some notable revolutionaries, including Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. The Revolutionary War severely disrupted activities at the college. In April 1776 the College Hall was commandeered by American troops for use as a military hospital, a process which saw much of its library and scientific equipment taken and spread across the city and instruction cease. After the British regained control of the city in September of that year, they also used the hall as a military hospital.
In 1784, after America secured its independence, a charter reestablished the college with conditions reflecting the ideas of the Revolution. The charter included efforts to make the board less Anglican and a name change to Columbia College.
Mollie McHale
King’s College London
Notes:
1. Enclosed Letter from Myles Cooper to Jonathan Boucher in a letter to George Washington from Boucher, April 8th 1773, The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, ed. Theodore J. Crackel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008)
2. Jonathan Boucher to George Washington, January 19th 1773, The Papers of George Washington
3. John Parke Custis to George Washington, July 5th 1773, The Papers of George Washington
4. George Washington to Myles Cooper, December 15th 1773, The Papers of George Washington
Bibliography:
Brady, Patricia, Martha Washington: An American Life, (New York, 2006)
Landsman, Ned, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture 1680-1760, (Cornell University Press, 1997)
Longmore, Paul K.
, The Invention of George Washington, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1988)
McCaughey, Robert A., Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York 1754-2004, (Columbia University Press, 2003)
Unger, Harlow G., The Unexpected George Washington: His Private Life, (New Jersey, 2006)
Queen Caroline of Great Britain (1683-1737)
Caroline was the daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, who died when she was three. Her mother, Eleonore Erdmuthe of Saxe-Eisenach married again (twice) but died when Caroline was thirteen. Caroline and her brother eventually moved to the guardianship of Frederick I of Prussia, and his wife Sophia Charlotte (sister of George I). Caroline married George Augustus, the future George II, in 1705 and moved to England with him in 1714 when he became Prince of Wales. She became Queen on his accession in 1727.
Caroline spent her teenage years at the Prussian court in Berlin, renowned for its patronage of artists and architects and its lively intellectual life.
Caroline was surrounded by a circle of writers and intellectuals, and shared with them a taste for the visual arts. Her intelligence and keen interest in science and art was recognised in her own lifetime. The French philosopher, Voltaire, said of her that she was ‘born to encourage the arts and the well-being of mankind’. One of her building projects in the garden at Richmond in the early 1730s displayed five busts of leading English scientists and philosophers, demonstrating her sustained interest in these areas of scholarship.
Caroline’s interest in art overlapped with her interest in history and several of her early purchases and displays of paintings demonstrated an interest in the portraits of previous monarchs. She acquired portraits of Tudor kings and queens, and hung them, along with works already in the collection, in her private rooms at Kensington Palace. She also commissioned paintings on historical subjects such as the life of Henry V. While this may demonstrate an interest in creating visual continuity of kingship, legitimising the rule of the House of Hanover, it was clearly also a personal and intellectual interest as well.
Caroline later commissioned Rysbrack in 1735 to make a series of 11 busts of medieval and Tudor monarchs for her new library at St James’s (although only three now survive).
One of the greatest treasures in the Royal Collection is the collection of Holbein drawings. Caroline had rediscovered these and had them taken out of their bound volume and framed so that she could display them. While not ideal in terms of conservation, this demonstrated a keen awareness of the quality of the works. She is likely to have been behind the acquisition of the Holbein portrait of Sir Henry Guildford during the reign of George II.
Caroline was also a keen collector of miniatures, cameos and intaglios again with an excellent eye for quality of execution and interesting or historical subject matter.
Although her building and landscaping commissions were relatively few, she commissioned Charles Bridgeman to redesign the gardens at Richmond, and William Kent to build Merlin’s Cave (a thatched Gothic structure) and a hermitage, neither of which survives.
She also commissioned Kent to erect a library building at St James’s (1736–7).
Consort of George II
A President and a King, George Washington and King George III, in a Dangerous Year
This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Library’s Manuscript Division.
A print of busts of King George III (left) and George Washington (right), circa 1780–1820.
For both George Washington and King George III of England, the summer of 1788 began a year shaped by illness and worry. Even though the sources of their troubles differed, each George had reason to look anxiously across the Atlantic.
That summer, George III began what would be his first prolonged bout of madness. It is uncertain what he had, but the letters, reports and diaries of the doctors and courtiers who surrounded him describe his symptoms. These included stomach pains, rashes, lameness, blurry vision, sleeplessness and discolored urine. His psychological symptoms were even more frightening: He chattered rapidly, incessantly, delusionally, even obscenely.
Through the fall, the king’s condition fluctuated. By November, he was unfit to rule, and Parliament began to debate a bill that would have allowed the Prince of Wales, who was allied with his father’s political opponents, to rule as regent. Parliament, like the king’s household, was in turmoil.
That same summer, the United States ratified its Constitution. By the fall, as the king was falling deeper into illness, George Washington learned that his contemporaries expected him to agree to become the first president of the United States. Washington expressed his dismay in letters to his friends.
To Benjamin Lincoln, who had been one of his generals, he wrote that if he was “constrained to accept, I call Heaven to witness, that this very act would be the greatest sacrafice of my personal feelings & wishes that ever I have been called upon to make.” To Henry Knox, who would be his secretary of war, Washington wrote that he felt like “a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quite a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties.
”
A view of a triumphal arch erected on Gray’s Ferry Bridge outside Philadelphia to receive the soon-to-be-inaugurated George Washington.
As Washington prepared to become president, he learned about the king’s madness from his European correspondents. One of these, Gouverneur Morris, had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and was now in Paris. He reported that the king had Washington on his mind.
“By the Bye,” Morris wrote, “in the melancholy Situation to which the poor King of England has been reduced there were, I am told, in Relation to you some whimsical Circumstances.” In one of these, “the Defender of the faith, in one of his Capricios, conceived himself to be no less a Personage than George Washington at the Head of the american Army. This shews that you have done Something or other which sticks most terribly in his Stomach.”
Was this true? Or was it gossip that Morris picked up in a country on the verge of revolution, where people were happy to spread stories about the frailties of kings? These stories do not appear in the writings of people around George III. Yet, Charlotte Papendiek, wife and daughter of courtiers, confirmed in her diary that the loss of the American colonies was still on the king’s mind five years after the end of the war.
She recounted that on being told that Lord North, who had been prime minister during the American Revolution, had been to see him, the king said, “[H]e, poor fellow, has lost his sight, and I my mind. Yet we meant well to the Americans; just to punish them with a few bloody noses, and then make bows for the mutual happiness of the two countries. … We lost America. Tell him not to call again; I shall never see him.”
In February 1789, the king began to recover. On April 23, a service of thanksgiving was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. One week later, on April 30, 1789, Washington was inaugurated in New York. In his inaugural address Washington said in public what he had been saying all year in private: “Among the vicissitudes incident to life,” he told his hearers, “no event could have filled me with greater anxieties” than learning he had been elected president.
The Federal Gazette, a Philadelphia newspaper, reported on a single page on May 2, 1789, news of both King George’s recovery (above) and George Washington’s inauguration (below).
As president of the Constitutional Convention, Washington had already had a hand in shaping the office of president of the United States. Now, as he filled the seat, he and the new government were responsible for starting the federal machinery. Together, they shaped the presidency in reaction to the monarchy while at the same time, as former British subjects, it persisted in their minds as a model.
While Congress debated whether Washington should be called “His Elective Majesty” or “His Highness the President of the United States of America,” Washington wondered how to divide his power and authority as president from his status as a private person. He wrote vice-president John Adams, treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton and others for advice.
Adams reminded Washington that the presidency “by its legal Authority, defined by the Constitution, has no equal in the World, excepting those only which are held by crowned Heads,” and that it would be hard for the new nation to uphold its dignity and authority in the world without at least some “Splendor and Majisty.”
“Huzzah, the king is well” reads the motto on this tea set created to celebrate King George’s recovery. Royal Collection Trust.
Hamilton suggested a weekly levee, or reception. The Washingtons settled on two per week. Abigail Adams, who attended the levees of both king and president, wrote that the president’s “grace dignity & ease” left the “Royal George far behind him.” Despite the ease he projected, however, Washington worried that his behavior might be taken for “an ostentatious imitation, or mimickry of Royalty.”
The summer after his inauguration, it was Washington’s turn to be ill. A tumor on his thigh, accompanied by a fever, lasted for weeks. Washington’s illness, though serious, did not compare to George III’s, which returned in 1810 and made him incapable for the last decade of his life. Nor did Washington’s two terms as president of a new nation make him an equal in power to George III, who ruled an empire for 60 years.
But for a year between 1788 and 1789, when Washington rose to lead the colonies that George III had lost, they were equal as human beings — each anxious, vulnerable and aware of his own weaknesses and his rival’s strengths.
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Philip VI (King of Spain) – PERSONA TASS
Origin and formation
Philip VI (baptized name Felipe Juan Pablo Alfonso de Todos los Santos de Bourbon and Grecia) was born on January 30, 1968 in Madrid. His father – Juan Carlos – in 1975-2014. king of Spain. Mother – Greek Princess Sofia, Queen of Spain in 1975-2014.
He received his secondary education at the prestigious Santa Maria de los Rosales school in Madrid. Then he studied at Lakefield College in Toronto (Canada) for a year.In 1985-1988. studied at the Military Academy in Zaragoza, the Officer Naval School in Marina and the Air Force Academy in San Javier. In 1987 he completed a training course for a Marine. In July 1989 he was promoted to lieutenant of the ground forces and the air force and junior lieutenant of the navy. By the time of accession to the throne, he had the rank of lieutenant colonel of the ground forces and the air force and captain of the second rank of the navy. He is qualified as a helicopter pilot.
Graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1993, in 1995.received his Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, USA.
The Heir
After the proclamation of Juan Carlos I as King of Spain on November 22, 1975, the Infante Felipe became heir to the throne. In January 1977 he received the titles of Prince of Asturias, Prince of Girona and Prince of Viana.
On January 30, 1986, on the day of his majority, Felipe took the oath of allegiance to the constitution and the king. The titles were added – Duke of Mont Blanc, Count of Cerversky, Senor Balaguer.
As heir to the throne since 1995, he has represented Spain many times at many international events. He visited Russia twice and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin (2002 and 2003).
King
On June 2, 2014, King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicated the throne (the first time in the history of the country) in favor of Felipe (while retaining the title of king, thus there are formally two kings in the country). This was preceded by scandals that negatively affected the image of the monarchy.One of them involved Juan Carlos’ costly hunt for elephants in Botswana at public expense. The second is a high-profile corruption scandal, in which the daughter of Juan Carlos I, the Infanta Christina, and her husband, Iñaki Urdangarin, were involved. Members of the Spanish royal family were in the dock for the first time.
Coronation took place on June 19, 2014. Prince Felipe, who took the name Philip VI, became the 11th king of Spain from the Bourbon dynasty and the youngest monarch in Europe. He was given a red belt – the symbol of the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, he received the rank of captain-general of the ground forces, navy and air force.In his inaugural speech, Philip VI said that he would make every effort to become “a symbol of the unity of the nation, the king of all Spaniards, protecting their rights and interests” and expressed his willingness to dialogue and promote the balance of the various branches of government. He also stated that one of his main tasks is to restore public confidence in the monarchy (at the time of the abdication of King Juan Carlos I, the popularity of the monarchy was approximately 41%). In one of his first appeals, he condemned corruption, stating that everyone should be equal before the law.
Activities
On June 21, 2014, the King held his first public meeting – with members of various associations in memory of victims of terrorism, including victims and their families. In addition, in the early days of the melting, he met with representatives of the LGBT community, which no head of Spain had done before.
In July 2014, Philip VI banned members of the royal family from accepting expensive gifts (cars, jewelry, etc.) and money, and called for them to refuse air tickets at the state expense and soft loans that banks could provide them.In 2015, he authorized external auditors to audit the accounts of the royal family (first in 2016). Also in 2015, due to the economic downturn, Philip VI announced a 20% reduction in his annual content (to 234 thousand euros excluding taxes).
In June 2015, Philip VI stripped his sister Infanta Christina of the title of Duchess of Palma de Mallorca. This decision was made against the backdrop of a corruption scandal associated with it.
Hearings in this case began on January 11, 2016 June 12, 2018.The Spanish Supreme Court sentenced the spouse of the Infanta Cristina Iñaki Urdangarin to five years and ten months in prison. The Infanta herself had previously been found not guilty.
In May 2016, for the first time since the establishment of a parliamentary monarchy in Spain (after the reign of General Franco in 1939-1975; the first free elections were held in 1977), the King signed a decree dissolving Parliament and holding new elections (in accordance with Article 99 constitution). This was due to the fact that those elected in December 2015MPs were unable to reach a consensus on the candidacy of a new prime minister.
During the political crisis caused by the independence referendum in Catalonia on October 1, 2017, the king made a televised address in which he accused the autonomous region’s government of seeking to “disrupt the unity of Spain” and declared the need to resist attempts to split the country.
By 2017, the level of support for King Philip VI was over 70%, and for the monarchy – 60.9%.
In March 2020King Philip VI of Spain decided to officially abandon the inheritance, which he could have received from his father Juan Carlos I. In addition, by the decision of the monarch, the ex-head of state no longer receives funds from the budget of the royal court. This statement followed after information appeared in the media that Philip VI may be the beneficiary of an offshore fund, created in 2008 in Panama and associated with his father.
Awards, language proficiency, hobbies
Philip VI is a holder of the Grand Cross of the Orders For Military Merit (1986), For Naval Merit (1987), For Aviation Merit (1988).In addition, he has the Order of the Golden Fleece (1981-2014 – Chevalier, since 2014 – Sovereign) and many other awards from both Spain and foreign countries. On June 17, 2019, Philip VI was knighted of the Most Noble Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
Fluent in Catalan, French, English and Greek.
Since his youth, he has been fond of sports – skiing, motocross, sailing. In 1992 he was a member of the Spanish Olympic sailing team at the XXV Summer Olympic Games.At the opening of the Olympics, he carried the flag of the country, in the soloing competition (three-seater sailing boats), the team took sixth place. Supports the football club Atletico Madrid (since 2003 – the honorary president of the club).
Family
Since May 22, 2004 he has been married to journalist Leticia Ortiz Rocasolano (born September 15, 1972). Prior to her marriage, she worked for CNN and Bloomberg TV in Spain, and is the recipient of the Madrid Press Association Award for Excellence (2000).This marriage was the first in the history of the Spanish monarchy when the king’s wife was not of aristocratic origin. Despite the fact that Leticia was previously already married, the Catholic Church did not object to remarriage, since she was not married to her first spouse.
The couple have two daughters – Infanta Leonor (born October 31, 2005), Princess of Asturias, who has been heir to the throne since June 19, 2014, and Infanta Sophia (born April 29, 2007). 90,029 90,000 why King George V did not save his cousin after the revolution – RT in Russian
In the photographs where George V and Nicholas II are standing side by side, they are so similar that they can be mistaken for twins.The British monarch was a cousin and, as they say, a close friend of the Russian emperor, but ultimately showed a cruel indifference to his fate.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was going through a crisis, its subjects lived in conditions of authoritarian rule and often extreme poverty. Nicholas II, who had headed the state since 1894, found himself as if caught in a vice: the discontent of the people and the burden of participation in the First World War ultimately led to the fall of the monarchy.
The situation developed rapidly.In March 1917, the sovereign was forced to abdicate, followed by arrest and exile with his family, and in June 1918 – the tragic death at the hands of the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg. However, among other things, the shooting of the royal family in the basement of the Ipatiev house casts a shadow on the reputation of King George V.
There are many photographs preserved in the archives showing the two monarchs together. The striking resemblance is especially noticeable in the photo, where they pose as if for a joint royal portrait, standing arm in arm in almost identical costumes for sailing trips.
From the photographs one can understand that the royal relatives are very close, and therefore the inaction of George V or his unwillingness to save Nicholas II raises even more questions. Did the English king leave his cousin and his family in trouble so as not to risk his own position on the throne? Or has he succumbed to pressure from the government to ignore the call for help in connection with the priorities of the First World War?
- Russian Emperor Nicholas II and British King George V
- globallookpress.com
- © Mary Evans Picture Library
The authorities of the Russian Republic – the people who, in fact, persuaded the tsar to abdicate – were initially prepared for the emperor to be able to leave the country in peace. But they were replaced by the Bolsheviks, and they were already determined to physically destroy the Romanovs’ house. Nicholas II was threatened with reprisals, and it appears that the British government was planning to grant him asylum.However, no help came.
The biographer of the British royal family, Theo Aronson, noted that at the cost of the death of his cousin, George V stayed on the throne. The image of the Russian autocracy met with such rejection that in Great Britain they feared a similar uprising of the workers.
“(George V. – RT ) realized that most of his subjects considered (Russian. – RT ) the tsar a bloody tyrant and that it was not time for him, a constitutional monarch who feared for his own position, to lend a helping hand to an authoritarian the ruler, no matter how closely related they may be.Therefore, the Russian imperial family was left to fend for themselves, ”wrote Aronson.
Historian Catherine Merridale, author of Lenin on the Train, stressed that the refusal to offer asylum was motivated by “personal and diplomatic considerations.” According to her, the ambassador to Russia, Sir George Buchanan, negotiated the departure of the royal family to Great Britain, but in the end his efforts were wasted.
In a 2010 interview, Prince Michael of Kent, the queen’s cousin, said that, despite London’s refusal to grant Nicholas II asylum, George V hoped to the last to save a relative.“They were very close,” the prince said of the relationship between the two monarchs.
But the former emperor never received help. He spent his last days in prison. First Tobolsk, then Ural. In Yekaterinburg, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Fedorovna and five children were shot. The bodies were taken out of the city and lay in unmarked graves for many decades.
You can learn more about the revolutionary events in Russia by clicking on the hashtag # 1917LIVE on Twitter. At the end of 2016, RT launched a large-scale renovation in which dozens of historical figures, including Vladimir Lenin and Nicholas II, post messages on Twitter, as if the social network existed in their time.They are all linked by the fictional newspaper Russian Telegraph, which publishes the latest news of 1917 and reprints messages from key historical figures in the project. 90,029 90,000 Polish king summoned to the Russian throne
One of the turning points in the history of Russian statehood during the Time of Troubles was the episode of the call to the Russian throne of a representative of the Polish dynasty, the future Polish king Vladislav IV Vasa.
On July 17 (27), 1610, the boyars and nobles, led by the voivode Zakhary Lyapunov, broke into the royal palace, forced Vasily Shuisky to abdicate, and on the same day they forcibly tonsured him a monk.The boyars decided to jointly elect a new king, so they stopped the internecine war and formed a coalition governing body. The new government consisted of seven members of the Boyar Duma: princes F. I. Mstislavsky, I. M. Vorotynsky, A. V. Trubetskoy, B. M. Lykov, as well as boyars I. N. Romanov and F. I. Sheremetev.
On August 17 (27), 1610, the Seven Boyars signed an agreement with the Polish hetman S. Zholkevsky, who was standing near Moscow, according to which the son of the Polish king Sigismund III, the prince Vladislav, was recognized as the Russian tsar.The boyars hoped to get rid of the Polish interventionists and preserve their power over the country, forcing Vladislav to delegate a number of powers to the Boyar Duma and the Zemsky Sobor. In addition, the prince had to recognize personal and property inviolability for serving people, accept Orthodoxy, and limit the number of people close to him from Poland. The Poles formally accepted all the conditions, but did not stop the intervention. In addition, Sigismund III demanded that the boyar government recognize not his son as the tsar of Russia, but himself.This attitude of the king to the treaty and the change in circumstances in the Moscow state, where a struggle broke out against the Polish and Swedish intervention, culminating in the election of Mikhail Romanov to the throne, prevented the Polish prince from taking the Moscow throne.
Vladislav’s attempts to become the Russian tsar continued until 1634, when, according to the Polyanovsk Peace Treaty, he was forced to finally abandon his claims in exchange for the return to Poland of the territories seized by Russia during the Smolensk War of 1632-1634.
Lit .: Bozheryanov I. N. Great devastation of the Moscow state (1598–1612) from the time of the termination of the Tsars of the Rurik clan until the election of the Tsar from the Romanov clan. M., 1912.
See also in the Presidential Library:
Overcoming the Troubles in Russia: [digital collection]
90,000 Family tree of Windsors and Romanovs
The family ties between the Romanovs and the Windsors were not limited to the royal cousins Nicholas II and George V, who were remarkably similar to each other.For several centuries, the Russian and British royal families managed to become related dozens of times.
Victoria (1819-1901)
The last representative of the Hanoverian dynasty to the throne of Great Britain. She has been on the throne for 63 years – more than any other British monarch. She gave birth to nine children, who later married and married representatives of other royal dynasties, for which Victoria received the nickname “Grandmother of Europe”.
Christian IX (1818-1906)
King of Denmark since 1863.By birth, he was not the direct heir to the Danish throne, but he became the successor of Frederick VII, who had no children. Christian himself had six children, of whom two sons became kings (Denmark and Greece), and two daughters became spouses of European monarchs (Britain and Russia).
Edward VII (1841-1910)
Eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Since Victoria lived to a ripe old age, Edward came to the throne at the age of 59.However, in 2008, Prince Charles (born 1948) broke this record. Before accession to the throne, Edward VII was better known by his first baptismal name Albert or his diminutive form – Bertie.
Alexandra Danish (1844-1925)
Eldest daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel. Thanks to her father, the “father-in-law of Europe”, she had family ties with many royal courts. Her older brother Frederick became king of Denmark, her younger brother Wilhelm became the king of Greece, and her younger sister Maria-Sophia-Frederica-Dagmara became the Russian empress, the wife of Alexander III, having received the name of Maria Feodorovna during her conversion to Orthodoxy.
Maria Feodorovna (1847-1928)
Born Maria-Sophia-Frederica-Dagmara, daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. The name Maria Feodorovna received during the transition to Orthodoxy for marriage with the Emperor of Russia Alexander III. Mother of Nicholas II. Initially, Maria was the bride of Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander II, who died in 1865. After his death, she married his younger brother, Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich, with whom they took care of the dying together.
George V (1865-1936)
Second son of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. He became the heir to the British throne after the sudden death of his older brother Albert Victor, who died of the flu. It was George V who renamed the British royal house, which formerly bore the surname of the founder of the dynasty, husband of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. During the First World War, Georg renounced all personal and family Germanic titles and took the surname Windsor.
George VI (1895-1952)
Second son of George V and Mary of Teck. He inherited the British throne from his older brother, the uncrowned Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne in 1937, as he intended to marry a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson, to which the British government did not consent. The reign of George VI marked the collapse of the British Empire and its transformation into the Commonwealth of Nations. He was the last emperor of India (until 1950) and the last king of Ireland (until 1949).Biography of George VI formed the basis of the plot of the film “The King’s Speech”.
Alice (1843-1878)
Daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, née Alice-Maud-Mary. In 1862 she was married to the Hessian prince Ludwig. The Grand Duchess of Hesse and Rhine Alice, like her mother, was a carrier of hemophilia, a genetic disease that disrupts blood clotting. Alice’s son Friedrich was hemophilic and died as a child from internal bleeding after falling from a window.Alice’s daughter, the future Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, was also a carrier of hemophilia, passing the disease on to her son, Tsarevich Alexei.
Alexander III (1845-1894)
Emperor of All Russia, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, who received the nickname “Peacemaker” for the fact that during the years of his reign Russia did not wage a single war. He ascended the throne after the death of his father, Alexander II, who was killed by the Narodnaya Volya terrorists. Alexander Alexandrovich was the youngest son of the emperor, but his older brother Nikolai died while his father was still alive.The future Alexander III married the bride of his deceased brother, the Danish princess Dagmara.
Nicholas II (1868-1918)
Emperor of All Russia, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, the last emperor of the Russian Empire. From the British monarchs he held the rank of Admiral of the British Navy and Field Marshal of the British Army. Nicholas II was married to the granddaughter of the British Queen Victoria Alice of Hesse, who received the name of Alexandra Feodorovna during her conversion to Orthodoxy. In 1917, after the February Revolution in Russia, he abdicated the throne, was sent into exile, and then shot along with his family.
Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918)
Born Princess Alice Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice Daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine Ludwig and Duchess Alice, granddaughter of the British Queen Victoria. The name Alexandra Feodorovna received during the transition to Orthodoxy for marriage with the Russian Emperor Nicholas II. After the 1917 revolution, she and her husband were sent into exile and then shot. In 2000, like other members of the executed royal family, she was canonized.
Tsarevich Alexei and the Grand Duchesses
Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei (in order of seniority). The heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei, was the youngest and most sickly child in the family. Hemophilia, a genetic disease that prevents normal blood clotting, he inherited from his maternal great-grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain. All five children of Nicholas II were shot together with their parents on the night of July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg.
Henry II Plantagenet
King of England (from 1154), Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. Eldest son of the Count of Anjou Geoffroy Plantagenet and Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England (1100-1135).
By the time of the accession to the throne of England, Henry already owned very extensive possessions on the continent, on the paternal side: Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Normandy and Poitou. In addition, in 1152 he married Alienore, Duchess of Aquitaine.
Henry’s reign ended the dynastic wars that had been going on in England since the death of Henry I.Energetic and domineering, he pursued a strong royalty policy. A large number of the castles of the English barons were declared illegal, they were torn down. Reforms in the field of criminal (introduction of a trial by jury) and civil (royalty provided an alternative to the court of manor and county courts) legislation laid the foundation for the common law of England.
As a supporter of the universalization of criminal justice, he wanted to remove clerical criminals from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical court.This led to a protracted (from 1163 to 1172) and dramatic conflict with the Church, from which the king emerged more defeated than vice versa. The most famous episode of the conflict is the assassination of Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury.
Henry II organized two expeditions to Wales (1158 and 1162), captured Dublin and part of the Scottish lands (Northumberland and Cumberland), thus expanding the influence of the English crown in the British Isles.
The sons of Henry and Alienora, already during their father’s lifetime, began to fight for the inheritance, both with the father himself (with the support of the mother) and with each other, often resorting to the help of the young French king Philip II Augustus.
The end of Henry’s life is marked by an important event of a Christian scale – the capture of Jerusalem by the Muslims in 1187. Before his death, the king managed to accept the cross and was forced to agree to recognize his eldest living son Richard as the heir to all his possessions.
6 July 1189 Henry II died. He was buried in the Abbey of Fontevraud in the ancestral domain of the Anjou house. The dynasty he founded ruled England until 1485
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The story of a king who abdicated for love
The news that Prince Harry is marrying his divorced American sweetheart rocked the UK and reminded her of another wedding that took place over 80 years ago.True, that wedding was not royal – then, for the sake of love, King Edward, without hesitation, abdicated the throne. The material “Gazeta.Ru” is dedicated to those who 80 years ago were not allowed what Prince Harry can now.
King Edward VIII, who occupied the throne in Great Britain in 1936 from the end of January to December, is remembered today only that he abdicated the throne for love. Elizabeth II’s uncle, the eldest son of her grandfather George V, made a decision in 1936 that he never regretted, as he said: he left the throne for the opportunity to marry his long-term lover, American Wallis Simpson, who had been married twice before.At the time of the wedding, he was 42 years old – and before that he had never thought about getting married.
The eldest son of King George V has always been loved in Britain: charming, democratic, he was a party star, danced beautifully, played tennis and golf. He was not allowed to fight in the First World War for fears that he would be wounded or, even worse, taken prisoner. For a similar reason, he was not allowed to engage in other risky activities, such as participating in horse races or training in flying. It saddened him – and he himself upset his father that he, the heir to the throne, did not want to settle down and, finally, marry.
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The Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson while on holiday in Biarritz, France, 1934
AP
Grief was also added by rumors that Prince Edward had an affair with a married woman, American Wallis Simpson.
They were introduced at a house party by Lady Furness, then believed to be intimate with Edward, Prince of Wales.Wallis Simpson was invited there along with her husband, Ernest Simpson, a native of New York. The couple lived in the UK, but Wallis Simpson, with her flamboyant Baltimore accent (she came from an influential New England family) and American bluntness, stood out from the British milieu. Beautiful, elegant, witty, she, of course, liked the prince.
A fleeting acquaintance with a couple of Americans quickly grew into friendship – and now they began to be regularly invited to events.But when one day King George V, once again expressing regret that Edward would not marry in any way, accused him of a close relationship with a married American woman, the Prince of Wales replied with indignation that there was no “immoral” relationship between them. Even after the wedding that followed a few years later, he continued to argue that Wallis Simpson was not his mistress before marriage. Despite the rumors.
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Governor of the Bahamas, Duke of Windsor with Duchess Wallis Simpson at his official residence in Nassau, August 1940
AP
On the evening of January 16, 1936, the Prince of Wales was practicing shooting in Great Windsor Park when he received a note from his mother, Queen Mary, stating that the royal physician was “unhappy with the pope’s condition at the moment” and that he should come to Sandringham Palace. only somehow unobtrusively, so as not to create undue stress.The next morning he flew into the palace in an airplane. On January 20, George V died, the throne passed to Edward. Wallis Simpson was one of the first to know about it.
The new king quickly deteriorated relations with his brothers – especially the Duke of York, the future King George VI – who were annoyed that Edward VIII openly bombarded Wallis Simpson with expensive gifts and generally supported this outrageous relationship.
In October 1936, the British Press Association informed Edward VIII’s personal secretary that Wallis Simpson had filed for divorce – the case was due on October 27.He discussed this with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, who decided to talk to the king about the scandal that his “friendship” with the aforementioned lady is causing in society and to ask him to prevent a divorce.
The king refused to do so. It was clear that he was planning to marry an American woman – this was known to everyone, despite the fact that the newspapers had reached a gentlemanly agreement not to reveal the name of Wallis Simpson. On November 10, this name, however, first appeared at a meeting of the House of Commons from the lips of a Labor MP from Glasgow during the discussion of the future coronation of the king.More precisely, the fact that there may not be a coronation.
It became clear that the abdication of the throne was not so much an opportunity for Edward as a necessity.
London is full of rumors. Even the king’s friends understood that if he married Wallis Simpson, he would have to abdicate immediately – otherwise, this would lead to a constitutional crisis, a general election, a rise in leftist sentiment – and all this against the backdrop of unemployment, recession and foreign policy problems (recall , it was 1936).
On November 16, the king informed Stanley Baldwin that he would marry Wallis Simpson in the very near future, whether his ministers approved it or not. If not, he will abdicate. Later in the evening. He said the same thing to his mother and sister. They were, of course, shocked.
Of course, they insisted that it was his duty to be king, and he was obliged to renounce this woman. To which he replied that he could not be king without her, which means that his real duty is to leave the throne. On December 10, 1936, in the presence of his four brothers, Edward VIII ceased to be king.For the first time in British history, a monarch voluntarily abdicated the throne.
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The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Prince Edward and Wallis Simpson, at the Château de la Cros on the Cote d’Azur, June 1968
AP
They were married on June 3, 1937 in France – the former King of Great Britain and now the Duke of Windsor and the twice-divorced daughter of an American entrepreneur from Baltimore who made his fortune in the flour trade.The modest wedding took place at the Château de Cand, in Monte.
Members of the family of the former British monarch were not present. Despite the fact that the British press was forbidden to be there, Time magazine carried a detailed report from the scene, not forgetting to mention that Edward did not take his eyes off the bride.
Wallis Sipmson wore a light blue crepe dress and a hat with a brim that surrounded his head, and a large brooch adorned his neck. “Only two incidents interfered with the ceremony,” Time reported.- When the vicar Jardin asked: “Will you love her, take care of her, respect and cherish her?”, An agitated Edward shouted: “Yes!” in a shrill voice, more like a scream. When he put on her finger a simple ring of Welsh gold, traditional in the British royal family, the trembling in his hands was visible even to the most distant observers.
The couple were married until Edward’s death in 1972. Wallis Simpson survived him by 14 years.
MAXIMILIAN II HABSBURG • Great Russian Encyclopedia
King Maximilian II of Habsburg in the vestments of the Knight of the Order of St. Hubert.Portrait by V. von Kaulbach. After 1854. New Pinakothek (Munich).
MAXIMILIAN II HABSBURG (Maximilian II. Habsburg) (31.7.1527, Vienna – 12.10.1576, Regensburg), Archduke of Austria, germ. king, king of Hungary, Bohemia and Croatia, emperor of Holy Rome. empire. From the Habsburg dynasty, son of Ferdinand I of Habsburg, father of im. Rudolf II of Habsburg and imp. Matthias (1612-19). He was brought up together with his younger brother, Archduke of Austria Ferdinand II (1529-1595) at his father’s court.In 1544, at the invitation of his uncle, imp. Charles V left for Spain, accompanied him on a campaign against France (1544), and then in a war against him. Protestants (1547; see Schmalkalden Wars ). In 1548 he married the daughter of Charles V, Maria of Spain (1529–1603). During the war. campaigns Charles V together with his wife as a stadtholder ruled Spain. In 1552 he returned to Austria. He gravitated towards Protestantism and hatched plans for a change of religion, but under pressure from relatives and the Pope, the Catholic remained in the bosom.Churches. The election in 1558 of Ferdinand I of Habsburg as Emperor of Holy Rome played an important role in making this decision. empire (the transition to Protestantism deprived M. II of G. of the opportunity to inherit his father). On Sept. 1562 M. II G. accepted the crown of the Czech Republic, in November of the same year, the Germans were elected. king, in July 1563 ascended the thrones of Hungary and Croatia. With the death of his father from 25.7.1564 imp. Holy Rome. empire. In 1574–75 he also laid claim to Polish.the throne, however, lost in the struggle for it to S. Bathory. In matters of religion. politics, despite the pressure of the Pope and Europe. Catholic sovereigns, tried to take a neutral position. In their inheritance. possessions actually equalized in rights with Catholics nobles and knights who converted to Protestantism. In 1566–68 he waged war with the tour. Sultan Selim II (1566–74) for Transylvania, which, however, ended in vain.
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