SOUTHERN BRANCH, 
 
 yNIVK i' OF CALirORNIA. 
 
 :3RARY,
 
 GREAT BRITAIN & HANOVER 
 
 A. W. WARD
 
 HENRY FROWDE, M.A. 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
 
 GREA T BRITAIN & HA NO VER 
 
 SOME ASPECTS OF THE PERSONAL UNION 
 
 BEING THE FORD LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 
 HILARY TERM, 1899 
 
 BY 
 
 ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD, Litt.D. 
 
 
 • » o 
 
 
 ©;cforb 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1899 
 
 G7 728
 
 Ojcfoti 
 
 PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 BY HORACE HART, M.A. 
 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 PRIiatD ['A LliGUND.
 
 ■^ f- 
 
 D 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ^ 
 
 *^\. 
 ^ 
 
 The subject of the relations between Great Britain 
 and Hanover has long seemed to me to deserve a 
 more special study than has hitherto been devoted to 
 ^ it. But no enquiry into these relations can be con- 
 
 r* sidered in any sense complete, unless it should include 
 V — a careful examination of the documentary evidence pre- 
 :^\^ served at Hanover, both in the Archives of the Ministry, 
 and in those of the London Chancery. It was there- 
 fore with some hesitation that I suggested this subject 
 for the course which I had the honour of being invited 
 to deliver at Oxford in the academical year 1898-99 ; 
 since my engagements made it impossible for me to 
 undertake the requisite inspection within the time at 
 my disposal. On the whole, however, I thought that 
 a useful purpose might be served by an attempt to 
 bring certain aspects of the theme under the notice of 
 hearers interested in this period of history, and that, 
 possibly, younger or more competent hands might 
 thus be induced at one point or another to take up 
 the thread. For myself, I had no choice but to confine 
 my comments mainly, though not altogether, to the 
 reigns of George I and H, and this again made it 
 necessary that the first of my lectures should largely 
 occupy itself with the history of the House of Bruns-
 
 VI PREFACE 
 
 wick before the accession of the Elector George Lewis 
 to the British throne. I trust that these introductory- 
 pages may not be considered superfluous, if they 
 throw any h'ght upon the poHcy of the earlier Hano- 
 verian reigns, derived from a study of the historical 
 traditions of the dynasty, and more especially of its 
 political action from the Peace of Westphalia to the 
 Peace of Utrecht. 
 
 I desire here to repeat my thanks to Dr. R. Doebner, 
 Archivist of State, &c., for having, by the information 
 which he was kind enough to transmit to me, enabled 
 me to explain the actual working of the Hanoverian 
 system of government, more especially as to the 
 relations between the territorial sovereign and the 
 higher ministerial authorities. 
 
 These lectures had been written, and in the fifth 
 of the series I had already largely availed myself of 
 the researches of M. Richard Waddington in his 
 Louis XV et le Renversenient des Alliances (i754~5'^)) 
 when he was so courteous as to allow me to 
 peruse the proof-sheets of the chapter on Kloster 
 Zeven in his forthcoming continuation of his important 
 political narrative. I was thus enabled to rewrite so 
 much of my sixth lecture as refers to the Capitu- 
 lation and its reception in England, although I have 
 not yet had the satisfaction of reading the remainder 
 of the expected volume. 
 
 A. W. WARD. 
 
 Kensington, March 24, 1899. 
 
 P.S. Since these lines were written, M. Wadding- 
 ton's La Guerre de Sept Ans, Les Debuts has appeared 
 in print.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 -♦-♦- 
 
 PACK 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Lecture I. Introductory i 
 
 Lecture II. The Settlement 35 
 
 Appendix to Lecture II. The 'Hanoverian Junta' 
 
 under George I 67 
 
 Lecture III. The Foreign Policy of George I ('1714-21) . 80 
 
 Lecture IV. The Foreign Policy of George I and II 
 
 (1721-42) 119 
 
 Lecture V. Hanover, Austria, and Prussia (1742-56) . 153 
 
 Lecture "VI. Kloster Zeven and Suhlingen . . .182
 
 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 INTKODUCTORV 
 
 THE Personal Union between Great Britain and Hanover, 
 of which in the present short course of lectures I 
 propose to consider some of the aspects, lasted, as you are 
 aware, for nearly a century and a quarter. It came to an 
 end, as there is even less need of reminding you, with Her 
 present Majesty's accession to a throne happily barred 
 against her accession by no public or private law or usage. 
 Prince Bismarck, in the very remarkable chapter on ' Dynasties 
 and Peoples' included in his Reflections and Recollections^ , may 
 or may not be mistaken as to the nature of the tie between 
 the British people and the dynasty novv' occupying its throne. 
 But he most assuredly underestimates the degree in which the 
 reign of Queen Victoria has been propitious to the conserva- 
 tion and renewal of the spirit that sustains the monarchical 
 form of government in these islands, and in the empire of 
 which they form the centre. 
 
 Now, throughout the long term of its endurance, the 
 union of which we are about to treat remained a Personal 
 Union |iure and simple, in the strictest sense of a term 
 
 ' Vol. i. ch. 13. 
 t B
 
 2 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 which, like many other expressions taken over by science 
 from practice, lends itself to a good deal of shading-ofif, both 
 in the way of formal use and in that of substantial significance. 
 Into the political connexion between Great Britain ami 
 Hanover there entered no element of federal relations of 
 any sort or kind. As has been pointed out by the most recent 
 enquirer into the modus vivendi (if I may so call it) between 
 the partners in this connexion, it was nothing more than 
 an official flourish of style indulged in on the one side, but 
 left quite unreciprocated on the other, when the Electors 
 of Brunswick-Liineburg, in their rescripts to their Hanoverian 
 subjects, designated themselves as Kings of Great Britain. 
 France, and Ireland, or afterwards as Sovereigns of the 
 United Kingdom, and when their electoral officials made 
 mention in their titulatures of the higher foreign dignity of 
 their territorial princes \ But not only were the relations 
 between the two political communities, whose conditions 
 of life and progress could not fail to be more or less affected 
 by their union under the rule of the same sovereign, 
 unmarked by any co-ordination or subordination of rights or 
 claims implying legalised interdependence. No contiguity 
 of frontier, no joint historical experience — often a far more 
 effective agent of political consolidation than the closest 
 kinship of race — helped to blend their respective interests 
 and aspirations, or to efface the contrasts in their political 
 life. Doubtless they thus likewise avoided the risk of direct 
 collisions such as have often sprung from the jealousies and 
 rivalries between neighbour populations connected by similar 
 ties, — between their political conceptions, their religious beliefs, 
 
 ' Speaking of themselves as ' Koniglich Giossbritannische, Kiir- 
 fiirstlich Braunschweig-Liineburgsche ' or after 1814) 'Koniglich 
 Grossbritannisch-Hannoversche ' councillors or magistrates. See E. von 
 Meier, Hannovcrschc Verfassuiigs- iind Vcrivalttingsgescliichtc, vol. i. 
 (Leipzig, 1S98), p. 122.
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 and their very forms of speech. We should not need to go 
 far afield in order to find examples of personal unions 
 between States which have led — some to real political union 
 and national amalgamation, others to passionate strife and 
 lacerating disrupture. But it would hardly be worth while 
 to linger over instances so familiar. Perhaps the most 
 striking example of a personal union pure and simple — 
 although in its duration more transitory" than that of which 
 I am asking you to note some of the aspects, and in its 
 formal conditions absolutely unique — was that into which 
 Great Britain herself entered as a result of the Revolution 
 of 1688. The union brought about by the statecraft of 
 William III of Orange, and represented by him in his own 
 person, went far towards combining into a single mighty 
 force the capabilities and resources of two great poHties 
 whom, a generation earlier, some of the leaders of the English 
 Commonwealth had dreamt of fusing into a single Stated 
 If William III so far found his account in the personal 
 union effected by him that, according to a contemporary 
 saying, though but a Stadholder in England he was a King 
 at home, the liberties of the United Provinces underwent 
 at most a temporary eclipse^; nor was it till a later day 
 that, for the preservation of their existence, they paid the 
 price of the downfall of their polidcal importance. In the 
 long run, however, the predominance of the monarchical 
 partner in the time-honoured conjunction of the Maritime 
 Powers came to be accepted as a fact by friend and by foe 
 alike. Even in matters commercial the reign of William III 
 marks the beginning of the ascendancy of his adopted over 
 
 ' Cf. Gardiuer, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 
 vol. i. pp. 356 seq. ; vol. ii. p. 344. 
 
 * For a very strong statement as to the deminution of political rights 
 suffered by the Provinces under William's government, see Pontalis, 
 John de Witt (English translation, 1885), vol. ii. p. 511. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 his native country, although after his death something hke 
 half a century was to pass before Dutch commerce could 
 be definitively pronounced to have lost its supremacy. 
 
 The rumour was absolutely false which, quite towards the 
 close of William Ill's reign, so greatly perturbed the Princess 
 Anne and her frientis, that the King intended the House 
 of Hanover to succeed to the Knglish throne immediately 
 upon his own decease; and Anne's own reign delayed during 
 twelve eventful years the repetition, under wholly different 
 conditions, of the experiment tried by William III in his 
 own person. In discussing the Personal Union between 
 Great Britain and Hanover under our male sovereigns of 
 the House of Guelph, I shall ask you to devote to the reigns 
 of George I and George II a measure of attention which 
 you will scarcely, under the circumstances, judge to be 
 disproportionate. And this, not only because of the 
 denunciations, in part at least beyond all question clap-trap, 
 into which most of our leading politicians in these reigns, 
 as well as the great body of public opinion at various 
 stages in their course, launched forth against Hanover and 
 Hanoverian influence. Manifestly, if ihe electoral dynasty 
 brought with it from the banks of Leine and Aller to our 
 shores any distinctive traditions, principles or methods, 
 these must have found their fullest and most direct expression 
 under its earliest representatives on the acquired throne ; 
 and as is well known the most notable feature in the 
 character of our first two Hanoverian sovereigns was 
 tenaciousness. George I was crowned king at the age of 
 fifty-four — an age at which few men are apt to change 
 either principles of thought or habits of action, least of all 
 one in whom a glacial reserve of manner covered a self- 
 centred disposition and a strong will. The political nurture 
 of this prince had intimately associated him with a group of 
 European soldiers and statesmen in which King William Ill's
 
 Ij INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 ^vas inconlesiablv the foremost figure, but which included 
 a few Englishmen, with Dutchmen, Germans, and French 
 Huguenots, worthy of his famiharity and equal to his trust. 
 The succession, failing issue from Anne, of the House of 
 Hanover to the thrones of Great Britain and Ireland, had 
 gradually come to form an integral part of the political system 
 or programme of these far-sighted reasoners and reckoners. 
 Our first Hanoverian king carried with him into his new 
 dominions not only the lessons and traditions which he had 
 derived from this training, but certain highly intelligent dis- 
 ciples of the school which it had bred, and the fixity of whose 
 tenets signally contrasts with the more fluctuating views and 
 purposes of many among the leaders of contemporary English 
 political — that is to say, parliamentary — life. Moreover, 
 King George I w-as never at the pains to conceal the fact 
 that he had become ruler of these islands by force of circum- 
 stances rather than by his own choice ; nor, as is well known, 
 was it ever in his opinion worth his while to take the first 
 step towards becoming an Englishman by acquiring the use 
 of the language spoken by his English subjects. It would 
 certainly seem, as I may note by the way, without pre- 
 tending that a call for reciprocity existed in the matter, as if 
 such of these subjects as were brought into close personal 
 relations with him, had taken quite as little trouble on their 
 side to learn the native tongue of their prince; and this com- 
 plete indifference of English courtiers and statesmen to a 
 tongue without some knowledge of which they could not 
 expect to penetrate far into the Hanoverian interests of their 
 sovereigns, continued without much change under George II '. 
 
 ' Lord Hervey {Memoirs of the Reign of George I/, etl. Crokcr. 
 1884, vol. ii. p. 389) mentions the naive suggestion that the Princess 
 Augusta of Saxe-(Jotha, when on the point of marrying Frederick Prince 
 of Wales, might spare herself the trouble of learning German, since 
 'most people in England ' would be sure to speak German as well as
 
 6 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 In other respects, the general character of the personal rela- 
 tions between king and people promised to improve when 
 (jeorge II succeeded to his father. ' I am very much 
 mistaken,' wrote Bolhmer (who perhaps contributed more 
 than any other servant of the House of Hanover to its estab- 
 lishment upon the British throne), ' if he has not more inclina- 
 tion for this crown than the Elector his father ; but this had 
 better remain between ourselves, since it would not do fof our 
 English friends to be aware of our indifference on this head '.' 
 Although, however, neither in disposition nor in temperament 
 George II altogether resembled his predecessor, and although 
 the relative stability of his throne could not but react upon 
 his view of his own position as its occupant,- — yet the political 
 and moral influences to which father and son had been 
 severally subjected were not essentially dissimilar, and their 
 
 they spoke English; which conjecture, he says, was 'so well founded 
 that I believe there were not three natives in England that understood 
 one word of German better than in the reign of Queen Anne.' Lord 
 Hervey's father, the first Earl of Bristol, places on record (see his 
 Diary, Wells, 1894, pp. 73, 77) the French speech which he made to 
 George I, at St. James' on October 26, 1722, and a similar speech 
 addressed by him to George II, at Leicester Fields House in 1747. 
 Sir Robert Walpole is stated to have preferred to address King George I 
 in such Latin as he could muster. It is an equally familiar fact that 
 among the ministers of George II, Lord Carteret, who was a most 
 accomplished modern linguist as well as a genuine classical scholar, 
 owed the personal influence which he secured over the King in no 
 small measure to the quite exceptional circumstance of his own 
 knowledge of German. In his recent address on Literary Statesmen 
 (November 25, 189S), Lord Rosebery, according to the Times report, 
 pointed out that, while Carteret thus excelled, ' perhaps the only startling 
 deficiency in Chesterfield's intellectual equipment was his unaccountable 
 ignorance of the mother-tongue of that Hanoverian dynasty which he 
 was so anxious to serve.' 
 
 ' See the letter from Bothmer to Ilten, in which the former, as early 
 as the spring of 1701, advocated a sojourn in England by the Electoral 
 Prince, afterwards King George II, ap. Bodemann, J. H. von Ilten 
 , Hanover, 1879), P* ^Z7>-
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 principles both of public government and of private conduct 
 harmonised more thoroughly than the sentiments entertained 
 by them for one another might have seemed to render likely. 
 Perhaps, although inordinately ambitious, and inflated by 
 a sense of individual importance superfluous to his prede- 
 cessor's stolid sense of dignity, George II was, by the 
 constitution of his mind as well as through the force of 
 circumstances, less completely master of his aims than 
 George I. His acumen as an observer both of men and of 
 measures, coupled with an extravagant fondness for admini- 
 strative detail, stimulated his interest in the affairs of his 
 kingdom as well as of his electorate. But, apart from the 
 fact that he had grown into manhood long before his first 
 actual arrival in England (when he was already in his thirty- 
 first year), he lacked the grasp of mind — some may prefer to 
 call it the power of imagination — which would have enabled 
 him to understand the opportunities as well as the difficulties 
 of his position ; nor was his excess of self-will in the end proof 
 against either cajolery or firmness. But his dynastic preferences 
 and prejudices were quite as eager as his father's had been 
 before him, and, being more vehement in expression, they 
 asserted themselves more patently, though they were less 
 continuously seconded by responsible British statesmanship. 
 Thus in the reigns of our first two Georges the conditions 
 of conflict between English and Hanoverian interests and 
 influences were, in some measure at least, homogeneous 
 though not identical. All this was changed with the com- 
 mencement of the long reign of George III, who made appeal 
 to the loyalty of his English subjects as himself an Eng- 
 lishman born and bred, and who during his lifetime never set 
 foot in his Hanoverian Electorate. Although as a matter of 
 fact the foremost of the Hanoverian counsellors of the Crown 
 in George II's reign only attained to the height of ministerial 
 power under his successor, yet with the close of the Seven 
 
 f
 
 8 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 Years' War ihe direct political importance of the connexion 
 between the two countries came, except incidentally, to a long 
 stop. More than forty years had gone by before the terri- 
 torial interests of the Elector and the Electorate of Hanover, 
 imperilled in turn by the friendship and by the hostility 
 between France and Prussia, again played an important part 
 in conflicts directly affecting the interests of Great Britain as 
 a great European Power. To these events and transactions 
 brief reference will be made in a concluding lecture ; but il 
 will be barely possible to glance at ideas of ulterior develope- 
 ments, which, had effect been given to them at the close of 
 the Napoleonic era, might have added a new and unpre- 
 cedented significance to the last phase of the history of the 
 Personal Union. 
 
 While, therefore, except towards the close of the actual en- 
 durance of that Union, few changes will require notice in those 
 formal relations between the two governments which I pro- 
 pose to describe in outline in my second lecture, it will be 
 readily allowed that such importance as the connexion 
 possesses for our political history mainly attaches itself to the 
 first two Hanoverian reigns, and afterwards to certain passages 
 of the Napoleonic epoch. You will not, I hope, desire me 
 to follow the example of certain English historical writers 
 who have previously addressed themselves to this subject, and 
 to ignore the effects of the Personal Union upon the fortunes 
 of the less of the two political bodies concerned in it. Nor 
 can I think that, in dwelling in its turn upon this side of my 
 theme, I shall be untrue to the spirit of my duties as a lecturer 
 in English history. The Personal Union with Hanover en- 
 tailed upon our country duties not to be shaken off either by 
 clamour or by formal disclaimers, but needing definition, and 
 (as is inevitable in politics) a frequent revision of definition, 
 under the light of facts. Where the consequences of that Union 
 were left to wreak themselves as they might upon the weaker
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 partner, the stronger remained accountable to a tribunal 
 which declines to accept expediency as a conclusive plea. 
 
 It forms no part of my present purpose to recall the 
 circumstances of the Succession of the House of Hanover to 
 the British throne, or to discuss the transactions, of which 
 to this day no altogether satisfactory history has yet been 
 composed, that led up to a consummation of unmistakeable 
 advantage to the progress of our national life. On the other 
 hand, it will, I think, be useful to devote the remainder of 
 this opening lecture to a rapid survey of so much — and no 
 more — of the history of the House of Hanover before the 
 Succession as may serve to throw light upon dynastic 
 traditions, ideas, and tendencies, of which the influence 
 remains traceable in the course of British political history at 
 all events during the first two Hanoverian reigns. 
 
 Neither the andquities of the House of Brunswick, on 
 which Gibbon wrote a dissertation unfortunately left uncom- 
 pleted, nor the wider researches of Leibniz into the origin of 
 the House of Guelph, must detain us on the threshold. Our 
 great historian, in his inimitable way, remarks that ' an Eng- 
 lish subject may be prompted, by a just and liberal curiosity, 
 to investigate the origin and story of the House of Brunswick, 
 which, after an alliance with the daughter of our kings, has 
 been called by the voice of a free people to the legal inherit- 
 ance of the crown.' Gibbon, who had a right to profess 
 a love for Italy such as he cherished for no other foreign 
 country, was more particularly attracted by that portion of his 
 theme which was concerned with the connexion between the 
 House of Este and the House of Brunswick, definitively 
 established by the researches of Leibniz. Thus, while the 
 English summary brought down the fortunes of the Italian 
 House to its last male representative Hercules III, Duke of 
 Modena, a contemporary of the writer, it carried the history 
 of the German no further than the latter part of the twelfth
 
 lO GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 century, — the period when its . greatness seemed to have 
 reached its highest pitch in the sway of Henry the Lion, and 
 to have ended for ever with his downfall. The monumental 
 work of Leibniz, on a portion of whose labours Gibbon's 
 essay was based, was, after its design had been expanded 
 (something in the fashion of the plan of Gibbon's own 
 masterpiece), again reduced to narrower chronological limits, 
 so far as Leibniz' own share in it was concerned. He had 
 very nearly reached the year 1024, and the death of the last 
 Saxon Emperor Henry II, which he had proposed to him- 
 self as hh finis chartae, when his own indefatigable hand was 
 stayed by death. The Elector Ernest Augustus, to whom 
 Leibniz afterwards devoted a monograph, and the entire 
 House of Brunswick- Liineburg, of which he had been named 
 the historiographer, had approved of his vast scheme of 
 enlarging the Annals of that House into those of the Western 
 Empire from the era of Charles the Great onwards, while con- 
 stantly keeping in view the Brunswick line and its dominions. 
 But George I had not inherited together with the clearness 
 the liberality of mind that distinguished his mother the 
 Electress Sophia, Leibniz' faithful friend ; and he had no 
 patience with the protraction of the great author's prepara- 
 tions for his work, which went on for nearly a quarter of a 
 century before, at his death, he left his intended share of it in 
 a condition very near completeness. Nor, indeed, was it 
 even then published in full as he had left it behind him, — 
 a consummation not reached till 1843, when another 
 historiographer of the House of Brunswick-Liineburg, the 
 editor of the Monu?nenia Germamae, at last paid this debt to 
 the historical services of the great writer who had preceded 
 him in both capacities. In the Preface to his edition of the 
 Annales, Pertz briefly adverts to the ignoble pressure put by 
 George I and his ministers upon their illustrious dependant ; 
 but the story has since been supplemented from Leibniz'
 
 Ij INTRODUCTORY II 
 
 correspondence, most recently from that with the minister 
 Bernstorff '. It forms a rather painful episode in the his- 
 tory — not a very overflowing one — of the relations between 
 the House of Hanover and literature ; nor, in view of what 
 Leibniz in this instance actually accomplished, can the great 
 thinker's insatiable desire to exhaust any scientific enquiry in 
 which he had engaged be pleaded in extenuation of the dis- 
 courtesies inflicted upon him. Moreover, as a publicist Leibniz 
 was not less prompt than he was deliberate as a historio- 
 grapher, — a title which he seems at times to have sought, and 
 at other times to have disdained '^. His political intelligence, 
 capable of such a design as the aversion of a European war 
 by means of a French invasion of Egypt ^, could condescend 
 to the compilation of a long treatise proving that prmces of 
 """ the empire not possessed of the electoral dignity were entitled 
 to the same measure of sovereign rights as that belonging to 
 the dukes of Modena and Mantua, and take part in the contro- 
 versy as to precedence between the Banner of the Empire 
 
 ' See Leibnizens Briefwechsel mit detn Minister von Bcinstorff, 8cc. 
 Herausgegeben von Dr. R. Doebner (^Hanover, 1882). 
 
 ' Apart from h:s post in the Hanoverian service, Leibniz was at 
 different tinaes anxious to be appointed historiographer of Brandenburg 
 and of England, and seems also to have thought of occupying a similar 
 position at Vienna. (Bothmer writes to Robethon, August 11, 1716 
 {^Robethon Papers, vol. iii. p. 21), that Leibniz desires the title of 
 historiographer of England, and that he would deserve it, if he would 
 finish the history of the House of Brunswick, on which head Stanhope 
 might do well to give him a hint.) But in 1699 he had protested to the 
 Duchess of Celle, that he 'had never taken, and could never take, 
 the position of historiographer.' It was only, he asserted, in the course 
 of his endeavour to ascertain the rights of the House of lirunswick, that 
 it became his task to occupy himself incidentally with its history. 
 (See Nachtrdge zu Leibnizens Briefcn an Bej-nstorff, &c., in Zeit- 
 schrift des historischen Vereins fUr Niedersachsen, Jahrgang 1890, 
 p. 140.) 
 
 ' As to tills curious project (1671), see Guhrauer, Leibnitz (Breslau, 
 1846), vol. i. pp. 92 seqq.
 
 12 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 borne by Hanover, and the Banner of Battle appertaining to 
 Wiirttemberg. The House of Hanover had no second advo- 
 cate of its rights and claims equipped with such historical 
 knowledge and literary ability as his; nor was it his fault if 
 that House made light of liie opportunity of blending his 
 Axme with its own \ 
 
 A man of letters of another sort, William Whitehead, the 
 harmless poet-laureate of George Hi's days, whom Johnson 
 censured so severely for the grand nonsense of his birthday 
 odes, in one of these rather unexpectedly introduces a tenth- 
 century ancestor of the House of Guelph. Him, when about 
 
 ' There is no very strong temptation to enlarge upon the earlier 
 relations between the Honse of Hanover and our own national literature. 
 It was not the fault of that House that its praises were sung by Elkanah 
 Settle in his Etisebia Trinmphans, or The Hanover Succession (1704) ; 
 nor is it to be blamed because its unsophisticated attitude towards the 
 progress of poesy was satirised by Pope, because (as Dr. Couithope has 
 shown) the wits thought it incumbent upon them to range themselves 
 on the side of the opposition. The true laureate of our early Hanoverian 
 kings was not Colley Cibber though he was a German by birth) or any 
 of his successors, but tlie illustrious musician, whom England really 
 owes to Hanover, but to whose greatest achievements she in her turn 
 proved no grudging step-mother. Handel, who in his childhood had 
 first attracted wider attention, on being taken to the Court of George I's 
 accomplished sister Sophia Charlotte, at Berlin, was admitted into the 
 Hanoverian service at Venice in 1709, and was in the same year from 
 Hanover granted leave for his first visit to London. After the accession 
 of George I he was, though a more serious defaulter than Leibniz, more 
 graciously forgiven, and taken back into favour. The flights of his muse 
 upon the banks of the Thames delighted George I, as the royal barge 
 glided down stream ; he composed the coronation anthems for George II 
 and the hymns of mourning on the death of Queen Caroline; he cele- 
 brated what, in the eyes of the victor, was the greatest glory of the reign 
 in the Detlingen Te Deuin, and honoured the hero of Culloden by 
 symbolising his success in the patriotic achievements cl Judas Maccabaeus. 
 Klopstock (see his ode Wit- iind Sie, 1766) might well take pride in 
 Germany's gift to England of Handel's music; but he should havt- 
 iabstained fiom throwing in Kneller's uninspired art.
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 to cross into Germany, the genius of the Julian Alps invites 
 to fix his ' visual nerve ' — 
 
 ' Where, crovvn'd with rocks grotesque and steep, 
 The white isle rises o'er the deep, 
 There Glon,' rests'.' 
 
 No such thought is, however, likely to have haunted even 
 the imagination of Henry the Lion at an epoch when his 
 territorial power reached from the German Ocean to the 
 mountains of the Tyrol, and from the Baltic to the Adriatic. 
 As it chanced, the good word of an English king — the far- 
 sighted Henry II — helped to induce the Emperor Frederick 
 Barbarossa to mitigate the severity of the treatment which 
 he had intended to inflict upon the great vassal before whom 
 a few years earlier he had abased himself in vain. Thus there 
 were preserved to Henry and his descendants the lands be- 
 tween Weser and Elbe, whence after moie than five cen- 
 turies one of these descendants set forth to mount the British 
 throne. In 1235 Henry the Lion's grandson. Otto the 
 Child, surrendered all these territories, which after being 
 subdivided had been again united in his person, into the 
 hands of the Emperor Frederick II, and received them 
 back from him as an imperial fief under the name of the 
 Duchy of Brunswick. Since, in the deed of imperial investi- 
 ture, the new duchy was attached to the city of Brunswick 
 and the castle of Liineburg, the successors of Otto called 
 themselves Dukes of Brunswick, at other times of Brunswick- 
 Liineburg, or Dukes of Brunswick and Lords of Liineburg ; 
 and ' Brunswick ' or ' Brunswick-Liineburg ' henceforth was 
 and remained the proper style of the house in its entirety. 
 Some time after the death of Otto the Child his two elder 
 sons proceeded to a repartition of the paternal inheritance ; 
 
 • William Whitehead's Ode on His Majesty's Birthday, November 10, 
 1758.
 
 14 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 and this particular distribution of the Brunswick-Liineburg 
 dominions was never undone, and has, in consequence of 
 the annexation of Hanover to the Prussian monarchy, re- 
 mained in force ever since the death, in 1884, of the last 
 sovereign Duke of Brunswick '. No similar fixity attended the 
 innumerable partitions and subdivisions that complicate the 
 annals of the Old, ^liddle, and New Houses of Brunswick and 
 Liineburg, to an extent almost unparalleled even in the his- 
 tory of German dynasties, which George II used to upbraid 
 Englishmen at his Court for being so slow to master. Over 
 these complications I have not the least wish to waste your 
 time ; but, in view of the later histor}' of the house of Bruns- 
 wick in particular, it is worth pointing out that these repeated 
 partitions, which weakened so many princely houses and 
 prolonged the hopelessness of national disunion, were deeply 
 rooted in Germanic law and usage. Only quite gradually — 
 from the fourteenth century onwards, but with little imme- 
 diate effect upon the simplification of the territorial map of the 
 Empire — this system was modified by special laws oiinaliena- 
 bility and indivisihility established for themselves by particular 
 princely families. Primogeniture came later, and as is shown 
 in the instance of the Hanoverian line, was most bitterly re- 
 sisted by the interests affected. In the Reformation period 
 a imion of government, or at least a systematic co-operation, 
 between the several branches of the House of Guelph, might 
 have raised that House to an exceptional height of power and 
 influence in Germany. In this period, as you are aware, the 
 secularisation of the great ecclesiastical sees materially con- 
 tributed to swell the dominions of divers temporal princes ; 
 
 ' A rennion would have taken place between Bmnswick on the one 
 hand and Liineburg and Calenberg 'Hanover) — the diminished posses- 
 sions of the younger line — on the other, had not the proposals made in 
 this sense after Sadowa been rejected in deference to the sagacious advice 
 of Bismarck. (See u.s.. vol ii. p. 72.)
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY I5 
 
 and in the early years of the sixteenth century nearly all the 
 richest bishoprics of this region of Germany, — Paderborn, 
 Osnabrilck, jMiinster, Verden and Brcnmi, — fell in turn into 
 Guelph hands. Hildesheim alone, the venerable foundation 
 of Lewis the Pious, saved a remnant of its domains out of 
 the clutches of the Brunswick dukes, whom its bishop had at 
 first defeated in the open field with the aid of their Liineburg 
 kinsmen. The interests of the dynasty thus coincided with 
 the impulses of the population; nor could personal diver- 
 gences, due to various motives, in after times shake the 
 attachment of the Guelphs to a sober and tolerant Luther- 
 anism. I shall briefly advert further on to the principles and 
 policy in matters ecclesiastical of our earlier Hanoverian 
 Kings, and need only remind you at present that in them 
 the Lutheran traditions of their House had been interfused in 
 peculiar fashion both with an unmistakeable vein of rational- 
 ism, and with a spirit of tolerance ahke bequeathed to her 
 descendants and younger companions by the Electress Sophia. 
 In some of the more critical stages, however, of its history, 
 the Reformation had not only divided the Guelphs against 
 one another, but had driven into temporary exile its violent 
 adversary Duke Henry of Brunswick, the 'evil Hal' of 
 Luther's brutal invective. Again, in the years preceding the 
 Thirty Years' War, and in those covering its earlier half, 
 a consistently combined action between the two main divisions 
 of the House might, in conformity with the sentiments of 
 their subjects, have established a strong bulwark of the 
 Protestant cause in the German North-West, and success- 
 fully withstood the hordes that, in the name of the ruler of the 
 Empire, were devastating this part of it almost like another 
 Palatinate. But the politics of the Brunswick branch were 
 Imperialist already in the time before the War, when the 
 House of Austria had no more constant friend and no more 
 assiduous adviser than Duke Henry Julius. His memorable
 
 1 6 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 activity was divided between high poHlics abroad, civic 
 struggles at home, and the literary occupations and diver- 
 sions which make him so fascinating a figure to students of 
 both the English and the German drama. But neither his 
 untiring diplomacy, nor the timorous shifts of his successor 
 Frederick Ulric, averted from the Brunswick-Liineburg 
 dominions the awful scourge of war. Its visitations had 
 been in the first instance provoked by the turbulent partisan- 
 ship of Frederick Ulric's brother, Christian, the Protestant 
 administrator of the See of Halberstadt, and the devoted 
 champion of Elizabeth of Bohemia. To Englishmen she 
 must always be, as she was to their ancestors, the heroine of 
 the Great War. The quick impulse of a high spirit, followed 
 by the long devotion of an unflinching fidelity, identified 
 the princess to whom the Hanoverian line was to owe its 
 place in the English succession with the cause to which our 
 nation's sympathies were given. 
 
 The Middle House of Brunswick, which, from the ordinary 
 place of residence of its Dukes, had come to be called 
 the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, had, with the sub- 
 sequent sanction of the Emperor Charles V and the 
 Estates of the Duchy, set up as the law of its territories 
 the principles of indivisibility and primogeniture. The so- 
 called Pactum Henrico-Wilhelminnm, of 1535 \ brought 
 about by no very conscientious means, formed a precedent 
 of considerable importance for the history of the House of 
 Guelph. A precedent rather than a law, — since the line for 
 the regulation of whose succession the agreement was de- 
 vised, died out within a century; and in 1634, before the 
 fury of the Great War had been spent, its dominions passed 
 in different portions to the descendants of Henry, the elder of 
 
 ' Cf. O. von Heinemann, Geschichte von Braunsclnveig und Hannover , 
 vol. i. :,Gotha, 1892), p. 336.
 
 Ij INTRODUCTORY 1 7 
 
 the two sons of Ernest, the last Duke of the Middle House of 
 Liineburg. From them sprang the Dukes of Brunswick 
 of the Wolfenbiittel and Bevern lines, which, though not 
 participating in the Personal Union, were to be so closely 
 associated with some of the most momentous European con- 
 flicts in which Great Britain and Hanover were together 
 involved '. Duke Ernest's younger son, William, on the 
 other hand, was the actual founder of the New House of 
 Liineburg, that was destined to inherit the British throne. 
 The politic design of uniting under a single rule the whole of 
 the dominions of the House of Guelph had been frustrated 
 in 1569 by the marriage of the elder brother, Henry, under 
 circumstances more or less analogous to those of the much- 
 vexed marriage between the parents of Sophia Dorothea, 
 ^afterwards unhappily wedded to the future King George I ". 
 The dynastic principle, whose workings may be traced into 
 the later period of the Personal Union, could henceforth only 
 exert itself within the limits of each branch of the historic 
 House respectively. In the Liineburg branch, possessed of 
 the Liineburg-Celle territories, to which it added certain 
 minor acquisitions, and from 1635 the principality of 
 Calenberg-Gotlingen, indivisibility of territory and unity 
 of government were established m perpetnum by the compact 
 of 1592, formally confirmed at Celle in 1610. In accord- 
 ance with this agreement, the elder four of the seven sons of 
 Duke William held sway in turn at Celle, fortune so arranging 
 it that each of them actually succeeded on the death of his 
 next elder brother. But the very purpose of unification, 
 
 ' Through Prince Ferdinand, the victor of Minden, Duke Charles 
 William Ferdinand, who fell at Auerstadt, and Duke Frederick William, 
 who fell at Quatrebras. 
 
 ^ Viz. Duke Henry married, in contravention of a previous agreement 
 with his brother that neither should take this step without the approval 
 of the composite authority under which the country had been previously 
 governed ; and he now demanded a partition. 
 
 C
 
 l8 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 which lias commended the compact to subsequent genera- 
 lions, caused it at the time to be vehemently resisted by the 
 Estates both of Liineberg and of Calenberg. The latter in 
 fact exhibited the very spirit which many generations later — 
 in 1794 — found expression in a resolution of the same Diet, 
 requesting the then Elector — King George III — to announce 
 to the French Republic the neutrality of the ' Calenberg 
 nation' in the Coalition War. Thus, the fifth surviving son, 
 the celebrated Duke George of Liineburg, who in the Thirty 
 Years' War played a part both important and patriotic, for 
 a time held separate sway in Calenberg, of which he con- 
 stituted the town of Hanover the capital ; and in his last 
 will he renewed the assurance to the Estates of the princi- 
 pality, that it should never be united wiih Liiueburg-Celle, 
 although, in accordance with the rule of primogeniture, 
 his eldest surviving son was to have his choice between 
 the two. 
 
 Had Duke George lived seven years longer, he might, by 
 his statesmanship, and more especially by the strength of his 
 position as a military commander, have secured to the House 
 of Guelph a prosperous issue out of the great war. As.it 
 was, in the year after his death (1642), the Brunswick- 
 Luneburg Dukes prematurely concluded a separate pacifica- 
 tion at Goslar with the Emperor, and hereupon disarmed. 
 The consequences of this precipitation showed themselves 
 six years later in the Peace of Westphalia, when Hildesheim 
 had to be given up by Brunswick, while the Liineburg Dukes 
 might count themselves fortunate in being excused from 
 meeting the exorbitant claims upon Calenberg of the heirs of 
 Tilly — a strange ancestor for a potential Hanoverian dynasty 
 — and in being allowed the modest 'satisfaction' that at 
 every alternate election to the See of Osnabriick the Bishop 
 should be a prince of their family. You know how it was 
 a peculiar result of the Personal Union that the last Protestant
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 Bishop of the See, for whom it had been kept open more 
 than two years, and who had been elected to it at the tender 
 age of six months, afterwards became commander-in-chief of 
 the British army, and was for a time thought hkely to succeed 
 to the British throne \ 
 
 But to return for one moment to the latter half of the 
 seventeenth century, the period when the fortunes of the 
 Brunswick-Liineburg line began to be built up in steady and 
 unbroken progression, — greatly to the vexation of their kins- 
 men of Brunswick- Wolfenbilttel. To these jealousies, which 
 after\vards led to certain notable attempts on the part of the 
 elder line to ally itself by intermarriage with some of the 
 chief reigning families of Europe, I cannot further refer ; 
 they illustrate a witty saying of Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess 
 Palatine and Duchess of Orleans — known 1 trust to some 
 of my hearers as one of the most amusing letter-writers and 
 one of the most brave-hearted women of her own or any 
 other age. ' The history of the House of Brunswick,' she 
 says, * is just like the birthright of Esau and Jacob ; the elder 
 brother lets his blessing be taken by the younger, and then 
 wants to have it back again.' For some time, however, 
 after the Peace of Westphalia, a consciousness of their 
 common needs kept the Guelph governments on good terms 
 with one another. Together they broke the obstinate resist- 
 ance long maintained against the ducal authority by the city 
 of Brunswick, where their nominal condominium was hence- 
 forth exchanged for the sway of the elder line ". Together 
 
 * A picture of the Duke of York in childhood, with mitre .and crosier 
 indicated in a corner of the canvas, used to be shown in the palace at 
 Osnabriick. 
 
 ^ A condominium continued to exist elsewhere, notably in a portion 
 of the Harz mountains, thence called Communion- Harz ; where this 
 anomaly survived even the war of 1866, and was not put an end to till 
 1875. .See Braun-Wiesbaden, /??■/</(;/' aus dei- detitsclien Kleinstaatcrei 
 (Hanover, 1881), vol. iv. pp. 259 scqc|. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 they revived the activity of the joint University of Helmstadt, 
 whose greatest light, Calixtus, had shone almost solitary 
 among the ruins of a noble scat of learning. Together, 
 above all, they strove to vindicate to their House and to the 
 Lower-Saxon Circle of the Empire an authoritative voice in 
 maintaining the Peace upon which its security and cohesion 
 depended. Thus in this period the loyal co-operation ot 
 the elder line added strength and significance to the foreign 
 policy of the younger, some aspects of which have a ver}- 
 direct bearing upon our theme. 
 
 The dominions of the Brunswick-Ltineburg family were 
 distributed among the sons of Duke George, on the twofold 
 principle of maintaining the right of primogeniture, and that 
 of indivisibility of territory except in so far as Calenberg 
 (Hanover) was to remain separated from the more important 
 Lijneburg-Celle. The Hanoverian historian Spittler — an 
 author of notable lucidity of statement as well as solidity of 
 research — makes a remark of which the bearings upon the 
 later experiences of the dynasty will not escape you. When 
 on the accession of the House of Hanover to the thrones of 
 these islands Englishmen had set down that House and all its 
 belongings as ' German,' everything seemed to have been said ; 
 in truth, however, the type which the dynasty represented 
 was in many respects a novel one in Germany itself. Spittler 
 points out ^ that none of Duke George's four sons had in the 
 old way gone through a University training, but that foreign 
 travel, and more especially long-protracted sojourns in Italy, 
 and at Venice in particular, had made the Liineburg Duke, 
 who for forty years stood at the head of the family, a prince 
 on a new model, strongly contrasting with that followed by 
 the Brunswick Dukes. This was George William, the close 
 
 ^ Geschichte des Fiirstenthums Hannover, &c. (Gottingen, 1786), vol, 
 li. p. 181.
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 21 
 
 friend of our William III, who held sway at Celle from 1665 
 to his death in 1705, having in 1689 added to his patrimony 
 (by a much disputed inheritance) the duchy of Saxe-Lauen- 
 burg. And the same remark applies to the fourth brother, 
 Ernest Augustus, the actual progenitor of our Hanoverian 
 kings. These two princes were thus closely bound together, 
 not only by an affection that withstood the severest of trials, 
 but by a complete congeniality of disposition, habits and 
 opinions. They thought and felt alike in both public and 
 private concerns, and alike united to an unflinching firmness 
 in the maintenance of the political interests of their dynasty 
 a moral laxity which was not less surely inherited by their 
 earlier descendants. The third brother, John Frederick, 
 who held Calenberg (Hanover) from 1665 to his death in 
 1679, though equally fond with his brothers of Italian travel 
 and of French society, had in him more eccentric elements 
 of obstinacy. In Italy he became a convert to the Church 
 of Rome ; and he was led into devious paths of policy partly 
 in consequence of this step, partly by a restless ambition 
 which at different times dangled before his eyes the Grand- 
 Mastership of the Germanic Order, and the Polish Crown \ 
 On his death in 1679 Calenberg (Hanover) passed to the' 
 youngest of the four brothers, Ernest Augustus, who since 
 1662 had held the bishopric of Osnabriick, and who in 1658 
 liad married the Princess Palatine Sophia, the youngest 
 daughter of Elisabeth Queen of Bohemia, and the mother of 
 our kings to be. Before the conclusion of this marriage 
 Duke George William, as heir-presumptive to Celle, had 
 entered into an undertaking not to marry (he had formerly 
 himself been engaged to the Princess Sophia) ; so that the 
 
 ' See A. Kocher, Geschichte von Hannover und BraunscJnveig, vol. ii 
 (Hanover, 1895), p. 80.— Leibniz, who was admitted into the Hano- 
 verian service by John Frederick, celebrated his virtues both in Oerman 
 prose (of the ' Chancery' sort) and in Latin hexameters.
 
 22 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [I 
 
 ultimate succession of Ernest Augustus or his issue to Celle 
 seemed assured. And even on the marriage in 1675, in 
 spite of this undertaking, of George William to a French 
 lady, Eleonora d'Olbreuse, hitherto his mistress, the rights 
 of their issue to the succession had been expressly barred 
 during the survival of any descendant of George William's 
 younger brother. The sole impediment in the way of a per- 
 manent union of the entire dominions of the House of 
 Brunswicke-Liineburg therefore now lay in the testament 
 of Duke George, establishing the separation of Calenberg 
 (Hanover) from Liineburg-Celle. This was met in 1682 by 
 the ' setting-up ' (i. e. publication by anticipation) of the 
 testament of Duke Ernest Augustus, which in the following 
 year received the imperial sanction '. It proclaimed as 
 a perpetual law and statutumfamiliae, to be observed by all 
 the testator's descendants, the twofold principle of indivisi- 
 bility of the existing territories of the House, including 
 Calenberg (Hanover), and of succession by primogeniture. 
 We may note as curious that shordy before the foundation 
 was thus laid of the future dynasdc greatness of the House of 
 Hanover — for without the eventful union of territories just 
 indicated there could have been no question of a Brunswick- 
 Liineburg electorate — the first step, though as it proved 
 a false one, had been taken towards the consummation of 
 that greatness by the acquisition of the British Crown. In 
 December, 1680, Prince George Lewis (afterwards King 
 George I) visited England with a view to asking the hand of 
 the Princess Anne (afterwards Queen) ; but the project, 
 which was approved by her brother-in-law the Prince of 
 Orange, fell through, it was said— though we need not 
 examine the statement — because Prince George was not 
 
 ' So Havemann, Geschichte der Lande Braunschweig iind Liineburg 
 (Gottingen, 1853), '^'ol. iii- p. 295; see, however, Spittler, vol. ii. 
 p. 321.
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 23 
 
 attracted \ Two years later— but this time against the 
 advice of WiUiam of Orange — the Hereditary Prince George 
 Lewis was, in order so to speak to make assurance doubly 
 sure, married to Sophia Dorothea, the daughter of his uncle 
 Duke George WilHam and his French wife, at last Duchess 
 of Celle. Into the tragic catastrophe of this marriage, which 
 casts a deep shadow over the history of the House of Bruns- 
 wick in the beginnings of its period of greatness, it is unne- 
 cessary on the present occasion to enter. No estrangement 
 whatever was caused between Duke Ernest Augustus and 
 his elder brother by the divorce declared between the Here- 
 ditary Prince and Princess, or by her melancholy doom. 
 Less widely known is another cruel chapter in the history of 
 the dynasty, the origin of which is directly traceable to the 
 ■establishment of the combined laws of primogeniture and 
 indivisibility. These laws were bitterly resented by the 
 second son — Frederick Augustus— the 'poor Gussy ' of his 
 mother the Duchess Sophia's candid Memoirs ; and his 
 grievance was supported by a protest from the active pen of 
 his ambitious kinsman Antony Ulric of Brunswick- Wolfen- 
 biittel. Prince Frederick Augustus afterwards lost his life 
 in the Turkish wars, in which he served like four of his 
 brothers, and in which one of them had previously fallen ; 
 whereupon the next eldest survivors, the Princes Maximilian 
 William and Christian, refused to recognise the new statute. 
 With the countenance of Antony Ulric, and apparently also 
 with that of the celebrated Brandenburg minister Dankel- 
 mann, Prince INIaximilian hatched a plot as to which infor- 
 mation was forwarded to Hanover from Berlin by his sister, 
 the Brandenburg Electress Sophia Charlotte. At the end of 
 1691 he was arrested, together with the chief accomplices 
 of his schemes; but as in the case of the youthful escapade 
 
 ' Briefe der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte, &c., 11. s., vol. i. p. 36; 
 cf. Rodemann.y. //. vor Illoi. p. 10 and note.
 
 24 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [I 
 
 of the future Frederick the Great, his own life was spared ', 
 while the most prominent of his agents, Colonel von Moltke, 
 a high ofTicial of his father's court, suffered death as guilty of 
 high treason. 
 
 The unity of the dominions of the House of Hanover 
 (as, following later usage, I may henceforth conveniently 
 call it) was now assured. But the fulfilment of this indis- 
 pensable preliminary condition of its rise to high political 
 importance would not have sufficed, had its bearing and 
 action with regard to the affairs both of the Empire and of 
 Europe at large proved inadequate to the demands made 
 upon it. So far as their results have as yet been given to 
 the world, the researches of Professor A. Kocher, the emi- 
 nent historian of Hanover and Brunswick during the years 
 (1648-1714) which we have at present in view **, show that 
 the part played by the princes of the House of Brunswick, 
 and by those of the younger or Hanoverian line in par- 
 ticular, in the imperial and general politics of this period, 
 was one of considerable importance, although little account 
 was afterwards taken of this in England. During the earlier 
 of these years their endeavours were chiefly, nor without 
 success, directed towards preventing Sweden and France 
 from breaking through the limits assigned to them by the 
 Peace of Westphalia ; and these are the very Powers with 
 which we shall find the foreign policy of the House of 
 Hanover still principally concerned at the time of its ac- 
 cession to the British throne. The Triple Alliance of 1668, 
 however, in some measure shifted the reladons between the 
 leading European States. The Brunswick dukes were plied 
 with solicitations on both sides, and, having already had 
 experience of the guilders of the Dutch, they were now for 
 
 ' He afterwards commanded the first line of cavalry at Blenheim, 
 and died — as a Roman Catholic — in 1726. 
 * See especially, u. s., vol. ii. pp. 79seqq.
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 25 
 
 the first time in their history offered subsidies by the govern- 
 ment of England \ We know how defective were the foun- 
 dations on which the Triple Alliance rested, and how soon, 
 notwithstanding the importance for the peace of Europe of 
 the principle of intervention which that Alliance embodied, its 
 value as an effective instrument passed away. In 167 1 John 
 Frederick of Hanover actually concluded a treaty of neu- 
 trality with France, which amounted to little short of an 
 alliance with the unbafffed aggressor; and George William 
 of Celle and Ernest Augustus of Osnabriick seemed not 
 indisposed to follow suit. It was in the same year that, with 
 the aid of the veteran diplomatist Gourville, whose Memoirs 
 describe his visits to the half-Gallicised courts of these princes, 
 Lewis XIV was persuaded to gratify the Duke of Celle by 
 ^a royal ordinance, naturalising his daughter in France as 
 ' Demoiselle Sophie Dorothde de Brunswick et deLunebourg-.' 
 But though his brother Ernest Augustus had actually entered 
 into a treaty on behalf of his bishopric, George William of 
 Celle continued to hold back, and by the advice of his Chan- 
 cellor Schiitz declined to range himself among the friends 
 and favourers of PVance at the epoch of her invasion of the 
 United Provinces in 1672. This may without hesitation be 
 described as a critical moment in the history of the House, 
 and one upon which its subsequent connexion with that of 
 Great Britain largely depended. Schiitz, the minister who 
 completely emancipated the policy of his master from the 
 French influences surrounding him, thus exercised a notable 
 influence upon the House so long served by himself, and 
 after him by his son-in-law Bernstorff\ Thus not only 
 
 ' See ib., vol. ii. p. 89, as to Sir Gabriel .Silvius' mission to the House 
 of Brunswick in the spring of 1669. 
 
 '' lb., vol. ii. p. 199. — I have only read Gourville's Memoirs in 
 Petitot's series, but a new edition has just been announced. 
 
 " The real name of the family, which served the House of Brunswick-
 
 26 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 were George William of Celle, and wiili liim his brother 
 Ernest Augustus, gradually gained over to the political 
 system of William of Orange and his mentor Count George 
 Frederick of Waldeck ; but the foundations were laid of 
 a policy which during some fourscore years, both before 
 and after the accession of the House to the British throne, a 
 series of trusted advisers, from Schiitz to Bernstorff, and from 
 Bernstorff to Miinchhausen, consistently strove to maintain. 
 The cardinal principle of this policy, that of a loyal 
 adhesion to the House of Austria, found expression in the 
 treaty concluded in April, 1674, between the Emperor 
 Leopold I and all the Dukes of both the Brunswick-Liine- 
 burg and the Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel lines, John Frederick 
 of Hanover alone adhering to France till very shortly before 
 his death in 1679. ^Y this treaty the Dukes, in return for 
 subsidies from the States General of the United Provinces, 
 Spain and the Emperor, undertook to furnish 15,000 men, 
 besides a further 2,000 at their own cost. There can be 
 no doubt that a strong national feeling, such as was less 
 rare in the seventeenth century than is sometimes supposed, 
 prevailed at this time in the Empire. Considerable enthu- 
 siasm greeted the successes against the French in 1674, 
 of which a full share fell to the Brunswick-Liineburgers, 
 headed by their Dukes. These troops gained a brilliant 
 victory under Ernest Augustus and his son George Lewis 
 at the Bridge of Conz, and took part in the recovery of 
 Treves. But the advantage was not pushed, and the Dukes 
 returned home to protect their own territories against the 
 other arch-foe of the Empire, the Swedes, of whom soon 
 
 Liineburg in at least three successive generations, was Sinold. The two 
 sons of Chancellor Schiitz were in turn ministers at the Court of 
 William III, and his grandson was the unlucky Hanoverian minister at 
 the Court of Queen Anne who was sent away for having demanded 
 the writ for the Electoral Prince.
 
 I] INTRODUCTORY 27 
 
 afterwards (in January, 1675) the great Elector of Branden- 
 burg disposed at Fehrbellin. 
 
 After the Peace of Nymwegen Lewis XIV entered upon his 
 process of reunions, dissimulating the reliance placed by him 
 upon the Turk, who was more seriously than ever threaten- 
 ing the Empire from the East. The bonds of alliance were 
 hereupon drawn still closer between the imperilled House 
 of Austria and the Brunswick-Liineburg Dukes, of whom 
 Ernest Augustus now held sway at Hanover in the place 
 of his deceased brother, the Catholic John Frederick. Of 
 the glories of the great day that saved Vienna from the 
 Infidel (September 12, 1683), not the least conspicuous 
 were earned by Prince George Lewis and the Hanoverian 
 life-guards \ From this time forward, as should surely be 
 remembered to its honour, the House of Hanover displayed 
 the keenest interest in the war against the Turk carried on 
 by the Emperor and his allies of the Holy League ; in 1685 
 a Celle-Hanoverian contingent, led by Prince George Lewis, 
 swelled the army of the Danube, and took part in the 
 capture of Neuhausel. I have already mentioned the ser- 
 vices of his brothers in the cause. Three of them took part 
 in the same campaigns, in which two of them lost their 
 lives ; and a fourth led out the first detachment of the 
 Hanoverian troops in the pay of the Venetian Republic, who 
 did not return home till 1688, after expelling the Turks from 
 Peloponnesus, and from the ruined Acropolis of Athens -. 
 We shall see a little later that the Government of George I 
 was the first British Government of modern times that 
 directly intervened in a diplomatic way in Turkish affairs '. 
 
 ' See O. Klopp, Der Fall dcs Hauses Stiiaii, vol. ii. p. 400, and 
 Appendix xii. 
 
 ' Bodemann, Ilten. p. 20. — I am sorry to say that it was a Luneburg 
 officer of artillery whose bomb exploded the Parthenon (Zinkeisen, 
 Geschichte des osmanischen Rcichcs, vol. v. p. 134. note). 
 
 " .See below as to the Peace of Passarowitz. — An odd relic of George I's
 
 \ Fr; 
 
 28 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 Wlien, in 1688, no doubt partly in consequence of the 
 successes of the Imperial arms in the East, the French 
 irruption into the Empire took place in the West, Celle 
 and Hanover joined in the Magdeburg Conference (October), 
 and contributed 8,000 men to the force whicli occupied 
 
 ankfort and secured the Middle Rhine '. Duke Ernest 
 Augustus, whose activity at this time is very noteworthy, 
 commanded this force, with his eldest son George Lewis by 
 his side, and was prominently concerned in the operations 
 which in the following year led to the recapture of Mainz '^. 
 
 These services, rendered at the critical season when the 
 'I'urkish war had not yet closed, and when the Grand 
 Alliance was only on the eve of conclusion, merited a re- 
 ward which was not wont to flow very copiously, viz. the 
 ' gratitude of the House of Austria.' They were not the 
 less welcome to the Emperor Leopold, as supplying a 
 balance to the growing power and importance of Branden- 
 burg, between whose political designs and action and those 
 of the House of Hanover a peculiar relation henceforth 
 becomes manifest, on which we shall have to dwell at length 
 in certain of its later phases. In the times immediately under 
 notice this relation was made up of periodical co-operation 
 and a growing jealousy ; nor was it by any means dominated 
 by the intermarriage between the two Houses in the persons 
 of the Electoral Prince Frederick (afterwards the first Prussian 
 king) and Sophia Charlotte, Ernest Augustus and Sophia's 
 accomplished and amiable daughter (1684). 
 
 Hungarian campaign long survived in the two Turks captured by him 
 as boys at this time — Mahomet (the ' honest Mahomet ' of Pope's Moral 
 Essays) and Mustapha. The report that as pages of the backstairs they 
 exercised influence in political as well as in private affairs appears to 
 rest on the authority of the Count de Broglie. (See Jesse, Memoirs of 
 the Court of London from the Revolution of 16S8, vol. ii. p. 297.) 
 
 ' Klopp, vol. iii. p. 198. 
 
 ^ lb. vol. iv, p. 33; Havemann, vol. iii. p. 217.
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 29 
 
 This anxious jealousy of the advance of its Brandenburg 
 neighbour both in actual power and in dignity of rank con- 
 tributed to rivet the attention of the House of Hanover upon 
 the establishment and improvement of its own position in the 
 Empire. The cohesion of the dynasty had been ensured 
 by the near prospect of a unification of its dominions, while 
 its military strength had been raised by a continuous system 
 of subsidy treaties with the Great Powers of the Grand 
 Alliance. Nor was the attention of Ernest Augustus and 
 his eldest son diverted from its main object by any anxious 
 consideration of the possible advantages to be derived by 
 their House from the English Revolution, and from the 
 clause in the Bill of Rights excluding Papists from the 
 throne. In the debates of the House of Commons it had 
 been urged as one of the reasons for omitting in the 
 Bill to name the House of Hanover in connexion with the 
 succession, that any such mention would offer to foreign 
 princes an opportunity for interfering in the affairs of the 
 nation ; and the proposal made by the House of Lords in 
 conformity with the wishes of King William, to settle 
 the reversion of the Crown upon the Electress Sophia 
 and her posterity, had been rejected accordingly \ The 
 interests of her husband and eldest son during the ensuing 
 period were concentrated upon the question of securing 
 the electoral dignity to their House. Early in 1692 was 
 concluded the so-called Electoral Compact [Ktirlraclal), by 
 which the two Brunswick -Liineburg Dukes undertook to 
 furnish, in addition to a money contribution, a body of 
 6,oco troops at their own cost for the prosecution of the 
 war against the Turks, and after it of the war against 
 France; while a supplementary agreement engaged both 
 sides to perpetual friendship and military assistance in the 
 
 * Hallam, Constitutional History of England, ch. xv ; cf. Traill, 
 William III, p. 72.
 
 30 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 event of danger of war, and specially assured to the House 
 of Austria the support of Brunswick-Liineburg in coming 
 Imperial elections and with regard to the imminent question 
 of the Spanish Succession. In return the Emperor pro- 
 mised to invest Ernest Augustus with a Ninth Electorate, 
 and in the December following the Investiture was actually 
 accorded. The bond which tied the House of Hanover to 
 that of Austria was therefore in both origin and conditions 
 altogether exceptional ; and this should not be overlooked 
 in commenting on the hold which it retained over the son 
 and the grandson of Ernest Augustus. But though the 
 Investiture had been secured, the second and final part of 
 the procedure, viz. the admission of the new Elector into the 
 Electoral College at the Diet, took sixteen further weary years 
 to bring to pass. Before the expiration of this period (in 
 1708) the death of the Duke of Celle (in 1705) had at last 
 united the entire Brunswick-Liineburg inheritance in George 
 Lewis's hands. The jealous intrigues of Antony Ulric of 
 Wolfenbiittel, the vacillations of Saxony, whose claims on the 
 Lauenburg inheritance were bought off, while the Elector's 
 enquiries concerning the terrible Konigsmarck scandal were 
 met by an impenetrable silence, and a host of other obstacles, 
 were at last overcome by the ability and persistence of the 
 Hanoverian diplomacy \ Before success at last rewarded 
 its efforts, the ambition of the Elector of Saxony and that 
 of the Elector of Brandenburg (with whom Hanover had 
 concluded a foedus perpetuum in 1700) had alike been 
 satisfied, in 1697 and in 1701 respectively, by the coveted 
 acquisition of a royal crown. 
 
 Ernest Augustus had not survived to witness the com- 
 pletion of the most anxious and difficult task of his life. He 
 
 ' The chief credit of these nefjotiations belongs to Jobst Hermann 
 von Ilten, the biographical account of whom by Dr. E. Bodemann has 
 already been cited. See especially pp. 26 seqq.
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 31 
 
 had died in 1698, leaving to his successor, together with the 
 prospect of a speedy and full recognition by his fellow Electors 
 of the dignity conferred upon his House, the assurance of a 
 solid and indivisible dominion, extended beyond the Elbe by 
 his own efforts, an exchequer free from debt, an effectively 
 centralised civil administration, and an army of some strength 
 and of high repute. He further bequeathed the tradition, 
 embodied in the form of a solemn compact, enjoining upon 
 his heir a firm support of the House of Austria, a loyal mainte- 
 nance of the integrity of the Empire, and a steady resistance 
 against the aggressions of France, with whom peace had 
 been concluded at Ryswick in the year before his death. 
 Finally, he had contrived to remain on good terms with 
 Brandenburg, notwithstanding that, by no means to the dis- 
 ^satisfaction of his chief counsellors, this State had, in conse- 
 quence of its geographical position, of the political genius of 
 the Great Elector, and of the perversity of the Saxon Court, 
 already become the foremost Protestant Power in the Empire. 
 In conclusion, a word must suffice to remind you how 
 during the sixteen years of his electoral rule before his 
 advent to the British throne George Lewis consistently 
 adhered to the principles of the paternal policy. With 
 Brandenburg he concluded in 1700, as was just now noted, 
 a perpetual alliance, after having in the previous year skil- 
 fully averted a conflict on the occasion of an encroachment 
 upon Holstein-Gottorp on the part of Denmark. His conduct 
 in face of the imminent renewal of the struggle with France 
 was prompt and spirited. In 1701 he and his uncle at Celle 
 joined the Grand Alliance re-knit by William III towards the 
 troubled close of his career; and in the following year they 
 forced their Wolfenbiittel kinsman to renounce his separate 
 alliance with France. When the great War of the Spanish 
 Succession broke out, Hanover and Celle placed more than 
 10,000 men under Marlborough's command-in-chief; nor
 
 32 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [l 
 
 was it the fault of the Elector George Lewis that during the 
 years (1707-10) in which he stood at the head of the 
 Imperial forces on the Upper Rhine, he accomplished no 
 \ military results of importance. His loyalty towards the 
 cause of the Grand Alliance remained unimpaired, when, 
 disappointed and vexed by the condition of the composite 
 force under his command, he laid it down without having 
 been able to gratify the military ambition which was pro- 
 bably the strongest personal impulse in him, as in his son 
 after him. George I's northern policy, and his proceedings 
 preliminary to the annexation of the Duchies of Bremen and 
 Verden to his electoral dominions, will be more conveniently 
 noticed in their connexion with the foreign affairs of his 
 British reign. Due in the first instance to the action of 
 Denmark, and to her manifest wish to anticipate him, the 
 intervention of Hanover against Sweden was at all events 
 consistent with the previous vigilance of his House against the 
 inroads of a Power at whose hands the Guelph dominions 
 had half a century before suffered so severely, and to the 
 redistribution of whose conquests he could not pretend to 
 remain indifferent. In the peace negotiations at Utrecht, 
 which he could not but know must prove wholly unsatisfac- 
 tory in their results for the Empire and its interests, the 
 Elector George Lewis, although represented at the Congress, 
 maintained an attitude of reserve '. 
 
 And yet in the instrument of peace the rights of the House 
 of Hanover to the British throne, now solidly established by 
 the Succession Act in 1701, were asserted with a definiteness 
 that left nothing to be desired. In this question of the 
 Succession events had moved — not rapidly to be sure, but 
 steadily — since King William Ill's visit to the Gohrde in the 
 first year of George Lewis's electorship. On this occasion 
 the King, had in reply to some leading questions suggested 
 * Klopp, vol. xiv. p. 454.
 
 l] INTRODUCTORY 
 
 33 
 
 by the zeal of Leibniz to the enterprising Duchess Eleonora, 
 and put by her on her own responsibility, shown himself 
 favourably disposed towards the idea of the eventual succession 
 of the Hanoverian line \ At Hanover itself, the subsequent 
 endeavours of King William and the action of Parliament 
 were of course foUow-ed with interest ; and after the formal 
 communication of this action, note was taken alike of the 
 unremitting efforts of the friends of the Protestant Succession, 
 and of the signals of fear proceeding from its adversaries, 
 sometimes ill-dissimulated under the guise of acquiescence, 
 or even of support. Gradually it became apparent that the 
 great body of intelligent public opinion in England w-as agreed 
 in favour of the legally settled solution of the question that in 
 the last years of Queen Anne occupied all minds. The ex- 
 .pectations which neither the old Electress Sophia, nor those of 
 her descendants who in the course of nature would succeed to 
 her claims, could altogether refrain from indulging, variously 
 affected personal temperaments dissimilar to one another. 
 The Dowager Electress, although the intellectual centre of the 
 Court of Hanover, had never been consulted as to its policy, 
 still less admitted to the direction of its diplomatic action. 
 With all her wit and wisdom, she had largely to depend on the 
 guidance of her sentiments, into which she was far too high- 
 spirited, and far too true-hearted, not to allow- both dynastic 
 ambition and inherited loyalty to enter. But, as you know, 
 she died a few weeks before Queen Anne, and the title of 
 Queen of Great Britain and Ireland was not inscribed on 
 her tomb. In her son, the Elector George Lewis, a rigid 
 reserve overlay a strong attachment not only to his Elec- 
 torate but also to the system and usages of its government. 
 But he was cast in a mould of manhood, and when the hour 
 of action arrived his resolute will was rarely found unpre- 
 f)ared for action. The personal ambition of the Electoral 
 
 ' Klopp, vol. viii. p. 246. 
 D
 
 34 GREAT BRITAIN AND FiANOVER 
 
 Prince George Augustus, seconded by the aspirations of 
 his Princess, a woman of high intelligence and of rare judg- 
 ment in conduct, awaited with comparative eagerness the 
 decisive tide in the affairs of the House. In order that it 
 might be taken at the flood, vigilant political agents of high 
 capacity and tried experience had for some time been busily 
 at work, — among them above all Baron Bothmer, the 
 Hanoverian resident in London, and at the Hague M. de 
 Robethon, the aUer ego of the Hanoverian minister Bern- 
 storff ; while the pens of publicists were equally on the alert, 
 including that of Leibniz, the faithful friend and corre- 
 spondent of the old Electress, confident of the great destinies 
 and convinced of the great responsibilities of her House. 
 
 Whatever turn the course of events might take when that 
 House was at last called to the throne of a great nation, 
 which at no previous period of its history had attained to 
 such a height of power and influence in Europe, the first 
 Hanoverian King of Great Britain would still remain Elector 
 of Hanover, and would still be imbued with.^jolitical tradi- 
 tions and principles of which it has been the object of the 
 preceding outline to recall some of the leading features. 
 Writing just before the passing of the Succession Act to her 
 beloved aunt the Electress Sophia, the Duchess of Orleans 
 had innocently assumed that when the throne of Great Britain 
 fell vacant her cousin George Lewis would become King of 
 Great Britain, while on the principle of the order established 
 by his ancestor his brother next to him in age would succeed 
 as Elector ^ But, whatever consequences might thence 
 ensue for his old dominions or for his new, a Personal 
 Union between them had become an inevitable part of the 
 settlement brought about by the English Revolution, and 
 by the irrevocable downfall of the House of Stuart. 
 
 *■ Briefe der Herzogin Elizabeth Charlotte, &>€., vol. i. p. 485.
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE SETTLEMENT 
 
 TH?^ accession of George I would be very incorrectly 
 described as the establishment of a petty German 
 prince upon the British throne. Enough was, I hope, said in 
 my first lecture to show that the part previously played by him 
 as Elector, and after his uncle's death as ruler of the whole of 
 ^he Brunswick-Liineburg dominions, had been one of con- 
 siderable importance for the Empire, and not without signifi- 
 cance for the great political issues that occupied the attention 
 of Western and Northern Europe. Quite apart from the 
 interest reflected upon it by the question of the British Suc- 
 cession, and the many political transactions into which that 
 question more or less materially entered, the House of 
 Hanover, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 commanded a high estimation among the princely dynasties of 
 the age. The dignified splendour of the Court of Hanover 
 well responded to the consideration enjoyed by the Electoral 
 Government ; and although in many other contemporary- 
 capitals the example of Versailles had led to a new era of 
 magnificence, yet we need not attribute solely to family 
 partiality the assurance of the good Duchess of Orleans to 
 the Electress Sophia (in 1705) that few sovereigns of the 
 times lived in so much grandeur and dignity as her son '. 
 
 ' Briefe, (sfc, u.s., vol. ii. p. 109. Cf. //'., p. 331, as to the grand 
 style in which a. 1713 George Lewis kept house at the Gohrde, enter- 
 taining 330 persons a day. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 A sympathetic volume devoted by the worthy Master of the 
 Ceremonies of the late King Ernest Augustus of Hanover to 
 a description of the Court of his sovereign's ancestor and 
 namesake, goes some way towards proving his assertion that 
 this Court in no wise fell short of the contemporary standards 
 of Dresden and Vienna '. Under George Lewis, although 
 he personally hated ceremonial, both because it gives trouble 
 and because it is only rendered bearable by a graciousness of 
 which he cannot have believed himself possessed, the etiquette 
 of the Court increased in vigour very much in proportion as 
 its morality relaxed ^ So long as the Electress Dowager 
 survived, there was fortunately no fear of intellectual interests 
 remaining wholly neglected at Hanover and Herrenhausen. 
 Thus, a shrewd English writer, who as the result of a visit to 
 Hanover in 1702 extolled its Court as 'extremely polite, and 
 accounted, even in Germany, as the best both for Civility and 
 Decorum,' dwelt particularly on the scientific and literary 
 atmosphere created by the Electress Sophia's exalted presence. 
 You are aware that King George I was not of a literary turn 
 of mind, although the correspondence remaining from his 
 earlier years indicates that he could express himself with 
 vivacity as well as sense ; and I have already referred to the 
 familiar fact of his want of intellectual curiosity, as shown by 
 his not caring to learn the English language. His mother, 
 the old Electress, had spoken both English and Dutch to per- 
 fection, although it might be imprudent to accept without a 
 grain of salt the ecstasies of Toland, the author just cited, as 
 
 ' C. E. von Malortie, Der Hannover' sche Hof unter dent Ktirfilrsten 
 Ernst August und der Kurfiirstin Sophie (Hanover, 1847). 
 
 ■^ See on this congenial topic E. Vehse, Geschichte der Hofe des Hauses 
 Braunschweig, vol. i. p. 163. It is here observed with truth that the 
 process noted above was analogous to that which occurred at Versailles 
 in the latter part of the reign of Lewis XIV, though of course the per- 
 sonal relations of the Grand Monarch to the ceremonial of his Court 
 were very different in character.
 
 Il] THE SETTLEMENT 37 
 
 to her beino- 'entirely English in her Person, in her Behaviour, 
 in her Humor, and in her Inclinations \' Sophia had been 
 brought up abroad, and could consequently hardly be expected, 
 in spite of herself, to resist this particular kind of flattery. 
 King George I's refusal to take the first step towards earning 
 a similar encomium, may safely be ascribed to an indifference 
 to the thoughts and sentiments of others, thoroughly in keep- 
 ing with his cold and selfish nature. Yet where either his 
 preferences for persons or his own interests, as they pre- 
 sented themselves to him, were involved, he showed no fickle- 
 ness of attachment or infirmity of purpose. From his pubhc 
 servants, whether as Elector or as King, he cannot be said to 
 have ever lightly withdrawn his trust after it had once been 
 given. According to the statement of a partisan of the 
 Protestant Succession, the Huguenot whom after he had 
 become a Whig writer Swift politely called a ' French dog,' 
 some people fathered on King George I, others on his son 
 and heir, 'the noble saying' that ''tis the Rule and Maxim 
 of their Family, to reward their friends, do justice to their 
 enemies, and fear none but God^' But though I doubt both 
 conjectures as to the authorship of this apophthegm, it has 
 in it a reminiscence of the truth. And, in order not to linger 
 over personal estimates, it may be as well, in judging of the 
 moral courage exhibited by George I when he made up his 
 mind to face the certainty of an experience altogether re- 
 pugnant to his natural inclinations, to go to the root of the 
 matter at once. The nation of which on his own behalf and 
 that of his dynasty he undertook the monarchical rule — 
 
 * See his Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover, printed in 
 1705. Toland, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says {History of English Thought, 
 fir**:., vol. i. p. 302), was partly dependent upon the patronage * of foreign 
 princesses of free-thinking tendencies.' 
 
 * See Abel Boyer, The Political State of Great Britain, vol. viii. 
 !'. 326- 
 
 6 7 7 2 8
 
 38 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 monarchical, whatever Hmits were imposed upon his authority 
 — was at the time by a consensus of foreign opinion judged 
 ' wild to hold.' During at least two generations it had been 
 generally regarded as impatient of permanent authority, and 
 as a priori disposed in particular to cast down any mon- 
 archical regime set up over it. Undoubtedly there was more 
 of truth in this notion than would have been readily admitted 
 by that later generation of Englishmen from whose conserva- 
 tive sentiments the influences of the French Revolution seemed 
 on the whole to glance off so harmlessly. Nor can there be 
 any doubt but that this impression as to the mutability of 
 English political feeling contributed, in conjunction with 
 a belief in the importance and tenacity of the Jacobite 
 remnant, to encourage the schemes of invasion entertained 
 by Alberoni and Charles XII ^ As to the principal political 
 advisers and agents in whom George I trusted at the outset 
 of an experiment from his point of view both doubtful and un- 
 avoidable, a few hints may be of use before we advert to some 
 of the transactions of his reign in which their activity was con- 
 spicuous. But in the first instance it seems necessary to take 
 note of the machinery which, from the establishment of the 
 Personal Union onwards, regulated the relations between 
 the royal and electoral governments, and as to which, unless 
 I am mistaken, some uncertainty has hitherto, in more respects 
 than one, prevailed. 
 
 The House of Hanover succeeded to the British throne by 
 Parliamentary title; and the Act of Settlement (1701) con- 
 
 * So late as 1740 the Chevalier de Brosses, President of the Parliament 
 of Dijon, declared it impossible for the Old Pretender to renounce ' all 
 hopes of recovering the crown of a country so given to revolutions ' as 
 England, inasmuch as ' the spirit of the English nation is to hate the 
 ruling monarch be he who he may.' See the quotation from de Brosses' 
 Letires FamilUres (^translated by Loid Ronald Gower), ap. ]. E. C. 
 Bodley, France [1898), vol. i. p. 229.
 
 II] THE SETTLEMENT 39 
 
 ferring this title contained, as is well known, certain pro- 
 visions introduced expressly with a view to an eventual 
 Personal Union between Great Britain and Hanover, together 
 with others directed generally to a restriction of the royal 
 prerogative. With the latter we have no concern on the 
 present occasion ; nor need we, with regard either to these 
 or to the remaining provisions of the Act, pause to enquire 
 how far a retrospective as well as a prospective significance 
 attached to all or to any of them. But as to the earlier clauses 
 of this famous instrument, set forth with so becoming an 
 amplitude by Hallam, a few observations will not be out of 
 place. 
 
 The throne, then, was to descend to the Klectress Sophia 
 and her issue, being Protestants. This condition accorded 
 i^-with the primary purpose of the Act of Settlement itself, and 
 with the principle asserted in the Bill of Rights as an integral 
 and immutable part of the law of the realm. In an age of 
 royal and princely conversions to the Church of Rome, neither 
 the House of Hanover nor the elder branch of the Brunswick 
 dukes was altogether exempt from the influence of this 
 tendency; under Duke John Frederick and his Duchess 
 Benedicta Henrietta, likewise a convert, Hanover was for 
 a series of years the centre of the Roman propaganda in 
 northern Germany and Denmark ' ; his brother Ernest 
 Augustus is said ^, but I do not know on what authority, to 
 have inclined in the same direction ; and his nephew Maxi- 
 milian William actually followed his example at a later date. 
 A strong sensation was caused in 17 10 by the public abjura- 
 tion of the Protestant faith by Duke Antony Ulric of 
 Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, who three years earlier had induced 
 
 ' Kocher, u. 5., vol. ii. pp. 53 seqq. 
 
 ''■ By Father Theiner. See his Geschichtc der Zuriickkehr der 
 regierenden Hduser von Braunschiveig und Saihsen in den S(hooss der 
 Katholischen Kirche (Einsiedeln, 1843), p. 6.
 
 40 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 his niece Elisabeth Christina to take the same step in order 
 to obtain the hand of the Archduke Charles, titular King of 
 Spain and afterwards Emperor, and whose two daughters 
 within a few years followed their father into the Roman 
 fold. Even in the family of George I's mother Sophia, 
 whose parents had ventured and suffered so much for the 
 sake of militant Protestantism, one of her sisters — after- 
 wards comfortably settled as Abbess of a French convent 
 — and one of her brothers had become Roman Catholics ' ; 
 and her favourite niece Elisabeth Charlotte had changed the 
 creed which she professed, though not the sentiments and 
 opinions to which she remained staunch, when her hand was 
 given to the Duke of Orleans. But no such step needed to 
 be apprehended on the part of Sophia herself, fortified as 
 she was by an unswerving loyalty to the traditions of her 
 family, combined in her case with a courageous spirit of free 
 enquiry and a rooted dislike of theological controversy and 
 of its inevitable consequence, religious disunion. Nor was it 
 any more likely to commend itself to her eldest son, who was 
 little inclined to the recantation of opinions of any sort, and, 
 though it might not be easy to excite in him any interest in 
 the question of the union of the Protestant Churches, was far 
 from being preoccupied by a desire for any rigid formulation 
 of dogma. But the Act of Settlement, besides renewing the 
 general limitation of the Bill of Rights, had further provided 
 that whoever should hereafter come into possession of the 
 Crown should join in communion with the Church of England 
 as by law established. The Electress Sophia had through 
 life continued to profess the Calvinistic faith of the Palatinate 
 family ; George I was a Lutheran like his ancestors. A few 
 months before his accession, Leibniz had demonstrated to 
 him the harmony between the Augsburg Confession and the 
 
 ' Louisa HoUandina (afterwards Abbess of Manbuesson) and Edward.
 
 11 ] THE SETTLEMENT 41 
 
 Articles of the Church of England, and had found him both 
 well incHned to that Church, and incredulous of the preten- 
 sion that those who were zealous on its behalf were Jacobites * ; 
 and most certainly there was, as the event proved, no reason 
 for anticipating any difficulty on his part as to a sufficient 
 conformity. But the spirit of Leibniz and others who in this 
 age endeavoured to bring about a union between the Protes- 
 tant Churches — intended by some, but not all, of its promoters 
 as a step towards a wider religious reunion — was not the spirit 
 prevailing among the English Churchmen, who in the year 
 of Queen Anne's decease, under Bolingbroke's unscrupulous 
 leadership, passed the Schism Act. The instructions drawn 
 up by Robethon for Baron Thomas von Grote, when sent to 
 London as the Elector's representative at the close of the 
 -year 1712, were largely concerned — for the Electress Sophia 
 then stood first in the succession — with arguments meant to 
 convince the high-flying clergy of the Church of England that 
 the system of ecclesiastical government at Hanover was not 
 Presbyterian, but practically episcopal. But after the arrival 
 of King George I in England it was thought desirable to 
 print for circulation a specific History of the Lutheran Church, 
 or the exact account of Khig George s Religion, which pro- 
 voked a reply with the telling title of A letter of a schoolboy to 
 the author of the History of the Lutheran Church. One of the 
 schoolboy's special points is the irreconcileable difference 
 between the Church of England and Lutheranism as to the 
 doctrine of the Real Presence. I know very well, continues 
 this innocent schoolboy, that King George was a Lutheran ; 
 but he is such no longer, being bound to defend our faith 
 against all erring sects and religions. 
 
 I cannot further pursue this subject, on which the late Pro- 
 
 ' .See Correspondance de Leibniz avec I'^lectrice Sophie, ed. Klopp 
 (Hanover, 1874), vol. iii. p. 342 [s. a. 1711).
 
 42 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 iessor Pauli published an interesting essay \ from which I have 
 borrowed some of the above particulars. George I attended 
 divine service, and even communicated at the Chapel Royal, 
 St. James', although a Lutheran Chapel had been established 
 in connexion with the Court for the use of Queen Anne's 
 Danish consort; while he granted divers favours to another 
 Lutheran place of worship in the Savoy, and was at least 
 solicited to show the same goodwill to a German Calvinistic 
 chapel likewise created there in the course of his reign '-. 
 For the rest, while towards the interests of Protestantism in 
 the empire George I proved himself so unmistakeably friendly 
 as, not long before his death, to be saluted in a British 
 Nonconformists' address as ' the common father of all Pro- 
 testants ^,' his ecclesiastical policy at home was anything but 
 illiberal in. spirit. This was shown, inter alia, by his approval 
 of the endeavours of Stanhope in 1718 to abrogate the Test 
 
 * Confessionelle Bedenken bei der Thronbesteigung des Hauses 
 Hannover in England, in .lufsdtze zur Englischen Geschichte, Neue 
 J-olge (1883). 
 
 ^ .See Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1720-8, ed. W. A. .Shaw, 
 pp. ccxl. and 40. Curiously enoujjh, in 1736, the bride of Frederick 
 Prince of Wales, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, who had of course 
 been brought up as a Lutheran, refused to communicate according to 
 the rite of the Church of England, and attended the administration of 
 the Sacrament in the Lutheran Chapel. However, on the representa- 
 tion of Sir Robert Walpole, Queen Caroline induced the Prince to 
 desire his wife to reconsider the matter ; or her later unpopularity 
 might have been in some measure anticipated. (See Lord Hervey's 
 Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 302). 
 
 ■'* C. J. Abbey, 'Ihe Englis/i Church and its Bishops, 1700-1800 
 (1887), vol. i. p. 204. It would obviously carry me too far were I to 
 dwell on tliis as]3cct of the foreign policy of George I, although it 
 should not by any means be overlooked. As a rallying cry 'the 
 Protestant cause ' had considerable vitality left in it even after the Peace 
 of Utrecht ; and the very phrase may be met with as a sort of ' final 
 appeal ' for both home and foreign use even in the despatches of 
 a diplomatist so cosmopolitan in his sympathies as Carteret.
 
 ll] THE SETTLEMENT 43 
 
 and Corporation Acts, tempered though it was by a judicious 
 desire, into which Walpole fully entered, to avoid any appear- 
 ance of antagonism to the interests, actual or supposed, of 
 the Church. His bearing in this respect altogether tallied 
 with the notable advice tendered to his dynasty, in a letter 
 among the Robethon Papers in the British Museum^ from 
 Rapin de Thoyras, the French refugee who, after taking part 
 in the expedition of William III to these shores, wrote what 
 in its English dress served many of our ancestors in lieu of a 
 national history. Exhibiting, as was to be expected, a strong 
 feeling in favour of King George and the House of Hanover, 
 he expresses at the same time his conviction that the strength 
 of the Tories lies solely in their appropriation, so to speak, of 
 the cause of the Church of England. ' For this reason,' he 
 — conunues, ' I am persuaded that the single way of defeating 
 iheir manoeuvres is to make it apparent that the Court has 
 no design of meddling with the Church, or of being guided 
 by the chiefs of the Presbyterian party.' I must abstain 
 from entering into any speculations as to the results of 
 the early Georgian regime upon the history of the Church 
 and of religion in England, whether in the direction of 
 a growth of tolerance among the better educated classes, or 
 in that of a stagnation of spiritual life under the operation 
 of the actual system of Church patronage. In this sphere 
 at all events, Queen Caroline's personal influence could not 
 even by herself be pretended to be a mere reflexion of 
 her consort's own profounder determinations. My wish is 
 simply to point out that the Personal Union gave rise to no 
 difificulty in the shape of a conflict with the provisions of the 
 Act of Settlement bearing upon tiie religion or religious 
 j)rofession of the sovereign, although a party in the Church, 
 deficient neither in numbers nor in voice, would probably 
 
 ' Vol. ix. pp. 127-130.
 
 44 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 have been quite ready to make the most of such a conflict, 
 had it been provoked by the dynasty '. 
 
 Very different vi'as the case with regard to the important 
 clause of the Act of Settlement providing that in the event of 
 the succession of a foreign-born sovereign the nation should 
 not be engaged without the consent of Parliament in war for 
 the defence of any dominions or territories not belonging to 
 the Crown of England. This provision closely touches some 
 of those transactions in the reigns of George I and II in 
 particular, as to which it will be our business to enquire in 
 more than one later lecture, whether or not, or in what 
 degree, they were severally due to the Personal Union, and to 
 its influence upon the foreign policy of Great Britain. But it 
 may be as well at once to make the obvious remark, that the 
 weakness of this clause lay in its ignoring a moral considera- 
 tion from which no legal safeguard could dispense the parties, 
 and more especially the stronger party, to such a political 
 connexion. This obligation even so temperate a writer 
 as Hallam, who regarded the Act of Settlement as having 
 put the seal on our constitutional laws, held to have been 
 unavoidable; or why should he, in his edition of 1827, pub- 
 
 ' In any survey of the state of ecclesiastical policy after the accession 
 of the House of Hanover, attention should be paid to Scotland, and to the 
 influence of religious opinion traceable in the insurrections of. 1 715 and 
 1745 respectively. An interesting memorandum on the subject has been 
 furnished to me by one of my hearers at Oxford, Mr. R. S. Rait, of New 
 College, who will, I trust, sooner or later publish the result of his studies 
 on this and cognate topics. He considers that Episcopalian Jacobitism 
 practically disappeared from the Church of Scotland in 1716, and that 
 from this date onwards the clergy of the establishment were devotedly 
 loyal to George I and to George H after him. Outside the Church, the 
 Episcopalians proper were almost without exception High Tories ; but 
 with them and the Roman Catholics were associated in opposition to the 
 Hanoverian Government the Cameronians, who protested against ' the 
 Prince of Hanover ' as having been ' bred and brought up in the Luthren 
 religion,' and also took part in the Jacobite risings.
 
 II] THE SETTLEMENT 45 
 
 lished only ten years before the dissolution of the Personal 
 Union, have placed on record his opinion that such a bond 
 ought never to have existed between the two States ? At the 
 same time, it is plain that the clause in the Act of Settlement 
 immediately under notice by no means aimed at impairing or 
 taking away the power of the Crown to make treaties, but 
 simply placed a sharp weapon in the hands of a Parliamentary 
 majority resolved on the impeachment of a minister held to 
 have given advice against the spirit of the Act. For of course 
 there could hardly be a treaty — subsidy treaty or other — with 
 regard to which the applicability of the clause would not 
 admit of discussion. Thus, in 1755, when an important 
 debate took place on the subsidy treaties concluded with 
 Hesse-Cassel and with Russia respectively, a member of the 
 i^House of Commons (Mr. Hume-Campbell) adverted to the 
 objections based on the Act of Settlement. He said that he 
 should ' pay no compliment to it ; it had been intended as 
 a censure on King William,' whose ministers had actually 
 been impeached in 1701 on account of the Partition Treaties; 
 ' the clause specified was only declaratory, and did not take 
 away from the Crown the right of making treaties. But 
 there had been subsidy treaties concluded, such, for instance, 
 as that with the Court of Wolfenbiittel in 1727, w'hich it had 
 never been dreamt of impugning as contrary to the Act ; 
 and in the present instance ' — here was the gist of the matter 
 — ' the treaties were calculated for the interests, and navy, and 
 commerce of Great Britain.' Other and more important past 
 instances, to which reference will be made further on, were 
 cited ; and when Pitt in his speech, while condemning the 
 treaties before the House, proceeded to review those of earlier 
 dates, he expressed astonishment at the supposed revelation 
 that ' Hanover was in them all '.' Whatever we may think 
 
 ' See Horace Walpole (Lord Orford), Memoirs of the Last 'Jen 
 Years of George II {^^. 1846), vol. ii. p. 116.
 
 46 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 of the motives and jiurposes of the particular treaties, the 
 general issue raised in this debate sufficiently illustrates the 
 fact that no real safeguard against the paramount danger of 
 the Personal Union was erected by means of this much- 
 discussed clause of the Act of Settlement. 
 
 The next clause, which prohibited any future sovereign 
 from going out of the dominions of England, Scotland, and 
 Ireland without consent of Parliament, had, as you know, an 
 inglorious fate. It was repealed in 17 15, previously to the 
 first continental sojourn of King George I. After this he 
 spent three further periods of some length at Hanover, and 
 he had set out thither for a fifth time when his journey was 
 stopped by death, and he was laid to rest in his beloved 
 electoral capital. George II paid twelve visits to Hanover in 
 the course of his reign, — spending thirty-four months there, 
 it has been calculated, out of thirty-three years— during the 
 last four of which the war perforce kept him in England. He 
 was perfectly callous to the outcry on the subject, which rose 
 to a higher pitch than it had ever reached in his father's reign, 
 and which is one of the most familiar echoes that have come 
 down to us from his own ^ When his face was set towards 
 Hanover and Herrenhausen, every other consideration be- 
 came secondary. In 1745 he took his departure, amidst 
 universal protests, on the very eve of an outbreak directed 
 against the existence of his throne; in 1755 he turned his 
 back upon a situation so serious that the safety of the realm 
 itself seemed in jeopardy. On the other hand, George III 
 
 ^ In George I's leign, the King's absence had been lamented, and his 
 speedy return more in sorrow than in anger desiderated, by the shop- 
 keepers and artisans, who were convinced that business would flourish if 
 he were in London. (See Robethon Correspondence , vol. viii. p. 267.) 
 Under George II, these visits to Hanover became a political grievance, 
 the cause of personal and social heart-burnings, and a constant handle 
 for all sorts of satire.
 
 II] THE SETTLEMENT 47 
 
 never set foot in his Electorate during the whole of his reign, 
 and though he possessed some knowledge of the German 
 tongue, and had several of his sons partly brought up in 
 Hanover, as his father Frederick Prince of Wales had been, 
 he bequeathed very little of this knowledge to his successor 
 on the British throne. The attempt made after the recovery 
 of Hanover out of the hands of the French to delegate the 
 rule over it to a prince of the blood will be adverted to below ; 
 but this late development, which culminated in the Duke 
 of Cambridge exercising authority as viceroy, after he had 
 previously conducted the. government without a title of 
 monarchical colouring, was obviously influenced by expecta- 
 tions of the coming separation. 
 
 The only remaining clause of the Act of Settlement wliich 
 ^alls for notice in the present connexion is that excluding 
 from the Privy Council, from Parliament, from any civil or 
 military office of trust, and from the benefit of any grant of 
 lands, all persons born of foreign parents out of the United 
 Kingdom or Ireland, whether or not such persons had been 
 naturalised. The exclusion from the Privy Council derived 
 additional significance from the circumstance, that another 
 clause of the Act sought to confine to this body the function 
 of advising the Crown on its measures of government. It is 
 known that this attempt to put an end to the Cabinet Council 
 system, which had prevailed under William and Mary, and 
 which for that matter continued to prevail under Anne, 
 proved a failure ; and that the Cabinet Council system 
 gained in importance by the fact that George I very soon 
 gave up the habit — not a very profitable one to a sovereign 
 unacquainted with the English tongue — of presiding at the 
 Cabinet Council meetings, although of course he continued 
 to attend tliose of the Privy Council. Henceforward Cabinet 
 Councils without the sovereign, which had formerly been 
 committee meetings only, became the rule. This arrange-
 
 48 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 ment could hardly fail lo lead to occasional misunderstand- 
 ings, or to something worse, so long as the sovereign was in 
 the habit of consulting ■^jimfa of advisers who spoke his own 
 language. For the avoidance of the disability imposed upon 
 foreigners in remembrance of William Ill's Irish land grants, 
 expedients were no doubt found in instances such as those 
 of the Duchess of Kendal and the Countess of Darlington. 
 Moreover, unlike the transfer of South Sea stock to the 
 Duchess, which required the royal sign manual, a very large 
 proportion of these ladies' gains must have remained secret^ 
 But the exclusion of the Hanoverian subjects of our first two 
 Georges from official employment was consistently carried 
 out during the entire period of the Personal Union ; in 
 return, no instances are on record of the admission of 
 British subjects into the Hanoverian service, except that 
 of Sir Hugh Halkett, who had been a distinguished officer of 
 the king's German Legion in the Peninsular War, and some 
 other similar permanent appointments to the Hanoverian 
 army of former legionaries after the peace of 18 15. Dr. von 
 Meier, who in his valuable History of the Constitution and 
 Admifiistrative System 0/ Hanover''' notices this exception to 
 the mutual self-denying ordinance, contrasts the general 
 result with the relations between Denmark and the German 
 Duchies under the Personal Union between them which 
 came to so violent an end in 1866. One used to hear bitter 
 complaints of the attempts to govern the Duchies from 
 Copenhagen ; on the other hand, during many generations 
 
 * See Stanhope, History of England, 6^c. (5th ed.), vol. i. p. 213. 
 Concerning the South Sea stock, see Calendar of Treasury Papers, 
 
 1 731-4, p. 237- 
 
 ' Vol. i. p. 123. Cf. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxiv. 
 p. 15. Sir Hugh Halkett served in the Schleswig-Holstein War of 
 1848, commanding the loth army-corps under Wrangel, and retired in 
 1858, when he was made a Hanoverian baron. 
 
 '
 
 Il] THE SETTLEMENT 
 
 49 
 
 ihe higher posts of the Danish official world were largely 
 rilled by natives from the duchies, and with their aid German 
 culture long helped to animate the social and intellectual 
 life of the Danish capital. Nothing of the kind occurred in 
 England. I have thought it worth while to go through the 
 Calendars of Treasury Books and Papers for the years 172 9-30, 
 1 731-4, and 1735-9, '^'^ry elaborately prepared by Mr. W. A. 
 Shaw, as well as the earlier volumes covering the years 
 1720-8, in order to ascertain whether they exhibit any traces 
 of appointments of Hanoverian subjects or other Germans 
 to minor posts under George I or II, that might perhaps 
 have been allowed to slip through the meshes of the Act of 
 Settlement. But I have only come across a few German 
 names belonging to doubdess deserving men nominated to 
 -tide-writerships, and to the holders of a court office or two \ 
 I find in 1731 an (apparenUy) German auditor of the receipts 
 for accounts relating to land-tax and malt-tax, and in 1728 
 the notice of the decease of one Thomas de Critz, sergeant- 
 at-arms, but his office must have been held under one of the 
 Houses of Parliament. More noticeable is the circumstance, 
 that the diplomatic and consular service under the first two 
 Hanoverian kings included a number of persons whom it is 
 difficult to suppose to have been naturalised British subjects. 
 Some of them may from their names be guessed to have 
 been French refugees, or the descendants of such ; others 
 were Swiss ; but one at least, a very active minor diplomatist, 
 Charles Holzendorflf, must have been of German parentage-. 
 
 ' This was held by Augustus Schiitz under George II as late as 1737. 
 The place of House and Wardrobe Keeper at Kensington Palace was 
 likewise given to a German. Of course the Court was full of German 
 domestics, and this practice, as every reader of Lord Ilervey knows, con- 
 tinued under George II. He also mentions one Yager, ' German horse- 
 apothecary at Hampton Court.' 
 
 ^ Holzendorff, whose name appears in the Kobcthoti Papers in con- 
 nexion with the Quadruple Alliance negotiations at Paris, became 
 
 E
 
 50 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 Incidentally, it may be added that these Calendars mention 
 no German recipient of any kind of pension charged to the 
 public account, with the exception of this busy political 
 agent, and of one other person in whose case the charge is 
 on the Irish establishment ^ 
 
 But although the administrative systems of Great Britain 
 and Hanover were thus, with a consistency that calls for 
 respectful recognition, kept free from personal contact with 
 one another, some arrangement had to be devised by which 
 the Sovereign of both might in each be enabled to per- 
 form without inconvenience the functions of government 
 incumbent upon him. Our first three Hanoverian Kings 
 were, in their several ways, men of business in their attention 
 to British affairs, — George I doing what was necessary, and 
 George H and III doing a good deal more, — the former 
 largely from habit of mind, and the latter in obedience to the 
 notions that he had formed of his royal prerogative. Yet it 
 
 secretary of legation at Madrid under Colonel Stanliope (subsequently 
 Lord Harrington), who was not strong in his knowledge of foreign 
 tongues. (See Rohetho7i Papers, vol. ix. p. 226.) The French and 
 Swiss names in the diplomatic and consular service, with that of John 
 Conraud, Under-Secretary of State, otherwise Secretary of the Latin 
 Tongue (1735-6), are not really to the present purpose. 
 
 ^ These Calendars, I may add, contain no further statement of any 
 significance as to the relations between the British and Hanoverian 
 administrations in the period of the Personal Union. This may in part 
 be explicable, as Mr. Shaw suggests, by the tradition (the correctness of 
 which it is difficult to doubt) that Walpole destroyed all records of 
 Secret Service expenditure under his control. By the wny, one curious 
 entry {^Calendar, 1729-30, p. 8) refers to a proposed modification of our 
 customs-tariff in favour of Hanover, by means of a diminution of ' the 
 duty on linens, whether plain or those called Drell, manufactured in the 
 King's German dominions.' I am not aware of any similar proposal in 
 the way of commercial legislation till 1826, when the .Second Chamber 
 at Hanover resolved to take steps towards obtaining a relaxation of the 
 British corn-duties in the case of Hanoverian corn ; but the motion was 
 rejected by the First Chamber, as certain to give offence to the King. 
 (E. von Meier, vol. i. p. 142.)
 
 ll] THE SETTLEMENT 
 
 51 
 
 would be quite a mistake to suppose that, all questions of 
 dynastic policy apart, they neglected the administrative busi- 
 ness of their Electorate. Their interest in this ought to go 
 for something in the reckonings of the repeated sojourns in 
 Hanover of George I and II, that cost this country sums 
 hardly to be called extravagant, but neither to be set down as 
 altogether insignificant, both for ' rigging the convoys' for the 
 royal journeys, and for the expenses of the officials attending 
 on the King abroad'. George Il's solicitude concerning 
 the internal affairs of his Electorate was, as will be seen, 
 otherwise attested ; but they likewise engaged the attention 
 of George III, more especially when turning on agricultural 
 quesdons and the condition of the peasantry, or on trade 
 in general, or on the details of military administration ^ 
 ^ Inasmuch, however, as from the first the sovereign of the 
 two countries was constrained to reside mainly in the more 
 important of the two, provision had to be made for the 
 ordinary transaction of business between the King and his 
 government at Hanover. And this was all the more neces- 
 sary, since at the time of the accession of the House of 
 Hanover to the British throne the political system of the 
 Electorate had come to approach very nearly to an absolute 
 government exercised by the Prince himself or through his coun- 
 cillors. Of the functions appertaining to the estates of the several 
 duchies and principalities of which the Electoral dominions 
 were composed, a large proportion was exercised only by 
 
 ' See Calendars, ut s., 1720-8, pp. cclii and 72, and ccxlv and 53 ; 
 1729-30, pp.68, 141, 257, as to charges for officials. Old Horace 
 Walpole's expenses, when entrusted with the duties of the Secretaryship 
 at Hanover in 1736, amounted to ;^3,ooo, in addition to ;!(^ 1,000 for 
 postage, stafets, &c. {Calendar, 1736-9, p. 259). The King's voyage 
 in 1729 cost;^r,ooo {ib. 1729-30, p. 273). There were of course 'mis- 
 cellaneous' charges, such as one for 'busts and pedestals' of King 
 George I transmitted to Hanover {ib. 1720-8, pp. ccl and 8); and 
 frequent charges for baggage, &c. 
 
 * E. von Meier, u.s., vol. i. pp. 129-30. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 means of standing committees ; and while their legislative 
 duties were wholly insignificant, the financial extended merely 
 to those branches of expenditure and receipts of which the 
 estates possessed the control. The conduct of the govern- 
 ment was determined by an Ordinance {Jicgk/fienf) promul- 
 gated by George I before he left Hanover for London in 
 1 7 14, based to some extent upon a previous ordinance issued 
 by his father Ernest Augustus in 1680, but with modifications 
 to suit the regular conduct of the administration in the 
 absence of the Elector. This Ordinance remained the basis 
 of the Hanoverian governmental system, and certain of its 
 provisions were reaffirmed in an edict concerning the reform 
 of the administration put forth in 1822 during the Governor- 
 Generalship of the Duke of Cambridge, and in the funda- 
 mental constitutional \a.\v (S/aa/sgrundgese^z) 2Lc\opted in 1833, 
 during his viceroyalty. 
 
 The most important of the clauses in this Ordinance 
 referred to the delegation of authority by the Elector to the 
 Privy Councillors whom he left behind him at Hanover, and 
 whose sphere of action was necessarily enlarged from that 
 assigned to them by the father and immediate predecessor of 
 George I. There was no lack of precedents in the way of 
 temporary enlargements of the same sort, for Ernest Augustus 
 and his brothers had been frequently absent from their 
 governments while detained by urgent private pleasures at 
 Venice or Rome. In 1694 the number of the Privy Coun- 
 cillors {^Geheimrdihe) was five, but it seems to have been 
 slightly increased under George I. These Privy Councillors 
 — or, speaking more accurately, their successors, — were the 
 dignitaries whom the impatience of Frederick II execrated as 
 the perruques d''Hanovre, and who collapsed before the 
 aggressions of Bonaparte. 
 
 Some obscurity seems to me to envelope the question, 
 whether in the earlier days of the Personal Union there was
 
 II] THE SETTLEMENT 53 
 
 a Prime iMinister, properly so called, at Hanover. We know 
 that there was no minister holding such a title officially in 
 London; that the notion of<a Prime IMinister is foreign to 
 the British constitution, and that it was consistently repudiated 
 by the very statesman, Walpole, who was the first thoroughly 
 to realise it in this country \ At Hanover there clearly 
 always was, as in a State governed on strong monarchical 
 principles there could hardly fail to be, one leading minister ; 
 but under George I, and probably also under George II, the 
 tide of President seems to have referred to the Elector's 
 Chamber (I presume essentially a financial board) rather than 
 to his Privy Council. The Prime Minister as such had no 
 precedence over the other Privy Councillors, and within the 
 Council the votes were equal, so that there was frequently 
 a tie, the decision remaining with the King, or practically 
 with the Hanoverian minister who, as we shall see, was in 
 attendance on him in London. Matters were, of course, much 
 simplified when, as in the days of the Miinchhausens (under 
 George II and III), the leading minister at Hanover and the 
 minister in attendance were brothers, and acted in perfect 
 understanding with one another ^. 
 
 'O 
 
 ^ Although the nature of the office of Prime Minister has shaped itself 
 distinctly enough in our later history, considerable uncertainty continues 
 to attach to some of the functions supposed to appertain to it. Mr. Glad- 
 stone and Lord Beaconsfield are understood to have held different views 
 as to the relations between the Prime Minister and his colleagues ; 
 the former, besides regarding himself as the sole organ through which 
 the recommendations of the Cabinet should be communicated to the 
 Sovereign, deeming it not incumbent upon him to make her acquainted 
 with any differences of opinion in the Cabinet unless they should have 
 reached the point of one or more resignations. Prince Bismarck's final 
 retirement from public life was ostensibly caused by a conflict as to the 
 relative responsibilities of a Prussian Prime Minister and his colleagues. 
 
 ^ See E. von Meier, vol. i^pp. 181-5. — The elder Miinchhausen cer- 
 tainly seems to have been ' declared I'rime Minister ' by electoral 
 rescript ; but the evidence is not quite satisfactory. Cf. Zeitsch)ift des 
 liistor. Vcreins fiir Niedersachsen, Jahrgang 1891, p. 153.
 
 54 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 The most important division of business with which the 
 Elector reserved to himself the right of dealing independendy 
 of his Privy Council was that concerned with military affairs 
 — in so far as they came under the designation oipure viili- 
 iaria, and comprised such matters as the organisation and 
 disposition of the armed forces of the Electorate, the appoint- 
 ment and dismissal of its officers, &c. For, although the 
 army was in a large measure maintained by the votes of the 
 Estates, the principle remained intact that the control of it 
 was a matter entirely for the Elector. Thus he alone was 
 responsible for, and if we like so to express it, profited by, 
 the subsidy treaties into which as Elector he entered with 
 himself as King of Great Britain, just as he or his father 
 before him had concluded similar treaties with the Emperor, 
 the States-General and the Signiory of Venice. And indeed 
 it should be remembered that the troops of which the Elector 
 thus disposed according to his own choice, were mercenaries, 
 who had entered into a bargain with him for their services, 
 rather than subjects called under arms by the law of the 
 land. For although the system, besides being financially 
 extravagant, must have involved much hardship and cruelty, 
 and cannot therefore be looked back upon without regret, 
 yet it was the inevitable result of the combination of the 
 mercenary system with absolute rule. Indiscriminate charges 
 as to the sale of human flesh and blood are unjust, not only 
 to many of the princes concerned, who as commanders 
 honourably shared the experiences of their comrades, but 
 also to many a gallant officer or brave soldier in whose eyes 
 warfare was the most eligible of professions or handicrafts ^ 
 
 * It would be well worth while for some well-informed writer to 
 attempt a history of our subsidy treaties, from the time of its commence- 
 ment to that of the American War of Independence. Our employment of 
 German mercenaries in this gave rise to a resentment, without which it 
 is doubtful whether the Colonies would in the last instance have desired 
 separation. In its earlier stages such a history would have to include a
 
 Il] THE SETTLEMENT 55 
 
 The Elector's direction of ' purely ' military affairs was exer- 
 cised on his behalf by the general commanding-in-chief at 
 Hanover, who thus had practical control of everything con- 
 nected with the command and discipline of the army, — while 
 all matters bearing on the condition of the troops, their pay. 
 arms, commissariate and the like, and to the very important 
 business of recruiting, were managed by a board called the 
 War Chancery, which like the Commander-in-Chief, reported 
 direct to the King, with or without previous consultation with 
 the Privy Council. To be sure, in cases of necessity the 
 Privy Council was provided with special powers, and in the 
 event of an actual imminence of war was authorised to con- 
 clude alliances, and in conjunction with the general in 
 command to mobilise the troops. But how unsatisfactorily 
 — the conditions of the Personal Union caused so carefully 
 adjusted a scheme of responsibility to work, we shall I hope 
 find time to see in speaking of the most humiliating of the 
 catastrophes which fate had in store for an army whose 
 history notwithstanding remains full of honour — the capitula- 
 tion of 1803. 
 
 In foreign affairs the Elector left current business to be 
 carried on by the Privy Council or Ministry (for it had now 
 practically become such) at Hanover. It may be thought 
 creditable to George I's good sense, that the electoral resi- 
 dents at Ratisbon were bound to send their formal relations 
 
 good deal of correspondence of the nature of the letter addressed to 
 Robethon by Dehn, minister of State at Brunswick, under date October 6, 
 1 7 18 {Robethon Correspondence, vol. x. pp. 180-4). The writer repre- 
 sents that arrears of subsidies are still outstanding, and that a renewal of 
 the subsidy treaty is still awaited, although his master has kept four 
 regiments at the disposal of his Britannic Majesty, even under the highly 
 rigorous condition of their being liable to be employed against any 
 enemy whatsoever indicated by the King. A favourable response is 
 claimed in consideration of the King's relationship to the Duke, and of 
 the reflexion of glory falling from the royal house upon the niaison 
 originaire.
 
 56 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 to the Ministry, and only brief summaries to the Elector ; the 
 diplomatists accredited elsewhere had to transmit duplicate 
 despatches to Hanover and to London. In penal justice the 
 Prince delegated to his Privy Council, as was in tlie nature of 
 the case inevitable, the confirmation of sentences when 
 requisite, but reserved to himself the exercise of the preroga- 
 tive of mercy. And, while this was only right and reasonable, 
 he likewise kept to himself the riglit of appointments of all 
 kinds ; for there is no species of authority which fails to cling 
 to patronage as the most cherished of its privileges. The 
 appointments in question included those to the Privy Council 
 or Ministry itself; for though it has frequently been repre- 
 sented as having been a co-optative body, no evidence exists 
 of its having been so much as consulted in filling up vacancies 
 upon it more than four times during the endre period of thfe 
 Personal Union. 
 
 Inasmuch as in addition to any business falling under the 
 above-mentioned heads, all serious expenditure had neces- 
 sarily to be reported for the Elector's approval, a large 
 amount of material had in the ordinary course of things to 
 be sent on to London for the Elector's signature, or at least 
 for his information. At the close of every quarter the Privy 
 Councillors despatched a courier with their statements of 
 accounts, arranged under their respective heads of revenue 
 and expenditure and settled by the Council, together with 
 other papers ; and couriers were likewise sent on extraordinary 
 occasions ; ordinarily the post sufficed, which probably 
 travelled about as quick as the couriers, — or about as slow. 
 All reports forwarded by the Council to London were ad- 
 dressed to the Sovereign in person, and all decisions thereon 
 were returned in his name, and with his sign manual. Thus 
 a very large quantity of business continued to flow in for 
 settlement by the King, much of it being of a kind which in 
 comparison with the matters brought before him by his
 
 Il] THE SETTLEMENT 57 
 
 British ministers was intrinsically insignificant. It has been 
 estimated that at least half the time, devoted by our Hano- 
 verian monarchs to the transaction of public business was 
 — necessarily, so to speak — given up to that of the Electorate. 
 This conclusion is of some moment ; for there can be no 
 doubt that such a distribution impaired the Sovereign's sense 
 of proportion in giving his mind to British and Hanoverian 
 interests respectively, — more especially in the case of King 
 George II, who was not only intent upon governing, or 
 at least seeming to govern, for himself \ but was sincerely 
 conscientious in his attention to the details of business. 
 
 Incidental reference has already been made to the practice, 
 according to which one of the Privy Councillors — a member, 
 in other words, of the Hanoverian Ministry — was in attend- 
 .^nce upon the King, in order to lay before him and explain 
 the material transmitted, to draft and put in form the royal 
 decisions and replies, and to verify the accounts. In the 
 performance of these functions he was assisted by confi- 
 dential secretaries and clerks, and attended by an official 
 messenger. These persons together constituted the so-called 
 German Chancery in London, to whose activity a rather 
 mysterious importance has occasionally been attached, but 
 whose actual composition and duties have not hitherto, so 
 far as I know, been made clear to English readers. Nor 
 should I have been able to place the present information on 
 the subject before you, but for the timely appearance of the 
 first volume of Dr. von Meier's work already cited, and 
 more especially for the great courtesy and kindness of 
 Dr. Doebner, State Archivist and Councillor of the Archives at 
 Hanover, in furnishing me with a complete and lucid state- 
 ment on the subject, drawn up by one of the officials 
 associated with him. 
 
 You will perhaps notice in passing that this Hanoverian 
 
 ' See Lord Hervey's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 93 and 186.
 
 58 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 Chancery, familiarly, but not till a late date (1824) officially, 
 known as the German Chancery in London, was not the 
 earliest German establishment directly connected with the 
 English official world to which that name has been given. The 
 term Chancery, in the primitive sense which it retains in some 
 other modern languages, of a secretarial office and repository 
 of confidential documents, specially recalls to the historical 
 student that period, full of diplomatic manoeuvrings and the 
 clandestine movements of secret agents, which preceded the 
 outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. We think more especi- 
 ally of the Chancery of Anhalt, the agent-in-chief of the 
 militant Calvinistic party of which the destined figure-head 
 was the Elector Palatine, the husband of the English 
 Princess from whom the House of Hanover derived its claim 
 to the English throne. In the years follo^ving closely upon 
 the overthrow of the Bohemian throne of Frederick and 
 Elizabeth, and, as may be assumed, already in the interval 
 of doubts and difficulties that had preceded it, there existed 
 in London a German Chancery. This was obviously a 
 secretarial bureau, set up to assist the Secretary of State in the 
 conduct of German business, and primarily we must suppose 
 to supply English translations of German documents, as well 
 perhaps as German versions of communications addressed to 
 Princes of the Empire and others by the Pacificator on the 
 English throne ^ 
 
 -Unlike the German Chancery of our first Stuart King, that . 
 of our Hanoverian Sovereigns was in no sense a branch of 
 the EngUsh Foreign Office. Its local habitation was in 
 St. James' Palace ; for I notice among the Treasury Papers 
 
 ' One of the persons employed in this earlier German Chancery was 
 Rudolf Weckherlin, who afterwards, according to his own account, acted 
 as Under-Secretary to four English Secretaries of State in succession ; 
 and who was moreover a poet of merit, and reproduced in his native 
 tongue certain fine stanzas written by Sir Henry Wotton. 
 
 1
 
 Il] THE SETTLEMENT 
 
 59 
 
 for the year 1726 ' a letter to the Lords of the Treasury, for 
 orders to be given ' for five wainscot presses for keeping the 
 records of the German Chancery at St. James'.' These presses 
 must in course of time have overflowed ; for the registers of 
 the papers of the Chancery (the whole of which, so far as they 
 remain in existence, are preserved in the State Archives at 
 Hanover) cover the entire period of the Personal Union, 
 from 1 7 14 to 1837. All these papers were removed from 
 London to their present resting-place on the accession of 
 King Ernest Augustus; but two or three years afterwards 
 — in 1839-40— their bulk was diminished by more than 
 one-half. All those documents of which counterparts were 
 to be found in the registers of the Hanoverian Ministry of 
 State — formerly known as the Board of Privy Councillors — 
 and which, as chiefly dealing with home aff"airs, possessed no 
 historical interest, were at that date destroyed. Already, 
 however, before the transportation of this large collection of 
 State papers to Hanover certain other gaps had been made 
 in it ; for on the occasion of the decease of each successive 
 King-Elector the practice seems to have been regularly 
 observed of destroying any personal letters from him to 
 be found in the Chancery Archives ". 
 
 In theory this Chancery was nothing more than a secre- 
 tarial office for the service of the Elector during his ' tem- 
 porary ' absence from the Electorate — a travelling Chancery 
 {Reisekanzlei). The Privy Councillor or minister in attend- 
 ance upon the King in London, together with the secretary 
 and clerks of the Chancery there, was regarded as absent 
 from Hanover on special duty ; and his name was accord- 
 ingly entered in the official calendar published at Hanover as 
 
 ' Calendar, ^c, 1720-8, ed. J. Redington, pp. cccvii and 17. 
 
 ' E. von Meier, vol. i. p. 125 ; where a letter is st.ited to have been 
 exceptionally preserved, written on December 17, i7'>9, by King 
 George III to G. A. von Miinchhausen.
 
 6o GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 a member of the Privy Council, with the addition of the 
 words 'at present in London.' It was not til! 1824, when, 
 as I have previously mentioned, the wish prevailed to make 
 the Hanoverian system of administration as complete in 
 itself as possible, that the German Chancery in London was 
 officially mentioned among the Hanoverian State authorities. 
 » In practice, very much necessarily depended, both for the 
 government of the Electorate and for the continuous exercise 
 of a Hanoverian influence on the King, upon ' the Hano- 
 verian Minister in London,' as he came to be usually 
 called ^ When George I arrived in England in 17 14, he 
 was accompanied by two Hanoverian ministers, Bernstorfif 
 and Gortz, and he found a third there, Bothmer, who .in his 
 post as Hanoverian envoy had done more than any man to 
 promote the Hanoverian Succession. But Bernstorff, as we 
 shall see, remained behind in Hanover after the King's visit 
 there in 1720, and altogether retired from office in 1723; 
 and Gortz returned early to Hanover as President of the 
 Financial Chamber {Kam7n€rprdsidmt) ; while Bothmer's 
 position was quite exceptional, inasmuch while formally 
 a member of the Hanoverian Privy Council he continued to 
 hold the appointment of Hanoverian envoy — representing 
 the Elector at the Court of the King — till his death at 
 London in 1732 -'. From an early date in the reign of 
 George I, the younger Hattorf, who had accompanied the 
 King to England in the place of his father, an old and valued 
 
 ^ The nearest analogy to the position of this minister with which 
 I have met is that of the Hungarian minister a lalere, who is attached to 
 the Court of the Emperor-King, acting towards him as the representative 
 of the Hungarian Cabinet. 
 
 ■^ I suspect it to have been in this capacity, that when Bothmer 
 remained behind in England during George I's visit to Hanover in 
 1 716, he was in the habit of transmitting to the King more or less 
 elaborate relations of what occurred during the royal absence. Cf. 
 Kobethon Correspondence^ vol. viii. pp. 319 and 325.
 
 II] THE SETTLEMENT 6l 
 
 electoral official, performed the duties of minister in attendance, 
 and countersigned the royal ordinances ; and on the accession 
 of George II he was one of the batch of actual Hanoverian 
 ministers named by the new Sovereign. Henceforth, during 
 the period of the Personal Union, it was the invariable 
 custom to entrust the functions of minister in attendance to 
 a single member of the Hanoverian Privy Council only ; 
 and in the century following upon the death of Hattorf in 
 1737 a series of seven such ministers held office, including 
 the younger Miinchhausen (Philip Adolf) and Miinster, — but 
 the latter, in the Napoleonic period from necessity and after 
 1 81 5 by preference, was rather a Prime Minister i7i partibus \ 
 than the representative of a body of colleagues. Another 
 eminent statesman, who as Prussian Chancellor of State was 
 .—to acquire an enduring celebrity — Hardenberg — was in his 
 younger days much chagrined by twice missing an appoint- 
 inent to the influential post of minister in attendance ^ It 
 should be added that the King-Electors at no time considered 
 themselves prevented from consulting any other of their 
 Hanoverian ministers by letter, or from sending for them in 
 person ; moreover, the functions of the so-called London 
 minister necessarily ceased during the residence of the King- 
 Elector in Hanover, unless, as was largely the case in the 
 times of George I, the minister accompanied the Sovereign 
 across the water ; for in his Electorate he of course had at 
 his command the service of all his electoral councillors. 
 
 In sum, the governmental system described above was 
 probably as good a one as could have been devised to meet 
 the circumstances of the Union, but proved incapable of 
 averting its unsatisfactory results. The resident ministry at 
 
 ' This apt expression is used by Munster's biographer in Allgemeivc 
 Deutsche Biographie. 
 
 "■ The names of the confidential secretaries in the London Chancery 
 have likewise been preserved.
 
 62 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 Hanover never pretended to an authority in electoral affairs 
 superseding that of the non-resident Elector, and was never 
 less happy than when left by him to act for itself. Almost 
 entirely composed of members of the old nobility of the 
 land, it showed little or no desire to pass beyond its ordinary 
 sphere of action ; and at no time, so far as I am aware, 
 identified itself corporately with schemes or ideas of policy 
 outside that sphere. There is equally little reason for sup- 
 posing that it ever allowed itself to be influenced by dis- 
 honourable or corrupt motives. In 1758, not long before his 
 death, George II put forth a rescript calling upon his Hano- 
 verian ministers to take into their consideration the boast of 
 the French Government of the day that a large proportion 
 of the Privy Council at Hanover had been ' at the disposal ' of 
 France. This insinuation, savouring of traditions which in 
 the earlier and later Stuart times even some English states- 
 men might not have found it easy to prove obsolete, was 
 apparently not taken seriously at Hanover, and had probably 
 only been communicated by the King-Elector in a spirit of 
 superior irony \ Nor was the practice of attaching to the 
 person of the King-Elector a Hanoverian minister charged 
 with advising him in electoral affairs, in itself calculated to 
 create or encourage in the Sovereign's mind a confusion 
 between what may roughly be distinguished as his royal and 
 his electoral policy. On the other hand, the large amount of 
 Hanoverian business regularly received for transaction by the 
 King, could hardly fail to demand an excessive share of his 
 
 * It may be worth noticing in this connexion that a M. de Bussy, 
 clerk in the French Foreign Office, who was proposed as French 
 diplomatic agent in Hanover during George II's visit there in 1755, had 
 been in English pay when similarly employed by his government in 
 London. Newcastle expressly enquired from Holdemesse, whether in 
 the event of de Bussy's coming to Hanover this arrangement could be 
 renewed. (See R. Waddington, Le Renversenient des Alliances, 6^r., 
 p. 101.)
 
 11] THE SETTLEMENT 63 
 
 time and powers, while it was only too likely to distort his 
 estimate of their due apportionment. Furthermore, it was 
 quite inevitable that the Hanoverian minister in attendance 
 on the King in London, who as such had the privilege of 
 direct access to the royal presence, should, even apart from 
 the special circumstances exisdng in the initial period of the 
 Personal Union, command opportunities of an exceptional 
 kind for exercising an inordinate influence upon the Sove- 
 reign's views and acdon, in regard to the affairs of Great 
 Britain as well as to those of the Electorate. And of these 
 opportunities exceptional advantage would of course be taken 
 by a personage of unusual ability or address. 
 
 No doubt it was from the former point of view — that of 
 the great pressure of business created by the double system 
 -- — that George II, who bestowed a closer attention than his 
 father before him upon the public business of both his 
 kingdom and his Electorate, gave the most unmistakeable 
 expression to his sense of the serious inconveniences involved 
 in the Personal Union. At different times in his reign we 
 find him recurring to the thought which already before his 
 accession a different kind of motive had suggested to him, that 
 a separation of the Hanoverian from the British sovereignty 
 might be of advantage to both countries. The first notion 
 of undoing the Personal Union seems to date from 1725,'-/ 
 unless indeed we are to take into account the strange fancy 
 which occurred to George I a few years earlier, before his 
 reconciliation with his son, that tlie Prince might be com- 
 pelled by Act of Parliament to undertake to resign his Hano- 
 verian dominions on his accession to the British throne. 
 This kind paternal design was abandoned in consequence of 
 the adverse opinion of the Lord Chancellor Parker (after- 
 wards Earl of Macclesfield), who had been formally con- 
 sulted on the subject ^ In 1725, two years before his own 
 ' Coxe, Life of Sir Robert Walpole (ed. 1816), vol. ii. pp. ] 2-13. This
 
 64 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 accession to the throne, the future King George II and his 
 consort appear to have taken into their consideration, as 
 a desirable family arrangement, a scheme by which their 
 elder son Frederick should ultimately succeed in Hanover, 
 and the younger William (afterwards Duke of Cumberland) 
 in Great Britain. The feelings entertained towards Prince 
 Frederick by his parents must be concluded to have thus 
 early — when he was thirteen or fourteen years of age — 
 settled in the direction in which they afterwards continued 
 to flow ; but King George I would not hear of the proposed 
 arrangement being made unless Prince Frederick, who had 
 hitherto been kept at Hanover, signified his assent to it, Wal- 
 pole having warned him that unless he brought his grandson 
 over to England the latter would never be allowed to set foot 
 on English soil. The plan thus fell through ; but in 1737 the 
 idea of a separation was revived under different conditions. 
 Frederick Prince of Wales was then in open opposition to 
 his father's government ; and it was with a view to annoying 
 his elder son that the King mooted the plan of securing the 
 succession to the Electorate to his younger brother. The 
 Prince of Wales, so the rumour ran, would not have been 
 unwilling to relinquish his claims to the Electorate in return 
 for the doubling of his income (from £50,000 to £100,000 
 per annum). When Lord Hervey mentioned the proposal 
 to Sir Robert Walpole, the latter cordially approved of it, 
 and declared that if it were ever brought before Parliament 
 it might be carried with universal concurrence of approbation. 
 
 idea seems to have been entertained as far back as 1 700-1, when, as 
 already mentioned, it was proposed to bring over the young Electoral 
 Prince (afterwards King George II), so as to settle him in England and 
 accustom him to English ways, while he should renounce his rights to 
 the Succession in the Electorate. But at that time the British Succession 
 had not come to be looked upon as so assured an expectation as to make 
 it worth while to pursue the plan. (See Klopp, vol. viii. p. 556.)
 
 ir] THE SETTLEMENT 65 
 
 His only fear was that if the scheme were carried, the 
 King's interest in Hanover would be redoubled, and that 
 while for the time every effort would be made to ' hoard ' 
 these for the Duke of Cumberland's grandeur and profit, and 
 for the Queen's security and retreat, Hanover would be more 
 of an obstacle and a source of difficulties than ever. Walpole 
 actually conferred on the subject with the King and Queen ; 
 but the proposal w^as put aside at her instigation. Lord 
 Hervey having moreover very sensibly pointed out that the 
 consent of the Emperor and Empire would have to be 
 obtained for the proposed arrangement, and that this could 
 scarcely be expected, as the King of Great Britain must be 
 so much more amenable to Imperial influence while he 
 remained Elector of Hanover. King George II, however, 
 according to Lord Hervey, continued to dwell on the scheme, 
 and caused drafts and instruments to be prepared ; but the 
 mailer was kept entirely private, and only guessed at even by 
 Sir Robert Walpole '. In 1 741, however — or at all events 
 shortly before his downfall — the minister 'tantalised' Speaker 
 Onslow, who is himself the authority for the anecdote, with 
 the prospect of a message from the King to the House of 
 Commons, in favour of the passing of an Act of Parliament, 
 which should prohibit ?'« perpeluu7n the joint inheritance and 
 possession of Kingdom and Electorate ^ Rather different 
 from this project was another, of which (according to Horace 
 Walpole) the Duke of Cumberland told Lord Waldegrave. 
 
 ' Lord Ilervey's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 216 seqq. 
 
 ' See Coxa's Life of Sir Robert Walpole (ed. 1798), vol. ii. pp. 571-2. 
 The Speaker replied that it would be 'a message from heaven ' ; but the 
 message never came, and the Speaker was of opinion that had it come, it 
 would have been rejected by Parliament as proceeding from Walpole. 
 In any case, the opportunity was lost; and though the Prince of Wales 
 was said at the time to have favoured the scheme, Speaker Onslow may 
 have been right in his conjecture that King and Prince were alike too 
 fond of Hanover to have been likely to regret its abandonment. 
 
 F
 
 66 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER 
 
 A so-called secundogeniture was to be set up for the Duke 
 in the Hanoverian dominions themselves, to consist of the 
 purchased principalities of Bremen and Verden; but the 
 Duke remaining unmarried, the scheme was relinquished by 
 liis father. Had this martial prince been of a more sus- 
 ceptible disposition, the hazards incurred by the acquisition 
 of these territories would not have been diminished ; while 
 the difficulties arising out of our connexion with Hanover in 
 the Seven Years' and Napoleonic Wars might conceivably 
 have been augmented. 
 
 Our earlier Hanoverian monarchs were not likely to feel 
 very keenly the second of the objections suggested above,' — 
 viz. that founded on the exceptional opportunities for acquiring 
 a personal influence over the Sovereign enjoyed by the Hano- 
 verian minister in attendance upon him. To what extent 
 advantage was actually taken of these opportunities is, how- 
 ever, precisely one of those problems connected with our 
 subject on which but scanty light has been thrown by 
 historical research. From the nature of the case, the 
 period which in this respect more particularly comes into 
 question must be the earlier portion of the history of the 
 Personal Union ; and it may therefore serve as an appropriate 
 Appendix to my present lecture, if I add a short notice of the 
 chief representatives and agents of Hanoverian statesman- 
 ship, by whom George I was surrounded at the time of his 
 advent to the British throne.
 
 APPENDIX TO LECTURE II 
 
 THE ' HANOVERIAN JUNTA ' UNDER GEORGE I 
 
 Nothing could be further from my wish than to attempt 
 a sketch of the Court of George I, and it is therefore unnecessary' 
 to enter into a discussion of the channels through which what- 
 ever political influence was personally exercised upon the King 
 habitually reached him. Unless contemporary accounts are in- 
 correct^— which on this head there can be no reason for supposing 
 them to be — the personal entourage of King George I, from his 
 body-servants upwards, consisted, with the exception of Mahomet 
 and Mustapha, entirely of Germans. Even at his friendly 
 dinners on Richmond Hill with Sir Robert Walpole he wa.s 
 surrounded by his German intimates ; and, in the genial words 
 of Sir Robert's son, ' it was not till the last year or two of his 
 reign that their foreign Sovereign paid the nation the compliment 
 of taking openly an English mistress ^' For a long time he was 
 in the habit (following therein the example of both Charles 1 1 
 and Lewis XlVj of transacting business of State in the apart- 
 ments of the Duchess of Kendal, who, notwithstanding the 
 contemptuous expressions of Sir Robert Walpole, can scarcely 
 have been altogether devoid of intellectual capacity, and who at 
 all events seems to have been credited with it by her brother, 
 the famous Marshal. But neither she nor the Countess of 
 Darlington, whose influence that of the Schulemburg gradually 
 
 ' See, for instance, that of the Count de 13roglie in 1721, cited by 
 Vehse, vol. i. p. 207. 
 
 '■' Reminiscences of the Courts of George I and George II, in vol. i. of 
 Letters (ed. Cunningham, 188S), p. cv. 
 
 V 2
 
 68 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 eclipsed without quite superseding, and who showed some 
 inclination for the society of wits and men of letters, appears at 
 any time to have been lifted out of the region of personal 
 intrigue into that of political designs. And in the great Court 
 crisis of 1720, which ended with a reconciliation between the 
 King and the Prince of Wales, and with the downfall of 
 Bernstorff, the Ducliess of Kendal, whose power and influence 
 were then at their height, was from whatever motive staunch to 
 the English ministers \ 
 
 The name of Bernstorff is by far the most prominent among 
 those of the Hanoverian advisers of George I during his occu- 
 pancy of the British throne; but perhaps precedence ought to 
 be allowed to Bothmer, who came to England some years before 
 his colleague, and held out there for twelve years after him. 
 Hans Caspar von Bothmer had in the service of George William 
 of Celle, the friend of William III, after acting as envoy at 
 Vienna, been one of the plenipotentiaries at the Congress of 
 Ryswyk. He was subsequently for a time envoy at the Court 
 of Lewis XIV ; and after the passing of the Act of Settlement 
 and the advent to the British throne of Queen Anne, who at 
 heart shrank from the prospect of the Hanoverian Succession, 
 was chosen as the principal agent for its accomplishment. In 
 view of the known sentiments of the Queen, it had been 
 thought preferable that he should in the first instance occupy 
 a post of observation at the Hague, whither he proceeded in 
 1702, and whence he materially contributed to the passing of 
 the Acts of 1706, which placed the position of the House of 
 Hanover on so solid a basis ; indeed, it was by means of the 
 Act of Regency, which authorised the heir-presumptive to 
 appoint lords justices for the event of the Queen's demise, that 
 with the aid of Bothmer's presence in England, the new rcgiine 
 was afterwards actually established. In 1710 the overthrow 
 of the Whigs and the occupation of their places by a govern- 
 ment whose attitude towards the Hanover Succession was at 
 least dubious, jiiade it advisable to settle Bothmer as the 
 Elector's envoy at St. James' ; and in this post he laboured 
 unintermittently at the prosecution of his task, till in 1714 he 
 
 ' Lady Cowper's Z>za;j (1864), p. 1^5.
 
 ll] THE •HANOVERIAN JUNTA ' UNDER GEORGE 1 69 
 
 brought it to a successful issue. For his exertions to this end 
 were supplemented, rather than interrupted, by his endeavours 
 as plenipotentiary at Utrecht, which were so far successful that, 
 though the Hanoverian Succession was not recognised in the 
 instrument of peace, a guarantee of it was introduced into one of 
 the Barrier Treaties (the third, of 1715). Placed in a position 
 of exceptional difficulty and delicacy, he was indeed unable to 
 become a. persona grata either to the Queen or to her ministers : 
 for a few weeks before her death we find Marshal Schulemburg 
 writing to Leibniz that Bothmer, although a man of merit and 
 probity, and well qualified as a negotiator, was detested by both 
 her and them \ But he managed to hold his own, and to avoid 
 such blunders as that of the demand of the Writ into which 
 Schiitz allowed himself to be hurried, or what might have proved 
 the still graver step of adopting Marlborough's advice, and antici- 
 pating events by landing Dutch and Hanoverian troops. When 
 the crisis came at last, Bothmer played a part of conspicuous 
 importance. On the morning of the day when the Council 
 whose decision settled the situation assembled, a great meeting 
 was held at his house ; when Queen Anne had breathed 
 her last, he actively co-operated in the proclamation of 
 King George 1 by the lords justices ; and he earned the 
 thanks— or at least he deserved them— of men of all parties 
 by burning the papers left by the Queen in her private 
 cabinet". Bothmer's secretary took to Hanover the news 
 of the accomplished fact ; and on the King's arrival in 
 England, was looked upon as the chief disposer of places. 
 ' The Forreigners,' writes Peter Wentworth, himself both 
 a Whig and an office-seeker, ' tho' they pretend to have nothing 
 to do with the English affiiirs, yet from the top to the bottom 
 they have a great stroak in recommending Persons that are tit 
 to serve his Majesty; most, nay all the addresses arc made to 
 Mons. Bothmar, he having been so long in England, and is 
 supposed to know all the English. There are,' he archly adds. 
 
 ' J. M. Kcmble, Stale Papers and Correipoiideuce, ^fc. (1857), 
 p. 512. 
 
 ^ Bodemann, Ilten, p. 1 jy, fiom a MS in the writinj^ of the youn<^ti 
 llten.
 
 ■JO GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [II 
 
 ' people wicked enough to suggest that way is made by some to 
 these Persons by money ^' 
 
 Archdeacon Coxe, who it must be allowed is herein quite true 
 to sentiments freely- expressed by Sir Robert Waipole himself, 
 has been more or less followed by other English historical 
 writers in lumping ' ministers ' with ' mistresses and favourites/ 
 and writing them down as greedy, like the rest of the venal 
 crew, of ' private emoluments ' and ' concealed advantages,' since 
 the Act of Settlement had excluded them from British official 
 rank, and had shut the door of the House of Lords in their faces. 
 Yet, unless the fact be thought conclusive that both BernstorfT 
 and Bothmer am,assed considerable wealth, the evidence as to 
 the mode in which they acquired it is extremely scanty. As to 
 Bothmer, I perceive no proof that, after the first great rush was 
 over, during which he stood between the King and the office- 
 seekers, he busied himself with the distribution of patronage. 
 Undoubtedly, while the siege lasted, its rigour was excessive, 
 and it is necessary to go through certain portions of the 
 Rohethon Correspo?idence in the British Museum in order to 
 form a conception of the extent and variety of the applications 
 made to Bothmer and transmitted by him through Robethon 
 for the royal approval. Some of these refer to the highest offices 
 of State, others to mere Court appointments^. Bothmer, who 
 at the time of the accession was nearly a sexagenarian, had 
 virtually reached the climax of his career when the task to 
 which its chief endeavours had been devoted was achieved ; 
 and this was acknowledged in 171 5 by his being created 
 a Count of the Holy Roman Empire— a significant testimony of 
 Imperial goodwill towards a success so largely due to him. He 
 
 ' 7'he li'cntivorth Papers, ed. J. J. Cartwright (1883), p. 427. 
 
 * Among these, it is pleasant to think, was very probably now or at a 
 later date included the appointment of one of the most charming among 
 the Maids of Honour at the Court of the Princess ofWales — Maryl.epel, 
 afterwards Lady Hervey. She seems to have owed her nomination to 
 the post to the influence of Bothmer, Bernstorff, and the Dowager 
 Duchess of Marlborough ; and to have herself sprung from a Mecklen- 
 burg, or at all events a Baltic family — not, as Croker thought, from one 
 settled in the Channel Islands. (See Diary of the First Earl of Bristol, 
 vol. iv. pp. 287 seqq.).
 
 II ] THE ' HANOVERIAN JUNTA' UNDER GEORGE I 71 
 
 continued, while holding the mainly ornamental position of 
 Hanoverian envoy in London, together with a non-resident 
 Privy Councillorship, to devote himself closely to foreign affairs. 
 Although they are constantly found acting together, and seem 
 ordinarily to have been guided by the same principles of political 
 conduct, the influence of Bothmer would seem to have waned as 
 that of Bernstorff rose to its height ; indeed, in an unsigned 
 letter from Paris in the Robethon Correspoftdence belonging to 
 the year 1718^ it is roundly asserted that 'Bothmer has but 
 little influence, and it all belongs to M. de BernstorftV Yet we 
 know on the authority of a MS. which in all probability pro- 
 ceeded from Bothmer's own pen, that he took a very direct and 
 noticeable part in the negotiations for the Quadruple Alliance in 
 1718 ; and both before and after this date we find him active in 
 the conduct of foreign aflfairs. In the transactions which ended 
 in August, 1719, with the conclusion of the alliance with Prussia, 
 Bothmer supported the policy of Stanhope against that of 
 Bernstorff, who was bitterly opposed to it. But although he 
 continued down to his death in 1732 to occupy a house in 
 Downing Street (the present official residence of the First Lord 
 of the Treasury^), it may be concluded that for some time 
 previous to his death at nearly eighty years of age he must have 
 ceased taking any prominent part in public affairs. He left 
 behind him a very large landed estate in Mecklenburg, together 
 with considerable personal property ^ 
 
 In character and disposition Bothmer, whom a contemporary 
 ( Ilten) credits with une hiimeur douce et bienfaisante — a descrip- 
 tion not belied by the letters remaining from his hand — must 
 have been very unlike the foremost of his colleagues, the guiding 
 spirit of the so-called Hanoverian junta, the celebrated Baron 
 Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff. We need not attach very 
 much importance to the casual utterances of those free-spoken 
 ladies, the favourite niece of the old Electress Sophia and the 
 more discreet but equally quick-witted wife of her grandson. 
 For if the Duchess of Orleans * and the Princess of Wales (after- 
 
 ' Vol. X. p. 70. '' Horace \\a.\\HA<:'i Letters, vol. i. p. 181 note. 
 
 ' Vehse, Die iJo/e d. //auses Mecklenburg, vol. ii. pp. 1 81 -3. 
 ' hi.. Die Hofe d. //auses Braunschweig, vol. i. p. 221.
 
 72 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 wards Queen Caroline') were at one in their vituperation of 
 Bernstorft", the Princess was also fain to call Bothmer a knave, 
 and — for that matter — Robethon another '^ But there are other 
 indications that he at times gave free expression to the asperity 
 which was in his nature, and the colleague just cited states it to 
 have been made an accusation against him that he was peu 
 courtisan. He was certainly well hated in the course of his 
 career, and numerous aspersions have been cast on him in the 
 literature of memoirs. But the part played by him in contem- 
 porary history was of sufficient importance to warrant the 
 assertion that he will not be finally judged by the inconsiderate- 
 ness which was at times resented in his manners, nor even by 
 the admixture of personal motives which was at times thought 
 discernible in his political action. 
 
 The autobiography of BernstorfT printed by Dr. Kocher from 
 the MS. in the Hanover archives ', and reaching up to the year 
 1 716, covers less than a dozen pages, and is couched in a laconic 
 style of ultra-ofificial dryness. But his life had contained at least 
 one passionate passage in his youth, and in his later days he 
 was certainly not in the habit of toning down the strength of his 
 opinions as to men and things. Bernstorff, as we shall have to 
 remember when adverting in our next lecture to the intervention 
 of the Czar in the Mecklenburg question, was a landed noble in 
 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and took a leading part in the early 
 stages of the quarrel between his Order and their territorial 
 prince, Duke Charles Lewis, which was carried on for a period 
 of something more than half a century ; but he had quitted the 
 Ducal Court many years before, having fallen in love with the 
 Duke's first consort, a lady of the French house of Montmorency. 
 At Celle, where he took service under Duke George William, 
 he however married the daughter of Chancellor Schiitz, described 
 in his son-in-law's Autobiography as ' one of the greatest and 
 most capable ministers that he had ever known.' He took part 
 in the campaigns of the Brunswick-Luneburg troops against 
 
 ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 79. 
 ^/^,p.87. 
 
 ' Die Selbstbiographie des Ministers A. G. von Bernstorff. (^Pro- 
 £ramm des Kaiser fVit/ie/m's Gymnasiums in Hanover, 1877.)
 
 II j THE -HANOVERIAN JUNTA' UNDER GEORGE I 73 
 
 France in 1674 and 1675 j ^"^ having soon afterwards, on the 
 death of his father-in-law, assumed the direction of affairs at 
 Celle, passed thence in 1705 into the service of the Elector George 
 Lewis at Hanover. In 1709, on the death of Count Platen, the 
 husband of the notorious Countess Platen, Bernstorff became 
 chief minister. He had taken a leading part in the negotiations 
 with Portland which secured to William of Orange the armed 
 support of the Brunswick-LUneburg dukes on the occasion of 
 his expedition to ICngland in 1688. But perhaps the note- 
 worthiest feature in his political activity during the period 
 preceding the accession of the House of Hanover to the British 
 throne was the suspicious vigilance with which he strove to 
 guard against the ambition of his master's two most important 
 neighbours, the King of Denmark and the Elector of Branden- 
 burg. Against Brandenburg he cherished an unextinguishable 
 aversion ; and while jealousy of Prussia was one of the most 
 potent, as it was one of the most enduring factors in the dynastic 
 policy of the House of Hanover through a great part of the earlier 
 half of the eighteenth century, that jealousy was incarnate in 
 Bernstorff". 
 
 In 17 14 he had accompanied George I to England as the 
 recognised chief of his German councillors, and this position he 
 maintained till the time of his political overthrow. There can 
 be no mistake as to the contemptuous dislike with which he 
 regarded the conditions of political life that he found existing in 
 his master's new kingdom, nor as to his belief that it behoveil 
 him to set them right, so far as in him lay, by a continuous 
 exertion of his own personal influence over the King. In one 
 of the few passages in his Autobiography where he gives tin- 
 rein to his private feelings, he recalls the infinite importu- 
 nities and vexations which had to be borne during the process 
 of forming a Court and a government at the time of the 
 King's accession, and refers to the incredible multitude of 
 applicants who imagined themselves ' fit for anything and 
 everything.' Of his varied and indefatigable activity during the 
 first five or six years uf the reign no more convincing evidence 
 can be required than is furnished in the Diary of i.ady 
 Cowper, who, like her husband, was on very friendly terms witii
 
 74 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 Hernstorff; indeed, the appointment of Whigs to all the higher 
 offices of State was largely due to the historical narrative drawn 
 up by Lord Cowper when a lord justice, and laid before the 
 King by Bernstorff. In the Diary we find the latter not only 
 busying himself concerning all sorts of appointments in and about 
 the Court, but also interfering as to nominations on the Bench 
 of Judges, and freely giving his opinion on matters whether of 
 administration or of legislation. He was a consistent upholder 
 of the Whigs, notwithstanding the distrust of their party fostered 
 in the Prince and Princess of Wales ; but his long-sustained 
 endeavour to remain the recognised agent of the royal will and 
 exponent of its ultimate decisions split on the rock of Townshend 
 and Walpole's determination to maintain the responsibility of 
 the King's ministers. There can be little doubt as to the 
 unscrupulousness of the procedure adopted by Walpole in order 
 to break Bernstorfifs influence in 1720; and whether or not 
 Lord Cowper and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu were justified 
 in asserting that his wholesale charges of corruption against the 
 Hanoverian minister might have been made to recoil on his 
 own head \ I am disposed to conclude that much of the popular 
 prejudice excited against Bernstorff was the result of exaggera- 
 tion, if not of invention. His influence at Court was necessarily 
 limited, and already in 17 16 he experienced a rebuff on 
 attempting to carry through the King's wishes as to restricting 
 the powers of the Prince of Wales and joining others with him 
 in the Commission of Regency during the King's absence from 
 England. But his ascendancy was most marked and enduring 
 in the sphere of foreign affairs, as is shown by the great 
 deference paid to him and to his influence upon the progress of 
 European politics by many of Robethon's correspondents, both 
 English and foreign. That in 17 15-6 we should find the 
 Imperial Resident stating foreign business to be in the hands of 
 the Hanoverian ministers is of course by no means surprising, 
 for serious home troubles were then absorbing much of the 
 attention of the cabinet. In December, 1716, Bothmer, writing 
 
 ' See Lady Cowper, p. 134; and cf. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 
 State of Affairs, Sic, in Works, ed. Lord Wharncliffe (3rd ed.), vol. i.
 
 Il] THE 'HANOVERIAN JUNTA- UNDER GEORGE I 75 
 
 from London, expresses a strong wish for Bernstorffs return 
 with the King ; and in the following month Cadogan at the 
 Hague represents the Grand Pensionary as most anxious for an 
 interview with him at Amsterdam on his way, to discuss the 
 affairs of the North ^. In the period of the Triple and Quad- 
 ruple Alliance, when English diplomacy was most active and 
 energetic, Bernstorff's influence upon our foreign business is (so 
 far as I can judge) even more noticeable than before, and it 
 rises to its height during the earlier, at least, of the years 
 (1717-20) of Stanhope's 'German ministry.' Yet this influence 
 was by no means always palatable to Stanhope, any more than 
 it had been to his predecessor ; and in one important respect he 
 resisted it successfully. It may ver)' well be that the mortifica- 
 tion inflicted on BernstorfF in 1720, by the achievement without 
 his knowledge of a reconciliation between the King and the 
 Prince of Wales, was partly due to a desire for revenge on 
 tiie part of Stanhope, whose foreign policy had been seriously 
 hampered, without being effectually thwarted, by Bernstorffs 
 irrepressible hatred of Prussia ^ and that this revenge was 
 wreaked by him with the aid of the Duchess of Kendal. In the 
 summer of 1720 Bernstorff once more accompanied George I to 
 Hanover, but when in November the South Sea catastrophe 
 obliged the King to return to England, the old minister (he was 
 now in his seventy-second year) thought it more prudent to 
 
 ' Robethon Papers, vol. viii. pp. 360 and 370. 
 
 ' 'I conjure M. de Bernstorff,' the Abbe Dubois writes to Robethon 
 in 1718, 'to saciifice or dissimulate whatever dislike (j!Ioignemen() he 
 may have for the House of Prussia,' and to consent to an alliance with 
 her which would frustrate the Swedish hopes of a Northern League. 
 Bernstorff had kept Prussia out of the Triple Alliance, but failed in his 
 opposition to the treaty, actually concluded in August, 1719, between 
 (ireat Britain and Prussia, with the object of bringing about a satisfactoiy 
 peace between each of these powers and Sweden. (Cf. Lecture III.) 
 His conduct in this matter was the more open to unfavourable comment, 
 since it was supposed to be swayed by jiersonal interest, in reference to 
 certain villages owned by his family that were in the treaty ceded by 
 Prussia to Hanover. (Cf. Droysen, Geschichle der preiissischen Politik, 
 vol. ii. part 2, pp. 260 seqq. ; and Stanhope, w. s., vol. ii. Appendix, 
 p. Ixxx.)
 
 76 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 remain behind. The last words of his autobiography stand on 
 record as a jotting which he never elaborated : ' Why in the year 
 1720 I did not go to England.' A new period in the history of 
 the reign now commenced with the readmission into the govern- 
 ment of Walpole and Townshend. Between 1720 and 1723, when 
 he actually quitted, or was dismissed from office, Bernstorff 
 appears to, have played no prominent part either in foreign or 
 other public affairs. He was probably for the greater part of 
 this period resident in Hanover ; for it was here that about 1722 
 he tried one more fall with the leading English ministers, in 
 opposition to whom he supported Carteret and the supple 
 minister-resident, Sir Luke Schaub, whom Carteret had placed 
 at Paris, in their attempt to push the intrigue of the La 
 Vrilli^re dukedom. The scheme practically fell through, and, 
 even before Carteret's control of foreign affairs, Bemstorff's 
 public life came to an end. He died in London in 1726, a year 
 before his master. Like Bothmer, he left his wealth to an only 
 daughter, from whom the eminent Danish statesmen bearing his 
 name were directly descended. 
 
 None of the other Hanoverians who accompanied King 
 George I to England exercised a personal influence upon the 
 administration or policy of the kingdom of which any traces 
 remain. Baron (afterwards Count) von Schlitz-Gorz very soon 
 returned to Hanover, where he remained a member of the 
 ministry, and held the Presidency of the Exchequer Chamber 
 till his death in 172S. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describes 
 him as a ' plain, sincere and unambitious man^' ; but he seems, 
 possibly with an eye to the inclinations of the Prince of Wales, 
 to have entered into relations with some of the Tory leaders. 
 His withdrawal from London is significant of the ascendancy of 
 Bernstorff, to whom he had opposed himself already in earlier 
 days, when his rival had taken so active a part in promoting 
 the English Succession. Probably he was not far from the 
 truth in excusing himself to the enterprising John Ker of Kersland, 
 as unable to do anything for him, when that worthy came over 
 from Hanover with an admirable letter from Leibniz, protesting 
 against its being thought possible that German ministers should 
 
 ' Account 0/ the Court 0/ George I, in H'orks, i. 125.
 
 Il] THE -HANOVERIAN JUNTA' UNDER GEORGE I 77 
 
 meddle in English affairs. Bernstorff and Bothmer, he said, 
 were the only foreigners who ignored the precept- or, as he 
 might have put the point, who ignored it with effect ^ 
 
 The younger Hattorf (Philip), when he went over in lieu of 
 his father with the King in 1714, exercised secretarial rather 
 than ministerial functions, and only later. became the regular 
 minister in attendance. His ultimate appointment is noteworthy 
 as the solitary instance during the period of the Personal Union 
 of a leading position in the Hanoverian government being held 
 by an official not born a member of the ancient nobility ; but 
 Hattorf, as we shall see when speaking of the reign of George II, 
 was a man of exceptional ability and tact. 
 
 I should mention no other name in the present connexion, 
 since it is beyond my purpose to speak either of the ministers of 
 George I at home in Hanover, or of the officials around the King- 
 Elector's person, am.ong whom certain conspicuous connexions 
 -were as a matter of course amply represented. But it might 
 seem strange to pass by one indefatigable agent, whose influence 
 upon the progress of the affairs of George I continued for 
 several years after he had become King of Great Britain. 
 Strictly speaking, of course, Jean de Robethon ought not to be 
 mentioned side by side with the Hanoverian ministers and 
 employees ; but he came to England as an old official of the 
 new Sovereign ; nor was he, so far as I know, ever admitted into 
 the British public service. He is variously addressed as 
 ' Domestic Secretary and Privy Councillor,' ' Privy Councillor 
 of Ambassage,' and ' Aulic Councillor ' ; and I have not come 
 across his name as recipient of a British official salary. He 
 had no connexion whatever with the Hanoverian Privy Council, 
 or even with the London office. Yet he has been justly 
 described ^ as the very soul of George I's diplomatic chancery, 
 and among all the politicians of the day he was beyond all doubt 
 the most closely trusted by both Hanoverian statesmen and 
 English and foreign d plomatists. 
 
 Like Bernstorff himself, and like Fabricc, the father of two 
 valued official servants of George I, Robethon had passed into 
 
 ' See Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland (3rd ed., 1727), vol. i. 
 pp. 100 seqq. ' l^y I'^ul'-
 
 78 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ll 
 
 the electoral service out of that of George William of Celle. 
 But, unlike them, he had previously been in the service of 
 William III, having entered it, perhaps on being driven into 
 exile by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, perhaps at 
 a rather later date, since he is known to have been natu- 
 ralised in England in 1693. He accompanied Portland as 
 secretary to Paris on his celebrated embassy after the Peace 
 of Ryswyk, and in 1698 was established as private secretary to 
 the King himself. During Queen Anne's reign he was actively 
 engaged in the long diplomatic campaign for carrying through 
 the Succession of the House of Brunswick, and when Bothmer 
 was sent to England, for a time took his place as electoral 
 envoy at the Hague. He then returned to Hanover, the notion 
 of sending him to London having been abandoned— probably 
 quite as much because of his want of birth and breeding, as 
 because of his being certain to be unacceptable to the Tories in 
 power. From the accession of King George onwards, Robethon 
 became at London what he had been at Hanover — the chief 
 confidential agent of the policy guided by Bernstorff and 
 Bothmer. He was also employed to translate, and probably on 
 occasion to draft, royal proclamations, speeches to Parliament, 
 and the like. But just as he had been much more than the 
 mere draughtsman of the ideas and projects of others in 
 the Succession correspondence, a larger proportion of which 
 had beyond a doubt fallen to his share than to that of any 
 other political agent, so the ministers of the new regime, 
 diplomatists like Stair, and leading foreign statesmen such as 
 Dubois, concurred in treating him as a personality to be 
 reckoned with. His supreme claim to importance lay in his 
 being known to possess the complete confidence of Bernstorff'. 
 
 ^ The statement of John Ker of Kersland (^Memoirs, u. s.), that he 
 had been advised of five hundred guineas to Robethon being the only 
 way of securing Bemstorff's good word, need (like other statements from 
 the same source) not be taken ati pied de la Icttre. More to the point 
 perhaps is Lord Strafford's request to Robethon to correct a report 
 unfavourable to the Ambassador's reputation for discretion, and suppli- 
 cating him to bring this disclaimer to the notice of Bernstorff and ' your 
 other ministers' {^Robethon Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 378).
 
 II] THE •HANOVERIAN JUNTA' UNDER GEORGE 1 79 
 
 The British ministers unmistakeably regarded his activity with 
 the reverse of goodwill ; but the contemptuous abuse that flowed 
 so easily from the lips of prejudiced contemporaries need not 
 have been accepted as decisive by sober modern historians. 
 The Robethon Correspondence in the British Museum furnishes 
 abundant evidence of his political knowledge and insight, and of 
 the important share belonging to him in many of the chief 
 political transactions of the first six years, or thereabouts, of the 
 reign of George I. A perusal of many of these papers has 
 convinced me of the justice of the estimate of Robethon's 
 powers and services given by Mr. J. F. Chance in an admirable 
 recent contribution to the English Historical Revieiv '. 
 
 ' Vol. xiii. No. 49, for January, 1898. Robethon seems to have 
 been excluded from any share in public affairs from about 1720, having 
 supported Bernstorff against Stanhope in the attempt to prevent the 
 treaty with Prussia. He died April 17, 1722.
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I (1714-21) 
 
 IN briefly commenting on some of the transactions of our 
 foreign policy in the reign of George I, into which his 
 interests or sympathies as Elector of Hanover more or less 
 distinctly entered, I shall perforce have to treat the spheres of 
 that policy to some extent apart from one another. Yet^ 
 of course, even a far less intelligent conduct of foreign 
 affairs than that which makes this reign so noticeable an 
 epoch of our diplomatic history could not, while acting in 
 one sphere, have ignored the rest. Within the European 
 range of relations to which the attention of our statesmen 
 was still as a rule restricted, they were constantly reminded 
 of the mutual influence of political movements far distant 
 from one another in origin ; one of the chief disturbing 
 forces of the period, the ambition of Spain guided by Albe- 
 roni, sought to accomplish its end by utilising the wrath 
 of the Swedish King, and we find George I promising the 
 l-'.mperor to let the British fleet winter in the Mediter- 
 ranean, although it would be of the last importance to him 
 to send part of it into the Baltic ^ It would be interesting 
 to know to what extent the combination of questions 
 and issues prima facie remote from one another was 
 impeded by the distribution, habitual at this time, of the 
 management of business between two Secretaries of State, 
 so that for instance the Secretary for the Southern Depart- 
 
 ' Record Office, Regencies, vol. xii (August 14, 1719).
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 8r 
 
 ment attended to the affairs of France and Spain, and the 
 Secretary of the Northern to those of the Empire and the 
 Scandinavian North. But no arrangement could have been 
 belter calculated to produce misunderstandings between the 
 two Secretaries themselves, more especially when the Crown 
 was swayed by counsels more favourable to the policy and 
 conduct of one of the pair than to those of his colleague. 
 
 In the case of Townshend and Stanhope we know that 
 such a misunderstanding actually arose, and ended in open 
 rupture. Yet the choice of each of these statesmen as 
 Secretary had approved itself to the King's Hanoverian 
 advisers. Townshend indeed, the Northern Secretary, owed his 
 appointment, if Lady iNIary Wortley IMontagu is to be trusted, 
 to Robelhon's remembrance of courtesies received from him 
 when Ambassador at the Hague in Queen Anne's time ; 
 this was a passport to Bernstorff's goodwill; and Bothmer 
 had likewise interested himself in Townshend's behalf ^ 
 Lady Mary, in her cynical way, implies that it was Towns- 
 hend's docility which carried him successfully through the first 
 part of his public career; but, as not unfrequently happens 
 with its lively authoress, the suggestion conveyed is unjustly 
 contemptuous, for nothing distinguished this statesman so 
 much as his high and unyielding sense of honour. Neither, 
 however, in the measure of his powers nor in the lustre of 
 his public services, can he be said to have equalled his fellow- 
 Secretary Stanhope, whose appointment was more than justi- 
 fied by conspicuous services to the State, and above all to 
 the alliance with the House of Austria, so that he could 
 
 ' Rohethon Correspondence, vol. vi. p. 405 (September 11, 1714 . 
 Bothmer was troubled to find Sunderland after all desirous of the office. 
 He was actually appointed to it in April, 1717, after Townshend's resigna- 
 tion. — Coxe {Life of Sir Robert IValpole, cd. 18, vol. i. p. 113) says 
 that Townshend had • secured and governed Bothmer before the King's 
 -Trrival ' ; but this may possibly not be altogether the right way of 
 putting it. 
 
 G
 
 82 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 hardly fail sooner or later to establish his ascendancy in the 
 tonduct of British foreign policy under the House of 
 Hanover. 
 
 At the commencement of the new reign, general attention 
 was still fixed upon the settlement of our relations with the 
 Power against which we had waged the long war that had 
 but recently been brought to a close. The Peace had been 
 vehemently condemned by the party which had now recovered 
 the control of the administration, nor had its conditions been 
 satisfactorily carried out by France. Following traditions that 
 seemed unlikely to be buried so long as the old King sur- 
 vived, her attitude remained steadily provocative; nothing 
 seemed capable of altering it but another war ; and towards 
 such a war the new British Government could not, without 
 apprehension, feel itself drifting ^ For the Grand Alliance 
 was a thing of the past ; and if Great Britain was to enter into 
 a new conflict, she ought at least to be sure of the support of 
 her old allies the United Provinces and the Emperor. But 
 while the latter had been alienated from Great Britain by the 
 Peace of Utrecht, he was at issue with the Dutch about their 
 so-called barrier of fortresses in the Austrian Netherlands, 
 which was as irksome to Charles VI in the second decade of 
 the century as it was to Joseph H in the ninth. However, 
 an end was put to the prospect of a renewal of hostilities with 
 France by the death of Louis XIV (September i, 1715), and 
 the establishment in the sole Regency of the Duke of Orleans, 
 the maternal kinsman of George I. The King's own throne 
 was speedily strengthened by the overthrow of the Rebellion 
 of the '15, to effect which Lord Stair had suggested the 
 shipping of seven or eight battalions of Hanoverian troops 
 
 ' A few weeks before the death of Louis XIV Robethon was in- 
 formed from Paris that England was then generally believed to be on the 
 point of recommencing war against France. {Robethon Correspondence, 
 vol. vii. p. 79.)
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 83 
 
 from Bremen, Hamburg, and Stade ' : but we had no treaty 
 with the Electorate analogous to that with the Dutch, and the 
 conclusion of a subsidy-treaty ad hoc was probably thought 
 inexpedient under the circumstances. The improved position 
 of the new rf^/;//^ in Great Britain showed itself in the friend- 
 liness displayed towards it by the Emperor. Not only was 
 his assent given to a new Barrier Treaty, more favourable to 
 the Dutch than its predecessor, mediated by the British 
 Government; but he was in 17 16 prevailed upon to con- 
 clude a treaty with Great Britain herself, in which each 
 Power guaranteed the possessions of the other. This treaty 
 having been concluded by George I as King of Great 
 Britain only, and not as Elector of Hanover also, it followed 
 that, notwithstanding certain apprehensions on the Austrian 
 side, no guarantee of Hanoverian possessions could be in- 
 volved in it. None of the Hanoverian ministers therefore 
 appended his signature to the instrument ^, whatever part they 
 may have taken in the preceding negotiations ; and thus no 
 complication was introduced into an arrangement which 
 materially strengthened the European influence of Great 
 Britain. It was at this very season — the summer of 17 16 — 
 that King George I, for the first time since his accession to 
 the British throne, visited his Electorate, and that Stanhope, 
 who accompanied him as Secretary of State, contrived en 
 route to prepare, by the earliest of his ' unbuttoned ' conver- 
 sations with the Abbd Dubois, that further developement of 
 our foreign policy of which friendship with France and a 
 iliorough understanding with the Emperor constituted the 
 joint conditions. 
 
 To this we may return a little later. While at the begin- 
 ning of the reign, for the Powers that had taken jiart in the 
 
 ' Robelhon Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 320. 
 
 ^ Michael, Englische Ceschichte im \%. Jahrhundert, vol. i. (1896), 
 
 c; 2
 
 84 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 war of the Spanish Succession, no problem of European 
 politics could vie in importance with that of the relations 
 between the chief of those Powers themselves, another war 
 was still in progress in which hitherto none of them had 
 become involved. The so-called Northern War had been 
 to all intents and purposes localised ; but would such a re- 
 striction of the conflict continue possible, after the House of 
 Hanover, which had recently so to speak acquired a direct 
 interest in its progress, had succeeded to the British throne ? 
 Together with Stanhope, Bernstorff, with Robethon by his 
 side, accompanied King George on the journey to Hanover 
 which in spite of so many and serious obstacles he had per- 
 sisted in undertaking. Bothmer remained behind in London, 
 in constant communication, as the Robethon Correspondence 
 shows, with his colleagues at Hanover ; nor can there have 
 been any time in his reign when a greater number of influences 
 combined to urge upon George I the prosecution of interests 
 which he made no secret of having particularly at heart. 
 
 The day of Pultawa, while checking the victorious career 
 of Charles XII of Sweden, had neither overthrown his power 
 nor broken his spirit. But his long delay in the dominions 
 of the Sultan, who was in the end altogether to disappoint 
 his hopes, had enabled the adversaries against whom he had 
 so successfully contended in the first nine years of the war, 
 to partition among them the outer circle of his dominions. 
 The Nemesis of an aggrandisement for which he was not 
 responsible, after being by his genius for a time averted from 
 his kingdom, had at last descended upon it, and the conquests 
 which, from the Peace of Westphalia to that of Roeskilde, had 
 swelled the territories of the great northern Power were torn 
 from her one by one. 
 
 Among these were what are commonly called the Duchies 
 of Bremen and Verden. or, more accurately, the Duchy 
 of Bremen and the Principality of Verden. The Duchy of
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 85 
 
 Bremen consisted of the former dominions of the Archbishop 
 of Bremen, which after the Reformation had been held, 
 together with the See, by princes of the neighbouring houses, 
 including that of Brunswick-Liineburg, but which in the 
 Peace of Westphalia had passed as a secular duchy into the 
 possession of the Swedish Crown. (The city of Bremen 
 maintained its immediacy to the Empire, but this was dis- 
 puted by Sweden and afterwards by Hanover, who however 
 recognised it in 1731.) The bishopric of Verden had 
 actually formed part of the dominions of Henry the Lion ; 
 it had then become immediate, and in the Peace of West- 
 phalia had been made over to Sweden as a secular princi- 
 pality. It results that the House of Hanover could pretend 
 to no claim to these territories (which by the way included 
 the two cathedral churches in the free cities of Bremen 
 and Hamburg), but that it had a historical connexion or 
 association with them. A glance at the map will show 
 that together they command the course of the Weser from 
 something like twenty miles above Bremen to its mouth, and 
 that of the Elbe to its mouth from the near neighbourhood 
 of Hamburg ; on the further side of the river lies Holstein. 
 Above Hamburg the Elbe formed the northern boundary of 
 the Brunswick-Liineburg dominions. 
 
 The proprietorship of the Bremen- Verden lands was there- 
 fore a matter of consequence to the Elector of Hanover. 
 The princes of the House to which he belonged had felt 
 deeply aggrieved by the settlement made in the matter by the 
 Peace of Westphalia; and both before and after that treaty they 
 had jealously watched the aggressive policy of Sweden. But 
 of late their vigilance had been directed less against Sweden 
 than against her inveterate enemy Denmark, whose appetite 
 for territory they had more reason for fearing. When there- 
 fore, in 1 7 1 2, the Danish King Frederick IV sought to avenge 
 the humiliations of Travendahl by occupying Bremen and
 
 86 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 Verden, and in 17 13 with Saxon aid partially carried out his 
 purpose, tlie siluaiion became one in which it must be 
 allowed that some sort of intervention on the part of Hanover 
 hardly remained avoidable. Moreover, her mediation had 
 been invoked by her near neighbour, the Duke of Holslein- 
 Gottorp (the nephew of Charles XII), whose territories the 
 Danes were likewise overrunning. They were indeed de- 
 feated by a Swedish force ; but after this had been obliged 
 to surrender to a combined army of the Powers in alliance 
 against Sweden, they once more established themselves in 
 the Bremen territory. In order, therefore, to hold some sort 
 of security against a complete Danish occupation in the 
 first instance, as well as to guard his own future interests, 
 the Elector George Lewis hereupon occupied Verden and 
 Ottenburg (just across the Bremen boundary). Then, while 
 opening negotiations with Denmark as to the settlement of 
 their respective claims, he ranged himself definitively on 
 the side of the enemies of Sweden by sending a Hanoverian 
 contingent to their army, now in Pomerania. These steps 
 had been taken shortly before the accession of the Elector 
 of Hanover to the British throne ; and there could be no 
 question but that they must lead to consequences of serious 
 moment for Great Britain, so soon as the Personal Union 
 should have been accomplished. 
 
 Up to this time, whatever friction might have arisen from 
 the state of shipping and trade in the Baltic, Great Britain 
 had held aloof from any intervention in the Northern com- 
 plication, and taken no part in the proceedings of the adver- 
 saries of Charles XII, either before or after Pultawa. When, 
 late in November, 171 4, the Swedish King reached Stralsund, 
 after his wonderful ride across Europe, very pleasant compli- 
 ments were interchanged between him and the British 
 Minister accredited to him (Jeflferyes), whom he requested 
 to transmit his congratulations on King George's accession
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 87 
 
 through Bernstorff — though the diplomatist thought it more 
 proper to forward them through Townshend'. But soon 
 Charles was better informed. Almost at the very time of his 
 arrival at Stralsund, a treaty of mutual guarantee had been 
 arranged at Berlin by the Hanoverian Privy Councillor Eltz, 
 one of the most devoted servants of his master (indeed he is 
 called the King's dfne daiimee by Ilten), between Great Britain 
 and Prussia, the Power most vitally interested in the extrusion 
 of Sweden from the Empire'. Next, it was determined to 
 take quick advantage of the apprehensions excited in the 
 Danish Court by the news of Charles' imminent return ^, and 
 of the uneasy feeling there that he might contrive to detach 
 George I from the Anti-Swedish league, by voluntarily ceding 
 Bremen and Verden to him ^. In truth, this would have 
 ' been a sagacious move, although not one after the manner 
 of Charles XII. The negotiations which ensued between 
 Hanover and Denmark ended in a formal alliance between 
 them in May, 17 15, for the expulsion of the Swedes from the 
 Empire, and in the cession in June by Denmark to Hanover 
 of Bremen and Verden, whose Estates in the October follow- 
 ing did homage to the Elector at Stade. Five years later, 
 Sweden, no longer a great Power, formally ceded these terri- 
 tories to their Hanoverian occupant, receiving in return a 
 compensation of 1,185,000 dollars. 
 
 ' Robethon Papers, vol. vi. pp. 538-9. It is curious to find Bothmer, 
 as late as August, writing to Robethon in a sympathetic tone as to the 
 difficulties in the way of Charles XII's return. 
 
 * Droysen, «. s., vol. iv. Part ii. pp. 201-2. 
 
 ■' In October, 1714, Fabrice reported the King of Denmark to bo 
 more tractable. (Robethon Correspondence, yo\. vi. pp. 478-9.) 
 
 * The fears of Frederick IV on this score are mentioned by his 
 biographer Iloyer. (Herrmann, Geschichle Rtisslaiids, vol. iii. p. 491.) 
 Similar information had reached Jefferyes from the Swedish legation at 
 Vienna. {^Robethon Correspondence, u. s., p. 540.) But if Charles enter- 
 tained any such intention, he must have very speedily abandoned it.
 
 88 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 This is the Hanoverian aspect of the matter. A con- 
 siderable province, speaking relatively, was added to the 
 Electorate, in extent falling- not very far short of its previous 
 dominions, and rounding them off appropriately on the North 
 towards Holstein, as it was intended East Frisia should at 
 some future dale round them off towards the Netherlands \ 
 An ancestral sentiment had been gratified by the incorpora- 
 lion of lands formerly connected with the House of Bruns- 
 wick ; some share in the commercial prosperity of Hamburg 
 and Bremen might be expected to accrue to the inhabitants 
 of the marsh-lands between the estuaries of the two great 
 North Sea rivers ; and a ray, or two of the faint glow of 
 patriotism evoked by the displacement of the Scandinavian 
 intruder would fall upon the princely house to whose action 
 it was due. 
 
 But during the six years which were required for carrying 
 this design to a successful conclusion, much had happened 
 showing it to be fraught with less acceptable results for the 
 Great Power with which the Hanoverian Electorate was now 
 associated in a Personal Union. Inasmuch as the corre- 
 spondence in the Record Office bearing on some of these 
 transactions is supplemented by the very voluminous col- 
 lection of Carteret's Letters and Despatches in the British 
 Museum, there is at least evidence enough to throw light 
 upon what may be called the British side of the question. 
 
 Before the proceedings of George I with regard to Bremen 
 and Verden could have entered as a factor into the relations 
 between Great Britain and Sweden, the danger of an out- 
 break of hostilities had already been near at hand. This 
 seems to be placed beyond all doubt by a statement trans- 
 mitted by the Lord Justices to the King on August 7, 
 previously to his arrival. From this document it appears 
 
 ^ The hereditary compact {Erbverbruderiittg) between Ernest Augustus 
 and Christian Eberhard of East Frisia had been concluded in 1691.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 89 
 
 that four men-of-war had been sent into the Baltic to provide 
 for the safety of our merchantmen there ; and that our resident 
 at Stockholm (Jackson) having expressed his opinion that if 
 a chance were given to the Swedish squadron it would 
 attack the British, the officer in command (Captain Hamilton) 
 had been furnished with instructions to return to the Thames 
 if danger were to be apprehended '. As a matter .of fact, 
 during the course of the Northern War Swedish privateers 
 had captured a large number of British merchantmen, on the 
 plea that they were carrying contraband of war into the 
 Russian ports, over which Sweden had established a blockade, 
 though doubtless to a large extent on paper only. The 
 damages suffered by English trade were estimated at nearly 
 £70,000 '^j- and it may safely be concluded that the great body 
 of these losses had been inflicted before the occupation of 
 Verden, and that no thought of this proceeding entered into 
 the naval votes passed by Parliament in the earlier part of the 
 year 17 15. In the month of June of this year a Brinsh fleet 
 under Sir John Norris anchored in the Sound, where it found 
 a Dutch squadron already in waiting ; and by the close of 
 the month the two fleets safely convoyed a large number 
 of English and Dutch merchant vessels to their respective 
 ports. So far it cannot be said that these proceedings, what- 
 ever gloss might be put upon them by interested parties, 
 had been carried beyond the necessary requirements of 
 the case. 
 
 The liberality of the naval votes which had preceded the 
 despatch of the fleet shows it to have been approved by 
 
 ' I\ecord Office, Regencies, vol. xi (1713-4) : Secretary Bromley 'to 
 the King,' from Whitehall, August 7, 1714. He is instructed to say 
 that the Swedes, whose men-of-war and privateers daily seized British 
 ships or effects, gave out that these practices were intended to suppress 
 the supply of their enemies with necessaries of war through British 
 ships, in contravention of existing treaties. 
 
 '■' Campbell's Naval History of Great Britain (181 3), vol. iv. p. 130.
 
 go GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 Parliamentary and public opinion ; nor is any trace discover- 
 able of a belief or suspicion in England that the fleet was 
 intended to bring hostile pressure to bear upon Sweden in 
 connivance with the Powers allied against her. Only a few 
 months before the accession of King George I the British 
 (Government had actively exerted itself on behalf of Sweden, 
 and Norris' instructions for the expedition of 1715 appear to 
 have borne entirely upon reprisals for the Swedish excesses 
 against British trade, committed more especially by the priva- 
 teers licensed by royal edict. But in the course of the summer 
 the intention of utilising the fleet for the furtherance of the 
 understanding between Hanover and Denmark, or in other 
 words for the purposes of league of aggression against Sweden, 
 i)ecomes more and more transparent. In August Norris' 
 squadron sails from Copenhagen as the vanguard of a united 
 armada of British, Russian, and Danish men-of-war, and the 
 Hanoverian agents busy themselves in pledging their master 
 as to its employment. In London BernstorfF assures the 
 Prussian Resident Bonet that the British movements in the 
 Baltic are in point of fact directed to a twofold end. At 
 Berlin the Hanoverian minister Heusch requests King 
 Frederick William I to content himself with a verbal under- 
 taking that Norris' fleet shall be used to support the 
 combination against Sweden, since a written engagement 
 would have to go through the hands of the British ministers ^. 
 As for Norris, he had at first hoped to induce the Dutch 
 admiral to join him in off"ensive action against the Swedes ^ ; 
 and though when met by a refusal he exhibited an access of 
 caution, he kept the Swedish fleet shut up in Carlscrona by 
 the movements of his fleet during the latter part of his stay 
 
 ■ Michael, vol. i. pp. 717-8. 
 
 "^ See the despatches of Sir John Norris calendared in the Eleventh 
 Report of the Histo7-ical MSS. Commission, Appendix, Part IV (1S87), 
 pp. 89 seqq.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 91 
 
 in the Baltic, and more especially by leaving eight ships 
 behind him there in September to co-operate with the Danes. 
 Thus, the immediate object of the allies, the capture of 
 Stralsund and Riigen from the Swedes, was in 17 15 success- 
 fully accomplished ; and Hanoverian troops formed part of 
 the besieging forces to which, in the month of April of the 
 following year, Wismar was surrendered by the Swedes 
 as the last place still in their occupation on German 
 soil '. 
 
 Still, however, Great Britain had not positively engaged in 
 the struggle. In the spring of 17 16 Norris was once more 
 in the Baltic, with instructions resembling those of the pre- 
 ceding year, but enlarged by suitable general phraseology. 
 He was also commissioned— nor unfitly, since, though laconic 
 in his style, he holds a distinguished place among British 
 diplomatist-admirals — to address a letter to King Charles XII 
 urging him to make peace with his adversaries, and offering 
 the mediation of Great Britain for the purpose. But on 
 receiving this letter Charles returned it unopened, prohibiting 
 his Senate at the same time from replying to a parallel 
 memorandum addressed to it by the British resident. 
 Charles XII had in fact soon after his arrival at Stralsund 
 fallen under the influence of Gortz, and if he had ever thought 
 of a transaction with George I concerning Bremen and Verden, 
 had now completely abandoned any notion of the kind. 
 Justly resenting the conduct of the Hanoverian Government, 
 he had, even before the year 17 15 was out, allowed com- 
 munications to be set on foot with the heads of the Jacobite 
 insurrection in Scotland. It would be futile to seek for 
 the origin of Ciiarles XII's wrath in the Baltic trade diffi- 
 culties, and the self-aggrandising action of the Hanoverian 
 Government must be held responsible for the introduction 
 of a new and unwelcome complication into the foreign 
 
 ' Havcmann, u. s., vol. iii. p. 497.
 
 92 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 relations of Great Britain at a time when they were already 
 full of difficulties. And the menace might have grown to 
 something worse, had not the Swedish invasion of Norway 
 led to the planning of a counter-invasion of Scania, which 
 in its turn obliged Charles to defer any Scottish enterprise. 
 But although the Jacobite broke down hopelessly, unaided 
 by the formidable sword of the Swedish king, his indignation 
 against George I and his government was unmistakeably 
 one of the chief motives determining him to embrace the 
 schemes of Gortz. 
 
 Of these schemes the British Government became aware as 
 early as October, 1716, and by the following December, as 
 appears from the Robethon Correspondence, they caused the 
 liveliest apprehensions to our ministers and their friends at the 
 Hague. The starting-point of Gortz's vast design was a 
 reconciliation between Charles XII and the Czar Peter ; and 
 this new line of policy opened vistas where figured the 
 versatile and aspiring minister at the head of Spanish affairs, 
 together with Fortune's mendicant, the Pretender, whom the 
 enemies of England had always with them. The discovery 
 of these plans blunted their point for the nonce ; but the 
 incidents by which it was accompanied, and especially the 
 arrest of the Swedish Ambassador Count Gyllenborg in 
 London, and that of the British resident (Jackson) at Stock- 
 holm by way of reprisal, caused the tension between Sweden 
 and Great Britain to become unbearable. Already in October, 
 1 716, as Bothmer v/rites to Robethon S Swedish privateers 
 in quest of English vessels were sighted close to our coasts ; 
 and had it not been for the schism among the Whig leaders 
 which nearly put the Government in a minority on a vote of 
 supply for Baltic requirements, war must have been declared 
 against Sweden at the very time when Charles XII was 
 contemplating a reconciliation with his Russian adversary. 
 
 ^ Robethon Corresfonde7ice, vol. viii. p. 149.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 93 
 
 But more ihan this. Just when our quarrels with Sweden, 
 embittered by Hanoverian action, seemed on the point of 
 ending in open war, and when the Swedish King was lending 
 his ear to the suggestion that he should throw himself into 
 the arms of Russia, the Hanoverian Government had become 
 involved in a dispute with that Power as well as with Sweden. 
 The Mecklenburg difficulty might be left aside as a typical 
 German quarrel in the circumstances of its origin as well as 
 in those of its endurance ; for the echoes of this dispute long 
 outlasted the term of King George I's natural life, and indeed 
 still resounded in the ears of Frederick II of Prussia, when, 
 in 1746, he composed in its original form his History of his 
 own Ti?}2es. This once famous contention interests us on the 
 present occasion, neither as illustrating the relations of the 
 ^territorial to the Imperial authority in the period of its decay, 
 nor as exhibiting the relative pertinacity of an unintelligent 
 despotism and of estates inflated with an undue sense of their 
 own consequence. In itself it was a controversy by which 
 the interests of Great Britain were not in the remotest way 
 affected, and it therefore stands on a quite different footing 
 even from the annexation to Hanover of Bremen and Verden. 
 Yet it exposed Great Britain to the imminent risk of a collision 
 with Russia, who at this moment was seeking either by war 
 or by management to make herself mistress of the Baltic, and 
 turning her face westward to become a member of the 
 European family of nations ; and though this collision was 
 actually averted, it helped to determine our attitude towards 
 Russia in the whole question of the settlement of the North, 
 which, after many demonstrations of force and fire, ended in 
 a signal failure of British statesmanship. 
 
 Charles Leopold, Duke of IMecklenburg-Schwerin, who is 
 historically not less grotesque a figure than he may be sup- 
 posed to have been in person, certainly did his utmost to set 
 by the ears the world at large, as well as his own particular
 
 94 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 dominions. He had inherited a standing quarrel with the 
 knightage or nobility of his duchy — a body which within 
 living memory maintained its reputation for extreme self- 
 consciousness — while he had precipitated another dispute 
 with his capital, Rostock. When, in 17 13, he succeeded to 
 his dukedom, the Northern War was still in progress, and 
 Charles Leopold, like many another petty potentate of his 
 day, kept up a standing army, which he gradually raised 
 to 14,000 men, and for which he accordingly needed an 
 increase of contributions. Twelve years previously to his 
 accession the Mecklenburg- Schwerin nobility had resisted the 
 compact {Schweriner VergleicK) by which the amount of 
 military contributions had been regulated under his pre- 
 decessor; and in this protest, to which the extraordinary 
 length of the subsequent dispute gave celebrity, the name at 
 the head of the list was that of the minister of the Elector of 
 Hanover, Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, whose connexion 
 with Mecklenburg has already been noted. Bernstorff's name 
 was, together with those of other protesting landed noblemen, 
 removed from the roll of the Diet; and the suggestion has 
 been repeated with unusual pertinacity that a personal motive 
 influenced the counsels offered by Bernstorff to his Hano- 
 verian master in the ensuing complications. In 17 14, the 
 nobility, in reply to the exactions of the Duke, went a 
 step further, and obtained an Imperial rescript intended to 
 protect them against a renewal of such proceedings; but 
 the Duke, after attempting to retort upon his nobles by 
 abolishing the institution of serfdom which was profitable 
 to them as landowners, resorted to a more direct method of 
 coercion. In 17 16 he had connected himself with the 
 Muscovite dynasty by marrying a daughter of Ivan, the elder 
 brother of the Czar Peter, and immediately afterwards he 
 induced the Czar to quarter in the recalcitrant duchy the 
 large army with which, in the interests of the alliance against
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 95 
 
 Sweden, he had undertaken to operate upon the coast of 
 Scania. But this, as was seen just now, was the time of 
 the daring intrigues of Gortz, primarily directed towards 
 bringing about an amicable understanding between Sweden 
 and Russia ; and it is not wonderful that suspicion and 
 disunion should have come to prevail among the members 
 of the Anti-Swedish league of which these intrigues stulti- 
 fied the purpose. Denmark was afraid of Russia ; Hanover, 
 under the name and style of Great Britain, was seeking to 
 impose her mediation upon the other combatants ; and the 
 expedition to Scania was necessarily postponed, after Den- 
 mark had refused winter-quarters to the Russian forces, 
 and King George I had with difficulty been prevented from 
 ordering Sir John Norris to give effect to the royal senti- 
 ments by means of a cotip de main against the person of 
 the Czar. 
 
 Now undoubtedly the ' Czarish ' occupation of Mecklenburg 
 constituted both an insult to the integrity of the Empire and 
 a danger to the safety of the Hanoverian dominions. If the 
 Imperial authority was thus to be set at defiance, because 
 a hot-brained prince had married into the Muscovite auto- 
 crat's family, there was no reason why his soldiery should 
 not flood the territories of his neighbour, with whom he was 
 notoriously on terms the reverse of friendly. But though 
 King George's aversion to the Czar was now intensified into 
 violent hatred, he can scarcely have expected the British 
 ministers to accede to his proposal of dealing with his brother- 
 potentate after a fashion for which it would not have been 
 easy to find recent Western precedents ' ; nor could the vio- 
 lation of the territories of the Empire furnish a sufficient 
 reason for the intervention of a British fleet. Even when, 
 instead of withdrawing his- troops from Mecklenburg, the 
 
 * Cellamare's plot for carrying oflT the Regent of France belongs to the 
 end of 1718.
 
 96 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 Czar quartered between 30.000 and 40,000 of them upon his 
 nephew's unlucky subjects, and when the Hanoverian minis- 
 ters were stirring up an anti-Russian agitation throughout 
 the Empire — Bcrnstorff, it was said, rendering any arrange- 
 ment impossible by the violence of his demands— the tone of 
 the British Government was far more subdued, and betrayed 
 a wish to avoid a war with Russia at a time when we had 
 been so near to one with Sweden, and when a reconciliation 
 between the two powers had been found to be so unex- 
 pectedly imminent. Under these circumstances, though in 
 1 7 17 Sir John Norris' annual expedition into the Baltic was 
 heralded with big words, nothing came of it; the Swedes 
 were not to be tempted from their harbours ; and the Russian 
 quarrel was not fought out at sea. The intolerable pressure 
 exercised by the Russian troops in Mecklenburg induced the 
 Imperial authorities, in defiance of Russia and, since Gortz was 
 resuming his schemes, perhaps of Sweden also, to commission 
 Hanover and Brunswick with the execution of the Empire 
 against the refractory Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and an 
 armed conflict actually took place, into the vicissitudes of which 
 it is unnecessary to enter. The subsequent withdrawal of the 
 Russian troops from Mecklenburg, which has been so fre- 
 quently attributed to the insistance of George I, was not really 
 due to any action on his part, either as King or as Elector. 
 It is rather to be explained as a concession to his French ally 
 the Regent, with whom the Czar in August, 1717, concluded 
 the treaty of Amsterdam, in which France promised to leave 
 her subsidy treaty with Sweden unrenewed, in return for 
 Russia's acceptance of French mediation in the matter of the 
 Northern Peace. In the ensuing years — 17 18 and 171 9 — 
 the tension between Russia and Great Britain increased 
 instead of relaxing ; and, delighted with the prospect of 
 Russia, and possibly even Prussia, being brought into hostile 
 relations with King George, the Jacobite agents in the Baltic
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 97 
 
 furnished more material than ever for Robethon to copy into 
 his papers ^ In 171 8 accordingly, so far as northern rela- 
 tions were concerned, the schemings of Gortz were resumed 
 with a better prospect of success than before, and peace 
 negotiations actually began in the Aland Islands under 
 Spanish mediation. Not only the acquisition of Bremen and 
 Verden, for which in the latter part of the year ^ we are not 
 surprised to find King George seeking to secure an imperial 
 o-uarantee, but British interests, the future of the Baltic trade, 
 and the question of the entire mastery of these waters, were 
 trembling in the balance. Yet what attention was likely in 
 these negotiations to be paid to the voice of Great Britain 
 who, though in truth already the foremost maritime power in 
 these regions, would become embroiled with both Russia and 
 "Sweden for objects concerning her either remotely or not at 
 all ? And should peace be concluded between the combat- 
 ants — should that peace mean an alliance, and the plans of 
 Gortz and the calculations of Alberoni be realised — no con- 
 sequence was more probable than the overthrow of the new 
 regime in Great Britain, and the driving backwards of the 
 course of our naiion-il history. 
 
 The death of Charles XII in December, 17 18, necessarily 
 produced a complete change in the mutual relations of the 
 northern powers, and one which has to some extent obscured 
 the paradoxical situation of the period immediately preceding, 
 when Sweden and Russia were bidding for one another's 
 friendship, and Great Britain, chiefly in consequence of 
 Hanoverian action, was on almost equally bad terms with 
 both. In 17 19, when the course of events in Southern 
 Europe was everywhere favourable to the interests of the 
 Quadruple Alliance and to the resolute policy of Stanhope, 
 a spirited endeavour was also made to follow out in the 
 
 * See vol. xi. of Correspondence, fassim. 
 "^ November, ib. vol. xi. p. 163.
 
 98 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 north a line of action consciously taken up by a responsible 
 British statesmanship. The schemes of Gortz were at an 
 end, and their author fell a victim to the audacity of his 
 genius. For Sweden, reconstituted under Queen Ulrica 
 Eleanora as an oligarchical government, the choice lay between 
 a simple acceptance of Russian terms of peace, which would 
 have at once reduced her to a position closely resembling 
 vassalage towards the power of the Czar, and an adherence 
 to the powers whose jealousy had been excited against his 
 ascendancy in the Baltic — above all, to Great Britain. The 
 personal inclinations of the Queen and of her consort, the 
 hereditary Prince of Hesse-Cassel, who had worn the British 
 uniform, and the wishes of a small but stedfast minority in 
 the nobility, favoured the latter alternative. The British 
 government, clearly recognising the danger of giving way to 
 Russia in the Baltic, was disposed to seize the opportunity, 
 which might pass away irrecoverably, for asserting its in- 
 fluence over Sweden, and secondarily over Denmark, and for 
 bringing about such a final settlement of the northern quarrel 
 as should preserve a fair balance among the Baltic states. 
 Under these circumstances the British Cabinet resolved to 
 send one of the ablest and most accomplished among the 
 younger adherents of the ruling party. Lord Carteret, on 
 a special embassy to Stockholm, to which Court the King, as 
 Elector of Hanover, had already accredited a special envoy 
 in the person of M, de Bassewitz '. The despatches and 
 
 ^ Henning Frederick von Bassewitz, who plays a prominent part in 
 the chronique scandalcuse of the age, was another native of Mecklen- 
 burg, belonging by descent to its most ancient nobility. He was created 
 a Count of the Holy Roman Empire for his services to the House of 
 Austria. At St. Petersburg, where he had represented the Duke of 
 Holstein-Gottorp, he was treated rather roughly by Peter the Great ; 
 and on his way to Stockholm he came into collision with Gortz. He 
 was afterwards concerned in the transactions leading to Gortz's execu- 
 tion. (Cf. Vehse, Die Hofe Mecklenburgs , vol. i. pp. 222 seqq.)
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 99 
 
 letters of Carteret, written from the Swedish, and afterwards 
 from the Danish, Court, fill four volumes of the extraordinarily 
 ample collection of his papers in the British Museum ^ ; and 
 a volume in the Record Office, containing Stanhope's de- 
 spatches from Hanover, with other correspondence belonging 
 to the years 1719-20 '^j furnishes much supplementary infor- 
 mation concerning the protracted negotiations conducted by 
 Carteret at Stockholm and Copenhagen, by Polwarth at the 
 latter Court, by Whitworth at Berlin, &c. Carteret is an 
 egregious despatch-writer, free from difluseness, notwithstand- 
 ing the pleasure which he evidently takes in the process of 
 literary composition, and, though possessed by an inborn love 
 of the grand manner, quite capable of resorting on occasion 
 to plainness of speech. The general course of his embassy 
 cannot be narrated here*. In 17 19 he made so successful a 
 use of the presence of Sir John Norris' squadron in the Baltic 
 as to induce the Swedish government, hampered though it was 
 by the necessity of obtaining the concurrence of the Estates, to 
 hold out against the Russian terms of peace and to conclude 
 a preliminary treaty with Great Britain, which was confirmed 
 after Sir John Norris had sailed up to Stockholm, and had 
 thereby prevented the Russians from showing their faces at 
 sea, and given Sweden breathing time for the winter. Early 
 in 1 720 a definitive defensive treaty was signed between Great 
 Britain and Sweden against Russia and Denmark, limited, 
 however, as against the latter, to the provision of subsidies 
 only ; and about the same time, in accordance with our treaty 
 of alliance with Prussia of August, 1719 ^ Great Britain and 
 
 ' Additional MSS. , 22,511-22,514. 
 
 ^ Regencies, vol. xi., July 1, 1719 to February 20, 1720. 
 
 ' An account of it will be found in Mr. Archibald liallantyne's 
 biography of Lord Carteret (1887). 
 
 ' Frederick William I had consented to the treaty of alliance with 
 Great Britain with the worst of grace, his antipathy being ineradicable 
 
 H 2
 
 TOO GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 France with great difficulty mediated a treaty between Sweden 
 and Prussia, which was now by the cession of Stettin and cer- 
 tain other positions in Pomerania completely detached from 
 the Russian alliance. Finally, towards Denmark Carteret, 
 who completed at Copenhagen the negotiations begun by 
 him from Stockholm, showed a firm hand, insisting upon the 
 retrocession of Stralsund and Riigen,wiih Wismar, to Sweden, 
 whose pride was thus salved, while France was flattered by 
 the adoption of her policy of leaving to Sweden a foothold 
 on German soil. Denmark's compensation was limited to 
 her retaining the Duchy of Schleswig and receiving a sum 
 of money, which the coolness of the British negotiators 
 succeeded in reducing to a moderate figure. 
 
 The purposes of Stanhope and Carteret in these very 
 successful transactions of 1719 and 1720 had in so far been 
 fulfilled that, to quote an early despatch from the former urging 
 the Lords Justices to reinforce Sir John Norris's squadron 
 in the Baltic, the opportunity had been seized of 'awing the 
 Czar, saving Sweden,' and defeating Spain's last hope of 
 ' forming a strong alliance against Great Britain in the north '.' 
 The exertions of British diplomacy and the skilful demonstra- 
 tions of the British fleet had therefore not been made in vain, 
 although we may be rather at a loss how to account for the 
 sentiment imported by Carteret into the struggle. IMore than 
 once he employs the phraseology of the despatch in which he 
 reports the signature of the preliminary treaty with Sweden : 
 ' I hope I have not exceeded the King's instructions. . . . 
 
 against his mother's family and nation. His marginalia on the 
 despatches submitted to him on the occasion bear witness to these 
 sentiments. ' If I could see a few Hanoverian villages in flames, 
 I should feel quite well again. . , . Nothing but fraud can come from the 
 English; I hold with the Czar and Denmark.' (Droysen, vol. iv. Part 
 
 II, pp. 216-7 ^ri<^ note.) But he had yielded at last. 
 ' Record Office, Regencies, vol. xi; Stanhope to Delahaye, July i, 
 
 1719.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I loi 
 
 The Protestant cause will owe its preservation to him. This 
 — the Swedish — nation is poor and reduc'd at present, yet 
 their alliance is not to be scorned, but courted. . . . They 
 have as good swords and as good hearts as any in Europe '.' 
 Our historical sympathy may be moved by this appeal ; and 
 the particular adjective applied by Carteret to the cause of 
 a militarism which had overleapt itself must have touched 
 a responsive chord in many a British breast as well as in 
 that of King George I. But the interests of the British 
 nation were limited to keeping the Baltic open, which, as 
 we find Carteret very forcibly reminding the Danes, was far 
 more easily done without than with the predominance of 
 Russia in its waters ; while King George's desire for a settle- 
 ment with Sweden arose not from interest in her future, but 
 from a wish to secure the acquisition of Bremen and Verden. 
 Accordingly, the question of this acquisition dominated the 
 British as well as the Hanoverian negotiations at Stockholm, 
 and nothing could be more evident than that by the Swedes 
 the definitive cession of Bremen and Verden was regarded 
 as the guid pro quo for the protection of the British fleet. 
 Bassewitz had everything contingently in order by the time 
 of Carteret's arrival at Stockholm ; and it was clearly under- 
 stood on both sides that if Bremen and Verden were ceded 
 to Hanover, Great Britain w-ould go the necessary lengths 
 in supporting Sweden against Russia ^ In order, however, 
 
 ' British Museum Additional MSS., 22,511, p. 77. 
 
 ^ See British Museum Additional MSS., 22,511, pp. 11-12. 
 Carteret writes to Stanhope, July 2. 1719, that he has 'brought the 
 Queen and her ministers to declare that they will make an absolute 
 cession, but upon such conditions as you must direct me upon.' ' I never 
 doubted,' he adds, putting into a dozen words the real nature of the 
 hazard run by Great Britain in attempting to settle simultaneously the 
 Baltic question and the cession of Bremen and Verden, ' but they would 
 part with these duchies, if King George would engage himself to do 
 more for them than they (the duchies) are worth.'
 
 T02 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 not only to spare the susceptibilities of the Swedes, but also to 
 prevent any sudden revocation on their part of the proposed 
 cession, Carteret had to use every possible ' management.' 
 He had to keep them ignorant of the desire of the British 
 Government to see the Swedish treaty with Prussia carried 
 through'. He had to defer to the feeling that Sweden must 
 not be driven altogether out of the Empire, on which she had 
 of old inflicted so much suffering in the cause of religion — 
 a feeling so strong as to make his good friend the Prince of 
 Hesse declare, that if he allowed this to happen he would be 
 coupe de tons les honneies gens. He had, to use a significant 
 phrase of his own, to treat 'with great neglect' the efforts of 
 Bernstorff and his Hanoverian colleagues to secure better terms 
 for Denmark than would have been permitted by the temper 
 of the Swedes, who hated the Danes almost worse than they 
 hated the Russians ^ ; 'but, however, he ' (Bernstorff) ' cannot 
 control anything of this nature ''.' With the aid of a patience 
 which must have found som.e relief in the communications 
 flowing from his facile pen, and of a courage never afraid 
 of assuming responsibility at a critical moment, Carteret 
 carried through so much of his task as fell within his sphere 
 of action, while at the same time enabling his Hanoverian 
 colleague to carry his special business to a conclusion. In 
 1720, Bremen and Verden were, as has been seen, defini- 
 tively ceded by Sweden for a moderate money payment. 
 A very striking document in the Record Office, which I 
 have not seen quoted elsewhere, shows very clearly with 
 how correct a logic Swedish public opinion estimated the 
 
 ' British Musewn Additional MSS., 22,511, p. 43, July 23 : 'Had 
 the Swedes suspected that King George interested himself in the satis- 
 faction of the various members of the alliance against Sweden, they 
 would never have made so complete a cession of Bremen and Verden.' 
 And cf. ib., p. 64. 
 
 * lb., pp. 160, 170 (October). ' lb., pp. 191-2.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 103 
 
 real nature of the transaction. The Emperor having with 
 praiseworthy caution declined to grant to his good friend 
 the Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain investiture 
 with the Duchy of Bremen and Principality of Verden, without 
 formal proof that the cession had been approved by the 
 constituted authorities of the kingdom of Sweden, Basse- 
 witz was supplied with a resolution which had been passed 
 for the purpose in the Senate at Stockholm. The protocol 
 of this resolution runs as follows : ' We are indeed of opinion 
 that the cession of Bremen, Verden, Stettin, and Pomerania * 
 is a sensible loss to the kingdom, inasmuch as these conquests 
 cost so much Swedish blood, were guaranteed by the Peace 
 of Westphalia, &c., &c., but on comparing this loss with the 
 harsh offers of the Czar, which he even desired to force upon 
 us as a law, and this in an incendiary fashion -, in order that 
 he might thus become master of the Baltic Sea, &c., &c., we 
 cannot but esteem as beneficial the engagements entered 
 into with the King of Great Britain as such and as Elector 
 of Hanover, together with his mediation and that of the 
 French Crown with Russia, whereby we obtained resources 
 with which to carry on the war and to secure a reasonable 
 peace with the Czar, who of all our enemies is the most 
 powerful ^' In other words, the Swedes believed that by 
 the cession of Bremen and Verden they had bought the 
 friendship of Great Britain, which in 1719, when the Russian 
 camp-fires were burning almost within sight of Stockholm, 
 had saved that capital from a visit of the Russian fleet, and 
 the Government from a complete surrender. But they knew 
 only too well that the repeated appearances of the British 
 
 ' Only part of Pomerania had been actually ceded to Prussia. 
 
 * This phrase seenns to refer to the devastations of the Swedish coasts 
 by which the Czar's peace overtures were accompanied in 1719 and 
 1720, and which were renewed in 1721. 
 
 ' Regencies, vol. xii (Protocol of Swedish Senate, June 20, 1720).
 
 I04 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 admiral in these northern waters had not saved their coasts 
 as far as Bothnia from being harried by the foe. Nor could 
 they think it likely that in the peace, if ever it were con- 
 cluded, the Czar would, in deference to the wishes of a 
 Sovereign who had thwarted his designs and threatened his 
 person, renounce Livonia, and with it the mastery of the 
 Baltic. 
 
 Bremen and Verden were secured ; but it was not with the 
 aid of British mediation, proffered though this had been by 
 Sir John Norris as it were at the sword's point, that the Swedish 
 peace with Russia was at last concluded. Once more, in 
 1 72 1, Sir John Norris appeared in the Baltic with a British 
 fleet ; but no results attended this concluding naval demon- 
 stration, and the belated scheme of a northern Quadruple 
 Alliance put forward in this year proved still-born. Already 
 in the latter part of the year 1720, when Carteret's Danish 
 embassy was drawing to its close, and he was preparing for 
 his return home by way of Hanover, the tone of his despatches 
 shows that his hopes of obtaining satisfactory terms from 
 the Czar were on the wane. As a matter of fact, the Peace 
 of Nystad, concluded in September, 1721, left nothing to 
 Sweden beyond Finland and part of Carelia, and Russia, as 
 mistress of the whole of Livonia and of Revel, had become 
 the dominant power in the Baltic. Sweden had not yet sunk 
 permanently into a relation of dependance on Russia ; but we 
 shall see that Carteret's attempt in 1723 to revive the policy 
 of 17 19 broke down completely, and that at the time of the 
 ill-judged war of 1741, which rendered Sweden's losses of 
 territory permanent, we were on the friendliest of terms with 
 her foe. The Bremen and Verden cession remained unre- 
 voked, although as late as 1740 there had been some talk 
 at Stockholm of an attempt to recover those territories ^. 
 
 1 Had it been made, Great Britain would have been in the peculiar 
 position of having by a subsidy-treaty 6,000 Hessian subjects of King
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I I05 
 
 Not much difficulty will, I think, be felt at the present day 
 in striking the balance between the advantages that accrued 
 to Great Britain by this Hanoverian acquisition, and its 
 inexpediency from the point of view of our national policy. 
 All that can be said on the one side was urged by Towns- 
 hend in reply to the protests of his Dutch correspondent 
 Slingelandt, and was afterwards repeated with more argu- 
 mentative force by Horace Walpole the elder '. But granting 
 that the Hanoverian annexation implied access to what 
 Townshend rather grandiloquently called ' the gates of the 
 Empire,' and that it was unsatisfactory to leave these in the 
 hands of Denmark — a Power that has come into collision 
 with England both before and after the reign of George I — 
 yet she could obviously have been kept out of Bremen and 
 Verden by some other process than that of buying her out 
 and cominLT close to the brink of war with Sweden. How 
 serious a risk was thereby incurred for our northern interests 
 was shown by the entire reversal of our Baltic policy so soon 
 as on the death of Charles XII Russia had determined to 
 overpower Sweden. But the latter Power, from whom pay- 
 ment had already been exacted, had no gratitude to spare 
 for us ; and thus the solution of the Baltic problem, which 
 had so direct an interest for Great Britain, and in which an 
 earlier and unprejudiced intervention might have enabled 
 her to take a leading part, was accomplished without her 
 and in her despite. The striking success of the negotia- 
 tions carried on by Carteret and directed by Stanhope in 
 1719-20, should not blind us to the even more signal failure 
 as a whole of the policy with which the most conspicuous 
 of George I's Hanoverian successes is intertwined. The 
 
 Frederick I of Sweden (who had taken over the royal authority, such as 
 it had become, from his Queen in 1720 to employ aj^'aiust a Swcdisli 
 attack. 
 
 ' Coxe, Life of Sir Robert Walpole, vol. i. pp. 160-1.
 
 Io6 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 Personal Union, however, was itself to remain no stranger 
 to the consequences of this failure. It was in the name of 
 the freedom of Baltic commerce, but really to conciliate 
 the goodwill of Russia as the predominating Baltic Power, 
 that Hanover was in 1801 overrun by Russia on the bene- 
 volent suggestion of France. 
 
 The influence of Hanoverian statesmanship acts in no 
 specifically interested way in the wider range of transactions 
 to which I next proceed summarily to advert ; but here, too, 
 it manifests itself in a measure unapproached in any later 
 period of the Personal Union. To judge of these trans- 
 actions in their general connexion with our immediate 
 subject, it is necessary to go back for a moment. The 
 Peace of Nystad belongs already to a time when Great 
 Britain, strong in an alliance including both France and the 
 Empire, and victorious over the ambitious attempts of Spain, 
 aspired to become the arbitress of the affairs of the north. 
 Neither the conception nor the consummation of the policy 
 which had placed this country in so commanding a position 
 as that which it had reached towards the close of the second 
 decade of the century is to be ascribed, wholly or mainly, 
 to the inspiration of Hanoverian counsels ; just as it would 
 be delusive to seek the chief motive for the energy exhibited 
 by the statesmanship which carried out that policy in devo- 
 tion to the interests of the new dynasty. Nevertheless, at 
 no other time during the continuance of the Union was the 
 conduct of our foreign affairs more immediately under the 
 eyes of the sovereign — especially when he was residing at 
 Hanover ; and at none was he in more constant commu- 
 nication and consultation with the politicians in possession 
 of his personal confidence, among whom Bernstorff, and 
 next to him Bothmer, were prominent. The great achieve- 
 ments of the foreign policy of George I's reign thus bear 
 the unmistakeable mark of the King's personal approval.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 107 
 
 and of the co-operation of his Hanoverian counsellors. 
 Townshend lost his hold upon the conduct of foreign affairs 
 after the limits of his appreciation of dynastic purposes and 
 methods had been made clear to the King by Sunder- 
 land, a master of this kind of exposition. The policy 
 of the Triple and Quadruple Alliance, of which the 
 chief credit rightly belongs to Stanhope, could not have 
 been carried to so successful an issue except by a 
 minister possessed, in the full sense of the term, of the 
 confidence of the King, and in touch with his still most 
 trusted advisers. 
 
 There can be no doubt but that the suggestion of an 
 alliance between Great Britain and France, which consti- 
 tuted the basis of the new system of our foreign policy, was 
 due neither to British nor to Hanoverian statesmen, but to 
 the Regent Orleans himself. He was naturally anxious to 
 protect his own future against the Spanish Bourbons, and 
 was in particular desirous of preventing a good under- 
 standing between the Spanish and the British Governments, 
 such as Alberoni was astutely seeking in the first instance 
 to establish by means of commercial concessions, actual or 
 pretended. The proposal of the British Cabinet to carry 
 on at Paris negotiations for giving effect to the Regent's 
 ideas had been rejected, largely it would seem because 
 it was not wished to entrust them to Stair'. Thus the 
 management of the business was in the first instance trans- 
 ferred to the Hague. This was still the diplomatic as the 
 
 ' Stair was evidently much disliked at Paris (St. Simon attacks him 
 with the utmost virulence"), and was no fortunate choice as British 
 Ambassador; but his innumerable letters in the Kobethon Correspond- 
 ence cannot be said to give the impression of a stiff, unbending 
 disposition. He showed no ill-temper when the negotiation was 
 taken out of his hands {ib., vol. viii. p. 9). lie repeatedly asked to be 
 relieved of his ambassadorial functions on account of the inadequacy 
 of his means.
 
 Io8 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 neighbouring Amsterdam was the banking centre of Europe ; 
 but in the present instance the place was chosen in order 
 that the Regent's personal intimate, the Abbd Dubois, with 
 instructions, as Stanhope writes, 'full of sweetness, unction, 
 anil accommodation \' should meet the British minister 
 there when cti route for Hanover. Thither, as we saw, King 
 George repaired in the summer of 1716, for as long a 
 sojourn as could be made compatible with English public 
 sentiment ; and thither the continuation of the negotiations 
 for the conclusion of the Anglo-French entente were accord- 
 ingly transferred. Thus the peculiarity of the circum- 
 stances under which so extraordinary a result was so rapidly 
 reached, by no means consists only in the choice of the 
 French political agent (whom, by the way, George I seems 
 to have afterwards befriended). Hanover was the locality 
 where the entente was finally se'ttled ; and Hanoverian states- 
 manship took an active part in the proceedings that led to 
 a result so little in accordance with English popular senti- 
 ment. At Hanover and Herrenhausen, in the forests sur- 
 rounding the hunting-seat of the Gohrde, and in the peaceful 
 avenues of Pyrmont, Stanhope and Bernstorff — or to put 
 them in the order in which we find their names running 
 off old Horace Walpole's pen ^, Bernstorff and Stanhope 
 — enjoyed both far readier access to the ear of their 
 common master, and more continuous opportunities for un- 
 suspected consultation with one another, than they might 
 have found, or cared to make use of, at St. James's. Thus 
 by October, 1716, was concluded the so-called Triple 
 Alliance, to which the assent of the United Provinces was 
 with scant ceremony taken for granted ; and by the following 
 January it was actually signed. Its 'advantages to Great 
 
 ^ Robethon Con-espondence, vol. viii. p. 32. 
 ^ lb., vol. viii. p. 107.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 109 
 
 Britain were so closely connected with the increase of 
 security accruing from it to the Hanoverian dynasty that it 
 might well be regarded as a twofold triumph. The Regent, 
 in giving way about the Mardyke fortifications and re- 
 nouncing the shelter hitherto afforded to the Pretender in 
 France, had sacrificed positions persistently maintained by 
 Louis XIV as points of honour. And it must have enhanced 
 the satisfaction of George I and his Hanoverian ministers 
 to know that the Regent had arrived at so complete an 
 understanding in the teeth of Gortz's protestations at Paris 
 that Charles XH was more pique against the King of Great 
 Britain than against any one else ', and doubtless also of 
 insinuations that the Regent could not do better than take 
 up the cause of the Pretender. The completeness of the 
 success overwhelmed Townshend, who without impeding the 
 French negotiations had virtually stood aloof from them. 
 Sunderland prepared his fall, and Bothmer did his best to 
 make it easy ". The subsequent dismissal of Townshend 
 from the office to which he had consented to be trans- 
 ferred, completed, as you know, the declaration of the schism 
 in the Whig party. Stanhope now became First Lord of 
 the Treasury, and in 1718 one of the Secretaries of State, 
 Sunderland holding these ofllices in the inverse order ; but 
 under either designation Stanhope was the actual head of 
 the Government. During his ascendancy the Hanoverian 
 influence was exercised more as a matter of course than 
 ever ; nor was it till shortly before the close of his conduct 
 of affairs — and then apparently wiih his connivance ^ — that 
 this influence experienced a serious rebuff". 
 
 ' Stair to Robethon, September 28, i']iCy {Robethon Correspondence, 
 vol. viii. p. 1 16). 
 
 ^ Robethon Correspondence, vol. ix. p. 11. 
 ' Lady Cowper's Diary, p. 145.
 
 no GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 If in the Triple Alliance the interests of the dynasty had 
 been very directly concerned, the Quadruple Alliance reflected 
 one of its most cherished traditions. Which of these could 
 compare with the devotion of the House of Brunswick 
 Liineburg to the House of Austria ? This sentiment was 
 as an article of faith with the Hanoverian advisers of 
 George I, and it may reasonably be doubted whether 
 without the padent and persevering labours of Bernstorflf 
 and Bothmer the politicians of the Vienna Hofburg would 
 have given way even to the ardour of Stanhope. To 
 Bothmer the Austrian alliance w-as, as he explicitly states, 
 a matter of something more than an increase of military 
 strength'; while in a letter rather hysterically urging the con- 
 clusion of the alliance as an achievement certain to be of the 
 greatest benefit to the human race, Dubois explicitly asserts 
 that Bernstorff possesses more influence than anybody else 
 with the Emperor '^. The task which with their assistance 
 was accomplished was the reverse of easy ; for the Austrian 
 acceptance of the proposed alliance was by no means only 
 impeded by the Plabsburg pride and prejudice which so 
 vexed the souls of Sir Robert Walpole and his brother 
 Horace ; an equally real obstacle lay in the consideration 
 that the secure establishment of the Regent Orleans in power 
 in France implied the exclusion of Philip from the French 
 throne, and that thus he and his line would remain in 
 possession of the Spanish, to which the Emperor Charles 
 had by no means renounced his pretensions. As late as 
 January, 1718, the Regent was troubled by most serious 
 apprehensions that the Emperor would after all prefer to treat 
 directly with his Spanish rival ^. 
 
 We are fortunate enough to possess a document of some 
 
 * Robe than Correspondence, vol. ix. p. 2. 
 
 ^ lb., p. 282. 
 
 ^ lb., vol, viii. pp. 13, 21.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I III 
 
 length, drawn up, as there can be no reason for doubting, by 
 the hand of Count Bothmer himself, which was designed 
 by him as a historical narrative of the negotiations for the 
 Quadruple Alliance in the years 1 7 1 7 and 1 7 1 8 *. It was 
 not conipleted, or the conclusion, which contained an account 
 of the transactions at Madrid and the Hague, has been lost ; 
 but it furnishes a consecutive account of the negotiations 
 upon which the establishment of the concert depended. 
 This narrative or memoir conclusively proves the importance 
 attached on the Austrian side, and more especially by the 
 extremely able Austrian negotiator Penteriedter, who plays 
 an important part in the diplomatic history of this period, to 
 the counsels of Bernstorff and Bothmer. Furthermore, it 
 shows them to have acted on their own judgment, more like 
 independent allies than supplementary subordinates, in fur- 
 thering the purposes of Stanhope as the leading representative 
 of British policy. As is well known, Stanhope's project was 
 to bring about an amicable settlement between the Habsburg 
 Emperor and the Bourbon King of Spain, by the transfer to 
 the Emperor of Sicily in exchange for Sardinia, while the 
 succession in Parma and Tuscany was secured to Philip's 
 son, Don Carlos. The disadvantages of the Emperor's posi- 
 tion were augmented by his being still hampered by the 
 continuance of his Turkish war, although in August, 17 17, 
 his arms were crowned by two brilliant victories. Since the 
 aggressive attitude of Spain still remained unchecked, and 
 was still upheld by a strong party in the divided Council of 
 the Regent, and since the Emperor himself continued unwilling 
 to renounce all claim to the Spanish throne, it was a task of 
 no small dilTiculty to bring him into line with the policy 
 of the British and French governments. But in 1718 (July) 
 
 ' ' Memoiren des Grafen von Bothmer iiber die Quadrujielallianz,' 
 &c., published by Dr. R. Doebner in Forschungen zur deutschcn Ge- 
 schichte, xxvii. 2 (^Gottingen, i886).
 
 112 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 peace was concluded between the Emperor and the Turks at 
 Passarowitz, under British mediation, prompted no doubt by 
 the interest of George I in what may be called the Eastern 
 Question '. The Emperor's course of action was finally 
 
 ^ Professor W. Michael, in his F.nglische Gcschichtc, &c., vol. i. 
 pp. 813-31, has directed attention to this episode of our diplomatic 
 history, hitherto scared}' noticed. Cardinal Alberoni had trusted to 
 alliances, conspiracies, and insurrections for sapping the strength of the 
 several members of the Quadruple Alliance; and among these 
 manoeuvres there had been an attempt at forcing back the attention of the 
 House of Austria upon its own affairs by inducing Francis Kakoczi, the 
 hero of the great Hungarian insurrection of the first decade of the 
 century, to head one more rising against the Austrian dominion. In 
 conjunction with this movement, the Turks had been instigated to 
 prosecute their war against the Emperor with renewed vigour. It had 
 been actually in progress since 171 6, having arisen out of the renewal of 
 hostilities between the Turks and their habitual adversary, the Signiory 
 of Venice. In the course of this conflict, tlie Turks had recovered all 
 the conquests of Morosini, ' the last of the Venetians,' including the 
 Morea and Athens, which the Hanoverian soldiery had been instrumental 
 in helping to wrest out of their hands. It seemed as if from the Dalma- 
 tian coast they might have continued their advance as far as the lagoons 
 which sheltered the discrowned Queen of the Adriatic. In the event of 
 a Turkish attack upon Venice the Emperor was bound to render assist- 
 ance to her by the treaty of Carlowitz, concluded in 1699 under the 
 mediation of Great I'ritain and the United Provinces — at a time when, 
 in apprehension of a speedy vacancy on the Spanish throne, William III 
 was above all anxious to put an end to a war which had pre-engaged 
 the military strength of the Empire. In a sense the situation was not 
 very dissimilar in 1717 from that of 1699 ; but the military successes 
 gained by Prince Eugene in the month of August, 171 7 — the victory of 
 Peterwardein and the capture of Belg^rade — surpassed in splendour those 
 of which part had fallen to his share during the former war. The cap- 
 ture of Belgrade had in itself exercised an immediate and most notable 
 effect in the Emperor's favour in Italy ' ; and it had become difficult for the 
 mediating Powers to exert a restraining influence, more especially since 
 the claims of the victorious Prince Eugene upon the consideration of 
 Great Britain and the United Provinces were quite unparalleled. Under 
 these circumstances the successful efforts of the diplomatic representa- 
 
 1 St. Saphorin to Robethon ; Robethon Correspondence, vol. ix. p. 220.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I II3 
 
 determined by the renewed violence of Spain, who, while 
 plotting a northern league against the British throne, was 
 preparing to settle affairs in the Mediterranean by a second 
 coup de main, this time upon Sicily. It is in the nego- 
 tiations which preceded and helped to bring about this 
 determination that we are able to follow step by step the 
 action of the Hanoverian ministers. Bernstorff and Bothmer 
 were zealous in promoting the secret treaty by which the 
 Emperor was guaranteed the support of Great Britain and 
 France for the event of a resistance on the part of Spain 
 to the proposed territorial arrangements in Italy. Pro- 
 tracted discussions ensued as to possible modifications in 
 
 tives of these Powers, as to the selection of whom Bernstorff had been 
 in active communication with the Grand Pensionary', seem entitled to 
 particular recognition. 
 
 These were the envoys of the two Powers at Constantinople, the 
 Dutchman Count Jacob Colyer, who had formerly taken part in 
 the negotiations for the Peace of Carlowitz, and Edward Wortley 
 Montagu, to whose sprightly consort we owe the first literary pictures of 
 Turkish interiors. The endeavours of these diplomatists to bring about 
 a pacification between the Emperor and the Sultan had been carried on 
 even before the fall of Belgrade ; but when after that event peace con- 
 ferences were actually opened at Passarowitz, Sir Robert Sutton had 
 superseded Mr. Wortley Montagu. What between the Imperial and 
 Venetian plenipotentiaries and the Turkish, behind whom respectively 
 stood in the background Prince Eugene and the new Grand Vizier 
 Ibrahim, the Dutch and English diplomatists had need for infinite 
 patience, and for not a little tact, before the conferences were brought to 
 an effective conclusion. Professor Wolfgang Michael points out that the 
 Peace of Passarowitz from more points of view than one marks an epoch 
 in the relations of Great Britain to the Eastern Question (as it used to 
 be called), in which Austria seemed to be the Power destined to take the 
 lion's share. In so far, however, as the intervention of Great Britain 
 was concerned, it manifestly continued the action of William 111 at 
 Carlowitz, and must be looked upon as an effort, successful within its 
 limits, to liberate the military strength of the House of Austria for 
 co-operation in the policy of the Quadruple Alliance. 
 
 1 Robethon Corresf>ondence, vol. ix. p. 272. 
 I
 
 114 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 these proposals, including the suggested reservation of Pisa 
 and Leghorn as free cities under the protection of the 
 Empire, and the garrisoning of certain places in Don 
 Carlos' Italian territories by Spanish or even by British 
 troops. That on such points as these considerable differ- 
 ences of opinion existed between Stanhope and the Hano- 
 verian ministers, who were eager to do all in their power 
 to strengthen the Emperor's position, is obvious from 
 Bothmer's criticisms of the British statesman's conduct. 
 
 m 
 
 The Austrian Penteriedter seems to have addressed himself 
 directly to Bothmer and Bernstorff, as being sure to enter into 
 his government's views of the situation, whereas Dubois 
 only had recourse to it when exceptionally anxious to 
 bring a personal influence to bear upon King George. 
 The entire narration, so far as its author has carried it, opens 
 a curious insight into the duplicated methods of British- 
 Hanoverian diplomacy at this period, and exhibits Stanhope 
 and the Hanoverian ministers as working side by side 
 rather than on any definite plan of mutual combination \ 
 
 Although, then, this famous treaty was signed in London 
 (August 20, 1718), the earlier negotiations that were to lead 
 to its conclusion had been carried on in Hanover. Nor is 
 there perhaps any other important political transaction of 
 the reign of which the responsibility, and we may unhesi- 
 tatingly add the credit, distributes itself so unmistakeably 
 between the chief British and Hanoverian statesmen con- 
 cerned in it. Schaub was probably warranted in asserting 
 that Dubois' most satisfactory contribution to the treaty was 
 his insistance upon Stanhope being sent to Paris in order to 
 
 ^ Neither Schaub (afterwards Sir Luke Schaub) nor Robethon seems 
 at this time to have been in Bothmer's good books ; but I cannot here enter 
 into illustrations or speculations. St. Saphorin (like Schaub, a Swiss by 
 birth) did good service as our resident at Vienna in helping to carry 
 through the scheme of tlie Quadruple Alliance in its final form.
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I II5 
 
 carry it to a conclusion ; for it would have been lost without 
 him '. But after all, the assent of the Regent to the principle 
 of the treaty was assured beforehand, and his resolution 
 merely needed strengthening against a factious minority in his 
 council. The crux lay in the difficulty of completing the 
 Emperor's conversion to the Western Alliance ; and by 
 effecting this the Hanoverian statesman, whose anxiety for 
 the advantage and dignity of the Empire was unmistakeable, 
 materially contributed to the end in view. 
 
 The signature of the Austrian plenipotentiary had not yet 
 been appended to the treaty, and the Dutch had not yet 
 assented to it (indeed it took some six or seven months 
 more before their formal adhesion was brought about), when 
 it became known in London that the active resistance of 
 Spain, still under Alberoni's guidance, would still have to be 
 reckoned with. Failing this, the peace of Europe could not 
 yet be said to have been established on the basis, more solid 
 than that of the Utrecht treaties, upon which the parties 
 to the Quadruple Alliance had agreed. The events which 
 followed, and of which the cycle may be said to have closed 
 with the conclusion of the defensive alliance between Great 
 Britain, Spain and France, known as the Treaty of Madrid, 
 in 1 72 1, were quite beyond the control of the influences at 
 present under discussion. On the assembling of the Con- 
 gress of Cambray in the following year for the arrangement 
 of matters still left open between Spain and the Emperor, 
 the beginnings of fresh difficulties revealed themselves. 
 The history of these, and of the action of British policy 
 towards them, belongs, however, to a different chapter in 
 the history of the reign of George I, and at an early stage 
 in this new period the influence of Bernstorff, and so far as 
 I can see that of Bothmer, finally passed away. But in 
 
 ' Robelhon Correspondence, vol. x. p. 99 (Schaub to Robethon, July 
 17. 1718J. 
 
 I 2
 
 ir6 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [ill 
 
 the great political achievements of reconciling France, and 
 more especially Austria, and of defeating Spain, Hanoverian 
 statesmanship may claim a large and honourable share. 
 The opposition offered to the conjunction between Stanhope 
 and the Hanoverian interest — a conjunction resting on no 
 merely personal basis — by Walpole and the 'disgusted' 
 section of the Whigs, was neither concealed nor scrupulous ; 
 but it cannot be credited with any profoundly patriotic modve, 
 and of a certainty it pursued no broadly national end. 
 
 In the above, I have noted at least the chief instances in 
 which what may fairly be called a dynastic policy is traceable 
 in the earlier half of the reign of George I. This policy he 
 had as Elector inherited from his father and uncle before 
 him, and as they had accommodated it to the great designs 
 of William III, so during the war of the Spanish Succession 
 he had made it serviceable to the Grand Alliance, in whose 
 hands its founder had left the execution of his still uncom- 
 pleted task. The Bothmers and the BernstorfFs, though 
 assured by long habit of the personal confidence of their 
 prince, had, after exercising an unavoidable control over the 
 shifting of the scenes, been left in possession of an influence 
 more or less uncertain and intermittent, and occasionally 
 indebted to the aid of capricious or corrupt agencies, but 
 capable from time to time of unmistakeably and effectively 
 asserting itself. On the other hand, neither Townshend, 
 whose ample correspondence nowhere so far as I have 
 observed belies the general impression of straightforwardness 
 conveyed by his public conduct, nor Stanhope, whose spirit 
 was far too high to allow us to suspect him of servility, was 
 consciously prepared to adapt his political action to an 
 extraneous pattern, or to allow the interests of the Electorate 
 to contribute otherwise than quite incidentally towards 
 deciding the action of the British Government. But the fact 
 of the Personal Union existed, and with it a belief on the part
 
 Ill] THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I 117 
 
 of the King that what concerned one of the states under his 
 rule concerned the other. Ranke has quoted a passage from 
 a letter from Sunderland to Townshend concerning the neces- 
 sity of pressing on the conclusion of the Triple Alliance, 
 which is well worth reading with its context in the Townshend 
 papers \ For, together, they illustrate a point of view which 
 as yet neither English nor Hanoverian statesmen openly 
 took, but which a change in the situation of the affairs of 
 Europe — above all the occurrence of any serious peril to the 
 safety of the Electorate — might at any time oblige Great 
 Britain either decisively to accept or peremptorily to reject. 
 The King, Sunderland says, is ' very much surpris'd at the 
 strange notion that seems at present to prevail, as if the Parlia- 
 ment was not to concern themselves in anything that happens 
 in these parts of the world,' i. e. Germany or the Continent, and 
 looks upon it ' Jiol onely as exposing him to all kind of affronts 
 but evett to mine ; and indeed this notion is nothing but the 
 old Tory one, that England can subsist by itself, whatever 
 becomes of the rest of Europe, ivhich has been so justly exploded 
 by the Wigs, ever since the Revolution.' In this letter neither 
 the King's conception, nor the view which he reprobated, 
 can be said to be very clearly put ; the meaning however is 
 obvious. Now, under the Hanoverian regime, as of old in the 
 days of the Grand Alliance, England's responsibilities are 
 not limited to the protection of her own safety and to the 
 advancement of her own interests, but extend to obligations 
 into which she has entered as to the safety and interests of 
 other States, among which from the nature of the case the 
 Electorate, with which she is united through the person of 
 their common sovereign, must stand first and foremost. 
 Had this conception of a British policy, including as an 
 integral part of it the defence of Hanover, been actually 
 
 ' Historical MSS. Commission, Eleventh Report, Appendix IV, 
 p. 103.
 
 Il8 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER 
 
 adopted by responsible British statesmanship, a stage in the 
 history of the Personal Union would have been reached 
 beyond that with which we have occupied ourselves in the 
 present lecture. But under no circumstances was British 
 political action less likely to be swayed by the principle 
 urged by George I, than during the ascendancy of Walpole, 
 with whose advent to power the first or, as it may be called, 
 the Bernstorff-Bothmer period of the Personal Union came, 
 though not abruptly, to an end.
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 
 
 (1721-42) 
 
 OF the two veterans of Hanoverian state-craft mentioned 
 so frequently in our last lecture, Bernstorff had not 
 yet entirely relinquished public business for the cultivation of 
 fruit-trees, and Bothmer was still occasionally making use 
 of his official position for political purposes, when, in the 
 midst of the terrors of an unprecedented financial catastrophe, 
 the popular voice called Walpole to power. The ways of 
 thought and speech of this great national statesman were 
 wholly English, his training was quite undiplomatic, and he 
 never made any secret, either of his personal aversion to 
 members of the Hanoveriany?/;//^;, or of his profound distrust 
 of the House of Austria, on their attachment to which their 
 political system hinged. Townshend, whose loyalty to the 
 policy of the Triple Alliance had been unjustly impugned, 
 but whose dismissal from office had excluded him from any 
 share in the subsequent developement of that policy, suc- 
 ceeded to one of the vacant Secretaryships of State ; and to 
 the other — the Southern, not therefore that concerned with 
 the affairs of the countries in which he had gained his early 
 diplomatic laurels — Carteret was appointed. Walpole can 
 hardly have been embarrassed by much wealth of choice 
 when he made this selection ; but nothing could be more 
 absurd than to suppose that, in making it, he had any wish
 
 I20 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 to gratify dynastic preferences or predilections '. During his 
 Northern mission Carteret had indeed entered very warmly 
 into the royal antipathy against the Czar ; but he had shown 
 no interest in the specially Hanoverian aspects of the Northern 
 question, and in more than one instance had treated Hano- 
 verian diplomacy and its agents with unconcealed disdain. 
 On the other hand, the strong autocratic vein in his disposi- 
 tion, which together with his fondness for rotundity of expres- 
 sion led him to lecture his colleagues as well as his opponents 
 when he had his pen in hand, and to give the rein to his wit 
 after dinner, sufficed to render it unlikely that his association 
 with Walpole would be enduring. In the first instance, he had 
 to carry through the policy of Stanhope and bring Spain to the 
 conclusion of peace, but without the surrender of Gibraltar, 
 of which Stanhope had formerly held out a prospect. This 
 he speedily effected (June 172 1); and his perfect under- 
 standing with Dubois enabled them, by means of a joint 
 Anglo-French guarantee of the territories of both Spain and 
 Austria, to induce both these Powers to enter the Congress 
 of Cambray (1722). 
 
 So far Carteret had in harmony with Townshend carried 
 out a policy consistent with the general purposes of the 
 British Government and with its engagements. But when 
 in 1723 both the Secretaries of Slate found themselves at 
 Hanover with King George I, the first occasion arose of 
 a difference between Carteret and his colleague in which the 
 former had the sympathy of the King. The Peace of 
 
 ' To a later date of course belongs Speaker Onslow's statement (see 
 the Onsloiu Papers in the Twelfth Report of the Historical MSS. Com- 
 mission, Appendix IX, pp. 47 1-2) that Walpole feared the influence which 
 Carteret had created for himself at Court largely by means of his intimacy 
 with the Hanoverian ministers (none of whom ever loved Walpole). 
 Possibly Carteret had begun to enter into closer relations with the 
 Hanoverians, when returning home in 1720 from Copenhagen by way of 
 Hanover.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II J2i 
 
 Nystad was already bearing its fruits, and the Czar Peter 
 was contemplating an armed intervention intended to over- 
 awe the Swedish estates into settling the succession to 
 the throne in such a way as ultimately to subject Sweden to 
 Russian control ^ Under these circumstances Carteret pro- 
 posed at once to mobilise an English squadron for action in 
 the Baltic. But the opportunity had in truth passed for 
 confronting Russia on behalf of a broken Power like Sweden, 
 and King George I reluctantly assented to the virtual inaction 
 recommended by Townshend. The Swedish aristocracy 
 bowed to the wishes of the Czar, to whose policy it remained 
 obsequious during the whole period of the ascendancy of 
 the Hats (to 1738). Indeed when in 1726 (shortly before 
 the death of the Empress Catharine I) a Bridsh fleet anchored 
 in the roads of Revel, its object was to prevent a joint Russo- 
 Swedish attack upon Denmark, which might have resulted in 
 the restoration of part of the Duchy of Schleswig to the 
 House of Holstein-Gottorp. In the unhappy war of 1741, 
 when Sweden's impotent attempt to regain her former 
 boundaries ended in the disastrous Peace of Abo (1743), she 
 stood alone, and the succession was secured to the House of 
 Holstein-Gottorp, notwithstanding the threat of a Danish in- 
 tervention in which George II intended to have pardcipated 
 as Elector of Hanover ^ But Great Britain was then in close 
 alliance with Russia, and Sweden's part seemed to have been 
 finally played out among the leading Powers of the North. 
 
 ' By naming as successor the Duke (Charles Frederick) of Hol- 
 stein-Gottorp, who was a suitor for the hand of the Czar's daugliter 
 Anna. 
 
 * A Holstein-Gottorp prince, though not the son of Russia's original 
 candidate, actually succeeded Frederick I in 1750. In 1743 the Danes 
 were promised the succession of their Crown-Prince in return for an 
 alliance with Sweden, and the rumour of this arrangement is thought to 
 have mitigated in some degree the rigour of the conditions imposed by 
 the Russians at Abo.
 
 122 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [IV 
 
 Mr. Jolin Morley \ in his brief chapter on the foreign 
 policy of Walpole's administration, has in all probability 
 correctly gauged the significance of this occasion, the first 
 on which Carteret pressed a ' spirited ' line of conduct upon 
 a sovereign whose willingness to engage in it was restrained 
 by his other advisers. Walpole's policy — and Townshend's, 
 while they acted together — was not and could not be a policy 
 of peace at any price, least of all at the price of the security 
 of the throne to which his perception of the best interests of 
 his country made him so loyal a servant. But he wished 
 Great Britain to keep free from all engagements which it 
 was possible for her to avoid ; and he would not hear of her 
 rushing into a belated war with the Czar for a cause — the 
 preservation of a balance of power in the Baltic — which had 
 to all intents and purposes been already sacrificed at Nystad. 
 On the other hand, both he and his much-abused brother 
 Horace (who, though gifted with few of the arts and 
 graces of the diplomatic profession, often penetrated to the 
 root of the matter in his state-papers and letters) clearly 
 recognised the advantage of permanently strengthening our 
 position in the North, which was of so high an importance to 
 our commercial interests, by an alliance with Prussia. It was 
 fortunate that the jealousy inspired by the aggressive policy 
 of the Czar acted as a counterpoise to tlie personal feelings 
 of King George I ; or the celebrated double-marriage project 
 which was to play so conspicuous a part in the family history 
 of the dynasty in the earlier years of the ensuing reign 
 could hardly have been already at this time on the tapis. 
 But for the present the transactions between the two houses 
 were confined to less delicate ground, and a step of consider- 
 able importance was gained by the Treaty of Charlottenburg 
 between Great Britain and Prussia (October 1723) which 
 
 ' Walpole, English Statesman Series (1889), p. 203.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 123 
 
 renewed the defensive alliance of 1690, and extended it to 
 the German territories of the British Sovereign. 
 
 Before, however, Walpole had to meet a problem of 
 greater difficulty for British statesmanship and requiring 
 a solution directly opposed to the traditions of Hanoverian 
 policy, Carteret's connexion with the conduct of foreign 
 affairs had ceased. He had, while at Hanover, sought to 
 strengthen his influence with the Countess of Darlington and 
 the Countess of Platen by entering into their design of 
 making a brilliant French marriage for a young lady born 
 for greatness as the niece of the former and daughter of the 
 latter favourite. Her intended husband, the Count St. 
 Florentin, was the son of the Marquis La Vrilli^re, Secre- 
 tary of State under the Regent and Dubois ; and it was part 
 of the scheme to give e'clai to the match by securing from 
 the Regent a dukedom for the head of the family which was 
 to become allied to King George I's mistresses. This not in 
 itself very baleful intrigue, in the success of which the King 
 unluckily took a very particular personal interest, may be 
 said to have rent the Foreign Office in twain. It was 
 actively carried on at Paris by Sir Luke Schaub, the ad- 
 venturous diplomatic agent who had transferred his official 
 allegiance from Stanhope to Carteret, while at a little 
 distance Bolingbroke cast an urbane shadow over the trans- 
 action as of one who an' he would could do much to 
 expedite its course. Bernstorff, whose flickering influence in 
 affairs of State might have been fanned into new life by the 
 success of the project, and Bothmer, who came over from 
 London to Hanover to lend his advice, were concerned in 
 the business. Unfortunately Carteret, who must have thought 
 the opportunity of rendering a personal service in such 
 a quarter too good to lose, overreached himself in trying to 
 take advantage of it. The history of the failure of the duke- 
 dom scheme may be read in the pages of St. Simon ; it hat!
 
 124 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 become inevitable after the death of Dubois had been 
 followed by that of the Regent ; and it led not only to 
 the recall of Schaub, and the establishment as ambassador 
 at Paris of Horace Walpole, who had been sent over by his 
 brother to watch the coun?e of affairs, but also to the transfer 
 of Carteret himself from his Secretaryship of State to the 
 Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland (1724). It seems further to 
 have brought about Bernstorff's withdrawal from the Privy 
 Council at Hanover, where his place was in 1723 taken 
 by a Hardenberg^ His day was past, and though Bolhmer 
 still remained to represent the traditions of the earlier part 
 of the reign, they must have lost much of their force, more 
 especially as the Duchess of Kendal had never shown 
 herself more inclined to support Walpole ^. Undoubtedly 
 jealousies within the British cabinet, as well as a rivalry of 
 another sort, must be included among both the causes and the 
 consequences of a design upon the success of which Carteret 
 had with even more than his usual rashness reckoned ; but 
 it seems futile to ascribe to Walpole' s — or for that matter, 
 to Townshend's — personal fears of Carteret's ascendancy 
 their opposition to what began and ended as an unworthy 
 intrigue. 
 
 The question however arises whether, had Carteret con- 
 tinued in office, so determined a resistance would have been 
 made by the British Government to the action of the Power 
 to which the Hanoverian dynasty was bound by the closest 
 of traditional ties, and of whose alliance Carteret was in 
 later days to stand forth as the most effective supporter. 
 For it was now that the first rift was made in a political 
 friendship of long standing and great solidity, though of 
 course it had its real root, not in any British enthusiasm 
 
 ' C. U. von Hardenberg, who became Kammerprdsident. 
 
 ^ Her later dealings with Bolingbroke do not concern us here.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 125 
 
 for the Austrian claims to the Spanish throne, but in the 
 British belief in the conservative character of the Imperial 
 policy. During nearly two generations the alliance of the 
 House of Austria had seemed an indispensable element in 
 the policy which William III had handed down to the 
 Whigs, and which had derived a fresh sanction from the 
 loyal adherence to that House of the Hanoverian dynasty. 
 The events, how^ever, which ensued upon the meeting of 
 the Congress of Cambray demonstrated the untrustw^orthi- 
 ness of this time-honoured alliance, at all events, to the eyes 
 of the brothers Walpole, nor could they fail to become all 
 the more sceptical of its value, since Great Britain was at this 
 very time entering into closer relations with Prussia, whose 
 position had been so much strengthened both in Northern 
 Europe and in the Empire by the results of the Northern 
 W^ar. 
 
 Whatever may be thought as to the unwillingness of the 
 Emperor Charles VI to give way to the Maritime Powers 
 on the subject of his East India Company, it seems clear 
 that this formed the original impediment to a satisfactory 
 issue of the Congress of Cambray which a Franco-Spanish 
 quarrel actually broke up in 1725. Spain having now re- 
 solved to settle her differences with the Emperor at first hand, 
 and having naturally taken deep umbrage at the brusque 
 dismissal of the Infanta from France as a preliminary to the 
 marriage of Louis XV to Maria Lescynska, Ripperda was able 
 to press the so-called First Treaty of Vienna to a conclusion. 
 The real gain of the agreement, however, accrued not to 
 Spain, who most assuredly could through the Quadruple 
 Alliance have secured the desired Imperial concessions as to 
 the future dominions of Don Carlos, but to the Flmperor, who 
 found in the Spanish recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction 
 his best equivalent for his abandonment of his Western allies. 
 With these dynastic advantages secured, the historic ally of
 
 126 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 Great Britain was not less ready than was the prince whose 
 claims to the Spanish throne she had so persistently aided 
 him in opposing, to play fast and loose with the question of 
 the settlement of her own throne and government, by con- 
 templating engagements as to an eventual support of the 
 Pretender ^ Thus, not only were the European relations 
 which it had been the purpose of the Quadruple Alliance 
 to guarantee, fundamentally disturbed ; but the system of 
 government established in Great Britain as the termination 
 of a long-protracted era of civil troubles was, together with 
 the endurance of the Hanoverian dynasty, to be thrown into 
 the melting-pot of the general conflict. 
 
 The Treaty of Hanover between Great Britain, France, 
 and Prussia (September 1725), which was designed as 
 a direct retort to the First Treaty of Vienna, is therefore, 
 notwithstanding its name, in no sense to be regarded as 
 dictated by purely or mainly dynastic motives. The main 
 responsibility of this agreement, which obviously diverts the 
 course of our policy from the direction which it had 
 previously pursued under Stanhope and was afterwards to 
 resume under Carteret, rests with Townshend. But Walpole, 
 who had only hesitatingly agreed to the Treaty of Hanover as 
 an inevitable measure of self-defence, was found ready to follow 
 it up by the requisite extended action. With the sturdiness 
 
 1 I do not believe that any actual undertaking for the support of the 
 Pretender was ever entered into by Charles VI, though this was asserted 
 in the King's speech of 1727 referred to below. But as early as February 
 16, 1726, Horace Walpole asserted in Parliament that 'the imperial 
 ministry at Vienna did not scruple to insinuate that if the King persisted 
 in his resolution to take measures in opposition to the treaty of Vienna, 
 the Emperor would not only think himself disengaged from the guaranty 
 of the Protestant succession to the crown of Great Britain, but that such 
 conduct might be attended with serious consequences to His Majesty's 
 dominions in Germany.' (Coxe, Life of Lord Walpole, vol. i. p. 200.) 
 Can It be doubted that he was near the mark ?
 
 IV] FOREIGN rOLlCY OF GEORGE I AND II l^-j 
 
 which helps to account for his long-enduring Parliamentary 
 ascendancy he bore the brunt of the Opposition clamour which 
 absurdly denounced the treaty as subservient to Hanoverian 
 interests. As a matter of fact it had been concluded against 
 the instincts of King George I and his Planoverian advisers, 
 apprehensive lest the Electorate might -suffer from the 
 wrath of the Emperor, as a party to the Treaty of Vienna. 
 How could they be expected to approve the clause by which 
 the Kings of Great Britain and Prussia agreed, in the event 
 of a declaration of war by the Emperor against France, to 
 abstain from furnishing their contingents to him as princes of 
 the Empire, unless they deemed themselves unable to dispense 
 with doing so — a somewhat inept way of expressing their 
 intention of being guided by circumstances as to keeping or 
 making their engagements. And in the case of King George I 
 a further gloss was put upon the compact by the subsidy- 
 treaty concluded by him in March, 1726, with the Landgrave 
 Charles of Hesse-Cassel ', by which this prince of the Empire 
 undertook to furnish his fellow-prince on the British throne 
 with a force of 12,000 men; as well as by the subsequent 
 treaty of November, 1727, with the Duke of Brunswick- 
 Wolfenbuttel for a force of 5000. In 1728 these treaties 
 were violently attacked in Parliament as designed for the 
 benefit of Hanover. Undoubtedly the possible consequences 
 of the Treaty of Hanover were present to the King's mind, 
 and it was to meet them that the subsidy-treaties were con- 
 cluded ; yet it is curious that the Elector should have so 
 materially weakened the defence of the Empire, besides 
 consenting to make so light of his direct obligations 
 towards it'^. 
 
 ' The father of King Frederick I of Sweden, who succeeded as 
 Landgrave in 1730. 
 
 ' From the English point of view it must however be repeated that if 
 the country was not to be left unprepared for war — a responsibility
 
 128 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 For some time the political situation defined by the First 
 Treaty of Vienna and its secret articles, and by tlie counter- 
 treaty of Hanover, from which however (as we shall see 
 below) Prussia allowed herself to be gradually detached, 
 remained ominous of a general European conflict. British 
 policy had to content itself with adhering steadily to the 
 principles of the Quadruple Alliance, abandoned for the 
 time by Austria in favour of a separate understanding with 
 Spain. In these troubled years, when the House of Hanover 
 had subordinated its traditional preferences to the demands 
 of a situation full of peril to its own tenure of the British 
 throne, we shall not expect to find many traces of Hanoverian 
 opposition to the unsympathetic policy of Walpole and 
 Townshend. Carteret had been succeeded in his Secretary- 
 ship of State by the Duke of Newcastle, from whom no 
 combinations in foreign affairs conflicting with their own were 
 to be apprehended by the leading ministers ' ; and at Paris 
 
 which Walpole was as unwilling to incur as Stanhope had been before 
 him — it is difficult to see how the requisite troops could have been 
 supplied unless by subsidy-treaties. England could not supplement the 
 mercenary system like Prussia by recruiting from her neighbours' terri- 
 tories ; and a national militia, as we afterwards found, was not to be 
 stamped out of the earth. Whether the subsidy-treaties were economi- 
 cally managed is a different question. The Brunsvvick-Wolfenbiittel 
 treaty for;i^25,ooo per annum seems in about half-a-dozen years to have 
 cost the country nearly ten times that sum. See Calendar of Treasury 
 Papers, 1 731-4, p. 97. 
 
 ' At the close of his long political career — when nearly heart-broken by 
 not being invited to carry it on a little further — Newcastle philosophised 
 with some reason (though with scant power of expression) on the 
 ' neglect of foreign affairs ' which he had observed in the British states- 
 men of his day, not excepting even Chatham, ' who raised himself and 
 his reputation by a contrary conduct.' But the ' application ' with 
 which he concludes is typical. 'I don't pretend to say what, or with 
 whom those alliances should be made ; that must depend upon circum- 
 stances, and the condition and disposition of the respective Powers ; but 
 I mean all such connexions to be formed upon the principle of pre-
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 129 
 
 Walpole's brother Horace had dexterously contrived to 
 secure the personal confidence of Fleury, who from 1726 
 onwards enjoyed a tenure of ministerial power comparable 
 in length and steadiness to Walpole's own, but who like 
 him in the end drifted against his own judgment into war. 
 
 It was however, and continues to be, asserted that the in- 
 trigues of Baron Palm, the Imperial Resident at the Court 
 of St. James', carried on in this period of estrangement 
 between the British and Imperial Governments, were 
 fostered by the Duchess of Kendal and the Hanoverian 
 ministers. As to Baron Palm's excess of zeal there can be 
 no manner of doubt. It has not I think been noticed 
 elsewhere that in the summer of 1718 — when the nego- 
 tiations for the Quadruple Alliance were in progress — 
 Palm was regarded as an unsatisfactory representative of 
 the Imperial Government in London \ How far, however, 
 his precipitancy was the cause of the collision which at the 
 very close of George I's reign nearly led to the outbreak 
 of the general war which both Walpole and Fleury had 
 laboured so sedulously to postpone — or whether Hanoverian 
 cabals actually incUned Walpole and Townshend to an 
 attempt to force the situation at home — it is not very easy 
 to determine. At the same time, the estimate of Walpole's 
 character which commends itself to my judgment, leads me 
 unhesitatingly to reject any suggestion that he endeavoured 
 to hasten a general war because in the closing months of 
 the reign he had reason to fear for his tenure of power. 
 
 serving the peace, as Sir Robert Walpole, that enemy of foreign connexions, 
 always said, Preventive and Defensive^ (Newcastle to Rockingham, 
 July 8, 1767, in Changes in the Ministry, 1765-7, edited for the Royal 
 Historical Society by Miss Mary Bateson, 1898.) 
 
 ' Schaub writing to Robethon on July 2 1 {Kohethon Correspondence, 
 vol. X. p. 103), while recommending that St. Saphorin should remain 
 as Resident at Vienna, states the latter to be strongly of opinion that 
 Palm should be moved from London to some other post.
 
 130 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 Whatever part may have been played by the Duchess of 
 Kendal in urging the views of the Imperial Court may be safely 
 attributed to her habitual willingness, in return for a direct 
 consideration, to set a manoeuvre in motion and then leave 
 it to take its course. In any case, if George I and Bothmer 
 were by Palm's action rendered more reluctant than ever to 
 resist the Court of Vienna, and more alive than before to the 
 dangers for the Electorate involved in the Treaty of Hanover, 
 the British ministry were by it driven forward to the brink 
 of extreme measures. In January, 1727, the King's speech 
 declared, and founded a demand of readiness for war upon 
 the declaration, that a secret agreement had been concluded 
 between the Allies of Vienna for placing the Pretender on 
 the British throne. Palm was hereupon instructed to tender 
 to the King a memorial protesting in no measured terms 
 against this charge as fictitious, and directed, in an angry 
 letter from the Imperial Chancellor Count Zinzendorff, to 
 publish the document. Instead of delaying a procedure so 
 utterly irregular, he so to speak rushed his ultimatum, and 
 promptly received his passports ^. The British Resident at 
 Vienna having been likewise dismissed, and the Spanish 
 minister at St. James' having previously taken his departure, 
 war with both Powers seemed inevitable. 
 
 Spain, however, was after all at the last moment left in the 
 lurch by her ally, and her offensive effort broke harmless on 
 the Rock of Gibraltar. The league of the Western was joined 
 by the Scandinavian Powers, Prussia remaining neutral ; and 
 the Emperor, agreeing to a compromise about his Ostend 
 Company, and abandoning any further attempt to settle 
 matters for himself with Spain, left over a general setdement 
 to another European Congress. Thus the reign of George I 
 ended with the successful assertion of the policy of Walpole 
 
 ' Baron Palm reappears in Germany as a combative diplomatist in 
 1744. (See Droysen, vol. v. part ii. p. 193.)
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 131 
 
 and Townshend against the attempt to override that policy 
 made by a Power whom a traditional attachment rendered it 
 difficult for the House of Hanover to resist, more especially 
 when it was influenced in the same direction by apprehensions 
 largely founded on the expected support of Austria by Russia 
 in the event of the outbreak of war. George I is supposed 
 to have towards the close of his reign become weary of 
 Walpole, which is quite possible. But nothing is less likely 
 than that the sagacious King had any intention of emancipating 
 himself from the guidance of his great minister either at home 
 or abroad. The emotions of the English people, so easily 
 stirred when the hand of death touches kings and queens in 
 their turn, remained quiescent at the tidings of our first 
 Hanoverian Sovereign's sudden decease on his last journey 
 to his German home. But he had not been unfaithful to 
 the spirit of the settlement to which he owed his royal 
 throne ; and the longer he had reigned, the more fully 
 had his policy met the responsibilities, which in reason 
 he knew to be paramount, of his position as a British 
 Sovereign. 
 
 With the accession of King George II it might have 
 seemed as if the inconveniences and disadvantages of the 
 Personal Union, even if they were not altogether removed, 
 were at least likely to be materially diminished. So long as 
 the old King lived, his son and heir was, according to the 
 testimony of Lord Hervey, universally supposed to love 
 England and hate Germany ^ What is more to the purpose, 
 George II, whose self-confidence was greater than his father's, 
 and who no doubt also cherished a more ardent ambition, 
 had from a relatively early age familiarised himself with the 
 idea of British rule. And although he was late in arriving 
 at a perception of the distance which separated the ideals of 
 
 ' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 201. 
 K 2
 
 132 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 a personal monarchy from the principles of British consti- 
 tutional government, in the earlier part of his reign he had 
 by his side, in the person of Queen Caroline, an adviser at 
 once thoroughly devoted to the interests of his dynasty, and 
 capable of pursuing them in a spirit in which there was but 
 little pettiness and barely a thought of self. Nor, in esti- 
 mating the causes of his long-enduring unpopularity, should 
 it be overlooked that he had after all not himself chosen the 
 position in which he was placed by his twofold sovereignty 
 and of which, by the obstinacy of his behaviour and the 
 hrusqnerie of his manner, he did his utmost to emphasise the 
 unreasonableness. There is something humiliating in the 
 mass of reproach, satire, and insult which George II drew 
 down upon himself by his repeated and prolonged absences 
 at Hanover, from the withering sneers of Pope to the coarse 
 pasquinades stuck up at the corners of the London streets 
 and on the very gates of St. James' Palace ' ; but though 
 these visits were largely, they were not wholly prompted or 
 protracted by the desire of self-indulgence, and the volume 
 of parliamentary and popular obloquy which they provoked 
 was really out of proportion to its cause. He learnt his 
 lesson neither at once nor easily ; and even after he had 
 virtually yielded to a Parliament which he could not control, 
 and a people whose loyalty he had failed to attract, he showed 
 himself no adept in the last art of Kings — that of graciously 
 yielding to a will other than their own. But though in the 
 successive periods of his reign hardly a mood of obstinacy, 
 hardly a movement of pupie seems to be left unchronicled 
 by the most minute and malicious of observers, yet 
 the fact remains that neither obstinacy of opinion, nor 
 vehemence of resentment, nor absorbing selfishness of aim, 
 prevented him in the last resort from responding to the 
 
 ' Heivey, ii. 362.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 133 
 
 demands of the great national epoch in which he was called 
 upon to play his part ^ 
 
 I pass over, as calling for little or no comment from our 
 point of view, the earliest portion of George II's reign, which 
 may be taken as covering the period when, with the assistance 
 of Queen Caroline, Walpole was in practically undisturbed 
 control of affairs. Most assuredly the Queen merited the 
 recognition which has been freely accorded to her for enabling 
 Walpole during these years to maintain a policy of peace 
 against contrary influences, of which the King's person- 
 ality was the main source. The Secretaries of State during 
 
 ' It might be worth the while of some biographical historian with 
 space at his command, to analyse more carefully the singularly strong 
 odium which King George II excited against himself, and not only in 
 those to whom he was only known at a distance. Thus, for instance, 
 Lord Hervey as a politician thought with Walpole, and detested the 
 Hanoverian and German influences to which he repeatedly described the 
 King as subject. But in such a passage as that in Memoirs, vol. ii. 
 p. 35, he seems to imply that the bellicose attitude assumed by 
 George II in reference to the national policy should in sum be set down 
 to personal rather than to ' German ' motives. It was certainly unlucky 
 that a military ambition, which would have been held highly creditable 
 in a Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, should have seemed a foible in 
 the King of Great Britain ; that it should have been impregnated with 
 jealousy by his cognisance of his Prussian brother-in-law's superior 
 opportunities in the way of recruiting ; that he should have had to keep 
 up the numbers of his army not only in the teeth of his Parliament but 
 against the wishes of the minister by whom he managed the process 
 {ib., p. 230) ; and that when at last he stood before his contemporaries 
 as the successor of Marlborough, a single day of victory should have 
 exhausted his assumption of the character. On the other hand, his 
 devotion to the interests of the Empire was genuine, and was all the 
 stronger because it was thoroughly shared by Queen Caroline, llcr at 
 least Lord Hervey understood to perfection, nor can he be supposed to 
 have intended to speak anything but the truth when {ib., p. 37) he goes 
 out of his way to assert that, ' wherever the interests of Germany and 
 the honour of the Empire were concerned, her thoughts and reasonings 
 were often as German and Imperial as if England had been out of the 
 question ' j with more to the barae purpose.
 
 134 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 these years were, until 1730, Townshcnd and Newcastle; 
 but after the tension between the former and Walpole had 
 at last ended in an open rupture, his place was taken by 
 Harrington, the William Stanhope whose Spanish experience 
 had confirmed in him a reticent dignity of bearing to which 
 the irretendveness of his fellow Secretary must have stood 
 in odd contrast. Notwithstanding the abuse poured on 
 Harrington by Hervey, he must have been a statesman of 
 some tact and judgment, and it is to his credit that he should 
 gradually have conquered the good will of both the King and 
 Walpole, which had at first been withheld from him for no 
 faults of his own \ The task of the British foreign ministers 
 of this period was in any case one requiring a patience such 
 as had not been distinctive of the bearing of Carteret. Before 
 the impression created by the Emperor's compromising 
 advances to Spain could be altogether effaced, there was 
 some vacillation on his part, and much persistency was 
 needed on that of the British Government. When after 
 prolonged discussions Spain at last (November, 1729) assented 
 to the Treaty of Seville, the Emperor held aloof from the 
 settlement, deeply offended by the provision substituting 
 Spanish for neutral garrisons in certain important places in the 
 Italian duchies destined for Don Carlos, over which the Empire 
 still claimed a feudal overlordship. In risking an armed 
 collision with the Emperor ^ the Government of King George I 
 certainly ignored Hanoverian traditions ; and its determina- 
 tion might seem to have met with an appropriate reward in 
 the acceptance of the Seville Treaty by the Emperor in the 
 Second Treaty. of Vienna (March, 1731). But the concession 
 
 * See Stanhope, vol. ii. p. 153. The King was prejudiced against 
 him on account of his brother Charles, Walpole by jealousy of his 
 kinsman, Lord Stanhope. 
 
 2 Who on the death of the last Famese early in 1731 actually 
 occupied Parma.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 135 
 
 by which Great Britain had secured this adhesion — viz. the 
 recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction — was one which, for 
 her part, France was as yet by no means prepared to make. 
 This unwillingness, and the tension which existed between 
 herself and Spain, caused France to abstain from any partici- 
 pation in the new Vienna Treaty, which accordingly marks 
 a weakening of the bond which for fourteen years had 
 united her to Great Britain. The strongest link had indeed 
 been taken away on the death of the Regent Orleans ; but 
 Walpole, from whom Townshend had before this at last 
 separated, must be held responsible for Great Britain's pre- 
 cipitate guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction. His foreign 
 policy, though never wanting in intelligence, had the fatal 
 defect of shaping itself all too readily to the exigencies of the 
 moment — in general the parliamentary moment ; and he had 
 taken this step, in contravention of his habitual attitude 
 towards the House of Habsburg, without consulting France 
 or taking account of the sentiments of his own sovereign. 
 But the historic French jealousy of the greatness of Austria 
 was still far from extinct ; and George II, as Elector of 
 Hanover, could not but dislike any attempt to settle a 
 question so deeply affecting the future of Germany in this 
 anticipatory fashion. Thus the Second Treaty of Vienna 
 marks not only the termination of an old series of contentions, 
 but also the beginning of a new. Estranged from Austria, 
 France drew nearer to Spain ; and two years later, under the 
 immediate influence of commercial jealousy of Great Britain, 
 and of her determination to remain neutral in the War of the 
 Polish Succession, the two Bourbon Courts concluded an 
 agreement which may be regarded as the germ of their 
 telebraied Family Compact'. On the other hand, — as if 
 
 ' See Sir John Seeley's paper in the English Historical Keviexv for 
 January, 1886 ; though the conclusions there advanced perhaps in some 
 respects overshot the mark.
 
 136 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 a Nemesis had visited Walpole's rashness upon the country 
 which it was the wish of his heart to keep out of war or 
 engagements leading to war, — Great Britain once more 
 entered into relations of intimacy with Austria that could not 
 but momentously affect our position in the European conflict, 
 should all the guarantees secured by Charles VI prove inade- 
 quate in the crisis. 
 
 Meanwhile, what- was the nature of our relations with the 
 Power which, when that time came, was to stand in the van 
 of the assault upon the House of Habsburg, and which, when 
 the long struggle was at last over, was to be found to have 
 made good its claim to rank among the Great Powers of 
 Europe ? We have arrived at a chapter of British policy 
 which, down almost to the dissolution of the Personal Union, 
 invites a special consideration of certain motives of action 
 influencing the Hanoverian dynasty and government as such, 
 which in the latter part of George II's reign become of even 
 greater significance than the traditional attachment of his 
 line to the House of Austria. 
 
 The ancient jealousies between the Hanoverian and 
 Prussian dynasties had, as has been seen, been from time 
 to time assuaged by intermarriages, and suspended by the 
 repeated necessity of agreeing on the protection of joint 
 interests, more especially against the overbearing Baltic 
 policy of Russia. So recurrent was the need of a defensive 
 combination for this purpose that the following observation 
 which, in 1747, old Horace Walpole had the courage to 
 address to the Duke of Cumberland \ might be applied to 
 the condition of things during the greater part of the previous 
 half-century. ' The necessity,' he wrote, ' of the friendship of 
 Prussia, who with Sweden will keep the Czarina en e'chec and 
 frighten Denmark, is so obvious that I wonder the Hanoverian 
 
 ' See the second of his very noteworthy letters to the Duke in Coxe, 
 Life of Lord Walpole, vol. ii, p. 210.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 137 
 
 ministers have not employed their utmost dexterity and 
 credit, for the sake of their own country, to procure a perfect 
 good understanding between His Majesty and the King of 
 Prussia.' But the attempts periodically made to establish 
 such an agreement, whether or not dignified with the name 
 of Perpetual Alliances, were of their nature provisional ; and 
 the project of the double marriage, on which I need not 
 expatiate to readers of Carlyle, dragged its way along with 
 very changeful chances of accomplishment. The design was 
 pressed on by the Queen of Prussia — George I's daughter 
 Sophia Dorothea — with pathetic persistency, whatever might 
 chance to be the aspect of the political horizon ; and the 
 prosecution of it contributed to the estrangement of both 
 Frederick and his sister Wiihelmina from their father. It 
 ultimately broke down completely in consequence of the 
 reversal of Prussian policy of which we are about to speak ; 
 and in 1730 the estrangement between Frederick William I 
 and his eldest son was, as you know, near ending in an awful 
 catastrophe. No love was lost between King George II and 
 his brofher-in-law ; each, as Lord Hervey puts it ', thought 
 and spoke much the same of the other, — but we need not 
 repeat the unhoneyed epithets, nor discuss the evidence as to 
 the various personal motives in which rumour asserted the 
 root of all this ill-will to lie. What is certain is that two 
 questions of territorial politics served to interfuse with dynastic 
 jealousies the personal antipathies of the two Kings against 
 one another. One of these was the prolongation of the 
 Hanoverian occupation of Mecklenburg, on the plea that 
 though the execution with which the Elector was charged 
 had technically come to an end, its cost still needed to be 
 made good. The other sprang from the chaotic condition 
 of affairs in East Frisia, parts of which were under the control 
 
 ' Memoirs, vol. iii. j). 349.
 
 138 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 of the local estates, while over others the States-General of 
 the United Provinces, as guarantors of certain compacts, 
 claimed authority; and Brunswick, Brandenburg, and other 
 troops had taken up positions in the country with a view to 
 future contingencies. For the reversion of the principality 
 of the Cirkzcmas, which included a very desirable sea-board — 
 the ' signiory of Embden ' had been thought a rare prize in 
 the Elisabethan age — was disputed by the Houses of Hanover 
 and Brandenburg, the former claiming it on the strength of 
 an ancestral treaty unconfirmed by Imperial authority, the 
 latter by virtue of an Imperial grant. Considering the clear 
 superiority of the Brandenburg claim, George II would have 
 done well to attempt a compromise as to his own, and such 
 a scheme was actually recommended by the Hanoverian 
 Privy Council. But he was obstinate ; the succession to this 
 desirable territory was left unsettled, and when Charles 
 Edzard, the last male scion of the Cirkzemas, died in 1744, 
 the disputed inheritance was pocketed by Frederick II, with 
 a promptitude peculiar to him '. A series of pettier, but 
 highly irritating, occasions of friction was periodically sup- 
 plied by the crimps whose business it was to find recruits 
 for King Frederick William I's army, and more especially 
 for his tall regiment of guards, and who constantly 
 harried the Hanoverian territories bordering on his own, 
 prolific, as they are to this day, of men of stature and 
 stamina. 
 
 We saw how, towards the close of the reign of George I, 
 Prussia had allowed herself to be detached from the Treaty 
 of Hanover, having concluded with the Emperor the secret 
 Treaty of Wusterhausen (November, 1726), in which she 
 
 ^ East Frisia, after successively undergoing annexation to the kingdom 
 of. Holland and to the French Empire, was in 1815 ceded by Prussia to 
 the new kingdom of Hanover, and as part of this reverted once more to 
 Prussia in 1866.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 1 39 
 
 acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction, and after which she 
 even listened to insinuations as to the transfer to herself of 
 Bremen and Verden in return for a renunciation of her 
 claims upon the succession in the Rhenish duchy of Berg. 
 The knowledge of this Austro-Prussian agreement had 
 weighed with the Western Powers when endeavouring to 
 thwart the Emperor's design of an independent settlement 
 of his differences with Spain. Early in 1729, as has been 
 seen, Walpole and Townshend were intent upon finding 
 a solution which would bring Spain over to the side of 
 peace, while war seemed imminent between France and 
 Austria. It was at this season that King George II suddenly 
 resolved to pay his first visit to Hanover since his accession 
 to the British throne. He was called thither, as a royal 
 message informed the Houses of Parliament, by divers 
 reasons of importance ; and the chief of these proved to be 
 a secret treaty of alliance between the Emperor and Prussia, 
 concluded at the close of the preceding year (December 23, 
 1728), by which the Wusterhausen agreement was converted 
 into a permanent defensive alliance. Whether or not the 
 two Powers might carry out the larger plan of settling in 
 common their relations with Russia, it was clear that Prussia 
 had thrown herself unreservedly into the Emperor's arms, 
 no doubt strongly actuated by the belief that his authority 
 would now settle in her favour her various outstanding con- 
 troversies with Hanover. Townshend was so exasperated 
 that he would unhesitatingly have risked a rupture with Austria, 
 but Walpole was all for peace and, as we saw, soon after- 
 wards played the last card by guaranteeing in his turn the 
 Pragmatic Sanction. But George IPs sentiments accorded 
 entirely with Townshend's; and the armaments for which 
 supplies were granted in 1729 and the subsidies were paid to 
 Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick, were palpably not intended by 
 the King for the defence of Gibraltar and Minorca, but for
 
 140 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [IV 
 
 action nearer home. In other words, the political motive of 
 George II's journey to Hanover early in 1729 v^^as to direct 
 the muster of troops on his electoral frontier, and in July 
 Prussia, who perfectly understood the meaning of the 
 demonstration, in return mobilised part of her army. 
 
 The difference was indeed settled without a resort to war, 
 King Frederick William I coming to terms notwithstanding 
 the pressure put upon him from both within and without, 
 and from Vienna itself, to make him persevere in his attitude 
 of defiance '. The genuinely pacific intentions of this con- 
 scientious prince, to which his son pays a very left-handed 
 acknowledgment ^, had not yet come to be thoroughly 
 appreciated ; and the result, which King George II attributed 
 solely to his own superior determination, sensibly added to 
 the self-consciousness which long exercised so potent an 
 influence upon the progress of our foreign policy. 
 
 After the resignation of Townshend in May 1730, how- 
 ever, Walpole's ascendancy in the guidance of foreign as 
 well as domestic affairs remained for a time undisputed. In 
 the former department, no more signal success was achieved 
 by him than that of keeping Great Britain out of the War of 
 the Polish Succession, which broke out in 1733 and lasted 
 till 1735 (though the definitive treaty of peace was delayed 
 for three years further). The credit due to Walpole for 
 having preserved Great Britain from participation in a conflict 
 that reduced ad ahsurdum the principle of an intervention 
 for the sake of safeguarding ulterior interests, is enhanced 
 by the fact that he found extreme difficulty in keeping the 
 King out of this war, both in 1734 and in the following year. 
 Lord Hervey ^ has given an elaborate account of the argu- 
 
 ' As to the compromise see Stenzel, Geschichte von Preussen, vol. iii. 
 p. 568. 
 
 ^ Histoire de mon temps, ch. 11. 
 ^ Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 38 seqq.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 141 
 
 ments employed in a paper specially drawn up in 1734 by 
 ' one Hatolf,' as he superciliously calls the Hanoverian 
 minister in London, in order to impress the Queen and 
 through her the King with the expediency of opposing France, 
 and takes note of the inclination towards this view shown by 
 both Secretaries of State, by the Duke of Grafton and others 
 — indeed, it would seem as if the majority of Walpole's own 
 Cabinet had been in agreement with royalty against him. 
 In 1735 this pressure was even more difficult to with- 
 stand, when, in spite of all efforts to the contrary on the 
 part of the entire ministry, the King had insisted on again 
 proceeding to Hanover. It cannot be denied that the 
 anxiety of George II to strike a blow for the Emperor in 
 this quarrel w-as intelligible enough from the outset, since 
 its origin was a treaty of alliance, unprovoked by Austria, 
 but directed against her, between Spain and France, to 
 which, seizing upon the advantages of the situation with 
 frank promptitude, Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia had 
 given in his adhesion. As the war progressed, the ill 
 fortune of the Emperor's arms seemed to appeal still more 
 forcibly to the loyalty of the Elector, and the French seizure 
 of Kehl, which was a fortress of the Empire, formed a fresh 
 challenge to the members of that body. Fortunately, the 
 reverses of the Emperor, and his intentness upon the 
 ultimate recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction by all the 
 European Powers, made him desirous of peace already in 
 the second year of the war ; or Walpole's rather cynical 
 summary of the results of the first year's campaign might not 
 have continued to satisfy the King and Queen : ' Madam, there 
 are fifty thousand men slain this year in Europe, and not 
 one Englishman '.' The scheme of pacification proposed 
 ill the first instance by the British Government was, however, 
 
 ' Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 62.
 
 142 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 not accepted ; and on its failure fresh pressure was put on 
 King George by the Emperor to go into the war in ac- 
 cordance with his treaty obligations, and he was actually 
 offered the command of the Imperial forces on the Rhine— 
 an invitation well calculated as an appeal to his personal 
 estimate of his powers although it neglected his incidental 
 position as a British Sovereign '. Before the year was out, 
 however, the bases of peace had been virtually settled, and 
 after protracted negotiations they were brought to a formal 
 conclusion in the Third Treaty of Vienna, in November, 1 738. 
 The evidence on which the credit of this settlement was given 
 to Walpole is not altogether satisfactory ; for although during 
 part of this period (1736) Horace Walpole the elder, by 
 a quite exceptional arrangement, attended the King as 
 minister at Hanover in the place of Harrington, he is stated 
 to have been ' as much for war as his brother was against 
 it V King George certainly took much pride in the pacifica- 
 tion, although in more respects than one it ran counter to 
 his former wishes. To be sure, in the matter of the suc- 
 cession to the Polish throne, which the war had nominally 
 been waged to settle, he was gratified by the withdrawal 
 of the proteg^ of France, Stanislas Lescynski, of whom he 
 had disapproved. Austria further gained, besides what 
 proved a precarious tenure of Parma and Piacenza, the 
 French guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction, and in return 
 for these dynastic advantages conceded to France the re- 
 version of Lorraine which the destined husband of the 
 Pragmatic heiress exchanged for Tuscany. The eventual 
 diminution of the strength of the Empire by the sacrifice 
 of an important borderland was a consequence to which 
 Walpole would of course have remained supremely in- 
 
 * Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 178-9. 
 
 * Jh., p. 43. Horace had laboured to bring over the authorities at 
 the Hague to his opinion.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 143 
 
 different. But until it has been ascertained from the Hanover 
 archives whether Hattorf or any of his colleagues were alive 
 to the ulterior importance of this arrangement, we must 
 leave it undecided whether George II, warmly as he entered 
 into the interests of the Empire, was justified of Adolf 
 Schmidt and Treitschke, as I feel sure he was not of those 
 readers of history who are revolted by the indifference to 
 popular sentiments and interests shown in the territorial 
 juggle of this notorious treaty. 
 
 In the Spanish War declared in November, 1739, into 
 which Walpole was forced, partly by the unscrupulous tactics 
 of the Opposition and partly by the rush of popular opinion 
 which they had provoked, the Hanoverian Electorate had no 
 conceivable cause of interest. The position of Great Britain 
 was full of hazard ; for she had no allies, even the United 
 Provinces having been prevailed upon by France to hold 
 aloof in a timid neutrality, while the Emperor Charles VI, 
 sick to death and lost to any political thought but his long- 
 cherished design of securely transmitting his possessions 
 in their entirety to his elder daughter, remained indifferent 
 to any other temptadon '. Frederick William I of Prussia, 
 in reply to British solicitadons, roundly refused to be em- 
 ployed as a hack, and was in truth presciently desirous 
 above all things of not alienating the good will of France. 
 In a word, the British Government knocked at every door, 
 but met with no response except at Copenhagen, whose 
 Court was still bound to us by a subsidy-treaty, concluded 
 in 1735 by way of demonstrating that we were prepared for 
 any emergency. As to France herself, all doubts had 
 vanished as to the existence of a close understandino- 
 between her and Spain, and she was known to be only 
 
 ' Great Britain had suggested to him a possible recovery of Naples 
 and Sicily, the provisions of the Third Treaty of Vienna being to this 
 extent undone.
 
 144 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 awaiting the most favourable opportunity for joining that 
 Power in the war which we had declared against her. 
 
 Yet the country was all for war, and in none of his least 
 responsible advisers was the combative impulse stronger than 
 in the King himself. The approval bestowed by him upon 
 the war must be mainly ascribed to his bellicose disposition, 
 stimulated by the eloquent appeals addressed by Carteret 
 and others to the same instinct in the nation at large. But 
 the case was altered when, with the death of the Emperor 
 Charles VI in October, 1770, six months after that of 
 Frederick William I of Prussia in May, the crisis actually 
 presented itself in which, as an Elector of the Empire, 
 George II was directly interested, and when a conflict ensued 
 that brought into question the security of his Electorate. 
 
 We have seen how time had left unmitigated the asperity 
 of the personal relations between George II and his Prussian 
 brother-in-law, although in some other respects the con- 
 fidence of the latter in his convictions had been broken, and 
 how it had become the consistent endeavour of both the 
 French and the Austrian Government to keep the two Kings 
 politically at variance ^ In the later years of Frederick 
 William, the East Frisian question kept up a continual 
 irritation with the Hanoverian Government, and it is 
 repeatedly referred to in the diplomatic correspondence 
 of the period. But so far as I can see it would be wrong to 
 ascribe the continuance of the royal ill-will against Prussia 
 to Hanoverian influence exercised upon the King; with the 
 exception of Walpole no English political leader advocated 
 a reconciliation between him and Frederick William'^; and 
 as to the East Frisian dispute, the King's Hanoverian 
 
 ^ Horace Walpole to R. Trevor, June 20, 1738. {Earl of Bucking- 
 hamshire s Papers, in Historical MSS. Commission, Fourteenth Report, 
 Appendix, Part IX.) 
 
 "^ Coxe, Li/e 0/ Lord Walpole, vol. i. p. 425.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 145 
 
 councillors were at one with his British ministers in recog- 
 nising the expediency of a compromise : thus it was the 
 obstinate determination of the King to keep up the quarrel, 
 which prevailed over both sets of advisers ^ But the intense 
 personality of the feeling on the part of George II, while, in 
 the language of a contemporary observer, it made him 
 'extremely averse to do anything that squints in the least 
 towards praising ' the old King of Prussia, left the question 
 open as to whether the relation to his successor would be 
 a wholly different one. Indeed, it had been suggested as 
 advisable to gain the good will of the heir to the Prussian 
 throne during his father's lifetime ; and there are certain 
 indications, although I do not think they can be said to be 
 worth anything as evidence, that money intended as an 
 instalment of a pension to the Crown Prince was actually 
 sent to Berlin^. In any case Horace Walpole, whom we 
 must not take altogether at his nephew and namesake's 
 valuation, saw the situation clearly, when only a few days 
 before the death of Frederick William, he wrote that in his 
 opinion the future security of Europe would depend upon the 
 crisis now at hand, and upon England's gaining or not gaining 
 the new King of Prussia. On the accession of Frederick II 
 the prospect, however, continued clouded. The mediatory ser- 
 vices of the Prussian Queen Dowager between her brother and 
 her son were both claimed and given, but remained ineffectual, 
 partly in consequence of the new King's excess of curiosity as 
 to family concerns hitherto hidden in a safe obscurity. Nor, 
 as English statesmen felt, was a family reconciliation with 
 regard to the past so much at issue as a distinct political under- 
 standing with regard to the future. France, whose struggle 
 with Great Britain for colonial empire was already at hand, 
 
 ' Horace VValpole's Letters to Trevor, u. s., May 23, 1740. 
 ' ft/., Introdtictioti, p. xv.
 
 146 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 would find an almost insuperable obstacle to the aggressive 
 policy which she was resuming in Europe, if an undcr- 
 slandins: between Great Britain and Prussia could be used at 
 the last moment to bring the latter Power and Austria into 
 agreement ^ But all such hopes proved vain. When — only 
 three months after the death of the Emperor Charles VI — 
 in January, 1741, Frederick II unmasked his designs and 
 openly stated the price at which he was willing to accept 
 a settlement, his audacity in thus treating the Prussian 
 guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction astounded even those 
 British politicians who were most sceptical as to the ex- 
 pediency of giving an uncompromising support to the 
 Austrian claims. Yet before the outbreak of the War of 
 the Succession, as well as afterwards, Walpole — or in justice 
 to Horace I should say Walpole and his brother — continued 
 to look for the best prospect of a general settlement in an 
 accommodation between Austria and Prussia. But the great 
 peace minister's day had nearly passed ; and in the midst 
 of the general collapse of his authority we hardly notice the 
 failure of his attempt to prevent the King's journey to 
 Hanover in 1741. Now that, under the influence of one of 
 those waves of feeling which it is idle to talk of a minister's 
 resisting, both King and nation were intent upon supporting 
 the young Queen of Hungary in the trouble against which 
 her father's guarantees had proved a futile fence, Walpole 
 clung to the conviction that even her interests as well as 
 those of the restoration of peace would be best served by 
 a direct accommodation between her and the Prussian King. 
 He had found himself obliged to move in Parliament 
 the maintenance of our Pragmatic guarantee by means of 
 an armed force and a subsidy of which the alliance of 
 Hanover in July definitely fixed the amounts ; but this was 
 
 * See Horace "Walpole's Letters to Trevor, u. s., pp. 31-2,
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 147 
 
 not incompatible with the endeavours in which he doubtless 
 more willingly engaged, to detach Prussia from the rest of 
 the adversaries of the Queen, and more especially of course 
 from France. Was it incompatible with another transaction 
 whereby, for the first time in the history of the Personal Union, 
 the interests of the Hanoverian Electorate were openly and in 
 the most marked fashion treated as separate from those of 
 Great Britain P Before his Parliament King George II had 
 adopted a warlike air, beyond a doubt in perfect harmony 
 with his personal sentiments, referring to the Danish and 
 Hesse-Cassel troops which by virtue of the subsidy treaties 
 would enable him to carry out the stipulations of the Hanover 
 Alliance '. But after he had — as already noticed — early in 
 1 741, against the strong representations of Walpole, betaken 
 himself to Hanover, in order to direct the military operations 
 of his contingents and thus, we shall not err in concluding, 
 utilise forces in British pay for at least partly electoral pur- 
 poses, he found himself checkmated by the Franco-Prussian 
 Alliance (June 4). In accordance with this agreement, one 
 of the two French armies which crossed the Rhine in August 
 threatened the Electorate from the West, and a Prussian 
 division collected on the Elbe (near Magdeburg) to the 
 South. The Elector was thus placed in direct danger, and 
 on September 27 he concluded the treaty of neutrality, by 
 which he bound himself to abstain from assisting the Queen 
 of Hungary, and pledged himself in the approaching Im- 
 perial election not to vote for her husband Duke Francis 
 Stephen of Lorraine. 
 
 Few transactions, if any, for which the Hanoverian regime 
 was responsible — for Kloster Zeven, as we shall see, was only 
 a military convention, and was moreover rejected by the 
 
 ' The Danish treaty had however only a year to run, after which the 
 Danes were bound by a similar treaty to France. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 Sovereign — raised a storm of obloquy comparable to that 
 of the neutrality treaty of 1741. 
 
 The satirical wit of the age — no very nice variety of this 
 class of effort— exploded its preparations, in the form of vapid 
 parody and doggrel ballad ^ ; Lord Marchmont produced a 
 pamphlet ; Lord Chesterfield bent himself double in epigram ; 
 and Newcastle proposed in the Cabinet a remonstrance 
 which has the uncompromising sound of an amendment 
 proposed by an irresponsible fraction in the House of Com- 
 mons to the address on the speech from the Throne '^. It is 
 not, one must confess, easy to defend the Treaty of Neutrality ; 
 yet it seems tolerably clear that, had Walpole in the wane 
 of his power ventured to breast the tide, a treaty of British 
 instead of Hanoverian neutrality (such as the French Govern- 
 ment actually pressed for) would have well suited the plan 
 upon which his Government was actually intent. British 
 diplomacy obtained from Frederick II the secret compromise 
 of Kleinschnellendorf (October, 1741); and after he had 
 ignored this agreement, it was again the British Govern- 
 ment which guaranteed the preliminaries of Breslau (June, 
 1742), and thus materially helped to bring about the Peace 
 of Berlin, that ended the First Silesian War (July). 
 
 ^ Sir Charles Hanbury Williams's Old Englanffs Te Deum is pre- 
 served in his IForks ; see Lord Orford's Letters, vol. i. p. 85. 
 
 ^ For the circumstances of the conclusion of this treaty and the 
 reception given to it by the Cabinet, see G. Harris's Life of Lord LLard- 
 2vicke (1847), vol. i. p. 519. The secrecy with which the King had 
 concluded it was in the eyes of the British Government as objectionable 
 as the treaty itself. Newcastle, besides proposing a remonstrance to be 
 sent to Harrington with a request that the King would reconsider his 
 action, proposed to inform the European Courts that, as King of Great 
 Britain, His Majesty would adhere to his engagements with Austria, and 
 use his best endeavours in her support. This proposal, however, which 
 would have thrown a strange light upon the perversities of the Personal 
 Union, commended itself neither to Walpole nor to his colleagues ; and 
 the incident terminated with a threat of resignation by Newcastle, which 
 cannot have been generally expected to be carried out.
 
 IVJ FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II 149 
 
 But before this Walpole's fall had taken place, and the 
 current of public feeling in favour of Maria Theresa had 
 begun to set in, which in the following year (1743) resulted 
 in the armed intervention of Great Britain on behalf of 
 the Pragmatic Cause, and the appearance in the field of 
 the King-Elector in person. Thus, the Treaty of Neutrality 
 had been concluded doubly in vain, and had in the end 
 served no permanent purpose of either British or Hanoverian 
 policy. 
 
 Walpole's fall (February, 1742) brought into power as 
 Secretary of State (for the Northern Department) a politician 
 whom it is a mistake to represent as blindly devoted to the 
 interests of the House of Habsburg, but whose sympathies 
 were strong with the old Whig system of resistance to 
 France in alliance with Austria. Carteret had already in the 
 previous reign, when he was joint Secretary with Townshend, 
 roused the spleen of his ' brother ' (to use Townshend's term 
 of official affection ^) by seeking the support at Hanover of 
 Bernstorff, whose influence was then declining, and of certain 
 ladies of the Court. He had furthermore, with the aid of his 
 exceptional proficiency in the German tongue, acquired that 
 knowledge of the German dynasties which King George H 
 regarded as the beginning of wisdom. Thus, although he had 
 when in opposition felt constrained to support the interests 
 of the Prince of Wales, even this was forgiven by the King 
 to a politician so much after his own heart; and it was 
 probably Walpole's knowledge of the desire cherished at Court 
 to bring Carteret back into office which caused his jealous 
 distrust of this opponent to excite in him a degree of ani- 
 mosity such as neither the vehemence of Pulteney nor the 
 malice of Chesterfield was capable of provoking. Not long 
 
 ' See Townshend's letter to Sir Robert VWilpole, s.d.^ printed from 
 the Hardwicke Papers in the Appendix loCoxc's LiJcofWalpolc, vol. ii. 
 pp. 402-6.
 
 / 
 150 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 before her death in 1737 Queen Caroline informed Walpole 
 of Carteret's having protested that he had only taken up 
 his stand against the Prime Minister because refused admit- 
 tance by him into his ministry ; to which Sir Robert, 
 with more than his usual bluntness, rejoined that ' it was 
 impossible the King's business could go on long with him 
 and Lord Carteret both in the King's service,' and offered to 
 quit himself so as to make things easy \ And later in the 
 same year, after Carteret's display of fidelity towards the 
 interests of the Prince of Wales, Walpole repeated his resolve 
 never in any way to ' act with that man ^.' Partly, no doubt, 
 he feared that Carteret, if admitted into his Government, 
 would entirely undermine his influence at Court; but he 
 must also have felt himself at variance with this possible 
 rival as to the guiding motives of the national foreign policy. 
 Frequently as Walpole had shifted his position, more espe- 
 cially since his parting with Townshend had left the control 
 of foreign affairs more completely in his own hands, he had 
 always regarded the alliance with France as the corner-stone 
 of the system to be maintained. Nor is he to be censured 
 because the progress of enterprise beyond the seas, to which 
 the commercial spirit fostered by his own policy of peace 
 had materially contributed, was rendering a collision with 
 France as inevitable as the quarrel with Spain had proved, 
 and this at the very time when Fleury's control over French 
 policy was loosening. To Walpole's profound distrust of 
 the House of Austria, on which historians have perhaps 
 insuflficiently dwelt, I have more than once directed your 
 attention. Carteret, on the other hand, in the great speech 
 with which on the occasion of the celebrated two-edared 
 motion for the dismissal of Walpole he led the assault in the 
 Lords, insisted above all on the vacillation and impotence 
 
 * Lord Hervey's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 95. ^ lb., p. 297.
 
 IV] FOREIGN POLICY OF GEORGE I AND II I5I 
 
 of the minister in the face of the persistent aggressiveness 
 of France and of her encroachments upon the integrity of 
 the Empire'. The Treaty of Nymphenburg (May, 1741) 
 seemed to justify this view so fully as to cause Walpole to 
 bow before it ; and though before his fall German affairs took 
 a pacific turn, the current to which he had yielded was still 
 as strong as ever when Carteret, whose own sympathies all 
 flowed in the same direction, found himself at last again in 
 office. 
 
 Although Carteret had never sat in the House of Com- 
 mons, he had in a sphere not then so tranquil as it has since 
 become found room for the constant exercise of his oratorical 
 powers, which are easily recognisable in his voluminous written 
 remains He never seems at a loss for ideas, and was always 
 capable of developing them with both amplitude and lucidity. 
 His clearness of insight is unmistakeable ; and in Ireland he 
 had given signal proof of what Swift calls a genteel manner, 
 or as we might put it, of that grand air which exercises an 
 irresistible fascination over so many ordinary mortals. I have 
 already spoken of his linguistic accomplishments, which were 
 wider in range than those of the gentlemanly scholarship of 
 his day, though in this too he excelled. But notwithstanding 
 his high personal and political reputation, his rare accom- 
 plishments to which I have already adverted, and an uncon- 
 cealed self-esteem which was transparent to Queen Carohne 
 but probably did him no harm with the public, Carteret 
 never commended himself to Parliament or popular opinion 
 as a possible head of the Government, although at a much 
 later date (in 1756) the Duke of Newcastle tried to put him 
 in that position and thus keep himself in office. The truth 
 is that Carteret's openly expressed contempt for popular 
 institutions was repaid by a more or less vague distrust 
 
 *■ Ballantyne, u. s., p. 225.
 
 152 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [iV 
 
 which it would be unjust to ascribe wholly to his supposed 
 openness to Hanoverian influences, of which too much has 
 probably been made. He was quite out of touch with 
 a House of Commons which he never made it part of his 
 business to bring under control by those influences of which 
 Newcastle was master ; and as it happened he never had 
 a seat there himself. But it may be well to note that even 
 his conduct of foreign affairs — for with Newcastle as his 
 colleague this was in his hands so long as Lord Wilmington 
 was at the head of the Government, and afterwards until his 
 final rupture with Pelham— lacked the support which has 
 been commanded by every really great foreign minister. As 
 in an autocracy the prince, so in a free polity Parliament 
 and people must repose in the conductor of their foreign 
 policy that personal trust which implies convinced defer- 
 ence, if his voice and action are to become heard and felt 
 as theirs. Moreover Carteret's tenure of power, such as 
 it was, was short; it is to be counted by months, not by 
 years, of which it lasted not quite two, and the attempt to 
 revive it in 1746, when Lords Granville and Bath held the 
 seals of the two Secretaryships for forty-eight hours and 
 some odd minutes, would have covered him with ridicule, if 
 he had shown the least concern in ihe fiasco. Yet Carteret's 
 administration of foreign affairs possesses special interest for 
 us in connexion with our immediate subject, as covering 
 a brief period during which the dynastic policy of the House 
 of Hanover, incarnate in King George II, was at one with the 
 impulses which were both consciously animating the nation, 
 and half unconsciously urging it onward to the establishment 
 of its world-empire ; so that I shall ask permission to make 
 some brief reference to it at the beginning of my next lecture.
 
 LECTURE y 
 
 HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA (1742-56) 
 
 WHEN, early in 1742, Carteret at last found himself 
 in possession of the seals, he had succeeded to the 
 heritage of a policy which had settled down into the support 
 of the Pragmatic Heiress by the British Government, while 
 it had reluctantly assented to the withdrawal of the Electorate 
 from immediate peril. In the last months of the war, when 
 even Russia had, by the sudden advent to the throne of the 
 Czarina Elisabeth, come under the rule of a friend of France, 
 the Queen of Hungary had no extraneous support but the 
 gold which Great Britain poured into her treasury. Some- 
 thing more than the payment of subsidies had however been 
 looked for from Carteret in many quarters, and had probably 
 been intended by himself. He told Wasner, the able 
 Austrian Resident in London, who was at that time very 
 actively endeavouring to promote a declaration of war by 
 Great Britain against France, that he was certainly not 
 Prussian in his sentiments, but a good Englishman, which 
 was as much as saying, a good Austrian, And certainly 
 this description of himself is borne out by the instructions 
 with which he supplied Lord Hyndford when, a few weeks 
 after taking office, and following in the first instance 
 Walpole's policy of attempting to bring about a recon- 
 ciliation between Austria and Prussia, he charged that long- 
 suffering diplomatist with a pacific mission to Breslau, while 
 Sir Thomas Robinson was directed to make fresh efforts at
 
 154 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 Vienna. Carteret's state papers at times have about them 
 that air of extreme frankness in which only very great 
 statesmen can indulge without laying themselves open to 
 sarcastic comment ; nor is it easy to understand why Lord 
 Hyndford, whose personal views seem to have on the whole 
 coincided with Carteret's, should not have been trusted to 
 read more largely between the lines. ' The King is prepared 
 to stand by and support the House of Austria, and is 
 equipping a body of 16,000 men. . . . The King of Prussia 
 is mistaken, if instead of making terms with Austria he goes 
 to war [in alliance] with France; he will only be known 
 as a Destroyer of Germany, and France will not (if they are 
 successful) suffer him, a Protestant prince and a natural 
 enemy, to share the spoils. In the opposite event (if he 
 makes a reasonable peace with Austria), he will be sure of 
 the support of the Maritime Powers. We can never suffer 
 the Emperor to remain master of Bohemia or see it in any 
 other hands than the Austrian family.' And then, after 
 an edifying reference to the sagacious self-interestedness of 
 Sardinia, ' The King would gladly see the King of Prussia 
 engaged in the actual support of the House of Austria ' ; but 
 it must be in the way which suits us best ; ' as for taking his 
 troops into our pay, we cannot do it ; and unless he has totally 
 deserted the former principles of his family,' he will assuredly 
 not make such a demand. In a general way, ' negotiating 
 with him we hold to be extremely dangerous ; and your 
 Lordship must have the greatest guard upon yourself in 
 conferring with him. . . . We will support him if he will 
 agree with the Queen of Hungary; but we cannot enter 
 into any notions of procuring advantages for our allies.' 
 And the hectoring spirit of these instructions reaches its 
 climax in the arrogant refusal which follows to go even so 
 far as to consult beforehand the Power whose co-operation 
 will be tolerated : ' nor does the King want to be taught
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 155 
 
 by them (his alHes) in what way the schemes of France 
 may be best disappointed '.' 
 
 Yet although it might seem as if negotiations begun in 
 such a spirit could not have had much prospect of success, 
 they were probably not quite hopeless even before the 
 course of events rendered Lord Hyndford's arguments 
 irresistible. Maria Theresa seems to have been disposed 
 to cede the whole of Silesia to Frederick if only she could 
 obtain from him satisfactory assurances as to his bearing 
 after the cession. But the distrust of Frederick had gone 
 too deep ; and at Vienna regret was openly expressed to 
 Robinson that in England any credit should be allowed to 
 the King of Prussia for honesty of intentions. But in the 
 midst of the negotiations the battle of Chotusitz (Czaslau) 
 \V2.s fought (May 17, 1742), of which Arneth aptly says that 
 it was ' with perfect justice called a Prussian victory, though 
 it would be going too far to call it an Austrian defeat,' and 
 which would thus seem to have raised the respect of each side 
 for the other. The Preliminaries of Breslau were accordingly 
 concluded, and succeeded by the conclusion of peace at 
 Berlin, which left the French under Belle-Isle to extricate 
 themselves as best they could from Bohemia. Of this peace 
 Frederick the Great calls Carteret the interested promoter ^ ; 
 but if, as I am certainly disposed to think, it may be regarded 
 as the most successful achievement of his administration of 
 foreign affairs, this commendation by no means extends to 
 the attitude subsequently maintained by the British Govern- 
 ment. The treaty of peace had indeed brought about 
 a settlement between Austria and Prussia ; but although the 
 honour of the former had been preserved, she had lost one 
 of the fairest of her provinces. Upon France a bitter 
 
 ' Instructions to Lord Hyndford «« setting forth to the King of 
 Prussia, March 30, 1742, in British Museum Additional MSS., 22,531. 
 ' I list aire de mon temps, ch. vii.
 
 156 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 humiliation had been inflicted, which to Cardinal Fleury 
 was only assuaged by the satisfaction which springs from 
 a fulfilled prediction of misfortune. She was unlikely to 
 forgive the Power which had so actively promoted, and had 
 together with the United Provinces and Russia guaranteed, 
 the Treaty of Berlin. 
 
 But after Carteret had so judiciously counselled Maria 
 Theresa against her own impulses, and had successfully 
 crossed the designs of France, he should have endeavoured 
 in the sequel to prevent the latter Power from finding an 
 opportunity of regaining the vantage-ground of which she had 
 thus been deprived. Maria Theresa, while not prepared to 
 break the compact to which she had assented, was known to 
 be weeping bitter tears for a loss which might still admit of 
 being made good should the violation of engagements pro- 
 ceed from the other side. In a word, every effort ought to 
 have been made by the British Government to avert a re- 
 newal of the alliance between France and Prussia. But the 
 surest way to bring about such a renewal was by strengthen- 
 ing the resources, and increasing the confidence of Austria 
 to such an extent as to excite the apprehensions both of 
 her present and of her recent adversary. Such, however, 
 was precisely the effect of Carteret's action. What was it 
 to Great Britain that the House of Austria should aspire not 
 only to hold its own, but to rise once more to its undis- 
 puted supremacy in Germany, and that while the wound 
 inflicted by the seizure of Silesia remained unhealed, schemes 
 should be laid at Vienna for recovering Alsace and Lorraine 
 for the Empire with the aid of our subsidies and soldiers.? 
 If this was an object legitimately of value to an Elector of 
 the Empire, the pursuit of it was at the same time certain 
 to imperil the security of the Electorate, and to involve a 
 continuous and heavy expenditure. The whole policy was 
 one to whose purpose it was not easy to find an end, and
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA I57 
 
 of whose cost it might prove arduous to reach the bottom. 
 Indeed, Carteret's way of thinking (which reflects itself in 
 his way of writing) incHnes one to suspect that this very 
 grandeur of range commended it to him, just as it was Hke- 
 wise in harmony with the imperialist ideas of Munchhausen, 
 a statesman already at this date much in the confidence of 
 the King, and with George II's own military ambition. 
 
 When in 1743, everything going well with Austria, the 
 army which had in the previous year been massed in Flanders 
 was at the request of our ally marched into the Empire, the 
 question was naturally enough asked : for whose sake was 
 this large and in part illegally engaged force taking the field ? ^ 
 In answer to the clamour which arose that the extraordinary 
 effort made by Great Britain was being utilised solely for 
 Hanoverian interests, Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, certainly 
 the ablest dialectician in the Cabinet, contended that so far 
 from Great Britain being sacrificed to Hanover, Hanover 
 was evidently 'hazarded by her union with Great Britain.' 
 The truth of the general proposition was undeniable, that by 
 the circumstances of the Personal Union Hanover was more 
 likely to be imperilled by the action of her predominant 
 partner than vice versa ; indeed, the observation, which in a 
 general way runs glibly off the pens of Hanoverian historians, 
 applies very forcibly to the later period of the connexion, 
 on which I fear it will be impossible to touch except in 
 
 ' The army numbered 70,000 men, who included, together with the 
 6,000 Hessians in 15ritish pay under Walpole's subsidy-treaty, 16,000 
 Hanoverians. There can be no doubt as to the unlawfulness of their 
 engagement without the consent of Parliament, which was not sitting at 
 the time. The plea of necessity could hardly have been raised at a time 
 when the King of Prussia was declaring that if the British army crossed 
 from Flanders into the Empire he would in turn march u])on the Hano- 
 verian frontier. The defensive treaty (usually called llie First Treaty of 
 Hanover) concluded in November with Prussia was merely a device for 
 keeping her quiet until her protests might be safely ignored.
 
 158 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 tlie briefest possible Avay within the compass of these lectures. 
 The Napoleonic age apart, even in the Seven Years' War, 
 when ' America was conquered in Germany,' Hanover (and 
 Brunswick with her) had to bear a wholly disproportionate 
 share of the sufferings entailed by a struggle waged by Great 
 Britain for the interests of her empire at large. But in the 
 Pragmatic War as such it could not and cannot be contended 
 with candour that Great Britain, though placed under obli- 
 gations by her guarantee, had any real interests of her own at 
 stake. Carteret knew this when he boldly justified it as a war 
 with France, though when her declaration followed he could 
 find no words strong enough to describe her insolence and 
 mendacity \ The proposal of Prussia that the Empire should 
 be left to defend its own inviolability he loftily waved aside, 
 and at the end of February, 1743, the British march began. 
 
 When four months later the Tower guns saluted the 
 great victory of Dettingen, and Handel's strains thanked 
 the God of battles for His grace, some critical spirits hinted 
 that since we had been auxiliaries only, we ought not to be 
 as pleased and as proud as if we had been principals. Had 
 the victory, however, been followed up by the invasion of 
 France which was actually planned, the war would have at 
 once revealed itself in a new character and have justified 
 itself to the nation as an integral part of the struggle for 
 empire with France. As it was, the French soon evacuated 
 Germany, and the British camp became the scene of futile 
 negotiations for settling the affairs of the Empire. Perhaps 
 the most striking episode, but at the same time the least 
 satisfactorily explained in the records of Carteret's direct 
 activity after Dettingen, is the attempt to solve the German 
 question by a compromise wuth the unfortunate Emperor 
 Charles VII. This effort was certainly countenanced by 
 
 ^ See his letter to Robinson, March, 1744, British Museum Addi- 
 tional MS S.., 22,529, p. 305.
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 159 
 
 Carteret in the first instance ; but apparently he afterwards 
 dropped the project without having secured for it a fair 
 attention either in Vienna or, which would have been more 
 immediately to the purpose, in London. The long but very 
 ciear statement of Prince William of Hesse-Cassel, preserved 
 among the Carteret papers in the British Museum ^, cannot 
 I fear be analysed in a few words. Its purpose, however, was 
 to secure to the Emperor a retreat from a hopeless position on 
 the twofold basis of the retention of his Bavarian dominions 
 and — though this was of course not expressed — ^a retention of 
 the Imperial dignity. Obviously, he could not continue to 
 hold the latter unless at least the greater part of his Electorate 
 was restored to him ; and the difficulties of such a concession 
 were in fact slighter than those which must have attended 
 -any alternative arrangement of the kind said to have occurred 
 to Carteret, of establishing him in Naples or in some 
 dominion to be taken from France. The assent in principle 
 which Carteret seems at first to have given to the proposal 
 was accordingly not the less statesmanlike because it was 
 generous. But, contrary to his usual coute que coute habit 
 of political thought, he appears to have abandoned the 
 scheme with the same facility with which he had in the first 
 instance welcomed it, perhaps after satisfying himself at first- 
 hand that it was impossible to look for its acceptance at 
 Vienna. Whether or not he withheld a knowledge of 
 this transaction from the ministry at home, where a change 
 adverse to him was in preparation and his colleague the 
 Duke of Newcastle was against all compromise as to the 
 Imperial title '^, it remained a coup manqu^. Yet though in 
 July, 1743, Henry Pelham became Prime Minister, and 
 
 * Briiish Museum Additional MSS., 22,527, pp. 289 seqq. The 
 Prince acted as Regent for his brother the King of Sweden, whom he 
 afterwards succeeded as Landgrave William VIII. 
 
 ' Coxe's Life of PeUiatn, vol. i. p. 87.
 
 l6o GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 Carteret, who had supported the pretensions of Bath (Pulteney), 
 must have become conscious of the insecurity of his own 
 tenure of power, he now fell back, in accordance with the 
 sentiments of the royal victor of Dettingen, upon an un- 
 compromising supj)ort of Austria. The Treaty of Worms 
 (September), which added Sardinia to the list of Powers 
 subsidised by Great Britain, and indefinitely prolonged the 
 Austrian subsidy \ not only resembled the beginning of 
 a new Grand Alliance, but it included a guarantee of all 
 the territories which the House of Austria possessed or to 
 which it was entitled, thus nullifying the guarantee of the 
 possession of Silesia accorded to Prussia in the Treaty of 
 Berlin. George II and Carteret, whose agreement was now 
 complete, stretched their demands upon the submissiveness of 
 ministry and Parliament to the uttermost limit ; it is a kins- 
 man of Lord Hardwicke, no peevish or inflexible officer of 
 state, who reports that when he as Lord Chancellor refused 
 in Council to attach the Great Seal to the Treaty of Worms, 
 Carteret exclaimed that the King should affix it himself". 
 The letter which Frederick the Great afterwards charged 
 George 11 with having written manu propria, in order to en- 
 courage Maria Theresa to take thought of the actual recovery 
 of Silesia, was said to have been sent at a rather earlier date 
 
 ^ This promise, contained in a supplementary conviction however, 
 was virtually repudiated by the Government at home. 
 
 "^ The letter, mentioned in the Histoire de nion temps, is in a royal 
 rescript to Podewils, dated ' immediately after the signing of the Peace of 
 Breslau' (Droysen, vol. v. part ii. p. 22/\, note). There seems no reason 
 for supposing British influence to have had any concern in the endeavour 
 to force the Diet of the Empire to second Austria's protest against the 
 election and rule of the Emperor Charles VII (the so-called Dictatur- 
 streit) ; it had however the support of Hanover, and I should suspect 
 in this the hand of Miinchhausen. The ominous conclusion of a treaty 
 of alliance between Austria and Saxony, formerly one of the anti- 
 Pragmatic Allies (December, 1743), was expressly attributed to British 
 efforts [ib., p. 203).
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA l6l 
 
 in Carteret's period of office ; but there are other indications 
 that towards the close of that period Great Britain, as the asso- 
 ciate of a Power bent upon revanche, was steadily pursuing 
 a course which could not but necessitate great national efforts 
 and sacrifices. Yet the Austrian cause had ceased to be 
 popular with either Parliament or people, and the determina- 
 tion of the Crown to support it could only endure, so long as 
 a ministry could be found to continue the requisite measures. 
 But at the head of the Government now stood Henry Pelham, 
 a politician who was himself the embodiment of caution, 
 and whose finger was always on the pulse of Parliament. 
 
 For a time the unpopularity of the policy of which Carteret 
 continued to be the agent, and of which he was the only reso- 
 lute upholder, chiefly took the concrete form of opposition to 
 the employment of Hanoverian troops in the British service ; 
 but it soon deepened into a bitter resentment of the entire 
 * Hanoverian ' influence traceable in the policy of the country, 
 or, in other words, of the part played by the King in the con- 
 duct of public affairs. The unpopularity of the dynasty seemed 
 by the spring of 1744 to have become so established a fact 
 that the war party in France, which had now possessed itself 
 of the control of affairs there, thought its opportunity come 
 at last. War was declared by France in March, and during 
 the next few weeks England was threatened with a French 
 invasion. The menace was met with high spirit, and the 
 apprehension soon passed. But the policy of the King and 
 Carteret was to bear further fruit. In May the conclusion 
 of the Union of Frankfort announced that Frederick II of 
 Prussia had once more joined the supporters of the Emperor 
 Charles VII, and in June his alliance with France was con- 
 cluded. In the same month he took possession of East Frisia, 
 so long the object of Hanoverian desires, on the death of 
 its last native prince. In August he gave a still more striking 
 proof of that promptitude which was the most characteristic 
 
 M
 
 l62 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 of all his qualities in action, by marching into Bohemia and 
 thus opening the second Silesian War. 
 
 The earlier events of that war proved unexpectedly favour- 
 able to the cause of Maria Theresa, and the sudden death of 
 the Emperor Charles VII in January, i 745, was an advantage 
 which of course could not have been calculated upon. But 
 before this event happened, the ill-will which had accumulated 
 against King George and Carteret had at last been visited 
 upon the minister's head. His openness of purpose and 
 frankness of speech had become arrogant self-assertion ; 
 ' with the Crown on his side,' he avowed his belief that he 
 could defy the keen wit of Chesterfield, the rushing eloquence 
 of Pitt, and the hesitations of his own colleagues the Pelhams, 
 and force them to leave him — what he openly demanded — 
 a free hand ^ When in former days, during his embassy in 
 Sweden, the settlement agreed upon between himself and the 
 Queen and her consort had been delayed by the estates, for 
 whom the so-called ' period of liberty ' was in those troubled 
 days opening, he had with his habitual vehemence exclaimed 
 against the difficulties inseparable from 'popular' methods 
 of government. The chief of these ' difficulties ' was to form 
 the rock upon which his attempt to remain the King's foreign 
 minister in the teeth of Parliament went to pieces. His 
 conduct of aff"airs had in an unusual degree depended on the 
 money-granting factor in the State ; yet in the House of 
 Commons he was without power or influence. The payment 
 of the Hanoverians in the British service, and the network of 
 subsidy-treaties, of which the most recent with Saxony had 
 been concluded mainly with the view of bringing over a for- 
 merly hostile Power to the Austrian side, were themes which 
 the Commons had a primary right to discuss, and to which 
 they returned with unflagging interest. Thus the question 
 
 ' Stanhope., vol. iii. p. 185, 7iote, from Horace Walpole.
 
 Vj HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 1 63 
 
 whether Carteret — now Earl Granville — should stay in office 
 or sfo, became in the last resort a constitutional one, involving 
 a decision between the personal preferences of the dynasty 
 and the claim of the nation to control the provision for its 
 armaments. As if to emphasise this view of the case, 
 Frederick Prince of Wales for once joined hands with his 
 father in the attempt to maintain Granville, and in urging 
 his removal Orford rendered a last service to the dynasty. 
 Thus, on the eve of the Rebellion that so unexpectedly 
 shook the throne, an English statesman of great ability and 
 high aspirations fell from power, who had done more than 
 any Hanoverian minister before or after him to make his 
 countrymen denounce the Personal Union. For it was owing 
 to this Union that Carteret's master seemed to have become 
 -wholly unable to act or think as a British King. 
 
 Carteret's fall would point a more impressive moral, had it 
 been followed by any speedy change in our system of policy 
 or in the method of carryins: out that upon which we had 
 entered. Nothing of the kind was to be expected either 
 from the Pelhams or from Harrington, who returned to office 
 in Lord Granville's place, and nothing of the kind was dreamt 
 of by the King. Our engagements remained, and even Pitt, 
 who gave a general support to the Government in which no 
 suitable office had been found for him, abstained from insisting 
 on more than that the war should not be carried on till the 
 aspirations of the House of Austria should have been 
 satisfied. Under these circumstances the subsidy system was, 
 after a nominal stoppage of the payment of the Hanoverian 
 and Hessian troops, continued and even extended by the 
 Pelham Government ; and Saxony, together with two Spiritual 
 Electors, enjoyed British pay. The King's mood, moreover, 
 was more difficult than ever, now that none of his English 
 advisers had his full personal confidence, while the Hanoverian 
 influence upon him was at this time remarkably strong. In 
 
 M 2
 
 164 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 1745 he paid a visit to Hanover, against the desire of all who 
 wished him well in England ; while here his personal treatment 
 of his ministers had been such that the Cabinet addressed 
 to him a dutiful remonstrance on the subject, of which he 
 took not the slightest notice ^ Yet on the whole it may be 
 said that the British ministry was beginning to relax the bonds 
 of alliance with Austria without essaying as yet to shake 
 them off, and that they thus acted in conscious disregard of 
 the wishes of the King and his Hanoverian adviser Miinch- 
 hausen. The successes of France and Prussia, and the expe- 
 riences of the insurrection in the north, might have induced 
 even Carteret, had he still been in office, to fall back upon his 
 earlier and more prudent method of seeking to checkmate 
 France by detaching Prussia from her alliance, rather than to 
 keep Prussia true to it by exciting Austria against her. At 
 all events, the Pelham administration was by August, 1745, 
 prepared to enter into the Secret Convention of Hanover 
 (negotiated there by Harrington under the eye of George II 
 himself), which exhibits Great Britain once more in the 
 position of a mediatress, renewing the old stipulations of the 
 treaties of Breslau and Berlin, with the reasonable addition 
 of the promise of the Brandenburg vote in favour of Maria 
 Theresa's consort at the imminent election to the Imperial 
 throne. The events of the year made a policy of moderation 
 imperative : the Duke of Cumberland had very gallantly 
 suffered defeat at Fontenoy (May); not long afterwards his 
 troops were wanted in the Highlands ; and both the United 
 Provinces and Sardinia were yielding to the allurements of 
 peace with profit. Thus Maria Theresa was actually forced 
 into the Peace of Dresden (December) by the refusal of the 
 British Government to continue its subsidies if she declined 
 to come to terms with her Prussian adversary. The alliance 
 
 ^ Life of Hardivicke, vol. iii. pp. 125 and 143.
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 165 
 
 between Austria and Great Britain had therefore left unsatis- 
 fied Maria Theresa's aspirations for the recovery of her lost 
 province. Three further years sufficed to show that it had 
 been equally unable to hasten the success of Great Britain in 
 her struggle with France, of which it had precipitated the 
 outbreak. The reverses suffered by the allies in Flanders 
 after the return thither of the victor of Culloden, were held 
 of greater account than the British victories on the high seas, 
 and in the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (October, 1748), which 
 ended the so-called War of the Austrian Succession, Great 
 Britain consented to relinquish at least one acquisition which 
 the requirements of her Imperial expansion could ill spare, 
 and to adjourn the contest with France on whose final 
 results her future as a world-power depended. But what 
 'made this Peace obnoxious to George II and his Hanoverian 
 councillors was no insight on their part into its imperfections 
 on this head. They disapproved of it because it implied 
 the failure of the policy which they had consistently upheld, 
 and which they could not bring themselves to lay aside. 
 Yet the day of that policy was near to its end. The Peace 
 of Aix-la-Chapelle marks the breakdown, from the British as 
 well as from the Austrian point of view — and from the former 
 quite as conclusively as from the latter — of an alliance 
 dictated primarily by Hanoverian traditions and sympathies, 
 and vigorously upheld by Carteret alone among English 
 polidcians of high mark, in obedience to impulses not dictated 
 by true statesmanship. And it condemns him as severely as 
 if the humiliation had actually been imposed upon him of 
 being one of its signatories. 
 
 In what has gone before, the incidental mention of the 
 name of Munchhausen may have recalled to you how about 
 the time (or a little before it) when George II exchanged the 
 weakened control of Walpole for the acceptable services of 
 Carteret, he began to lean more and more habitually on the
 
 r66 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 counsels of this eminent Hanoverian statesman. The name 
 of Miinchhausen in fact marks this chapter of the history 
 of Hanoverian influence upon British poHcy exercised 
 through the person of the Sovereign, as the names of 
 Bernstorff and Bothmer in a more direct way mark the 
 period covering the larger half of the reign of George I, 
 and as in yet another fashion Miinster's connects itself dis- 
 tinctively with the later years of the reign of George HI and 
 with the Regency. At the same time it is right to point out 
 that the documentary evidence on which alone the actual 
 extent of Miinchhausen's influence in matters of foreign 
 poHcy could be established has not as yet found its way 
 into print ; and probably nothing would be better worth 
 while than a systematic inspection of the ministerial and 
 London Chancery archives at Hanover with a view to 
 ascertaining what they contain on the subject. Baron 
 Gerlach Adolf von Miinchhausen was clearly a statesman of 
 a very different intellectual type from that represented by 
 Bernstortf, while in the breadth and loftiness of their ideals 
 there were some resemblances between him and Miinster. 
 Miinchhausen is most widely remembered for an achieve- 
 ment of which the lasting credit is in a large measure due 
 to him, and to which it would not be possible in these 
 surroundings to refer without a word of cordial recognition. 
 For in truth it is not easy to recall an instance of the 
 foundation of a great modern University — unless it be that 
 of the University of Berlin, with which the fame of William 
 von Humboldt is similarly associated — in which the full 
 significance of the act has been so vividly present to the 
 mind of the virtual founder \ 
 
 Miinchhausen's opportunities of communication with his 
 
 ' An admirable account of Miinchhausen, by F. Frensdoiff, is given 
 in vol. xxii of the Allgerneine Deutsche Biographie, and I have found 
 much illustrative matter concerning the earlier history of Gottingen in
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 167 
 
 Sovereign were doubtless very considerably increased when 
 in 1749 his younger brother Philip Adolf was appointed 
 
 a series of biographical papers entitled Gottinger Professoren (Gotha, 
 1872). 
 
 Miinchhausen, whose family was of old Hanoverian origin (he be- 
 longed to the same line of it as a contemporary namesake whose adven- 
 tures were actually recommended to the British public on the ground of 
 his relationship to the celebrated minister) , was born at Berlin, but entered 
 the Hanoverian service as early as 17 15. It was not, however, till the 
 accession of George II that he became a member of the Privy Council — 
 the governing body, as we have seen, of the Electorate. His labours in this 
 capacity were during his earlier years of office mainly devoted to religious 
 and educational affairs, and thus he naturally came to occupy himself 
 with the idea of the foundation of a University which should be situate 
 within the new Electorate and proper to it. (The joint University of 
 Helmstadt, which necessarily declined in numbers on the foundation of 
 .Gottingen, was abolished by King Jerome in 1810.) The idea had 
 been originally thrown out, although in a rather different form, by 
 Leibniz, and such encouragement as it received in the uncongenial sur- 
 roundings of the Court of George II was probably due to Queen 
 Caroline, the youngest of the princesses who prided themselves on their 
 intellectual indebtedness to the great thinker. It seems to have been 
 broached in Council by Miinchhausen about 1 731, to have been first offici- 
 ally taken up on the King's visit to Hanover in the following year, and to 
 have been carried out between 1734 and 1737, when the new University 
 was formally opened. Gottingen was very far from starting, like the 
 University of Berlin at a later day, equipped in her panoply; indeed 
 Frederick William I of Prussia had with vigilant jealousy threatened 
 with heavy penalties any professor who should allow himself to be 
 tempted away from Halle, and the Saxon princes, Albertine and 
 Ernestine, quickly followed suit on behalf of their Universities of 
 Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Jena. But the resoluteness of Miinchliausen, 
 and the extraordinary insight displayed by him into the requirements of 
 the University from both the highest and the most practical points of 
 view, prevailed over all obstacles, and before the middle of the century 
 Gottingen had unmistakeably reached a stage of its progress when 
 promise was already ripening into fulfilment. The solidity of its 
 administrative system thus combined with the reputation of its teachers, 
 among whom Mosheim, Haller, and Gesner belonged to this early period 
 of its history, to carry it safely through the troubles of the Seven Years' 
 War, after which began a long-continued era of prosperity on which
 
 1 68 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 minister in attendance in London, and thus became head of 
 the German Chancery there. The younger Miinchhausen 
 
 1 must abstain from dwelling. But it may be to the purpose to remind 
 you that the academical history of Gottingeii had from the first reflected 
 the ideas of its founder, and that, apart from other developements which 
 must here be passed by, it had consistently aimed at being a seminary 
 of statesmen and administrators ; for to the consciousness of this pur- 
 pose must be in part attributed the conservative character which the 
 University maintained in the later Pre-Revolutionary days. It had no 
 doubt been hoped that the connexion of Hanover with this country 
 would have the effect of inducing young Englishmen of position in 
 increasing numbers to pursue their studies at Gottingen ; but I cannot 
 perceive that such an effect ensued, at least for a considerable time to 
 come. Yet Chesterfield, who took so very unflattering a view of the 
 benefits to be gained from a sojourn at either of our English Universi- 
 ties, was one of those who lent his countenance to the fashion, which 
 seems to have set in towards the close of George II's reign, of sending 
 young men of family to study international law at Leipzig under Mascov, 
 a former Gottingen professor no longer in his prime. (Cf. Mason's 
 Memoifs of Whitehead, in Whitehead's IVorks, vol. iii. pp. 79-80.) 
 Gottingen only very gradually succeeded in attracting young English- 
 men ; perhaps it did so to a greater extent after several of the sons of 
 George III had attended the University. But I take it that such English 
 students as frequented the professors' lecture-rooms in the days when 
 Coleridge repaired to Gottingen to ' study the Kantian philosophy,' were 
 attracted less by the reputation of cameralists and constitutional his- 
 torians such as Putter, than by the fame of the eminent biologist and 
 physiologist Blumenbach, of the speculative theologian Eichhorn, and 
 perhaps of the great classical philologist Heyne. The former two pro- 
 fessors were attended by Coleridge ; there appear, however, to have been 
 but few of his countrymen studying at Gottingen with him, although 
 the practice of resorting to this place of learning seems not to have been 
 uncommon among young Englishmen, few of whom can have found it 
 as easy as he did to assimilate their habits of life and thought to German 
 ways. (See Dr. Clement Carlyon's .£'a;'/j' Years and Late Rejlections, 
 1856, vol. i. pp. 16 seqq.) On the other hand, all through the earlier 
 part of the reign of George III, Gottingen seems, curiously enough, to 
 have helped to anglicise the Hanoverian nobility and upper classes 
 whose sons so largely frequented the University; the use of English had 
 gained much ground among the professors — in particular, as was natural 
 enough, from an early date among the leading members of the 
 flourishing medical faculty (see the letters from Werlhof to the cele-
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 1 69 
 
 seems to have held office till 1762; and it is not always 
 easy to distinguish between him and his brother, more especi- 
 ally as a thorough agreement in opinions and a perfect mutual 
 confidence is stated to have obtained between them^ The 
 elder brother remained for the most part at Hanover, although 
 he held important temporary posiiions such as that of Hano- 
 verian Ambassador on the occasions of the elections of Charles 
 VH and Francis I to the Imperial throne in 1742 and 1745 
 respectively; nor was it till 1765 that he was formally placed 
 at the head of the Privy Council. His influence upon the 
 Government of George H was consistently exerted in favour 
 as against Prussia, and of Austria for the maintenance of the 
 ancient position of the House of Austria in the Empire. At 
 the same time, though opposed to the general policy of 
 ■Frederick II, and to the process of solution applied by him 
 to the constitutional system of the Empire, IMunchhausen 
 appears to have been actuated by no such motives as were 
 uppermost in the mind of George II — an insatiable appetite 
 for territorial acquisitions, even of the pettiest sort, in 
 augmentation of his Hanoverian patrimony, and a violent 
 jealousy of Prussia. These annexations were constantly 
 occupying the attention of George II, even at seasons of 
 
 brated Haller, printed by Frensdorfif in Zeitschrift des histor. Vcreins 
 fiir Niedcrsachsen, 1891, pp. 103 seqq.) ; and there can be no doubt 
 that the genius loci was highly favourable to influences primarily due to 
 the fact of the Personal Union. 
 
 Miinchhausen died as an octogenarian in 1770, having enjoyed the 
 full confidence of George III, as well as that of his predecessor. 
 
 ' The younger brother must be the Miinchhausen referred to by Lord 
 Waldegrave {Memoirs, p. 29) when describing Cresset, secretary to 
 the Princess of Wales and her principal adviser up to about 1755, as 
 ' uncommonly skilful in the politics of the backstairs, trusted by Lady 
 Yarmouth, Munchausen, and all the German faction,' &c. Horace 
 Walpole, who faithfully reflected the paternal aversion to that 'faction,' 
 does his utmost to throw contempt upon Baron Miinchhausen, and 
 ridicule upon his lady {Letters, vol. ii. p. 197 ; vol. iii. p. 114).
 
 170 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 more or less critical significance for the affairs both of Great 
 Britain and of the Electorate. In 1739 he was quarrelling 
 with Denmark about Steinhorst, a fragment of the Duchy of 
 Lauenburg, which he ultimately by Imperial mediation secured 
 in return for a money payment. In 1731, 1732, 1741, and 
 1753, he contrived to effect additions (none of which were of 
 special importance), either of a permanent or of a transitory 
 sort, to his Electorate. The impulse which urged the King in 
 this direction, and which seems to be an infirmity common 
 to many crowned heads and great landowners, was censured 
 and deplored by Miinchhausen. For the rest, he was a 
 historical conservative in his sentiments and sympathies ; and 
 it is natural that in him these should have taken the political 
 form of a conviction that, whatever mistakes Austria might 
 commit, her action must be less detrimental than that of 
 Prussia to the prospect of preserving the Empire. Thus he 
 persisted in his preference of the cause which was conquered 
 by reason of its intrinsic lack of reality rather than, even in 
 the day of its waning fortunes, because of a dearth of high- 
 minded champions. In Hanoverian politics he was hardly 
 happier than in Imperial; for while he had at heart the 
 security of the Electorate, for whose sake his prince had 
 been so long accused of ignoring British interests, the 
 inevitable had come to pass, even before he had reached 
 the full height of his personal ascendancy, and the union 
 between the two countries had, for the sake of the greater 
 of them, entailed dire sufferings upon the less. 
 
 In so far as the interval between the War of the Austrian 
 Succession and the Seven Years' War is to be regarded as 
 leading up through divers vicissitudes to the epoch of the 
 political supremacy of the elder Pitt, it may also be said to 
 have prepared the downfall of the system of foreign policy 
 dear to King George II and the Hanoverian interest repre- 
 sented by the Miinchhausens. In the violent agitation of
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 171 
 
 the public mind which in the years 1756-7 was followed 
 by a public depression which pictured to itself the downfall 
 of England as a thing assured, the utter unpopularity of the 
 Crown, and the widespread conviction that the King had 
 conceived a deep hatred for his British subjects, counted for 
 much ; so unimaginative a chronicler as Lord Waldegrave ^ 
 compares the situation with that which in 1641 had been 
 followed by the outbreak of the Civil War and the collapse 
 of the English monarchy. More than this. When at the close 
 of this period of distraction Pitt at last took the helm, his 
 appointment may be said to have averted a personal con- 
 tention between the Sovereign and the popular favourite on 
 the broad issue of the supposed undue leaning of the former 
 to the interests of his Electorate, and of the resistance to this 
 leaning, which in truth was as yet the chief foundation of Pitt's 
 popularity. It was with so wonderful a rapidity to acquire 
 titles of a higher kind that one feels little disposed to enquire 
 whether, as something of tinsel had contributed to the glitter 
 of Pitt's earlier anti-Hanoverian speeches, so now there was 
 not something of inconsistency in his maintenance of the 
 subsidy system and the payment of Hanoverian troops. He 
 had not invented these methods ; and the undertakings into 
 which his active genius at once threw itself were too vast 
 and numerous to allow of his now devising others in their 
 place. As for Hanover, to whatever use his ambition might 
 have hitherto put her needs or pretensions, his present task 
 was to make Great Britain's connexion with her serve as 
 best it could the purposes of the mighty struggle through 
 which he had undertaken to carry the nation. 
 
 However much against the wishes of King George II, 
 the second Silesian War had been brought to a close by 
 Great Britain's once more dissociating herself from ulterior 
 
 ' Memoirs, p. 130.
 
 172 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 undertakings on the part of Austria for the recovery of 
 Silesia. In the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the hated guarantee 
 of Silesia to Prussia had been renewed, and in Vienna the 
 question was already very directly raised whether it was 
 worth while to hold fast to the British alliance, which was fast 
 dwindling into a good understanding with the King rather than 
 with his Government. But Kaunitz's revolutionary proposal 
 of an alliance with France was at this time still rejected by 
 the Empress, and seems to have been temporarily abandoned 
 by its author in favour of the policy of a frank renunciation of 
 Silesia, which might have brought Prussia over into the alli- 
 ance of Austria and the Maritime Powers. An excellent device 
 in the interests of the peace of Europe ; but Kaunitz soon 
 found that his mistress would have none of it, and the tradi- 
 tions still cherished by George II and his Hanoverian advisers 
 (who, as might easily be shown, were about 1753 on as ill 
 terms as ever with Frederick II ^) would have placed a serious 
 obstacle in the way of its acceptance by Great Britain. Thus 
 the British Government could only pursue its negotiations 
 in every possible quarter in view of the inevitable necessity 
 of resuming the war with France, of which, as we know, the 
 real issues lay outside the European complications. Other 
 Powers were approached with more or less success ; our 
 engagements with Russia were regulated by a treaty, of which 
 the most important stipulation proved strangely ambiguous ; 
 the United Provinces were pressed to take a more liberal 
 view of their obligations than accorded either with their 
 wishes or with their fears. But above all an understanding 
 was once more sought with Austria, and the negotiations at 
 Vienna reached their height in June, 1755. They were 
 
 ' See the account of the negotiations with the Danish minister 
 Bernstorff (Johann Hartwig Enist) carried on shortly before Newcastle, 
 on the death of his brother, succeeded him at the head of the Govern- 
 ment (Havemann, vol. iii. p. 337).
 
 Vj HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 173 
 
 conducted by Keith under instructions which in part pro- 
 ceeded jointly from Holdernesse as Secretary of State and 
 from Munchhausen — ^the Hanover Miinchhausen, for the 
 King was once more in his electoral capital. Thus, during 
 his last visit there the consequences of an identification of 
 British and Hanoverian policy were once more illustrated 
 with signal force. Austria manifestly — Kaunitz said this in 
 so many words to Keith ^ — desired to consider the proposed 
 British alliance to be directed as much against Prussia as 
 against France. Accordingly, a combination which should 
 seek to unite both these ends was sure to be attempted ; and 
 this was the meaning of the so-called Herrenhausen project 
 (June-July, 1755), elaborated by the Saxon minister Count 
 Fleming with Miinchhausen and his Hanoverian colleague 
 Steinberg, with the approval of King George H. It provided 
 for the signature of a treaty in which, as Elector of Hanover 
 (but of course with British subsidies in his hand), he should 
 agree with Austria and Saxony-Poland for the maintenance 
 of an army for the defence of Hanover, Saxony, and the 
 German dominions of the House of Austria, which with the 
 aid of an expected Russian diversion would enable the 
 Empress to send the desired 30,000 troops for the defence 
 of the Low Countries against France. It was obvious, as 
 Holdernesse explained in a covering letter to Newcastle, 
 that the King's signature to such a treaty would imply 
 a promise of the requisite subsidies being furnished by 
 Great Britain ; it was equally obvious, as Newcastle per- 
 ceived, that the Herrenhausen project made an appeal to 
 Parliament indispensable, and that this appeal would be 
 useless, if unsupported by Pitt as a responsible member of 
 the Cabinet. 
 
 ' See Keith's letter to Newcastle, May 22, 1755, ap. Waddington, 
 Louis XV et k Kcnversement des Alliances, 1754-6 (Paris, 1896), 
 P- '.'.4-
 
 174 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 This was the very moment (July, 1755) when our American 
 quarrels with France, followed by the seizure of French ships, 
 had brought us to the actual brink of war with that Power, 
 and the French Ambassador (the Due de Mircpoix) had 
 taken his departure from London. What could have been 
 unhappier than that at such a time the belief should have 
 been general which was afterwards expressed by Horace 
 Walpole in the words : ' While Britain dared France, the 
 monarch was trembling for his Hanover ^ ' ? Pitt, in the 
 interview which, on behalf of the Cabinet, Lord Hardwicke 
 had requested of him, declined co-operation on the basis of 
 an indefinite extension of the subsidy system, such as must 
 have ensued upon the adoption of the Herrenhausen project, 
 which was accordingly doomed. But even had it been 
 otherwise, and had the general detestation of the subsidy 
 system not stood in the way, the Herrenhausen project — and 
 this is why I have dwelt upon its collapse — would soon have 
 revealed its fatal flaw. The Powers whom it designed to 
 bind together more closely had quite different objects in 
 view. Newcastle laid aside the project without any regret 
 at having to consider the alternative which his master was 
 so unwilling to face — a reconciliation with Prussia ; and by 
 the beginning of August the negotiations with Austria may 
 be said to have come to an end. The wrath of George II 
 descended upon Lord Holdernesse ; and during the re- 
 mainder of this troubled year he fell back upon the system 
 of subsidy-treaties pure and simple, in order to be able to 
 guard the Hanoverian frontier against all attacks, in this 
 sense concluding a fresh agreement with Hesse-Cassel, and 
 carrying on the negotiation with Russia. The agitation in 
 Parliament against this detested system of treaties rose higher 
 than ever : and Newcastle ventured upon one more appeal 
 
 ' Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of Geoige IT vol. ii. pp. 34-5.
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 1 75 
 
 to Pitt, in which the latter, though consenting to support 
 the Hessian treaty in which the King's honour was engaged, 
 refused to go further or identify himself with the system. 
 When the treaties came to be considered in Parliament 
 (December), Pitt's brother-in-law Temple moved in the 
 House of Lords for a censure, declaring that we were become 
 an insurance office to Hanover, and in the Commons Pitt 
 himself condemned them in more dignified, but not less 
 severe terms \ But Newcastle's hand was still on the main- 
 spring, and the Court prevailed. 
 
 The Austrian policy of the Plouse of Hanover, which the 
 Pelham and Newcastle Governments had half-heartedly taken 
 over from Carteret, had broken down ; and Great Britain 
 stood face to face with France, alone and to all appearance 
 dismayed. But this was not all. The negotiations between 
 Great Britain and Austria, of which the Herrenhausen project 
 may be regarded as the final phase, had come to an end 
 quite early in August ; and before that month had closed, 
 the confidential negotiations between Austria and France had 
 begun. Their ultimate issue was, as you know, a revolution 
 in the relations between the chief European Powers so radical 
 as to wear the aspect of a dramatic surprise ; but in truth it 
 was the reverse of unprepared and sudden. Its history, which 
 has been much obscured by partialities difficult in such a 
 connexion to repress, and by the rapid growth of legend in 
 an atmosphere of so much insincerity and concealment, has 
 been recently rewritten with rare clearness by M. Richard 
 Waddington, in a work cited in a previous note; but we 
 cannot concern ourselves with it here, except in so far as the 
 part played by Great Britain in these transactions illustrates 
 the final effort of Hanoverian policy to provide against what 
 
 * For an extremely interesting account of these debates, see Memoirs 
 of the Last Ten Years of George II, vol. ii. pp. 105-38.
 
 176 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [v 
 
 had now become the plain issue of the Personal Union — viz. 
 the danger in which Hanover was involved by it. Probably 
 few Englishmen would nowadays approve of Pitt's disdainful 
 way of treating the risks to which British policy exposed 
 Hanover. The King, he said, would be certain to recover 
 possession of his Electorate when the war was ended ; if 
 necessary let him then ask for an indemnity. 
 
 The Austrian negotiations, then, having failed, what were, 
 during our struggle with France for colonial empire, likely 
 to be our relations with our and Austria's former adversary, 
 Hanover's hated neighbour King Frederick H of Prussia ? 
 As for that prince, though not apt to give way to sentiment 
 in business hours, he had of late thought it advisable to show 
 himself not absolutely indisposed to cultivate friendly rela- 
 tions with his uncle's Government. As early as 1754 he had, 
 with an instinctive perception, for which Carteret as protector 
 of the ' Protestant interest ' would have found a grander name, 
 shown himself willing to co-operate with the British and the 
 Scandinavian Governments in the matter of the religious faith 
 of the Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Cassel, who had become 
 a convert to Rome. In 1755, not long after the arrival of 
 King George at Hanover, he had been prepared to pay a 
 personal visit to his uncle, — a project which even the Hano- 
 verian ministers did their best to promote, but which was 
 defeated by the immoveable discourtesy of their master. Of 
 more significance was the visit to Hanover of his sister the 
 Duchess Philippine Charlotte of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel with 
 her two daughters, the marriage of one of whom to George 
 Prince of Wales was for a time encouraged by his grand- 
 father \ For her husband, Duke Charles, was a prince 
 
 ' The scheme fell through, as may be read in Horace Walpole, 
 owing to the strong resistance offered to it by the Dowager Princess of 
 Wales ; and the Princess Anna Amelia soon afterwards married the Here- 
 ditary Prince Ernest of Saxe- Weimar. She was to become the tutelary
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 177 
 
 of considerable intelligence, and very distinctly contributed 
 to the establishment of friendlier relations between the Prussian 
 and Hanoverian Courts. During her visit King George II 
 spoke to her in a reassuring tone of his intention to prevent 
 any attack upon his Electorate, and of subsidising troops of 
 her husband's for the purpose ; and she apprised Miinch- 
 hausen of this conversation. Upon this hint, it seems that the 
 British statesmen still charged with the conduct of our foreign 
 policy began to familiarise both themselves and the King 
 with the idea of an arrangement with Prussia, as ■&. pis-aller 
 for a satisfactory alliance with Austria ; and Miinchhausen 
 may be supposed to have fallen in with this change of face, 
 because he had the Brunswick marriage scheme more imme- 
 diately in his mind. But manifestly the security of the 
 Electorate was the ultimate purpose which British and 
 Hanoverian statesmanship alike had in view ; and for 
 which, in default of an Austrian alliance, an under- 
 standing with Prussia now seemed indispensable. Thus, 
 covering this ulterior design by the Brunswick marriage- 
 negotiation, Miinchhausen at last ventured on a note which 
 is still extant in Frederick the Great's Correspondence, and 
 which requested the good offices of the Duke and Duchess 
 for obtaining from the King of Prussia an undertaking of 
 neutrality, should Hanover be attacked by a French army. 
 Here, then, we have the germ of an alliance which was to 
 shake the world. The Duke of Brunswick, who could 
 hardly foresee how closely the consequences of his action 
 were to tie the fortunes of his own house to those of Great 
 Britain, leading it from the glory of Minden to the tragedy 
 of Quatrebras, in the end yielded to the personal pressure 
 
 spirit of the dawn of a great age of CJerman literature. It would be 
 idle to speculate as to the influence she might have exercised over the 
 progress of our own, had she been actually united to the future King 
 George III. 
 
 N
 
 178 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 of Holdernesse, and communicated to Berlin (September 2) 
 the British proposal that Prussia would remain neutral in 
 the event of a French attack upon Hanover, and should even 
 endeavour to prevent such an attack. No difficulty, it was 
 added, could exist as to a suitable equivalent, should King 
 Frederick assent. Although Frederick's reply to the Duke 
 of Brunswick was quite vague, while in the accompanying 
 private letter he characteristically declined to commit him- 
 self, and showed a perfect insight into the situation, he at 
 once began to make enquiries in London ; and Dutch and 
 English journals promptly announced that he had agreed 
 to a treaty of neutrality in return for a round sum. As 
 a matter of fact, he was still hesitating. Once more, 
 through the Duke of Brunswick, he apprised the British 
 Government that his treaty of alliance with France would 
 expire early in the coming year ; that he would then be 
 free to act; but that the first proposals could not come 
 from him. At the same time he sent word to Versailles that 
 he desired to see at Potsdam the Due de Nivernais, 
 a highly accomplished statesman to whom he was particu- 
 larly attached, in order to communicate to him certain 
 overtures recently received. While the French Government 
 committed the irrevocable fault of allowing Nivernais to 
 delay his departure for four months, till it was too late, the 
 British risked spoiling its game by playing it too openly. 
 Holdernesse eagerly proposed to settle the matter by sending 
 a confidential envoy to Berlin to bring it to a conclusion 
 under the King's own eyes. Frederick, maintaining the 
 character of a present ally of France, who had shown herself 
 most obliging in the aflfair of East Frisia, replied that if he 
 were to sacrifice his preferences, his hatreds, his personal 
 feelings and passions, it would be indispensable that the 
 interests of Prussia should coincide with those of the Power 
 which made proposals to him. And, by way of emphasis, he
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA 1 79 
 
 added privately that he could not be expected in reason to 
 turn France out of doors, in order to have the satisfaction of 
 preserving to the English this country of Hanover, for which 
 he for his part cared neither the one way nor the other. 
 Notwithstanding this confident tone, he was however very 
 anxious as to the English negotiations with Russia, and the 
 existing treaty between those two Powers. Dissatisfied with 
 the vagueness of the British reply (of November 21), he in- 
 structed Knyphausen at Paris to protest against the malicious 
 insinuations afloat as to his having entered into an engage- 
 ment with Great Britain ; but a few days later he began his 
 negotiations with her in earnest, by entrusting the conduct of 
 them to Abraham Ludwig Michell, the Prussian Secretary 
 of Legation in London. This skilful diplomatist quickly 
 contrived to obtain through Henry Fox, now Secretary of 
 State in the place of Robinson, copies of the Russian treaty 
 with Great Britain, and of the British proposals for an under- 
 standing with Prussia. On finding that a treaty of neutrality 
 would include a renewal of the Silesian guarantee, a removal 
 of apprehensions of Russian intervention, and a fair settle- 
 ment of the difficulty as to the Prussian ships seized during 
 the last war, Frederick perceived that these were the con- 
 ditions which he wanted ; and without further hesitation set 
 about securing them. Nine days after Michell's letter was 
 written, Frederick signified his acceptance (December 7), and 
 certain final difficulties having been removed, and a judicious 
 alteration in the wording adopted ^ the treaty, which is 
 sometimes oddly enough called the Second Treaty of West- 
 minster, w-as signed at Whitehall on January 16, 1756. 
 The two Powers expressed their common desire to maintain 
 
 ' In the neutrality stipulation, the term 'Germany' was substituted 
 for ' Germanic Empire,' so as to exclude the Austrian Netherlands; but 
 the former seems actually to have been the term suggested in Frederick's 
 first letter. 
 
 N 2
 
 l8o GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [V 
 
 peace in Germany ; they agreed to oppose the entrance into 
 or passage through it of any foreign army, and each renewed 
 the guarantee of the possessions of the other. 
 
 The full significance of the Anglo-Prussian neutrality 
 treaty was not contained within its four corners or present 
 to the minds of those who were concerned in bringing it to 
 a conclusion, — not even to the mind of Frederick the Great 
 himself King George II rejoiced; as Horace Walpole says', 
 ' this guarantee of Germany, this thorn drawn out of the side 
 of Hanover, dispelled at once his aversion to his nephew/ 
 The British ministers were troubled by doubts, Newcastle in 
 particular, and these doubts were echoed by Miinchhausen. 
 It was indisputably well that short work should have been 
 made of the preposterous interpretation of the clause in the 
 Anglo-Russian treaty, binding each Power to communicate to 
 the other any negotiation concerning the commo7i enemy, by 
 which term, according to the Russians, the King of Prussia 
 was signified. Above all, it was well that the treaty should 
 have followed with such speed upon the rejection of the 
 French tiliimalum by the British ministry, which made war 
 with France inevitable. Yet it remained surprising that 
 Frederick II, who could not be desirous of throwing down 
 the gauntlet to France, should have ventured to keep her in 
 the dark, at the very time when her special envoy the Due 
 de Nivernais was at last arriving in Berlin. But neither could 
 Frederick know the extent of the risk which he had run by 
 his extraordinary rapidity of action, nor was the British nation 
 aware of the prospect that was opening for its future by a 
 compact which for the first time placed it and the Prussian 
 King side by side. Nor, in fine, could King George and the 
 Hanoverians anticipate what vicissitudes this connexion was 
 to bring upon the Electorate, in whose interest they had 
 
 ' Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II, vol. ii. p. 152.
 
 V] HANOVER, AUSTRIA, AND PRUSSIA l8l 
 
 assented to it, at first with so much reluctance and even now 
 not without misgivings. For none of them had in their hands 
 the true key to the situation — a knowledge of the negotiations 
 which had during the last few months been in progress 
 between Austria and France. Whether but for the conclusion 
 of the Anglo-Prussian agreement these negotiations would 
 have ended as they did — in a compact which, like that of 
 Westminster itself, was not a treaty of offensive alliance, but 
 which was to develope into a league of partition (May, 1757) 
 — may perhaps be open to doubt. We have the positive 
 assertion to the contrary of the Abbd de Bernis, upon whom 
 the chief responsibility on the French side rests. Yet now 
 that these transactions have at last been placed comprehen- 
 sively and lucidly before us, the conclusion has become 
 almost irresistible, that it was the action of Frederick II in 
 agreeing to the British treaty which stung the supine and 
 pacifically disposed Government of Louis XV into taking the 
 first step that made the second inevitable. If this was so. 
 then the anxiety of King George II, and of those who thought 
 with him to safeguard the Hanoverian frontier, was the final 
 cause of the Franco-Austrian agreement, which so largely 
 influenced the course, and determined the character, of the 
 Seven Years' War.
 
 I 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 
 
 THE British ministry had for a season flattered itself 
 that the Treaty of Westminster, upon which it looked 
 with very half-hearted satisfaction as upon an arrangement 
 for the protection of the Hanoverian Electorate — an object 
 with which it was not easy to captivate a Parliament and 
 people dejected as to the condition of their own affairs — 
 meant no more than this. It would, so they were content 
 to suppose, leave the ancient system of alliances unaltered ; 
 Austria and the United Provinces remaining unestranged ; 
 and the Russian alliance, which dated from 1742, being 
 renewed by means of the treaty which Sir Charles Hanbury 
 Williams had brought to pass with more pains than skill. 
 Indeed, Miinchhausen seems to have thought that Fleming's 
 stillborn scheme of an alliance between Austria, Saxony- 
 Poland, and England, which had attracted him so greatly, 
 might still be saved from its ashes, or indeed extended by the 
 inclusion of Prussia, now in so pliable a mood, and that all 
 might yet be well. So blind is the fondness of politicians 
 for proposals which they have made their own, that they 
 seem at times incapable of perceiving such schemes to have 
 been materially altered by a process which to blunter wits 
 seems like turning them inside out. As for the factors in 
 Miinchhausen's revived project, you know how Saxony was, 
 before the year was out, to fare at the hands of the ally he 
 was proposing for her. The new Anglo-Russian treaty.
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 183 
 
 which had been concluded by Great Britain largely in defer- 
 ence to the wishes of Austria, became a dead letter in conse- 
 quence of the Treaty of Westminster ; for Great Britain 
 could not now use it against Prussia, the sole ennemi commiin 
 against whom the Czarina Elizabeth wished her troops to be 
 employed. Hence no troops were forthcoming, and no 
 subsidies were paid ; but you will look in vain among the 
 facetious effusions of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams' muse 
 for any verses on a theme of much satirical promise. 
 
 A more seductive offer, as holding out a prospect of 
 safety on both sides, was that which appears to have been 
 in June, 1756, insinuated through Lady Yarmouth by the 
 Danish minister in London, Count Rantzau, who drew his 
 inspiration from Paris as well as from Vienna. This took 
 -the shape of a scheme of neutrahty based on an agreement 
 with Austria, to whom or to one of whose allies Hameln — 
 situate, as we all know, on the river Weser in the principality 
 of Calenberg — was to be delivered up as a pledge. The 
 plan was very honourably rejected by George 11 before it 
 had come to the knowledge either of the British Cabinet or 
 of the Prussian King. But it seems certain that this clan- 
 destine transaction was encouraged by Kaunitz, besides being 
 apparently known to the French Government ; and, as will be 
 seen, the echoes of it had not quite died out in the following 
 year \ 
 
 I spoke just now of satire ; but something far different 
 from ridicule would be an appropriate e7nwi to a contrast 
 between the events that followed upon the Treaty of West- 
 minster and the intentions wilh which it had been concluded. 
 When Frederick II had accepted it in principle with a rapidity 
 bordering on rashness, his chief motive cannot but have been 
 to place a serious if not insuperable obstacle in the way of 
 
 * As to this scheme, see Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George IT, 
 vol. iii. p. 1 2 and note.
 
 184 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 an eventual Russian attack upon his dominions, such as would 
 have well suited Austria. Yet it was an offensive combina- 
 tion between these two Powers, which after giving him great 
 trouble in the third year of the war, in the fourth (1752) 
 brought him near to despairing of his destiny. The British 
 Government's primary motive in settling the treaty had been 
 the protection of the electoral dominions of the King, whose 
 solicitude for their safety had hitherto so far exceeded that 
 manifested by his Parliament. But even before, in conse- 
 quence of the French descent upon Minorca, war had been 
 actually declared against France, the fear of invasion had led 
 to a proposal (April 29, 1756) for the despatch of the elec- 
 toral troops to England for the defence of these coasts. Pitt 
 opposed the motion in a speech which really struck at the 
 root of the illogical and yet inevitable consequences of the 
 Personal Union which it aimed at utilising. Not only — 
 which was the less evil — was the proposal one which dictated 
 to the Elector how to dispose of his soldiery ; but — and 
 herein lay its moral obliquity — by baring the Electorate of 
 troops for the sake of England, we placed another country in 
 a situation of immediate danger, simply because it happened 
 to be under the rule of our King. The motion was carried 
 by an overwhelming majority, and during the summer the 
 Hanoverians were encamped near Maidstone ^ Then, how- 
 ever, came early in 1757 the real stress of the German war. 
 Pitt, whom the King had blamed for unwillingness to do his 
 business — and as Granville said to Fox, it was known what 
 this business was'^ — brought down a royal message asking 
 
 * Ballantyne, p. 345, from Horace Walpole. 
 
 ^ At the end of 1756 they were sent back with a broad hint that their 
 services would not again be required, in the shape of the recommenda- 
 tion of the scheme of a national militia in the King's speech. George II 
 did not like this proposal, which was thrown out in 1756, but carried in 
 ^757- See Stanhope, vol. iv. p. 86, and cf. Hallam (loth ed.), vol. iii. 
 p. 262.
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 185 
 
 for a grant of £200,000 in defence of the Electorate; and 
 this vote was merely the precursor of an expenditure without 
 precedent or parallel for the same purpose on the part of both 
 King and country. Yet what were the results which ulti- 
 mately remained with the Electorate and the electoral family ? 
 A collapse, on which it is difficult to look back without a 
 sense of shame, involved in its discredit the one member 
 of that family whom either King George or the English people 
 had at any time regarded with pride ; nor had the King him- 
 self been able wholly to cast off his share of responsibility for 
 what had come to pass. And as for the Electorate, it under- 
 went privations and sufferings, such as had not befallen it 
 since the days of the Thirty Years' War. 
 
 After the death of George II, and at a time following 
 — shortly upon the resignation of Pitt, a clever but reckless 
 speaker was put forward in the House of Commons (into 
 which he would appear to have been brought for the purpose), 
 to vilify the statesman who had never been greater than in his 
 fall. On one of these occasions Colonel Barr6, defiant of calls 
 to order, opened his attack by asserting that during the late 
 reign everything was made subservient to Hanoverian coun- 
 sels and interests ; the present King, he added with perhaps 
 too much point, had never looked on a map of Hanover '. 
 No one honestly believed or believes that the blood and 
 treasure expended by Great Britain during the struggle of 
 the Seven Years' War, even in so far as it was expended on 
 German soil, is to be placed to the account of the sorely-tried 
 Electorate. But the animus against Hanover, which survived 
 to the latter days of the war, was still very rife in the earlier, 
 when to the widespread disfavour provoked by the King's 
 known personal sympathies was united a more or less well- 
 founded suspicion of the continued activity of his electoral 
 
 ' Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III {f:^. 1894), 
 vol. i. p. 86,
 
 l86 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 counsellors. It would be an error to suppose that either he 
 or they, with the brothers Miinchhausen prominent among 
 them, had the least intention of making use of the Treaty 
 of Westminster as a first step towards the establishment of 
 a solidarity of interests, or that they contemplated with 
 satisfaction or acquiescence the event of Hanover being 
 without any further safeguard exposed to the chances of a 
 British war. Hence, at the outset of the struggle, a vacillation 
 to which nothing short of events of unprecedented magnitude 
 could have set a term. 
 
 The army which early in 1757 was, with the aid of subsidy- 
 treaties and the grant proposed by Pitt, collected for the 
 defence of the Electorate, contained, in addition to the 
 Hanoverians born, Brunswickers, Hessians, and Gothaers, 
 but no British soldier, with the exception of its commander- 
 in-chief. The Duke of Cumberland arrived in Hanover at 
 the close of April, after in the beginning of the month 
 the French army under Marshal d'Estrees had crossed the 
 Rhine. Westphalia was occupied, and whatever assurances 
 might have been transmitted to Hanover by the Marshal, it 
 was to become more and more manifest that the Electorate 
 was directly threatened. Even now the negotiations as to 
 a Hanoverian neutrality were not at an end, and Count 
 Colloredo, the Austrian ambassador in London, suggested 
 a scheme of treaty which would have opened a transitus 
 innoxius to the Empress and her allies through the greater 
 part of the Electorate. No answer had been given to this 
 proposal on the part of the King-Elector, when on May i 
 the secret treaty of offensive alliance (the so-called Partition 
 Treaty) between France and Austria was signed at Versailles. 
 
 I am obliged to restrict myself to a single word on the 
 significance of the appointment of the Duke of Cumberland, 
 and the nature of the authority which it conferred on him. 
 The Duke of Cumberland was a personage whose public
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 187 
 
 importance remained little diminished, even when the cruelties 
 that had followed upon his victory of Culloden, and for which 
 he must in part be held responsible, had put an end to his 
 widespread popularity. He continued to assert himself as 
 a high military authority, and by the public at large, then 
 still very incurious in such matters, he was readily accepted at 
 his word. For political business he entertained and expressed 
 a lofty contempt ; and though not devoid of shrewdness, 
 he had not allowed himself to be disturbed in his inherited 
 notions by the flow of accumulated wisdom which old Horace 
 Walpole had directed to his special address, concerning the 
 advantages of a thorough co-operation with Prussia. What 
 he liked in public men was frank servility ; and no doubt 
 he was not always left ungratified. To Pitt he had an 
 utter aversion. Frederick II cannot be said to have judged 
 unwisely, when, after one or two other suggestions which had 
 proved impracticable, he expressed a wish that the Duke of 
 Cumberland should be appointed to the command of the 
 electoral army. For it was clearly in Prussia's interest that 
 this command should be in the hands of some personage 
 with authority to overawe the Hanoverian Government, which 
 was still at the last moment endeavouring to impress its wish 
 for neutrality upon the King through the younger Miinch- 
 hausen. In point of fact a measure of authority was 
 accorded to the Duke in Hanover, which is almost ^ sui 
 generis in the history of the Personal Union, and which we 
 shall probably not be wrong in connecting with King George II's 
 long-continued wish (of which some traces appear to exist 
 in this very year 1757) for an ultimate dissolution of that 
 connexion. Before Cumberland left England his parting 
 admonition to his father had urged the dismissal of Pitt. 
 
 ' At least before the appointments of the Duke of Cambridge as 
 Military Governor in 1813, as Governor-General in 18 16, and as 
 Viceroy (with materially enlarged powers) in 1831.
 
 l88 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 As you know, the advice was actually carried out, and Pitt 
 quitted office in April, not resuming it till late in June. More 
 keen-eyed than either sire or son, Frederick II transmitted 
 assurances to the dismissed statesman of his continued regard. 
 He at least hoped to make the Hanoverian army what it 
 ultimately became — an active factor in his plan of operations. 
 
 But the way to a share in the laurels of the Great War lay 
 through the Caudine Forks. The news of Frederick's great 
 victory of Prague (May 6), which first aroused the feeling of 
 enthusiasm for him in England which was afterwards to swell 
 to so vast a volume, enabled the King to censure Colloredo 
 with that contemptuous discourtesy of which, under all cir- 
 cumstances, he was so perfect a master; and with equally 
 characteristic frugality he lost no time in requesting the victor 
 to despatch reinforcements to the Duke of Cumberland. But 
 the very next courier brought the disheartening tidings that 
 the Prussian arms had suffered the great reverse of Kolin 
 (June 1 8), which made the evacuation of Bohemia indis- 
 pensable, and thus brought to a complete collapse the bold 
 offensive movement with which Frederick had opened the war. 
 
 I do not wish to discuss from any point of view but one 
 the circumstances of the catastrophe that followed, and that 
 went further than any other transaction belonging to the 
 history of the Personal Union, and in itself due to the cir- 
 cumstances of that Union, towards leaving a stain upon our 
 national honour. For in a monarchy, whether constitutional 
 or other, the honour of the Sovereign is the honour of 
 the nation ; nor can it in candour be denied that the British 
 ministry was cognisant of the real nature of the action of 
 King George II in the matter of the Convention of Kloster 
 Zeven. The facts of the case are perfectly patent from the 
 Newcastle Papers, and are, with the aid of these, exposed 
 only too clearly by M. Richard Waddington in his new 
 volume. The consciousness of what had actually taken place
 
 Vl] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 189 
 
 was, no doubt, readily thrust aside under the transcendent 
 effect of the great achievements which filled the years next 
 ensuing ; but the truth was not wholly ignored at the time, 
 and now stands forth with the utmost distinctness. 
 
 Cumberland's army was efficiently drilled, and composed 
 of troops accustomed to act together ; but it was little more 
 than half of the French forces in numbers. Indifferently com- 
 manded, therefore, though the French were before the battle, 
 and (as it seems scarcely too much to say) ill commanded 
 though they were after it, one may concede that they could 
 scarcely have been permanently prevented by so much 
 weaker an adversary from making their way into the Elec- 
 torate. But it seems equally fair to assume that it was in 
 Cumberland's power to give them serious trouble, and by 
 averting so rapid and complete an occupation of the Electorate 
 as was actually effected, to respond in some measure to the 
 purpose with which he had been sent forth. The line of 
 the Rhine had never been defended ; and he was probably 
 right in regarding the line of the Weser as untenable. But 
 what can be urged in explanation or in palliation of his 
 actual course ? After (to put it in a few words) collecting 
 his forces on the home side of the Weser at the one end 
 of the Electorate, he gave battle, and then, having lost the 
 day by his own precipitancy in accepting defeat, when 
 victory was within his grasp, he retreated to the other end. 
 His object, of course, was to gain a position whence he 
 could cover Stade, and thus keep open his communications 
 with England ; and he afterwards, no doubt correctly, re- 
 minded the King his father that his original instructions and 
 the ensuing correspondence had been based upon the plan 
 of operations which he actually pursued, and that an eventual 
 retreat upon Magdeburg had never been taken into con- 
 sideration. As a matter of fact, the suggestion by the British 
 Cabinet, inspired by the King of Prussia, of a retreat in this
 
 igo GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 direction was first made just a week after the Convention of 
 Kloster Zeven had been signed. To the plan laid down 
 for him, Cumberland, with characteristic obstinacy, adhered, 
 thereby at first actually bewildering his adversary Richelieu, 
 who could not but think that reinforcements would arrive from 
 England, and then obliging the unwilling French commander 
 to follow in his footsteps. The territory of Hesse-Cassel had 
 been left open to the enemy before the battle of Hastenbeck ; 
 and through it a second French army, in conjunction with the 
 troops of the Empire, could now advance upon Thuringia 
 and Saxony. As for the Hanoverian Electorate, after Has- 
 tenbeck had been fought and lost (July 26), it fell an easy 
 prey to the foe, and on August 10 Richelieu entered the 
 capital ; while the Duke of Brunswick concluded a treaty 
 with the French, who occupied the whole of his dominions, 
 except a corner left to him for residence ; and when on Sep- 
 tember 3 the French had surprised Harburg, the Duke of 
 Cumberland and his army of defence were completely isolated 
 on the strip of territory between Elbe and Oste, with the 
 fortress of Stade, where the Hanoverian Privy Council had 
 taken refuge, in their rear. Five days afterwards the Duke 
 signed the Convention of Kloster Zeven, in which Denmark 
 by Richelieu's request had acted as mediatress, and which, as 
 you know, provided that Cumberland should dismiss his 
 auxiharies, while the Hanoverians should be distributed in 
 cantonments on the right bank of the Elbe, with a garrison 
 at Stade, and the French should remain in occupation of the 
 Electorate at large. 
 
 We need not enter into the question as to the judgment, or 
 the want of judgment, shown by Richelieu in concluding the 
 Convention of Kloster Zeven, which at the time was dis- 
 approved in principle by the Government of Louis XV, and 
 would probably have been visited severely on the head of 
 a commander less in favour at Court, and which was after-
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 191 
 
 wards censured by Napoleon as an act of inexplicable folly. 
 Our concern is rather with Cumberland's acceptance of the 
 agreement, and with the view taken of this step in Hanover 
 and in England. As for Hanover, the Electorate was in the 
 grasp of the enemy; and it seems quite expHcable, that 
 inasmuch as nothing could be so calamitous for the country 
 as a continuance of active hostilities, the news of the con- 
 vention should there have caused a general feeling of relief, 
 the solitary voice raised in deprecation of so sudden a self- 
 immolation being that of the most prominent member of the 
 Government, IMiinchhausen \ In England, on the other 
 hand, where no actual consequences of the agreement could 
 except remotely be in question, it produced extreme indigna- 
 tion ; and the Duke of Cumberland had become so unpopular 
 that there was nothing to interfere with the unanimity with 
 which he was made responsible for the catastrophe. More 
 surprising was the circumstance that the loudest and the 
 harshest condemnation of the Duke of Cumberland's conduct 
 proceeded from the Elector-King, his father. 
 
 The personal aspect of this incident has but a faint interest 
 for a later age. Certain it is that in the public career of the 
 Duke of Cumberland nothing became him so well as the self- 
 restraint which dignified its close. But the final refusal of 
 King George H to ratify the Convention of Kloster Zeven 
 is an incident of great significance, both for the history 
 of the Personal Union and for that of the Great War, in 
 which the two countries connected by it were engaged. 
 For, in a word, it involved a decision on the part of the 
 King to enter into the policy of active co-operation with 
 Prussia, now distinctly adopted by Pitt, and it put an end 
 to the attempt to pursue a Hanoverian programme or 
 
 ' Horace Walpole says that the London Miinchhausen was ' the most 
 indecent ' of all who indulged in personal invectives against the Duke. 
 Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II, vol. iii. p. 60,
 
 192 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 system of action side by side with a British. Unhappily, how- 
 ever, this repudiation was not on the part of George II an 
 act of good faith, and the leading members of the British 
 ministry, though unaware of the extent of his engagements, 
 were not ignorant of the original intentions of which the 
 repudiation implied the disavowal. Very briefly put, the order 
 of events had been something as follows. After Hastenbeck 
 a suggestion had been made in the British Cabinet to 
 despatch, in aid of Cumberland, a force of 9,000 men then 
 n readiness at Chatham, and Richelieu, as already noted, had 
 been apprehensive of such a step being taken ; but, chiefly in 
 deference to Pitt, who thought diat the force might be more 
 eff"ectively employed elsewhere, the notion had been dropped. 
 The King had accordingly continued his efforts for securing 
 either the neutrality of Hanover, or a separate peace between 
 her and France, carrying on negotiations in this sense at 
 Vienna, at Copenhagen, and directly through Miinchhausen 
 with Marshal d'Estrdes, then siill in command of the French 
 invading army. The British Cabinet was quite aware of what 
 was in progress, and Newcastle gave vent to his fears of the 
 impression that would be made upon the King of Prussia by 
 such an abandonment of his alliance. But formally the business 
 was an electoral concern, and even when on August 10 King 
 George communicated to Newcastle a further letter received 
 from his son, announcing that the Hanoverians were in full 
 retreat upon Stade and in a desperate condition, the ministers 
 left the King to decide for himself. His decision was taken 
 on the following day (August 11), when he transmitted to 
 the Duke of Cumberland a series of documents too long 
 to be described here, but culminating, if I may so say, in 
 a letter in which the King gives it as his opinion that nothing 
 remains but to negotiate with the French commander (novv 
 Richelieu) ' a separate peace, or a neutrality, or even a pre- 
 liminary arrangement, as speedily and on as favourable terms
 
 Vl] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 193 
 
 as possible, for the relief of the country and the preservation 
 of the army.' Full powers to the above effect were enclosed 
 to Cumberland under the same date ; and it is to these, 
 which are textually extant, that Pitt referred when he replied 
 to the King's assertion that he had given his son no orders to 
 conclude: ' But full powers, sir, — very full powers \' Abetter 
 witness still, however, on this head has been summoned 
 by M. Waddington. In the British Museum^ may be seen 
 the original draft by Lord Holdernesse, disapproving of the 
 despatch sent to the Duke on receipt of the untoward news. 
 In this draft the King has with his own hand crossed out 
 certain words charging the Duke with having signed the 
 convention ' upon conditions which His Majesty has been 
 pleased to declare to me your Royal Highness was not 
 authorised to accept,' and has added the marginal comment : 
 ' He had a full power, and this part must be alter'd.' New- 
 casde's hand has accordingly made the necessary alteration ; 
 so that the letter goes on at once to express the King's surprise 
 that the convention should have been carried into execudon 
 by the Duke without waiting for the royal ratification. 
 
 At the time these instructions were not communicated by 
 the King to his ministers ; and though of the general drift 
 of his intentions they were fully aware, both from his own 
 hints, and through Lady Yarmouth and the London Miinch- 
 hausen, they may, I think, be acquitted of any knowledge 
 before the fact as to the powers given by the King to the Duke. 
 Of Frederick's views with regard to a treaty of neutrality or 
 a separate peace they were soon made cognisant ; but before 
 they were informed of these they induced the King to suggest 
 
 ^ Horace Walpole, in the passage cited in the last note. The same 
 authority asserts that Geoigc II told the .Spanish Ambassador that he had 
 written to his son, positively commanding him to fight ; but that the 
 letter, though written, was never sent. 
 
 ^ Additional MSS., 32,874, p. 163. 
 
 O
 
 194 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 to Cumberland a retreat upon Magdeburg, — the Kloster Zeven 
 Convention having, as I have said, been aheady signed. 
 
 It is therefore clear, both that the British ministry did 
 nothing to stop or modify the King's action, and that this 
 action was such as to make the King responsible for Cum- 
 berland's signature of the convention. If, notwithstanding, 
 his wrath blazed up against his unlucky son from the moment 
 of the arrival of the news, we cannot in fairness attribute this 
 result merely to the vacillation not unnatural in a passionate 
 prince of seventy-five years of age. The convention, which 
 left nearly the whole of the Electorate in the hands of the 
 enemy, had certainly, as M.Waddington points out, ' relieved ' 
 it after a fashion which could scarcely have been contemplated 
 by the Elector. Such, however, as the convention was, how 
 could it now be dealt with, in view of the authorisation con- 
 veyed in the King's own instructions, the remonstrances of the 
 King of Prussia, and the indignation of the British people .? 
 
 To the ministry, the exigencies of the situation seemed 
 to be adequately met by a declaration affirming that the 
 Government had had no share in the convention, and that 
 it would in no wise affect the action of Great Britain. But 
 they can hardly be said to have by this simple expedient 
 succeeded in dissociating themselves from the antecedents of 
 the transaction. For the moment discouragement prevailed, 
 but soon the arrival of better news from Germany exercised 
 its effect, and if the King should resolve to repudiate the 
 convention, he would be sure of being met halfway by his 
 British ministers, among whom, as a matter of course, Pitt 
 took the lead in advocating a forward policy. The King's 
 difficulty as to repudiation was twofold. In the first place, 
 a pretext must be found ; but this, of course, might be 
 managed. For while there could be no question of a modi- 
 fication of the agreement going so far as to provide for 
 the evacuation by the French of the whole of the Electorate,
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN I95 
 
 or of the greater part of it, the convention had been hastily 
 and carelessly drawn up, and advantage might be taken of 
 some oversight or omission. But if, as was supposed, the 
 dislocation of Cumberland's army had already begun, a de- 
 nunciation of the convention would have placed the scattered 
 troops at the mercy of the enemy. By a stroke of good luck 
 it proved that a difficulty about disarming the Hessians 
 before their return home had delayed the dispersion of 
 Cumberland's army, and that this hitch could be made a 
 pretext for either breaking off the entire agreement or at 
 least delaying its execution. By the time of Cumberland's 
 return to England, the King was clearly intent upon repudia- 
 tion. But it was resolved this time to avoid precipitancy ; for 
 there might any day arrive the news of a Prussian victory, 
 when, if the convention had not yet been openly denounced, 
 an excellent opportunity would be afforded for an unexpected 
 attack upon the French army now occupying the Electorate. 
 The British ministry was encouraged by its knowledge 
 of these speculations to go a step further, and at a meeting of 
 a committee of the Cabinet held early in October, at which 
 the London Miinchhausen was present, Pitt drew up a resolu- 
 tion which, while continuing to deprecate any interference 
 with the King's electoral possessions, expressed the opinion 
 of the British ministers that in the event of the repudiation of 
 the convention the electoral army should be taken into 
 British pay. Although, even after this, the King seems to 
 have thought it well not absolutely to drop all proposals for 
 negotiating a satisfactory separate understanding between 
 the Electorate and France, his resolution was fast ripening 
 in a contrary direction. He was untouched by the continued 
 protests of his Hanoverian Privy Council against a proceed- 
 ing which would expose the Electorate to the vengeance of 
 the French forces ; but he appears to have been unable to 
 suppress a fear as to what might be the consequences of such 
 
 2
 
 196 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [vi 
 
 a step if the King of Prussia should be found to have treated on 
 his own account with the French, or if — worse still — he should 
 be defeated by them in battle. Accordingly, as a last resort, 
 he commissioned the London Miinchhausen to undertake a 
 winter's journey to Stade, in order to report on the situation. 
 But its issue was to be decided for him neither by the fears 
 of his Hanoverian Privy Council for the fate of the Electorate, 
 nor by the lofty disregard of Pitt and his colleagues for so 
 secondary a consideration. On November 5 Frederick the 
 Great gained the victory of Rossbach, which raised popular 
 enthusiasm in England on behalf of our ally to its full height, 
 and opened to Hanover a prospect of speedy liberation from 
 the presence of the foe. The Convention of Kloster Zeven was 
 no longer worth the paper on which the agreement signed 
 by a British prince, with full powers from his Sovereign, had 
 been written ; in his place his kinsman Prince Ferdinand of 
 Brunswick, one of King Frederick's most trusted generals, 
 was appointed commander of the electoral army; by the 
 end of March, 1758, the Electorate was entirely freed from 
 the French occupation ; and in the following month Pitt, who 
 earlier in the year had without a dissentient voice obtained 
 the grant of an enormous Prussian subsidy, carried a further 
 vote for taking the electoral army into British pay. Finally, 
 Prince Ferdinand's victory at Crefeld (June) induced Pitt to { 
 
 take the step to which he had refused his assent before Has- 
 tenbeck, and a body of British troops (8,000) was despatched 
 to the Prince's aid. Thus, at an advanced stage of the war, 
 comradeship in arms at last effectually linked together those 
 British and Hanoverian interests which at the commence- 
 ment of the struggle had been so carefully and persistently 
 kept asunder. The military genius of Prince Ferdinand, 
 which succeeded in assimilating the heterogeneous elements 
 of which his army was composed, was able simultaneously 
 to add to the great achievements of an alliance of vital
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 197 
 
 importance for the future of Great Britain and her Empire, 
 and to protect the Electorate. After he had liberated the 
 whole of the Hanoverian and Brunswick dominions, together 
 with the Hessian, seized by the French as the first prize of 
 Cumberland's dilatory strategy, the greater part of the 
 Electorate was, during the later years of the war, spared the 
 burden and suffering of further invasion. Only the southern- 
 most portions of its territories, including the towns of IMiinden 
 and Gottingen, were from time to time in French hands; in 
 the latter the professors, quite in the spirit of the eighteenth 
 century, regularly carried on their courses before a diminished 
 auditory. In 1761 a second French invasion was planned 
 with the design of reconquering the whole of the Hanover- 
 Brunswick lands, but the action of the combined French 
 armies of Soubise and Broglie was crippled by Prince 
 Ferdinand's victory of Vellinghausen (July, 1761); and in the 
 following year a series of brilliant operations crowned the 
 success of his plan of defence. Yet the sacrifices entailed 
 upon the Electorate, and upon the adjoining Duchy of 
 Brunswick, had been extremely heavy, and their sufferings 
 during the months of entire occupation after Hastenbeck 
 intense ; though Richelieu's soldiery probably did him an 
 injustice in claiming him as an associate in the license which 
 he tolerated, and popular rumour seems to have erred in 
 supposing the splendours of his Parisian hotel to have been 
 due to the spoils of his northern campaign. 
 
 That the few years of a war carried on conjointly, and of 
 sacrifices made in different ways for what had become a 
 common purpose, had not sufficed to impart a permanent 
 consistency to the tie uniting Great Britain and the German 
 dominions of her Sovereign, was once more made manifest 
 by the j)acification that ended the struggle. When, under cir- 
 cumstances and influences which cannot here be considered, 
 peace with France was concluded by Great Britain under
 
 198 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [vi 
 
 her new King, on her own account and without consideration 
 for her Prussian ally, what thought was taken by her of her 
 Hanoverian dependency — for such the Electorate had, for 
 the purposes of the war, practically become ? In the Pre- 
 liminaries a clause had originally been proposed, stipulating 
 for the restitution of German territories (viz. Hanover, Bruns- 
 wick, and Plesse-Cassel) in the condition in which the first 
 French invasion had found them. But this clause was sub- 
 sequently withdrawn, and another substituted requiring only 
 as speedy as possible an evacuation of these territories. 
 Thus it was previously to the definitive signature of the 
 Treaty of Peace that the British troops in the army com- 
 manded by Prince Ferdinand took their departure for Holland; 
 and before the close of the year 1762 he resigned his 
 command \ The impression left by the Peace of Paris upon 
 the Power who had been our ally during four years of 
 unparalleled eventfulness, but whose interests it had now 
 suited the British Government entirely to ignore, was not 
 likely to be transitory ; and to Hanover, as a matter of course, 
 the effects of this impression were at a later date, and in 
 more than one passage of the later history of the Personal 
 Union, to become of very great moment indeed. 
 
 In lieu of the brief oudine which I had proposed to give 
 of the relations between Hanover and Great Britain during 
 the latter half of that history, from the close of the Seven 
 Years' War onwards, I must, however, content myself with 
 a few detached references, and cannot try to cover even that 
 part of the ground on whose significance for the history of 
 British as well as Hanoverian policy I just now touched. 
 These references may, however, serve to show how much 
 there is to invite enquiry in this portion also of a theme 
 which I could not in the nature of the case hope to exhaust 
 on the present occasion. 
 
 * Heinemann, vol. iii. p. 285.
 
 Vl] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 199 
 
 During the earlier years of the long reign of George III 
 his Electorate was an object of comparatively little interest to 
 British politicians, although it was not overlooked by them so 
 entirely as might be supposed by students absorbed in the great 
 colonial and maritime issues of this period of our history. In 
 Hanover, the continuous connexion with Great Britain was not 
 merely an incidental source of a harmless kind of pride which 
 might without offence be classed as provincial patriotism, and 
 from which even the serene academic atmosphere of Gottingen 
 derived a pleasant accession of self-consciousness, but it was 
 also productive of certain negative consequences of more solid 
 importance. In the absence of the Sovereign, affairs were 
 conducted by the Privy Council, composed exclusively of 
 members of the higher native nobility. Their methods of 
 government, however slow in rate of motion, were in perfect 
 harmony with the eminently conservative ways of thought and 
 life of the Lower-Saxon population ; the taxes were not 
 burdensome, and were increased neither by the residence of a 
 Court nor by the pressure of an officiously busy foreign policy. 
 
 On the other hand, King George III, while undoubtedly 
 interested in the general prosperity of his German dominions, 
 was not by education or habits of mind careful to distinguish 
 between British and Hanoverian political purposes ; it was 
 simpler, when they came into contact, to let the former include 
 the latter. The elder Miinchhausen, who survived to 1770, 
 in his last years largely confined his special attention to those 
 educational matters which were perhaps nearest to his heart ; 
 and neither he nor his successor Christian von Behr can have 
 desired that Hanover should play a prominent part in the 
 politics of the Empire. After Great Britain's abandonment 
 of Prussia in the Peace of Paris, it was impossible that the 
 relations between the two Powers should be cordial ;. and it 
 must be allowed that in the policy of the great King during 
 the later years of his reign there was little to commend it to
 
 200 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 British interests or sympathies. In the War of the Bavarian 
 Succession (1778-9), carried on at a time when Great Britain 
 was at the height of her struggle against her American 
 Colonies, whose side France and Spain in these years suc- 
 cessively joined, Hanover remained neutral, inclining rather 
 to the Austrian side. In the important transactions, however, 
 connected with the last achievement of Frederick the 
 Great, the establishment of the Furs/enl/und [I'jS^), which, 
 while checkmating Joseph II's design of exchanging the 
 Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, formed an unmistakeable 
 step towards the disintegration of the old Empire, Hano- 
 verian diplomacy co-operated with Prussian, and was sup- 
 ported by British statesmanship in the person of Sir James 
 Harris (afterwards Earl of Malmesbury^). The motive of his 
 action was beyond doubt a desire to establish intimate rela- 
 tions between Prussia and Great Britain, who was left in 
 isolation even after she had made peace with her many 
 adversaries. Thus, curiously enough, British interests were 
 once more paramount in determining the accession of 
 Hanover to a policy which could not otherwise than detri- 
 mentally affect the cohesion of the Empire, the liberty of 
 whose princes it proposed to safeguard. The disloyalty 
 towards that Empire of the policy of Joseph II avenged itself 
 indirectly as well as directly upon the House of Austria, whose 
 
 * A very active part was played in these transactions by Hardenberg, 
 who, as mentioned above, missed only by accident being appointed 
 Hanoverian minister in London, and thus lost any opportunity of inter, 
 vening directly — who can say to what purposes ?— in the unfortunate 
 complications that followed on the Peace of Bale. As minister of the 
 Duke of Brunswick, he was active in furthering the inclusion of both 
 Brunswick and Hanover in the Furstenbund \ and it is noteworthy to 
 find in co-operation with him a British Prince, the Duke of York, who as 
 Bishop of Osnabriick resided for some years at Hanover, while three of 
 his brothers (the Dukes of Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge) studied 
 at Gottingen.
 
 VlJ KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 20I 
 
 interests he had so logically at heart ; and by a remarkable 
 chain of consequences the House of Hanover, which even 
 the course of the Seven Years' War had not altogether 
 alienated from its traditional sympathies, actively contributed 
 to advance this stage of the dissolving process. Indeed, 
 the Hanoverian minister Beulwitz, whom Ranke ^ states to 
 have been previously active as Hanoverian envoy at Ratisbon, 
 and whom I assume to have been the Privy Councillor of 
 that name appointed in 1783, was the draughtsman of the 
 instrument of the Furslenbund, which under his hand assumed 
 the character of a vindication of State rights against the 
 encroachments of a would-be centralising authority. 
 
 After the death of the great King, the British desire for 
 a friendly understanding with Prussia was met halfway from 
 Berlin, so long as the Friderician traditions were maintained 
 there by Hertzberg. Indeed, under Frederick William II 
 this good understanding progressed as far as a new Triple 
 Alliance between Great Britain, Prussia, and the repentant 
 Provinces ; and wider schemes were entertained, with the aid 
 of which the gauntlet might once more have been thrown 
 down to a Russo-Austrian Alliance. But the younger Pitt 
 shrank from these proposals, which involved the separation 
 from the nexus of the Austrian dominions of an independent 
 Belgium, completing the arch of a great Maritime Alliance 
 of which Hanover would, so to speak, have been the 
 keystone. Isolated in her turn, Prussia now definitively 
 exchanged the friendship of Great Britain for that of 
 Austria; with whom at Reichenbach (1790) she entered 
 into an understanding concerning Poland and against 
 Revolutionary France. A new era begins in the history 
 of Europe. 
 
 The Coalition fell to pieces in 1795, when, in the I'eace of 
 
 ' In Die deutschen Mdchte mid dcr Furslenbund, one of the most 
 instructive, I venture to lliiuk, of the great historian's minor works.
 
 202 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [vi 
 
 Bale, Prussia sacrificed the left bank of the Rhine, but was in 
 one secret article promised compensation elsewhere, while 
 another imposed neutrality upon the North German terri- 
 tories beyond a certain line of demarcation. These territories 
 included Hanover, and Prussia undertook, in the event of 
 Hanover refusing to accept this neutrality, to occupy the 
 Electorate as a pledge. With these arrangements begins 
 that long and lamentable episode in the history of the Per- 
 sonal Union which still awaits the pen of an unbiassed 
 historian. In the present connexion it must suffice to affirm 
 that during the whole of this period Hanover was helpless in 
 the hands whether of neighbours or of strangers, and that 
 Great Britain was impotent to protect her against either. 
 
 The first Prussian occupation of the Electorate (March, 
 1801) had for its pretext certain oflfences — whether actual 
 or fictitious is of little consequence — on the part of Great 
 Britain against the Armed Neutrality of the North. It was 
 really due in part to the direct suggestion of France, in part 
 to the fear of Prussia, that she might be anticipated by 
 Russia — though it was continued even after the policy of 
 Russia had been reversed by the death of Paul I — partly, 
 however, and chiefly, to the desire of Prussia to make sure of 
 the territorial compensation which had remained unsettled at 
 Lundville. It lasted for about seven months ; it cost the 
 country more than a million of dollars ; it proved of no 
 advantage to the occupying Power ; and it sowed in the 
 Hanoverian population a distrust of that Power which 
 endured for generations. 
 
 The first Prussian occupation had come to an end a few 
 weeks after the preliminaries of peace had been signed 
 between Great Britain and France in October, 1801. When 
 in May, 1803, war broke out again between those two Powers, 
 the doom of Hanover was sealed, and although the calami- 
 ties which ensued were shared by her with the greater part
 
 Vl] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 203 
 
 of Germany at large, the circumstances of the Personal Union 
 aggravated her sufferings, while throwing upon Great Britain 
 a responsibility which, with all her resources and all the 
 strength of will that left her victorious at the last, she was 
 unable to meet. 
 
 No incident in this period of humiliation furnishes a more 
 striking proof of this inability than the catastrophe with which 
 the French occupation of the Electorate in the years 1803-5 
 opened. Indeed, had a narrative of these events been possible 
 on the present occasion, it would have formed a sequel — 
 strangely close in some respects, though fortunately not in 
 all — to the story of Kloster Zeven \ In the spring of 1803 
 it was still uncertain whether peace would after all be 
 preserved between France and Great Britain ; but no doubt 
 whatever remained that, should this not be the case, France 
 would fall upon Hanover. The Hanoverian Government 
 had been informed by King George that an application to 
 Prussia for assistance seemed in the first instance desirable, 
 but that if the Privy Council preferred not to act on this 
 suggestion, it would be advisable to draw away the Hano- 
 verian army to Stade (the route taken by the Duke of 
 Cumberland after Hastenbeck) and to ship it thence to 
 England. The Hanoverian Government, for reasons which 
 it is impossible but to approve, declined to adopt the 
 former alternative. It has been severely blamed for not 
 having responded to the second suggestion, and thus added 
 15,000 — or rather perhaps 30,000 — men to the military 
 force at the disposal of the British Crown, while leaving 
 Bonaparte to inflict such reprisals as he chose upon the 
 
 ' The most accessible English account of the events briefly noticed in 
 the text is to be found in N. L. Beamish's History of the King's German 
 Legion (,1832) ; the Hanoverian authorities, including the Field-Marshal's 
 own Apologies, are cited in the article on Wallmoden in vol. xl. of 
 the Allgemeine Deutsche Bio^raphie.
 
 204 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [vi 
 
 population of the Electorate. The blame which the Hano- 
 verian Privy Council really deserves is neither for com- 
 mission nor for omission, but for a hopelessly fatal dilatori- 
 ness. Field-Marshal Wallmoden, who was in command of 
 the Hanoverian troops, may technically not have rendered 
 himself amenable in the same measure to the same charge ; 
 as a matter of fact, however, his irresolution materially con- 
 tributed to the final result. Thus, the Sovereign sent no 
 orders ; the Commander-in-Chief declined to take the respon- 
 sibility of providing for the defence of the country ; and the 
 population was divided between apprehensions of invasion, 
 and the fear of a military levy which would entail more certain 
 if less extended hardships. While the French were already 
 massing their regiments on the Dutch frontier under the title 
 of rar??i/e d'Hanovre, the Hanoverian Privy Council had only 
 reached the point of directing that the numbers of the army 
 should be increased and a camp of instruction set up. From 
 London Wallmoden was apprised that he and the Government 
 must act according to circumstances — repulse the enemy, 
 defend the country, secure a favourable position for the army, 
 embark it, capitulate. Even then, had the weakness and bad 
 equipment of the French force been known to the Hano- 
 verians, the most humiliating of these several courses might 
 have been avoided. But the soldiery were disheartened, all trust 
 in either Government or Commander was at an end, and when 
 the French army actually advanced upon the Weser, and 
 General Mortier announced the First Consul's demand that 
 the whole of the Hanoverian troops should withdraw beyond 
 the Elbe and lay down their arms, this demand was transmitted 
 to the Privy Council and accepted by it. The Suhlingen 
 capitulation having been signed, the march — a series of hard- 
 ships and humiliations — commenced. The French were on 
 the heels of the bewildered troops, and it was with difficulty 
 that they managed to cross the Elbe. On the further side of
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 205 
 
 the river the tidings reached Walhnoden that the First Consul 
 had refused to approve of the capitulation, until (he was not 
 likely to have forgotten Kloster Zeven) he should have been 
 informed of its ratification by King George III. When the 
 King's answer arrived, it insisted with incontrovertible logic 
 upon the principle that. — to quote Lord Hawkesbury's words — 
 he ought not to be held liable in one country for a line of 
 conduct which he might have felt it his duty to adopt in the 
 other. He therefore contented himself with appealing to 
 the Empire in the matter of the violation of his electoral 
 dominions ; but, in order no doubt to save the unhappy 
 army from further complications, he undertook in the mean- 
 time to do nothing in contravention of the capitulation of 
 Suhlingen. In accordance with its formal terms rather than 
 its obvious intention, and in deference to the First Consul's 
 manifest wish to see the Electorate as a conquered country 
 at his feet, King George's answer was treated as a refusal 
 to ratify. Wallmoden, who was by no means wanting in 
 personal courage — although he had no Guelph blood in his 
 veins, he was closely connected with the electoral family — 
 would even now have risked a conflict in arms. But a 
 mutiny broke out among his troops, which he was unable to 
 suppress, and in the end he was forced to conclude a second 
 convention (the so-called Elbe Convention), which was a copy 
 of that of Suhlingen. The Hanoverian army was hereupon 
 disbanded. It would be short-sighted to blame the British 
 Government for the radically false conditions of a Union 
 which was no union, and which it could only be to the dis- 
 advantage of both partners to attempt to treat as if it had 
 been such, but of which an enemy like Bonaparte was certain 
 to make the most. And it was to their credit that they did 
 their best to temper the cruel absurdity of a situation which 
 they had not themselves created. But the dishonour of the 
 double capitulation remained, and neither Great Britain nor
 
 206 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 Hanover escaped their respective shares of it. It is distasteful 
 to be obliged to add that the unsoundness of the basis of the 
 Personal Union made itself perceptible even in the arrange- 
 ments for the honourable bond which after the capitulation 
 was established between the British and the Hanoverian 
 armies, and of which the remembrance will never be eflfaced 
 from the minds of patriotic Englishmen. The history of 
 the German Legion fills many honourable, and some glorious 
 pages, in the annals of the British army ; and one would 
 willingly allow the high deserts of this association to cover 
 a dubious passage in the record of its beginnings. The 
 Convention of Suhlingen had been acted upon so precipi- 
 tately that no time had been left to place on their parole the 
 great body of the troops whom it subjected to the condition 
 of not bearing arms against France in the course of a war 
 actually renewed only a fortnight before ; and the second or 
 Elbe Convention was never formally made known to the 
 soldiers, of whom many had already taken their departure 
 from the army. The King of Great Britain, having never 
 accepted the second convention, may be held to have acted 
 within his rights in declaring, as he did in the following 
 month (July), that the Hanoverian troops were free from any 
 obligation to observe it, and in issuing letters of service for 
 the raising of a foreign corps primarily designed as an in- 
 ducement to the disbanded Hanoverians to enlist as British 
 soldiers. A free passage through Holstein granted by the 
 Danish Government greatly facilitated a response to these 
 invitations, and in October was formed the King's German 
 Regiment, in the first instance under the command of Major 
 von Hiniiber — at times there is something in a name. Such 
 was the origin of the distinguished corps, which under its 
 subsequent designation of the German Legion, on many 
 a hard-fought field of the Peninsula, in other varied service, 
 and finally at Quatrebras and Waterloo, intertwined the laurels
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 207 
 
 gained by its gallant combatants with those of their British 
 comrades in arms, and will with them remain unforgotten. 
 
 I would gladly break off on this note, but historical veracity 
 demands a different kind of conclusion, Hanover, as Hausser 
 reminds us in one of those outbursts of generous indignation 
 which animate the masterpiece of this truly patriotic his- 
 torian \ was the German territory which first experienced 
 the iron rule of the conqueror, destined to lie so heavy and 
 so long — as it seemed even to that sorely-tried and patient 
 age — upon the greater part of Germany. This infliction, 
 although directly attributable to the pusillanimity of the 
 native authority, which like many another oligarchy under 
 the strain of peril had proved incapable of the impetus often 
 leading to unexpected success, had been essentially due to 
 -Hanover's connexion with the great Maritime Power. 
 
 Neither the right nor the left arm of that Power, although 
 stretching across two hemispheres, was of avail to defend the 
 involuntary partner of her destinies, upon whose shores her 
 own looked across the German Ocean. During the French 
 occupation which ensued, the Hanoverian Privy Council split 
 into two sections, — the one continuing as a sort of administra- 
 tion in parlibus at Schwerin, the other remaining mcog?iito at 
 Hanover, and there carrying on a sort of secret control of 
 the Government in conjunction with the ministers beyond the 
 Elbe. In all this there was so much of mere playing at 
 government that one can hardly wonder at the indifference 
 felt in London as to consulting either Schwerin or Hanover, 
 or at the orders finally sent to the electoral representatives 
 and agents to report directly to the London Chancery. The 
 appointment of Miinster in 1805 practically put an end to the 
 melancholy endeavours at galvanising an extinct authority. 
 Meanwhile, in the Electorate, the French seemed at first 
 
 ' Deutsche Geschichte vom ToJe J-'ricdrichs des Grossen (edn. 1862), 
 vol. i. p. 464.
 
 2o8 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 single-mindedly intent upon extracting and extorting as much 
 as they could from the population, repeating on a more ex- 
 tensive scale, and with a slighter admixture of the amenities 
 of which even war admits, the oppressive proceedings under 
 which the country had suffered in the days of the Seven 
 Years' War. The invading army, besides being quartered on 
 the inhabitants, was paid out of their taxes ; its cavalry was 
 remounted, and its general equipment renewed. Thus families, 
 municipalities, and the State were alike plunged into debt ; 
 and the calculation has been made that during the twenty-six 
 months of the French occupation in question, it cost at least 
 as many millions of dollars to the Electorate, whose ordinary 
 revenues were reckoned per annum at less than one-fifth of 
 this total. In reply to deputations, Bonaparte expressed his 
 wish that the French name should be beloved among the 
 Hanoverians, and ordered a certain reduction in the army 
 of occupation; but it was not till June, 1804, that the 
 treatment of the unlucky country was mitigated by Mortier's 
 successor Bernadotte. ' 
 
 In 1805, when the Third Coalition set on foot by Pitt had 
 been called into life, and Napoleon, having abandoned his 
 project of invading England, turned against Austria, the 
 armies of the French Empire were set in motion towards 
 the Rhine ; and among them that of Hanover under Berna- 
 dotte quitted the Electorate. It was at once occupied by 
 Russians, Swedes, and the German Legion of the King of 
 Great Britain, of which many officers and soldiers were 
 thus unexpectedly brought back for the moment to their 
 native land. For a short space of time — something under 
 two months — the authority of George III was again estab- 
 lished in the Electorate, the control of military affairs being 
 by proclamation vested in the Duke of Cambridge, while 
 Count Miinster was directed to report on the condition of 
 the civil administration, and to provide for immediate require-
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 209 
 
 ments. The recovery of Hanover, the principal object of 
 the important treaty negotiated by Miinster at St. Petersburg 
 which had formed the foundation of the Third Coalition, 
 thus seemed accomplished ; but the hope of drawing Frederick 
 William III of Prussia into the Coalition became fainter and 
 fainter, while Talleyrand's honest brokerage offered Hanover 
 to Prussia as the price of a counter-alliance with France. 
 We must pass by the negotiations which ensued between Great 
 Britain and Prussia on the subject of an entire or partial cession 
 of Hanover, when in the autumn of 1805 Prussia was on the 
 point of joining the Coalition against Napoleon. They 
 •were scattered by the sun of Austerlitz ; and after, in January, 
 1806, her troops had provisionally occupied Hanover, Prussia 
 in April formally entered into possession of the Electorate 
 as ceded by France, who had held it by right of con- 
 quest. In June Great Britain declared war against Prussia. 
 The author of the elaborate manifesto, in which King 
 George III reviewed and reprobated the policy of Prussia, 
 was Count Miinster, whom Hardenberg upbraided for refusing 
 to recognise that Hanover's salvation lay in annexation to 
 Prussia. The argument had in it much that was weighty ; 
 but it was out of season. Hanover was the price paid by 
 France for the offensive and defensive alliance of Prussia. 
 When, a few months later, this alliance ended in war and 
 disaster, the unfortunate Electorate fell back into the foreign 
 conqueror's grasp. After the catastrophe of Jena (October 
 14, 1806), Hanover was at once reoccupied by the French, 
 under the command of the General Mortier who had headed 
 the earlier occupation, and who was not likely to be stopped 
 by the placards bearing the device ' Neutral Territory,' 
 substituted for the Prussian eagles by the native authorities. 
 The land remained under French domination till the War 
 of Liberation, from 1810 onwards forming part of the 
 kingdom of Westphalia — a feebly rather than viciously ruled
 
 2IO GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 pachalik ; for poor King Jerome was not so much as the 
 master of his secret police. 
 
 During all the years of hostile occupation, the Government 
 in London had sought to maintain some sort of connexion 
 with the Electorate ; but this had of necessity been fitful and 
 ineffective. On the other hand, Count Miinster, who in 1805 
 had permanently succeeded Baron Lenthe as the Hanoverian 
 minister in London, during the same period exercised 
 a political influence in the affairs of Europe, which in 
 its ubiquity recalls that of Bernstorff and Bothmer in the 
 days of George I, and in its sustained personal authority 
 that of Miinchhausen under George II, and in the earlier 
 years of George III. Miinster stood in the centre of Euro- 
 pean diplomatic activity, holding a unique position among 
 the politicians of this troubled age by virtue of his intimate 
 knowledge of continental affairs. The trust continuously 
 reposed in him by the King and the Prince Regent secured 
 to him the attention of both British and Continental states- 
 men, and the patriotic spirit which, besides animating his 
 official activity, kept him in private touch with the great 
 European movement of resistance against the Napoleonic 
 despotism, and in particular with such representatives of 
 that movement as Stein and Gneisenau. The Hanoverian 
 envoys in Berlin and Vienna, although their official occu- 
 pation had gone, remained in residence there and kept him 
 well informed; — it was through him, for instance, that 
 the great design of Austria to declare war against Napoleon 
 in 1809 became known to the British Government. In the 
 same year Miinster, with whom Canning was in ae:reement 
 on this head, strongly urged that the enterprise which has 
 acquired a melancholy title to remembrance under the name 
 of the Walcheren expedition, should be directed to the 
 Hanoverian coast, with a view to the liberation of the Elec- 
 torate from the French yoke. Seeley calls Miinster the 

 
 Vl] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 211 
 
 Metternich of the smaller German States; but there seems 
 little force in the simile. 
 
 At the Congress of Vienna in 1814-5, it fell to Miinster's 
 lot, as representing Hanover, to guard in the first instance 
 the immediate interests of his native land ; and it was no 
 doubt due to his personal influence among the diplomatists 
 assembled at the Congress, as well as to Great Britain's 
 commanding position in Europe, that Hanover issued forth 
 from the Congress increased by about one-fifth of its previous 
 size, at last in the possession of the East Frisian coast-line, 
 and raised to the dignity of a kingdom. Of his exertions at 
 the Congress, and more especially of his opposition to those 
 schemes for the reorganisation of Germany, which would 
 have led to the establishment of a Prussian hegemony over 
 
 - Northern Germany, this is not the place to speak ^ He 
 would have preferred to any other scheme the restoration 
 of the old Empire, of course under Austrian headship ; and 
 in the acute conflict between the two German Powers which 
 arose on the subject of the fate of Saxony, he ranged himself 
 with his British colleagues on the Austrian side. But some- 
 thing beyond jealousy of Prussia attracted the sympathy of 
 Miinster to a scheme of which the authorship was at one 
 time assigned to him, but is now known to have been 
 submitted to the Prince Regent by Gneisenau during his 
 memorable visit to Linden at the close of the year 181 2. With 
 Gneisenau, as Pertz says, the scheme was a means to an 
 end — a British expedition to Germany; with Miinster, who 
 had entertained similar proposals before Gneisenau's earlier 
 visit to London, and discussed them with members of the 
 
 English royal family, it was an end in itself^. This end was, 
 
 ' His reports to the Prince Regent were published as an Appendix to 
 a slight volume of political reflexions by Count Miinster's son (Leipzig, 
 1867). 
 
 ' See Pertz, Gneisenau, vol. ii. pp. 439 seqq. ; and cf. ib., Appendix, 
 p. 674. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 in a word, the formation of a large Low German State, 
 reaching from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Schelde, 
 which in the expected event of the British throne passing 
 into the female line should, under a male descendant of Henry 
 the Lion, in some measure revive his territorial power on 
 Germanic soil. However, the opportunity of initiating such 
 a policy, if it ever existed, passed with the course taken by 
 the war which led to the settlement of the Congress of Vienna. 
 And in lieu of a great Guelphic Austrasia, the new kingdom 
 of Hanover remained planted midway between the two 
 divisions of Prussia — a position ominous of future trouble, 
 whether or not the dynastic connexion between Great Britain 
 and Hanover continued. The Congress separated without 
 the influence of Miinster or Hanover having contributed to 
 any satisfactory national settlement of the German question. 
 In the mercantile difficulty as to the freedom of the great 
 North German rivers, the particular interests of Hanover 
 ranged her on the side of obstruction, from which British 
 interests in their turn were not strong or vigilant enough to 
 detach her. 
 
 So long as the ultimate succession of the Princess Char- 
 lotte to the British throne seemed assured, the first condition 
 of the interesting scheme or dream to which I have referred 
 seemed sure sooner or later to become a fact, and the Personal 
 Union certain to find its natural end. For the last time the 
 historic connexion between Great Britain and Hanover was 
 brought home to the populations of both countries by the battles 
 of Quatrebras and Waterloo ; and then, under circumstances 
 which unfortunately once more illustrated the inherent defects 
 of a system of divided interests ', the German Legion was dis- 
 
 ' The existing Hanoverian army, which had taken its share in the 
 brief War of Liberation, held its interests to be imperilled by the pro- 
 posed incorporation in it of the Legion, while the latter considered its 
 claims as a distinguished veteran corps inadequately met.
 
 VI] KLOSTER ZEVEN AND SUHLINGEN 213 
 
 banded (i 815-6), and a memorable episode in the annals 
 of modern warfare came to a flat and painful conclusion. 
 Yet the history o^ the German Legion cannot in justice 
 be looked upon as a mere chapter in that of the mer- 
 cenary system at large, of which Great Britain's policy of 
 intervention in the wars of Europe induced her to sustain 
 and protract the use. 
 
 Not in the way or at the time expected — not by the advent 
 to the British throne of the daughter of King George IV, but 
 by the much later accession of Her present Gracious Majesty — • 
 the Union was in the end dissolved. Herein at least both 
 countries were fortunate ; for the event when it took place 
 had been long expected, and tacitly prepared. The two 
 countries had more and more drifted apart in their political 
 sentiments and aspirations^; and, except to courtiers, officials, 
 
 ^ It would serve no purpose to dwell on the changes effected 
 during the remaining years of the Personal Union in the constitution 
 and administrative system of the kingdom of Hanover. They were 
 due to the popular movement which agitated Germany in the period 
 ensuing on the War of Liberation, and were facilitated by the docile 
 ambition of the Duke of Cambridge, against which Miinster was 
 ultimately unable to prevail. In 1S16 he had addressed himself to 
 the reorganisation of the internal administration of the new kingdom, 
 and practically remained at its head till 1831. Then, however, after the 
 accession of William IV to the British throne, advantage was taken of 
 an agitation for reform, which at this epoch made itself felt everywhere, 
 to bring about a series of changes including the elevation of the Duke of 
 Cambridge from the dignity of Governor-General to that of Viceroy, 
 under conditions which removed certain of the restrictions previously 
 imposed upon his authority, and Miinster was dismissed. Proposals 
 were at the same time brought forward for a revision of the Constitu- 
 tion which in 1819 had been bestowed upon Hanover, but which had 
 made little actual difference in the system of government, and had been 
 accepted without much emotion by the population. The new Constitution 
 was in 1833 finally sanctioned by King William, but unfortunately it 
 was omitted to obtain the assent of the heir-presumptive to the throne, 
 the Duke of Cumberland. Thus when, four years later, he actually
 
 214 GREAT BRITAIN AND HANOVER [VI 
 
 and military veterans, the Personal Union had come to seem 
 little more than a name even while it still continued to be 
 a fact. The problem had ceased to be a problem since it 
 had sunk into a mere question of the revolving years ; and, 
 in the end, two populations to whose burdens and troubles 
 their involuntary connexion had in divers ways and propor- 
 tions added, once more fell asunder. It mattered little that 
 they were akin in descent, and had in common not a few 
 physical, mental, and moral features. On the one side the use 
 made of the opportunities of the Union for dynastic ends was 
 with constant violence, but not always wholly without cause, 
 decried as prejudicial to important national interests. On 
 the other, the same tie came very slowly, but very surely, to 
 be recognised as having retarded an enduring association 
 with the fortunes of the German people, and with the future 
 to which it was looking forward. On neither side is the 
 lesson brought home to it likely to be forgotten. The great 
 efforts and achievements in which Great Britain and Hanover 
 each had a share should nevertheless remain for both coun- 
 tries a historic remembrance of unusual interest, and the 
 foundations of a lasting mutual good will. 
 
 succeeded to the Hanoverian throne, a constitutional contiict could 
 hardly fail to ensue, and he was not the man to avoid it. But with the 
 whole of these transactions British policy neither had nor affected any 
 concern.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Of Principal Names and Topics 
 
 Act of Settlement, 38. 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, peace of, 97. 
 Aland Islands, peace negotiations at, 
 
 97- 
 Alberoni, Cardinal, 97. 
 Austria, House of, devotion of House 
 
 of Brunswick to, 1 10 ; British 
 
 alliance with, 124. 
 
 Bale, peace of, 202. 
 Baltic, the, Russian power in, 98. 
 Bavarian succession, war of, 200. 
 Bernstorff, Baron A. G. von, 71. 
 Bothmer, Count H. C. von, 68 ; 
 
 and the Quadruple Alliance, no. 
 Brandenburg and Hanover, relations 
 
 between, 30. 
 Bremen and Verden, 32 ; annexation 
 
 of, 84 ; and British northern 
 
 policy, loi ; Swedish declaration 
 
 on, 103. 
 Breslau, preliminaries of, 148. 
 Brunswick, or Brunswick-Liineburg, 
 
 House of, and its lines, 13 ; 
 
 marriage project (1755), 176. 
 
 Calenberg-Gottingen, principality 
 of, 17. 
 
 Cambridge, Duke of, 208. 
 
 Caroline, Queen, 71. 
 
 Carteret, Lord (Earl Granville), 6 
 note ; his mission to Sweden and 
 Denmark, 98 ; Secretary of State, 
 118; again Secretar)', 179; his 
 
 Austrian leanings, 156; his fall, 
 162. 
 Charles VI, Emperor, his death, 
 177. 
 
 — VII, Emperor, negotiations con- 
 cerning, after Dettingen, 158. 
 
 — XII, King of Sweden, 84 ; his 
 return, 86 ; his death, 87. 
 
 — Leopold, Duke of Mecklenburg- 
 Schwerin, 93. 
 
 Charlotte, Princess, 212. 
 Coalition, the third, against France, 
 
 208. 
 Cumberland, Duke of (King Ernest 
 
 Augustus of Hanover), 213 note. 
 
 — Duke of (William Augustus), 
 186. 
 
 Denmark, and Holstein - Gottorp, 
 31 ; settlement with (1720), 100. 
 
 East Frisia, 137. 
 Elbe Convention, 205. 
 Electoral Compact {K'u>tractat),2,o. 
 Ernest Augustus (Elector), 21 ; his 
 family law^s and troubles, 23. 
 
 Ferdinand, Prince, 196. 
 
 France, alliance of with Great 
 
 liritain, 107; its decline, 135. 
 Frankfort Union, 161. 
 Frederick I, King of Prussia, 28.
 
 2l6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Frederick IT, Kinc; of Prussia, 146; 
 his treaty with Great Britain 
 
 (1756), 1 79- 
 
 — I, King of Sweden, 98. 
 
 — IV, King of Denmarli, 85. 
 
 — Prince of Wales, 163. 
 
 — William I, King of Prussia, and 
 George II, 137 ; his death, 177. 
 
 — II, King of Prussia, and the 
 British alliance, 201. 
 
 French invasion of England expected 
 (1756), 184; occupation of 
 Hanover, first, 203 ; second, 209. 
 
 Fiirstenbund, the, 200. 
 
 ^ George I, his political training, 4 ; 
 as Hereditary Prince, 22 ; as 
 Elector, 31 ; his personal influence 
 on the foreign policy of his reign, 
 ~ 106 ; his view of foreign policy, 
 117. 
 
 f^ — II, his political aims and in- 
 terests, 6 ; his unpopularity, 132 ; 
 his demonstration against Prus- 
 sia (1729), 139; his letter to 
 Maria Theresa, 160 ; his appetite 
 for annexations, 169 ; his repudia- 
 tion of the Kloster Zeven Conven- 
 tion, 194. 
 
 — Ill, government of Hanover 
 under, 199. 
 
 — Duke of Brunswick-LUneburg, 
 18. 
 
 — William, Duke of Brunswick- 
 LUneburg, at Celle, 20. 
 
 German Chancery in London, 57. 
 
 — Legion, 206 ; its disbandment, 
 212. 
 
 Germans in British public service 
 under George I and II, 49. 
 
 Gibbon, E., and the antiquities of 
 the House of Brunswick, 9. 
 
 Gneisenau, Count N. von, 211. 
 
 Gortz, Baron G. H. (Count Schlitz), 
 91. 
 
 Gottingen, University of, 166 note. 
 
 Hanover, Court of, under Ernest 
 Augustus and George Lewis, 35. 
 
 Hanover, Electorate of, its adminis- 
 trative system before and after the 
 Personal Union, 51. 
 
 — House of, and the British Suc- 
 cession, 41. 
 
 — treaty of (1725), 126; so- 
 called first treaty of (1742), 157; 
 secret convention of (1745), 164, 
 
 — visits to, by George I and II, 46. 
 Hanoverian minister, the, in London, 
 
 57- 
 Hardenberg, Prince, 200 note. 
 
 Hardwicke, Earl of, 157. 
 
 Harrington, Earl of, 134. 
 
 Hastenbeck, battle of, 209. 
 
 Hattorf, Philip von, 77. 
 
 Hildcsheim, see of, 15. 
 
 Hyndford, Lord, his instructions, 
 
 154- 
 John Frederick, Duke, at Hanover, 
 
 21'. 
 
 Keith, R., his negotiations with 
 
 Kaunitz, 173. 
 Kleinschnellendorf, agreement of, 
 
 148. 
 Kloster Zeven, capitulation of, 191 ; 
 
 its repudiation by George II, 192. 
 
 La Vrilliere dukedom, intrigue con- 
 cerning the, 123. 
 
 Leibniz, G. E. von, his researches 
 into the antiquities of the House 
 of Brunswick, 10; his other ser- 
 vices fo the House, 33. 
 
 Lewis XIV, after Utrecht, 82. 
 
 Liineburg branch of House of 
 Brunswick, 17. 
 
 Lutheranism of George I, 40. 
 
 Madrid, treaty of (i 721), 115. 
 
 Magdeburg, conference of, 28. 
 
 Malmesbury, Earl of, 200. 
 
 Maria Theresa, Empress, 146. 
 
 Mecklenburg quarrel and its conse- 
 quences, 93. 
 
 Military authority of Elector at 
 Hanover, 54.
 
 INDEX 
 
 217 
 
 Mortier, General, 204. 
 Miinchhausen, Baron G. A. von, 
 
 165. 
 
 — Baron P. A. von, 168. 
 
 Miinster, Count, 207 ; and the pro- 
 posed great Guelphic state, 211. 
 
 Neutrality treaty (1741), 147. 
 Newcastle, Duke of, 128. 
 Nivernais, Due de, 17S. 
 Norris, Sir John, 89. 
 Nymphenburg, treaty of, 151. 
 Nystad, peace of, 104. 
 
 Orford, Earl of, see Walpole. 
 Orleans, Duke of (Regent), 84. 
 Otto the Child, 13. 
 
 Pactum Henrico- Wilhelminum, 16. 
 
 Palm, Baron, receives his passports, 
 130. 
 
 Paris, peace of (1763, 198. 
 
 Passarowitz, peace of. 112. 
 
 Pelham, Henry, 159. 
 
 i'enteriedter, Baron C. von, 114. 
 
 J'crsonal Union of Great Britain and 
 Hanover, and Act of Settlement, 
 38 ; and Hanoverian administra- 
 tive system, 61 ; proposals for end- 
 ing, under George II, 63. 
 
 Peter I, Czar, and Charles XH, 92 ; 
 and Mecklenburg difficulty, 9,s. 
 
 Philijipine Charlotte, Duchess of 
 Brunswick-Wolfeiibiittel. 1 76. 
 
 Pitt, Uilliam (Karl of Chatham), 
 his appointment in 1757, 171. 
 
 — William (the younger), 208. 
 
 Polish .Succession, War of, Wal- 
 pole's policy and George IPs 
 wishes as to, 140. 
 
 Pragmatic Sanction, 125; guaranteed 
 by (jreat Britain, 135. 
 
 Prime Minister, Hanoverian, 53. 
 
 Pi ivy Council, Hanoverian, 52. 
 
 J'rotestant Succession and Act of 
 .Settlement, 39. 
 
 Prussia, British treaty of alliance 
 with (1719), 99; Hanoverian 
 relations with, under ( ieori/e II, 
 
 136; British treaty with 1^1756), 
 179; later British relations with, 
 201. 
 Prussian occupation of Hanover, 
 first, 202 ; second, 209. 
 
 Quadruple Alliance (171S), no; 
 British and Hanoverian endeavours 
 for, 114. 
 
 Reformation, the, and the House of 
 
 Guelph, 14. 
 Reichenbach, convention of. 201. 
 Richelieu, Due de, 190. 
 Robethon, J. de, 77. 
 Rossbach, battle of, 196. 
 Russia, subsidy-treaty with, 182 ; 
 
 see also Baltic. 
 
 Schiitz, Chancellor, 2;^. 
 
 .Schwerin, Hanoverian ministry at, 
 
 207 ; see also Mecklenburg. 
 .Secretaries of State, So. 
 .Seven Years' War, 184. 
 Seville, treaty of, 134. 
 Silesian^Var, opening of second, 102. 
 Sophia, Electress, 21, 
 — Dorothea, Queen of Prussia, 
 
 1.37- 
 Spain, and Quadruple Alliance, 1 1 1 ; 
 
 w.ir with (1718-20), 130; war 
 
 with (1739), 143. 
 Stanhope, Earl, 81 ; his northern 
 
 policy, 100; and the Quadruple 
 
 Alliance, 1 11. 
 Subsidy-treaties, 45 ; under the Pel- 
 
 ham ministry, 163. 
 .Sweden, her relations with Great 
 
 Britain under George I, 88; her 
 
 later relations with Russia, 121. 
 
 Townshend, Viscount, 81 : his first 
 
 fall, 109. 
 Treaty-power of the Crown under 
 
 Act of Settlement, 45. 
 Triple Alliance (1668), 24; (1717), 
 
 108. 
 Turkey .nnd I'ritisli mediation, 112. 
 
 Utrecht, peace of, 32.
 
 "2l8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Velliiighausen, battle of, 197. 
 Venice, Hanoverian troops in service 
 
 of, 27. 
 Verden, see Bremen and Verden. 
 Vienna, relief of, 27 ; first treaty of, 
 
 125; second, 17,4; third, 142. 
 
 Wallmoden, Field-Marshal, 204. 
 
 Walpole, Horace (Lord Walpole), 
 122. 
 
 — Sir Robert (Earl of Orford), 
 his foreign policy, 122 ; his Prus- 
 sian leanings, 144. 
 
 Westminster, (so-called) second 
 
 treaty of, 1 79. 
 Westphalia, peace of, and the House 
 
 of Brunswick, 18. 
 William HI, 3 ; his visit to Celle, 
 
 32. 
 Williams, Sir C. H., and the Russian 
 
 subsidy-treaty, 182. 
 W^olfenbiittel branch of House of 
 
 Brunswick, 19. 
 Worms, treaty of, 160. 
 Wusterhausen, treaty of, 138. 
 
 York, Duke of, 200 note. 
 
 THE END
 
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