a protestant succession, he expected to reign. His morals were most culpably neglected: he was permitted to abandon himself to licentious pleasures, apparently without the least restraint; and his habits and ideas at length became irrevocably depraved. It is but justice to add, that this dissolute young man, at an early period of his life, was, it is said, so good-natured, as to have been incapable of wilfully inflicting pain on any human being.

In the twenty-second year of his age he was united, against his inclination, to the Princess Sophia Dorothea, who was then about sixteen. Of the causes which led to this imprudent match, and its unfortunate consequences, the following is a brief narration:-The princess being the only child of the Duke of Zell by his Duchess Eleonora D'Emeirs, (a woman of comparatively mean birth, but great beauty,) and the acknowledged heiress to his dominions, her uncle and aunt, the Elector of Hanover and his wife, were desirous of forming an union between her and their son George Lewis, so that the whole Duchy of Luneburg might devolve upon their descendants. Proposals for a marriage were consequently made by the elector, which met with the decided approbation of the Duke of Zell but the young princess and her mother felt a strong objection to the alliance; the one, because she disliked her ambitious sisterin-law, the electress, and the other, on account of her attachment to a young Prince of Wolfenbüttel. Nor was the proposed bridegroom himself at all favourable to the match; he having, as well as the princess, set his heart on another object. The paternal authority over these young victims to the Moloch of political expediency was, however, irresistible; and they were united on the 21st of November, 1682.

The unfortunate princess was neglected, if not hated, by her husband, almost from the day of their marriage. The palace in which she resided, either by his permission or connivance, was constantly polluted by the presence of his mistresses; and, for a period of ten years, during which she gave birth to two children, afterwards George the Second, King of England, and Sophia Dorothea, Queen of Prussia, she is said to have endured a series of indignities,

which were as irritating as they were unmerited. The sympathy of her brother-in-law, Prince Philip, afforded her great consolation; but it unhappily involved her still more deeply in misfortune. Count Philip de Koenigsmarck, who had previously acquired an infamous notoriety in England, by instigating some wretches to assassinate a Mr. Thynne, was selected, either by the prince or his sister-in-law, to be the bearer of messages between them. The imprudent Sophia treated this vain and ambitious man with so much familiarity, as to excite suspicions derogatory to her honour; which were considerably increased by a report, that Koenigsmarck had boasted of his peculiar influence over her, during a drunken frolic, at the court of Denmark. On his return to Hanover, he was narrowly watched, by command of the elector; who, discovering that stolen interviews actually took place between his daughter-in-law and the count, peremptorily ordered the latter to join Prince Philip in Hungary. The count, however, prevailed on the princess to allow him a farewell audience, and he was admitted to her bed-chamber at midnight. The elector, by means of his emissaries, received immediate intelligence of the circumstance; and, in a paroxysm of rage, he placed two of his guards in a passage which led to the apartment of the princess, with orders to intercept Koenigsmarck's retreat, and despatch him on the spot. They, accordingly, stabbed the count to the heart as he attempted to retire, and threw his body into the common sewer of the palace. The princess was shortly afterwards placed in confinement at the castle of Dahlen, whence she was, some time after, removed, on the approach of a French army, and sent home to her father and mother; but after a year's residence at Zell, notwithstanding the importunities of her parents that she might remain with them, she was taken back to Dahlen, where she died, a few months only before her husband. She was never acknowledged by George the First as his queen; being, for the last twenty years of her life, spoken of only as Princess of Zell.

It has been asserted, that the sole object on her part, in her interviews

excise on provisions to be abolished, and the insolvent debtors throughout the electorate to be discharged. He reached the Hague on the 5th of September, but did not embark until the 16th, and arrived at Greenwich on the 18th of the same month. He made his public entry into London on the 20th; and his coronation took place with the usual solemnities on the 20th of October.

At the first court which he held, he treated some of the late queen's ministers with marked contempt, and others with coldness. Lord Oxford was permitted to kiss the king's hand, but received no further notice. Chancellor Harcourt, who had prepared and brought with him a patent for creating the king's eldest son Prince of Wales, was forthwith turned out of his office. The Duke of Ormond, who was captaingeneral, and had come with great splendour to pay his court, was informed that the king had no occasion for his services, and was not allowed even

to

come into the royal presence. Pursuant to an order, despatched by the king previously to his departure from Hanover, Bolingbroke had already been dismissed; and his majesty appeared bent on depressing, as much as possible, all the open and secret enemies of his house.

In the early part of his reign, or, at least, on his arrival in this country, George the First was far from unpopular; but his decidedly foreign appearance and manners, when they became known, lowered him materially in public estimation. His two German mistresses, who were created Duchess of Kendal, and Countess of Darlington, shortly after his accession, became seriously offensive to the people, by whom they were satirically called the may-pole and the elephant and castle. It is related of one of these ladies, that being abused by the mob, she put her head out of the coach, and cried, in bad English, "Good people, why you abuse us? We come for all your goods."-"Yes, d-n you," answered a fellow in the crowd," and for our chattels too!"

Nor does the king appear to have been infinitely delighted with his new subjects: he sighed for his beloved electorate, and spoke and acted like a man ill at ease, in a strange house, and

longing to be at home again. "This is a very odd country!" said he: "the first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked out of the window, and saw a park with walls, and a canal, which they told me were mine. The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my park, sent me a brace of fine carp out of my canal; and I was told I must give five guineas to Lord Chetwynd's man for bringing me my own carp out of my own canal in my own park!"

Of oysters he was remarkably fond; but, for some time, he could not reconcile his palate to those of this country. "The cursed English oysters," he exclaimed pettishly, "have such a very queer taste!" It was at length discovered, by means of a German page, that oysters, in Hanover, being necessarily conveyed a considerable distance overland, were always tainted: stale oysters, were, therefore, at once procured, which, it seems, proved exceedingly grateful to the sovereign's palate.

One of the most important circumstances in the early part of this king's reign, was the impeachment of some of the Tory leaders for the share they had taken in the treaty of Utrecht: and their conduct was visited, in the opinion of a still large and powerful party, with unnecessary rigour. Inflammatory papers were circulated, to a great extent, against the new monarch; one of these, in allusion to the white horse in the Hanoverian arms, had for its motto the following passage from the book of Revelations: "I looked, and beheld a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death; and Hell followed with him!"

Various parts of the country were agitated by tumults; and, at length, about the middle of September, in 1715, the Earl of Mar proclaimed the Pretender, as James the Third, at Castletown in Scotland. He soon collected an army of ten thousand men, and an insurrection followed in Northumberland, under the Earl of Derwentwater; but that nobleman was compelled, in the early part of November, to surrender, with many of his partisans. On the same day, a bloody, but indecisive battle was fought at Sheriffmoor, between Mar and the Duke of Argyle. On the 25th of December, the Pretender landed at Peterhead; but he displayed so little

fact, these anecdotes prove nothing, but that he pardoned what it would have been ridiculous in him to have seriously noticed. The offenders were, in two cases, foreigners, over whom, perhaps, he had no power; and in the others, women. The fault of one of them, who does not appear to have been even a subject of George the First, consisted in his having a picture of an acquaintance, who happened to be his royal guest's enemy: the others wrote or spoke a few words, not to the Jacobites, but to the king himself. To those who bore arms against him after the Pretender had been openly proclaimed in his dominions, he certainly exhibited no exalted mercy. Phlegmatic as he had appeared on taking possession of the throne, he suddenly evinced a sanguine temperament on his rights being disputed; and although, by the laws of the land, he was not unjust, he seems to have been rather ignobly ungenerous. He did not seize the glorious opportunity, which his good fortune, and we may add, the justice of his cause afforded him, to be greatly lenient to a vanquished and prostrate enemy; but endeavoured to secure his new kingdom by an effusion of blood, which, as it evidently tended to aggravate rather than extingiush the discontents of the Jacobites, might have been spared with equal security to himself, and advantage

to his successor.

- In 1716 the disaffection to the House of Brunswick induced its staunch adherents, the Whigs, who were in office, to propose the famous septennial act; by which a power was assumed, not merely of increasing the duration of future parliaments, but even of prolonging the existence of that assembly by which it was enacted; so that, although only elected by the nation for three years, it conferred on itself the power of sitting for seven. This iniquitous and totally indefensible bill, after a long and violent struggle, was passed, and of course received the royal assent.

In 1717, the king and his ministers were exceedingly unpopular. Oaken boughs worn on the 29th of May, and white roses on the 10th of June, the birth-day of the Pretender, were the badges of the disaffected. Oxford, and especially the University, was the focus of disloyalty; and it was deemed expe

dient to send a military force there, in order to prevent any seditions or treasonable attempts. Cambridge being more complaisant, received a royal present of books; and Dr. Trapp wrote the following epigram on the occasion:

Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes,
The wants of his two Universities:
Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why
That learned body wanted loyalty;
But books to Cambridge gave, as well discerning
How that right loyal body wanted learning.
Sir William Browne, retorted, as it
was said, impromptu :

The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,
For Tories know no argument but force :
With equal care, to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.

In this year, during the king's visit to Hanover, the Prince of Wales was left guardian of the realm, in which station he acquired such popularity as appeared to revive those feelings of animosity, which his father had exhibited towards him on previous occasions. He was ordered to remove from St. James's palace to a private residence; the princess had permission to accompany him, but their children were retained under the king's roof. Shortly after, the sovereign forbad all such persons as should visit the prince to enter his presence. His feelings on this subject carried him so far, that he could listen to schemes for the exclusion of his heir-apparent from the throne, and the consequent restoration of the banished family. It is even asserted by Walpole, in his Reminiscences, and elsewhere, that Queen Caroline found, in the cabinet of George the First after his death, a proposal from Lord Berkeley, for securing the prince, and conveying him secretly to America. reconciliation ultimately took place between George the First and his son; but it appears to have been equally insincere on both sides.

A

In 1718, a plan was formed to assassinate the king, by a political fanatic, named James Shepherd, a youth under nineteen years of age. He had imbibed from childhood the highest principles of monarchical right; and regarding George the First as an usurper, he had coolly resolved to put him to death. On the 24th of January, he wrote to one Leake, a nonjuring clergyman, that he