Table Of ContentAlso in the Yale English Monarchs Series
ATHELSTAN by Sarah Foot
EDWARD THE CONFESSOR by Frank Barlow
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR by David Douglas*
WILLIAM RUFUS by Frank Barlow
HENRY I by Warren Hollister
KING STEPHEN by Edmund King
HENRY II by W. L. Warren*
RICHARD I by John Gillingham
KING JOHN by W. L. Warren*
EDWARD I by Michael Prestwich
EDWARD II by Seymour Phillips
RICHARD II by Nigel Saul
HENRY V by Christopher Allmand
HENRY VI by Bertram Wolffe
EDWARD IV by Charles Ross
RICHARD III by Charles Ross
HENRY VII by S. B. Chrimes
HENRY VIII by J. J. Scarisbrick
EDWARD VI by Jennifer Loach
MARY I by John Edwards
JAMES II by John Miller
QUEEN ANNE by Edward Gregg
GEORGE I by Ragnhild Hatton
GEORGE II by Andrew C. Thompson
GEORGE III by Jeremy Black
GEORGE IV by E. A Smith
* Available in the U. S. from University of California Press
For Harry, who had a Hanoverian great-grandmother
First published in 1978 by Thames and Hudson Ltd
This edition first published by Yale University Press in 2001
Copyright © 1978 Thames and Hudson
New Edition © 2001 Peter S. Hatton and Paul G. Hatton
New Foreword © 2001 Jeremy Black
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001087415
ISBN 0–300–08883–3 (pbk.)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund
Contents
FOREWORD TO THE YALE EDITION (by Jeremy Black)
PREFACE
SPELLING OF NAMES AND PLACES
NOTE ON DATES
I Parents and childhood
II The electoral cap
The father's plans for his son
The family's advancement and George's marriage
The primogeniture struggle
George's divorce
III Experience gained
The Königsmarck myth
George at the helm
The prospect of England
Struggle over the English succession between George and his mother
Wider German horizons
Losses of friends and companions
IV The royal crown
Hanover and Celle united
George's household after 1698
The War of the Spanish Succession
Death of queen Anne: the ‘Act of Settlement’ put into effect
V Settling down
Great Britain at the time of George's accession
George and the party system
The king's English
The royal household
VI Two issues of principle
The struggle for place and profit
Promotion by title
The Hanoverian succession
VII Three crises
George I's image
The Jacobite ‘Fifteen’
European issues 1716–17
The ministerial crisis
Quarrel in the royal family
VIII The watershed 1718–21
Lessons learnt
European peace plans
Success in the south
Partial success in the north
Shifts of emphasis
IX Peace, its problems and achievements
The South Sea bubble
George, a captive of his ministers?
George as a patron of the arts
Unfinished business
Alliances and counter-alliances
War or peace?
X Death of George I
George's last journey
The balance sheet
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES TO THE TEXT
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
MAP 1: George's Hanoverian dominions and the near neighbours of his electorate
MAP 2: Northern Europe
MAP 3: Southern Europe
INDEX
FOREWORD TO THE YALE EDITION
by Jeremy Black
George I: Elector and King appeared shortly before the end of Ragnhild Hatton's
distinguished career at the London School of Economics. It was published in 1978 by Thames
and Hudson (in the United Kingdom), Harvard University Press (in the United States), and,
appropriately, in German as George I: Ein deutscher Kurfürst auf Englands Thron, by
Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt. The biography amply justified that often clichéd term, ‘the
culmination of a lifetime's study’, because Hatton's first book, her thesis published in 1950,
had covered a central topic in British foreign policy during George's initial seven years as
king. Hatton's biography also consolidated her expertise as a biographer. She had published a
major life of Charles XII of Sweden (1968) as well as a number of studies of Louis XIV that,
while not amounting to a complete biography, nevertheless showed her acute understanding of
the monarch both as an individual and in the context of his times.1
Writing a biography of George I was a formidable challenge. Founder of the Hanoverian
dynasty in Britain, he was very much both elector of Hanover and king. As a consequence he
had partly eluded other British historians who lacked Hatton's interest in, deep knowledge of,
and appreciation of Continental power politics and Hanoverian concerns. J.H. Plumb's The
First Four Georges, for example, first published in 1956 and reissued, uncorrected, as late as
2000, included many of the standard, but erroneous judgements of an earlier age. Whereas
Plumb was definite that Sophia Charlotte, countess of Darlington was George's mistress,
Hatton had demonstrated that she was his half-sister, that she was devoted to her own husband,
and that incest was never imputed to George by anyone close to the royal circle.
Hatton's George was a ruler and a person in his contemporary European context, and her
study was based on extensive and wide-ranging archival research. She was interested in
people (alive as well as dead) and successfully sought to discover George as an individual, to
probe his relations with his parents and (unfaithful) spouse, with his mistress, his children, and
his courtiers and ministers. In place of a militaristic dolt, George was presented as a more
complex individual, with cultural and intellectual interests, and he was located in terms of the
Early Enlightenment.
All of these features justifiably earned Hatton high praise, and they emerge clearly from a
reading of her book.2 This introduction seeks to offer an updating that focuses on perspectives
suggested by subsequent work, and also tries to explain why George was less popular with his
British subjects than the above account might imply.
Subsequent research has not challenged Hatton's valuable account of George as elector, nor
her clear and well-grounded discussion of the international relations of his reign that provided
much of the dynamic for his policies. Hatton was very good on the House of Brunswick and its
position in Europe. Indeed the measure of her achievement stands even clearer as a result of
