Kinlight · The British Royal Line

King George II

1683 – 1760 · Generation XXIX · King of Great Britain and Ireland (r. 1727–1760) · House of Hanover

Portrait of King George II

George II was born in Hanover on 30 October 1683 (Old Style), the only son of George Louis, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and Sophia Dorothea of Celle. In 1694 his parents’ marriage was dissolved and his mother was confined at Ahlden House, and he probably never saw her again. He spoke only French until he was four, learned German from a tutor, and later added English and Italian. The subjects he worked at hardest were genealogy, military history and tactics. The Act of Settlement of 1701 made his grandmother Sophia and her Protestant descendants heirs to the English throne, which placed him third in line, and in 1705 he was naturalised as an English subject.

His marriage began with a piece of private reconnaissance. In June 1705, travelling under the name “Monsieur de Busch”, he visited the Ansbach court to see Princess Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach for himself, and later that summer the two were married in the chapel at Herrenhausen. The couple had eight children, beginning with Frederick in 1707. The following year George charged with the Hanoverian cavalry at Oudenarde, where his horse was killed beneath him and Marlborough praised his conduct. When his father became George I in 1714 he came to England as Prince of Wales, but the two men soon fell out. After a quarrel at the christening of his second son in 1717 he was expelled from St James’s Palace, and his London home, Leicester House, became a gathering place for the king’s opponents, among them Robert Walpole.

He succeeded his father in June 1727 at the age of forty-three and was crowned with Caroline in Westminster Abbey that October, to anthems that included Handel’s Zadok the Priest. He had been expected to dismiss Walpole, but Caroline advised him to keep him, and Walpole went on to run domestic policy with a secure majority in Parliament. As Elector of Hanover George had far more direct power, and he spent twelve summers of his reign there. His relationship with his eldest son turned as sour as his own with George I had been. Frederick became a figurehead for the opposition and was banished from court in 1737. Caroline died that November, and George grieved for her openly. His mistresses, Henrietta Howard and later Amalie von Wallmoden, were common knowledge.

War gave the reign its sharpest moments. During the War of the Austrian Succession George, then nearly sixty, rode with an allied army against the French at Dettingen in June 1743 and shared in the victory, the last time a British monarch led troops into battle. Two years later Charles Edward Stuart, grandson of the deposed James II, landed in Scotland, beat a government army at Prestonpans and marched into England before turning back. At Culloden in April 1746 George’s son William, Duke of Cumberland, crushed the Jacobite army, and no serious attempt to restore the Stuarts followed. Frederick died suddenly in 1751, leaving his son George as heir. In the Seven Years’ War, directed from 1757 by William Pitt the Elder, whom the king had long disliked, Robert Clive won at Plassey in India, and in 1759 Quebec fell to British forces.

On the morning of 25 October 1760 George collapsed at Kensington Palace and was dead before his daughter Amelia could be brought to him. He was nearly seventy-seven, older than any English or British monarch before him. He was buried beside Caroline in a vault beneath the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey, and by his wish the sides of the two coffins were taken away so that nothing would separate their remains. He was the last sovereign to be buried in the Abbey. He gave the old royal library to the new British Museum in 1757, founded the University of Göttingen in 1737, and lent his name to the colony of Georgia, chartered in 1732.

The memoirs of Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole left a picture of a weak and faintly ridiculous king, managed by his wife and his ministers, and biographers relied on them well into the twentieth century. Historians working from his correspondence since the late twentieth century have taken a different view. His notes on ministers’ letters show a king who followed foreign policy closely and who could block or sideline ministers and commanders he did not want.

Place in the family

  • King George II was a great-great-grandfather of Queen Victoria.
  • King George II was the elder of 2 children of King George I and Sophia Dorothea of Celle recorded in this archive.
  • The archive records 92 of his descendants, across 11 generations.

Images

One of 35 people of House of Hanover (from 1700) in this archive. Called from Germany by the Act of Settlement; the Georges, then Victoria.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II.

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Children

Life

  • 1683 — Born
  • 1705 — Married Caroline of Ansbach
  • 1727 — George II succeeds his father, George I.
  • 1737 — Death of George’s wife, Queen Caroline.
  • 1743 — George leads troops into battle at Dettingen in Bavaria.
  • 1746 — Scots defeated at the Battle of Culloden. Duke of Cumberland, the King's 2nd son, ruthlessly represses the rebels and Scottish traditions.
  • 1751 — Death of Frederick, Prince of Wales. His son, George, becomes heir to the throne.
  • 1760 — Died
  • 1760 — George II dies.

Sources

  1. George II of Great Britain · Wikipedia
  2. George II (r. 1727–1760) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. George II and Caroline · Westminster Abbey

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