George I., son of Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, and of Sophia, granddaughter of James I. of England, was born in Hanover on 28th May 1660. Immediately after Queen Anne's death on 1st August 1714, he was proclaimed king of Great Britain and of Ireland in London, the proclamation at Edinburgh taking place four days, and at Dublin five days later. He had been Elector of Hanover since 1698, and he was the first monarch of the House of Brunswick who, in accordance with the Act of Settlement, succeeded to the throne of this country. He arrived at Greenwich on 29th September, and was crowned at Westminster on 31st October 1714. He had commanded the imperial forces in the war against France in which Marlborough acquired distinction, and, though less successful than Marlborough as a general, he was as chagrined as he when the Tory party, under the inspiration of Bolingbroke, made peace, and sanctioned the treaty of Utrecht. In 1682 he married his cousin, the Princess Dorothea of Zell. Twelve years later he obtained a divorce on the ground of her intrigue with Count Königsmark, and caused her to be imprisoned in the castle of Ahlden, where she died on 2d November 1726. While punishing his consort for her frailty, he lived openly with mistresses, and was neither ashamed of his conduct nor made to suffer for it.
The Tories and Jacobites who clung to the banished House of Stuart were the objects of his aversion, and the Whigs were favoured by him. Bolingbroke and the Duke of Ormond fled to France; both of them, and Oxford, who remained behind, were impeached. In Scotland a Jacobite rising, headed by the Earl of Mar, took place in 1715; a battle at Sheriffmuir on the 13th November, though indecisive, dispirited the rebels, who afterwards dispersed. Another body marched into England, proclaimed James king at Penrith, and, being surrounded after reaching Preston, laid down their arms on the day of the battle at Sheriffmuir. The Earl of Derwentwater and Viscount Kenmare were executed on Tower Hill; many others were shot, and many were transported. A year after this abortive rebellion, parliament passed the Septennial Act, in order that by prolonging its own existence for four years the accession of the Tories to power might be hindered. More serious than any rebellion was the rise and fall of the South Sea Scheme (q.v.), the English counterpart of the Mississippi Scheme which beggared France. The king's personal part in the history of the reign was but slight, the actual ruler being Sir Robert Walpole. George I. could not speak English; Lord Granville was the only one of his ministers who could converse with him in German; the king and Walpole interchanged views in bad Latin. On this account the king did not preside at meetings of the cabinet. Queen Anne is the last sovereign of Great Britain who was present at a cabinet council. It was the delight of George I. to live as much as possible in Hanover, and to obtain as much money as possible from Great Britain. He died suddenly at Osnabrück, on his return from Hanover, on 9th June 1727. Lady Wortley Montagu styles George I. 'an honest blockhead.' If he had been an abler man he might have proved a worse sovereign. He was a useful figure-head in a constitutional government, and rendered greater service than he may have intended to the country which adopted him.
See the Histories of England by Stanhope, Hallam, and Lecky; the Stuart Papers; the Life of Walpole, by Coxe; the Historical Register.