In Our Time - The Hanoverian Succession

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the intense political activity at the turn of the 18th Century, when many politicians in London went to great lengths to find a Protestant successor to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland and others went to equal lengths to oppose them. Queen Anne had no surviving children and, following the old rules, there were at least 50 Catholic candidates ahead of any Protestant ones and among those by far the most obvious candidate was James, the only son of James II. Yet with the passing of the Act of Settlement in 1701 ahead of Anne's own succession, focus turned to Europe and to Princess Sophia, an Electress of the Holy Roman Empire in Hanover who, as a granddaughter of James I, thus became next in line to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. It was not clear that Hanover would want this role, given its own ambitions and the risks, in Europe, of siding with Protestants, and soon George I was minded to break the rules of succession so that he would be the last Hanoverian monarch as well as the first.WithAndreas Gestrich Professor Emeritus at Trier University and Former Director of the German Historical Institute in LondonElaine Chalus Professor of British History at the University of LiverpoolAnd Mark Knights Professor of History at the University of WarwickProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:J.M. Beattie, The English Court in the Reign of George I (Cambridge University Press, 1967)Jeremy Black, The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty (Hambledon Continuum, 2006)Justin Champion, Republican Learning: John Toland and the Crisis of Christian Culture 1696-1722 (Manchester University Press, 2003), especially his chapter ‘Anglia libera: Protestant liberties and the Hanoverian succession, 1700–14’Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 – 1837 (Yale University Press, 2009)Andreas Gestrich and Michael Schaich (eds), The Hanoverian Succession: Dynastic Politics and Monarchical Culture (‎Ashgate, 2015)Ragnhild Hatton, George I: Elector and King (Thames & Hudson Ltd, 1979)Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford University Press, 2005) Mark Knights, Faction Displayed: Reconsidering the Impeachment of Dr Henry Sacheverell (Blackwell, 2012)Joanna Marschner, Queen Caroline: Cultural Politics at the Early Eighteenth-Century Court (Yale University Press, 2014)Ashley Marshall, ‘Radical Steele: Popular Politics and the Limits of Authority’ (Journal of British Studies 58, 2019)Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688-1788 (Cambridge University Press, 1989)Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture 1714-1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)Daniel Szechi, 1715: The Great Jacobite Rebellion (Yale University Press, 2006)A.C. Thompson, George II : King and Elector (Yale University Press, 2011)In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. This is in our time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you can find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoyed the programme. Hello, at the turn of the 18th century,

Westminster politicians went to extraordinary lengths to find a Protestant successor to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland. Queen Anne had no survived. children. And following the old rules, there were at least 50 Catholic candidates ahead of any Protestant one. Yet, by passing the active settlement in 1701, focus turned to Europe and the Protestant Princess Sophia, an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire in Hanover, who became next in line to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. With me to discuss the Hanoverian succession, Andreas Gestrick, Professor Emeritus at Trier University and former director of the German Historical Institute in

London. Elaine Chalice, Professor of British History at the University of Liverpool, and Mark Knights, Professor of History at the University of Warwick. Mark Knights, why was there a need for the Act of Settlement in 17001? The Act of Settlement was needed to secure the Protestant succession. And in order to understand that, we need to go back a little bit because Britain had been racked by succession crises for 25 years. James Duke of York, who became James the second, was the subject of an enormous amount of controversy in the late 1670s and the early 1680s when there were attempts to exclude him from the succession. They failed. He did become king. He became James the second. And he fulfilled all the worst nightmares of his

opponents by pursuing Catholic policies, triggering revolution in 1688. And one of the outcomes of that revolution was the Bill of Rights. And the Bill of Rights laid down that no future king should be a Catholic. Indeed, they weren't even allowed to have a Catholic wife. So, as you were saying in the introduction, with the prospect of no Protestant heir from either William or from Anne, it became increasingly necessary to settle the succession in the Hanavirian line. All the more so, because England's arch enemy, France, had recognised James the second son, James Francis Edward, as the legitimate heir. So the prospect was for a succession war which would radiate across Europe, as indeed was happening with Catholic Spain at the time. And the war that broke out during Queen Anne's reign, the war of the Spanish succession, was precisely another of these big conflicts over,

session. Which party was most in favour of a Hanoverian ruler in the early days? And if so, why? So the later Stuart period, the later 17th century, early 18th century is characterised by the birth of party politics. So we had the emergence of Whigs and Tories. The names were very pejorative. They were given to the emergent parties in 1681. And the Wigs stood for tolerance towards Protestant descent. That was one of the bedrocks of their ideology. And they were also interested in expanding Britain's power overseas, particularly against Catholic threats. And the Tories were very devoutly wedded to the Church of England, and they were much more skeptical of the sort of Whigs expansionist foreign policy. So the Whigs were the sort of in a way

there's some natural supporters of the Hanoverian succession because they saw in Hanover the Protestant champion that they had been looking for. The Tories, on the other hand, or indeed some Tories, because I should say that really the Tory party has different wings, but many in the Tory party were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of breaking away from the Stuart succession,

inviting a foreigner who spoke very little, English. It sort of fed into many of their prejudices. Thank you very much. Elaine, Elaine Chalas. How did they arrive at the idea that a successor from Hanover would be the answer? Well, I think from what Mark has already said, we've already specifying in the act that it would have to be someone Protestant. And so consequently, we're looking for who in the line of succession. And of course, the Hanoverians are in the line of succession. So, Fia the Electress is actually a granddaughter of the Stuart line, and so consequently she fits into that direct line of succession. They can argue that this is still a Stuart line. They can

sort of cadge about a bit with that, and they can then popularize that, and it's that kind of popularization of the Hanoverians that is part of what's going on here. So we're seeing that in a number of different ways. Once they've settled on that she's going to be the person who's going to inherit the throne that she is directly the heir once Queen Anne's son has died. She gets written into the state prayers. We see her image being portrayed in Prince, her son's image, later George I,

his image is in Prince. These people are talked about, there's gossip, there's news, the newspapers are talking, there's lots of information coming out. Can I take a couple of steps back? Anne had 17 children and all of them died either in childbirth or very soon afterwards. That must have been so obviously unbearably distressing for her, but for people knowing what to do.

Yes, oh, definitely. The Stuart Line has a desperately bad reputation for having healthy living children that are also legitimate. And Anne continued that. And so within multiple pregnancies, and as you say, 17 different pregnancies, only one child actually living long enough. He's born in 1689. He dies in 1700, just after his 11th birthday, I think, of smallpox. Once the Duke of Gloucester, which is what he was called, has died,

then we really are in a situation where we have to find some other heir because Anne's health is not good enough. she's clearly not well. It looks very unlikely that she's going to have any children that actually will survive. So someone has to be in the line of succession. Otherwise, we have a dynastic crisis. So they were the least bad option? Absolutely the least bad option.

And they're actually quite a good option in lots of ways. Because they don't pose a real threat to the British. They aren't that big and that important to German family in that sense. They're a relatively new German family. but they're also staunchly Lutheran at this point in time, but seen as defenders of the faith, and that's really important if you're a weak politician. Also, they're very active against Louis XIV, you know,

and Louise aggrandizing, Catholicizing movement across Europe, and they're very much involved in that, in fighting back, in pushing back, in standing up for Protestantism. And so that makes them very popular in social. some ways in England. Andres, the Hanoverians had their own considerations, obviously. Who was supporting them in advancing their case? Well, it's an interesting question in the context of the succession,

that, of course, in Hanover, opinions were also partly divided and at least not clear how earnestly or how eagerly one should follow up this possibility, which was still then in 1701 and hadn't even acceded to. the throne, so that was still William III. And a lot could happen. Officially, it was Sophia, the granddaughter of James I. And daughter of the Winter Queen of the Palatinate. So she was clearly a proper Protestant.

But her husband had his eyes on actually different aims. He wanted to raise his family to the status of election. of the Holy Roman Empire. Traditionally, there were seven electors in the Golden Bull of 1356, and only after the Peace of Westphalia, there was, for peace sake, they created an eighths electorhip, and now Hanover came and wanted a ninth electorship. And he was fairly close to that,

and he needed the emperor to convey that title onto him, and then announcing that he might be the next Protestant King of England or his wife might have been counterproductive. In 1692 he became that. The Emperor gave him this title, but even then, the Imperial Diet hadn't agreed to it. That took another 10 years.

So there was a lot in limbo in the time, but he left, or that is why, he left all dealings with England to begin with to Sophia, the Electress. Can you tell the listeners who Leibniz, and why he played an important part in this. Yes. Leibniz had a very close relationship to Sophia. They were engaged in continuous debate, theological, philosophical,

and Leibniz was also basically the court historographer of the Hanoverians. And he had the task to write a history of the Gels, because the Hanoverians or the electors of Brunswick-Luneburg, as they officially called, were... came from the family of the Gelf's, and Leibniz, in that context, was very keen not only to support the electorship, but also then the house rising to the status of British kings.

And he did genealogical research, which became quite important to show that the contacts between the Gelf family and the British royal families were much closer or have been closer for a long time. And he went right back to, Maltilda, daughter of Henry II, Blantachinette, who married the Gulf Henry the Lion. And in the public fashioning of the claim to the throne, that played an important part. When the act of settlement was ceremoniously transported to Hanover, Sophia issued a medal,

and on that medal she had her face. and on the other side she had Matilda's face, not her mother, not her grandfather, but Matilda. And that was a way to counteract the, well, the way the act of settlement was a bit of a parliamentarian thing. It didn't necessarily, of course it recognised the birthright, but there was a different tone to it, a Republican tone. What other reservations, if any, did the Hanoverians have,

the active settlement of 1701? The family, as from 1701, the family, and particularly, as August was dead, his son, George, later George I first, I think he took over the task. The electorship was clarified by then, and he worked towards it very carefully, very cautiously, because a lot could still go wrong, as we heard.

A Stuart Brins might convert to Protestantism again, and the boling broke and others tried to convince them, but he then sort of continuously worked towards it. The Protestant priests in the electorate were, of course, delighted because her electorate became the main defender of Protestantism in the Reich. He took over this role from August, from Saxon, who had converted to Catholicism in order to conquer the Polish crown, And so the Hanobrians try to step into that void

and become the leading power in the imperial diet and in the Reich Protestant power. Thank you. Mark, there was 13 years between the act of settlement and the death of Queen Anne. Those must have been turbulent years. Can you give us a sketch of that time? Yes, they were extremely turbulent years. Indeed, many historians refer to them these years

as the rage of party. So party politics really reached a crescendo, partly because of very, very frequent parliamentary elections, on average every two and a half years. So an almost constant ferment of electioneering. And there were some really big public debates, partly because government censorship had lapsed in 1695. So the press was unleashed. So you have very vigorous debate in Parliament, but also very vigorous debate outside. side of Parliament. On this issue alone or on many, many issues. Such as? Such as the war effort. So from 1702 to 1713, Britain was at war with France. And that war was enormously expensive

on an unprecedented scale. It was a continental war. It was a land war. But it was also a sort of global war as being fought out in the colonies and so on. And in order to pay for that war, there had to be new innovations in the tax system. The Bank of England had been created in 1694 to create the financial mechanisms to supply this. So war was an extremely controversial point, but so too was religion. Religion was an extremely strong dividing line in this period,

as we've already heard, with the need for a Protestant successor. But Protestants disagreed amongst themselves. And they disagreed particularly over how far the state should tolerate those who couldn't conform to the Church of England. 1689 had ushered in a toleration act which had given dissenters, as these nonconformists were known, some freedom of worship outside of the confines of the Church of England, but there were many who deeply, deeply resented that and remained very hostile to dissent. and in 1709, an inflammatory cleric called Henry Sir Chevro

preached a sermon that basically attacked the Revolution of 1688 for its resistance against the Stuart Line and attacked the role of the dissenters and wanted to restore the Church of England to its sort of former supremacy. And this created the largest propaganda outflow, the largest flow of print seen in the 18th century as a whole.

So religion was really, really divisive. And one other point that's worth mentioning, I think, here in terms of the division, is what's happening north of the border. Because although the act of settlement secured the succession in England, it didn't secure it north of the border in Scotland. And the act of union with Scotland, which created the state of Great Britain, was passed in 1707 in order to ensure that the Scots sided with, the English with the Hanoverian succession.

And that created enormous discontent north of the border. Elaine, Helene Jonas, a lot of the major figures here are women. Queen Anne, of course, and before her married, then Princess Sophia. And then Caroline Ansbach, married to Sophia's grandson, also George. What did she have to offer? Caroline is probably one of the most underrated, I think, figures in the securing of the Hanoverian succession. Because the Hanoverian succession depended upon having multiple generations. And this is one of the things that the stewards had not been able to do. And so when George I first comes to the

throne, he comes with a ready-made line of succession. And that ready-made line of succession owes not necessarily to him, because he's, of course, coming without a queen. His queen is being kept under house arrest effectively in Germany. But he is coming with the Princess of Wales. And that's Caroline. And she already has a son. So he not only, George I first is coming not only with a son who is an adult, but he's coming with a grandson who's in the direct line of succession. And then when Caroline is here, she also has daughters. So there are other options. And then she has another, well, she has several other sons, but only one who lives. And that's the Duke of Cumberland. And so she's actually ensuring that the succession lasts. And there's a wonderful poem actually

that's written by Joseph Addison, and it really picks up exactly this. And it's done as a squib, and it's sent out as printed and published. And just a couple of lines of it. And it says, he starts out and he says, no longer shall the widowed land bemoan, a broken lineage and doubtful throne,

but boast her progenies increase and count the pledges of her future peace. And that was exactly what they were thinking. This woman, through her maternity, has given us the future. Thank you very much. Andrews, in 1714, Sophia died and then Anne died, and George I was crowned and obliged to live in London.

How was you supposed to run Hanover from London? That was one of the biggest problems of this succession, and it was partly a problem because the British politicians were very eager to not make the same mistake as in 1689, when William III brought a lot of Dutch people with him and filled his government with his Dutch advisor. So the Act of Settlement said no Germans can be employed within the British government

and likewise no British should be employed in Hanoverian government or on the British payroll. That sounds as if it's going to be very awkward then. It was very awkward and it's interesting. Before George came across to England, he issued a similar statement in Hanover, so no British advisors on the Hanoverian payroll. And there were really intentions to keep the two governments apart, which was, of course, extremely difficult. So what he did, he set up German chancery in St. James's Palace, it was about eight people, his advisors, and at the same time,

He gave power to the Privy Council and a few other colleges to rule Hanover, but of course he limited their powers. So for everything more important, they had to come back to him. And that's interesting. The whole power sharing, so to speak, rested on a very efficient postal system. And of course, of both sides where suspicions raised that, the other side had influence on their affair. So there was permanent strife, some friendships,

but also a lot of strife between the British on the one hand and the Hanavians on the other hand. And the whole thing had a second level as well. Who's really going to pay for this? And George had a very clever system. So, for example, the cost of the postal system were divided. England had to pay.

Holland and Hanover paid for the postal stand from Holland to Hanover. But there was also employing aid people in London was slightly above the means of his privy purse in Hanover. They were on the payroll in Hanover but he had to supplement, give them a London allowance and that came out of the English privy purse which was strictly speaking against the act of settlement.

And there are other instances where he found in the end, in fact, so complicated that as early as 1716, he formulated a will where he recommended the dissolution of the personal union. And he wanted to end it. The British politician said,

don't do that, that will throw this country back into complete disarray and we will repeat this due at Protestant succession. There was plenty of disorder in array, Mark, around the coronation of Georgia, first more than a celebration, or something. Yes, indeed. Although rioting, of course, wasn't new.

What did the rioters do? The rioters were essentially protesting against the coronation, but championing the Church of England. They saw the Hanoverian succession as giving carte blanche to the

dissenting non-conformist communities, and they saw this as a threat to the Church of England. So all that animus that I was talking about earlier on that had been whipped up by Sir Chevrole sort of comes out again with these coronation riots and they attacked over 40 dissenting meeting houses and destroyed them as a sign of their displeasure.

That's not to say that there weren't also lots of loyalist demonstrations at the same time. And indeed, because Britain was so polarised at this point between these rival camps of Whigs and Tories, dissenters and Church of England people, There was real rivalry. So this sort of came to a head at the end of May. So the 28th of May was George the first's birthday. And so there were lots of loyalist celebrations about that, provoking Jacobite, that's the name given to those who are opposing the Hanoverians and supporting a Stuart

restoration, provoking them to riot. The very next day was a key day for the Jacobite community because of 29th of May marked the accession of the stewards, the restoration of the stewards in 1660s. So that gave them an opportunity to come out onto the streets with roses and oak leaves and laurels and so on as a sign of their continuing adherence to the stewards. So you get these sort of almost festive, ritualised moments of contestation between rival groups.

And they become very, very, very, serious. So it's not just at the coronation, but those riots continued into 1715. Indeed, they crescendoed in 1715 to the extent that the government had to introduce a special piece of legislation to curb the rioting, the riot act, which we still talk about the riot act being read to people. And that's because the 1715 riot act was a warning to the crowds that if they fail to disperse, they could essentially be shot. And that had the desired effect, eventually, but not before widespread rioting, which affected 50 to 60 different towns across England and Wales. Was any or many people shot? There were not so many people shot, but there were numerous arrests,

probably about 500 arrests in 1715, to try and clamp down. The other thing, of course, was that the government had very good spy network. and it knew about the Jacobite unrest that was being planned, and they instituted a number of arrests to prevent major uprisings in England. London sounds have been in other cities and towns, to mean a sort of controlled uproar. Elaine can you just develop the idea of that 1715 rebellion, just a little so the listeners are up to speed on it.

Okay, the best thing to think about with that is that we've had a number of different possibilities already, of invasions, of Jacobite invasions, either there's threats. Invasions of England. Invasions of England. Where effectively what's been going on all the way through here is there are dynastic concerns and there's a dynastic threat. And what we see is that threat trying to be pushed through to actually have a true rebellion,

a change of government in 1715 and it fails. But in the failing of it, what happens is that the Whigs, who come through this next election and who, George I first, is already encouraging, people to vote Whig in this election, they come in with a majority and they use their power to actually purge the Tories from power. And George I is in favor of this. He has no problem with that. And this idea that the Tories are out of power, they're out of place, they're out of the court, and basically they're in the cold. Thank you. Andreas, we had Georgia First straddling Britain and Europe. Did one benefit more than the other? What was the balance there?

Well, that was a big question even at the time. And it, of course, concerned the fact that foreign policy was officially the prerogative of the king, but the act of settlement had already curbed his powers in that respect as well. He wasn't allowed to involve the United Kingdom in any war that might primarily benefit Hanover. And the split between Tories and Wigs also extended to the United Kingdom. the different foreign policy aims and the Tories were a blue water party they wanted a navy and no standing army

the wigs were more on the side of we need balance of power in Europe for our security as well especially to enter the Jacobite threat as well so at the time there was dispute historians dispute who has actually profited more some came out with a compromise actually his foreign policy might have benefited both sides. It's clear to begin with, he used the Royal Navy to follow some of his

aims in the Great Northern War, because we had not only the War of the Spanish Succession, which ended in 1713, but from 17 to 1720, we had a second major war, which ended with the rise of Russia, but it was against Sweden dominating the Baltic. And Britain had, of course, also interests in Baltic trade. They needed a wood and navy stores basically from the east, but it's clear that Hanover profited. They got two territories, Verden and Bremen, which they desperately wanted because it gave them access to the sea. So question who benefited most is probably until 17, 16, 17. Hanover benefited more. And then George realized opposition in Parliament was so strong against any further major involvement

where Hanover might profit more than Britain that he learned his lesson and did respect British interests more. Mark, can we take that on a bit? Can we detail the economic impact that the succession had on Great Britain and Ireland? Yes, so the Whigs, as the natural supporters of George I were delighted because his new regime seemed to guarantee stability and success for the Protestant Empire abroad.

So the American colonies, for example, which were helping to drive the economy, were very, very supportive of the succession of George. And those colonies were beginning to generate income from the slave trade in a very significant way. One of the clauses of the peace treaty that had ended that major war with France in 1713 gave a contract to Britain

to supply 4,800 slaves per year to the Spanish colonies. And that contract was given to a company called the South Sea Company, which became initially quite a successful venture, but then, perhaps as listeners will be aware, collapsed in very dramatic fashion, very controversial fashion in 1720,

causing the first big stock market crash. But I think perhaps the other really interesting economic aspect of the Hanoverian succession is actually, again, north of the border in Scotland, because one of the consequences of the Act of Union had been to push up Scottish taxes. And the Scots felt very aggrieved at this. There was a tax on malt, for goodness sake, a tax on salt. And those were deeply resented. So the economic benefits north of the border were not at all as visible as they were south of the border or in the empire as a whole.

And indeed that resentment and that economic grievance was one of the things that helped to fuel the discontent that broke out in Scotland in 1715. Thank you. Elaine, can you tell us about Walpole and his role as Prime Minister and the effect, which is, I think, considerable, but you're going to tell us more than that. that he had. Yeah, Walpole is a fascinating character. He's basically coterminous with this period. He comes into Parliament in 1701. So by the time that George's has come to the throne, he's quite an experienced player,

and he's very articulate, very active, an excellent communicator. And what he does is he's able to... First of all, he plays a role in the family itself because, of course, George I first and George the second have desperate problems with each other. And so one of his roles in actually even coming to power and taking that position is to effect a reconciliation between the king and the Prince of Wales. And that's really, really important.

And interesting there, again, he's working through the women. He works through Melisina, George I's mistress, and he works through Caroline, George I, Prince of Wales's wife. So he's doing that. but also then what he's doing when he comes into Parliament is he's really he's interested in calming things down, pacifying things, and he's able to take the disaster that is the South Sea bubble and find a strategy through it to be able to protect the king and try and sort out the worst of the South Sea bubble impact so that he has the king still on side. He has the king's mistress and his half-sister on side,

and he's able to then bring together the Whig Schism and have them unite behind him and move the country forward in a much more peaceful way. He's also, very shortly after that, we will have the Septennial Act, which is in 1716, which is passed, and that stops this rage of party, age of party that Mark was talking about by giving us an extended parliamentary session, and that's really important. Thank you.

We've mentioned this, but I'd like to, Go back there again, Mark, for a moment, the impact of the honey-evereering succession on Scotland and Ireland. So in Ireland, where there was, of course, a Catholic majority, the Protestant elite were nevertheless in the ascendant, and they had all the levers of power. And so Ireland remained entirely quiet. That was a very different picture in Scotland,

where there was rebellion. At the end of 1715, James Francis Edward Stuart is proclaimed James III and a series of uprisings occurred in Scotland, which initially had some success. Big cities like Aberdeen, Dundee were captured. There was even a Jacobite force that came as far south as Preston. But eventually those Jacobite rising, were pushed back and defeated, and by the spring of 1716,

the Jacobite rebellion had largely failed, mainly because it lacked any support from France. So there was no invasion force that could have ousted the Hanoverians, no invasion force that could have placed the Stuart regime securely north of the border, but also the Jack. Jacobites lacked arms. They lacked real organisation. The British army remained very loyal. So really the odds were stacked against the Jacobites in Scotland. There was some residual uprising in the Highlands. But again, that was relatively quickly extinguished. But it was a scary moment for the powers in London.

Size of relief, I think, when that was brought to a close. Elaine, what impact did this have on the lives of the general public? The succession itself. Impact, I suppose, is difficult to judge particularly. Probably if you were a tenant farmer somewhere in Lincolnshire, it probably didn't have a huge amount of impact on you. But if you were a member of the landed gentry or if you were a member of the aristocracy

and you were playing your cards right, and that was if you happened to be a wig or you had to be wig aligned, And it opened up all kinds of possibilities for you. It opened up possibilities for power, for patronage, for preferment, for profit. So there were lots of opportunities in that sense. In terms of wider developments, it had implications in various other ways. Certainly you have people like Caroline Vanspa, Queen Caroline later, who's very interested in religion and involved in religious preferments as well.

so the involvement in patronage in that way. George I first is very involved in military. He controls the military patronage effectively, but that's very much his thing. And so people who are wanting military preferment, that is going to be extremely important if you're playing on the king's side in that way. But there's also implications for art, for garden design.

Caroline does her own garden following an English pattern and sort of popularizes that. She gathers people together who are artists. she gathers people together who are writers. This is a period of real ferment and real growth in terms of the arts and literature in terms of popular culture in that sense. We bring in the opera.

Italian opera becomes really important. Handel and handles music comes over. There are all kinds of different aspects to where people could have cultural impact if not necessarily direct personal impact. And Caroline's also really important in inoculation, isn't she spreading the idea that inoculation wasn't dangerous. This was a new enlightenment scientific idea to prevent disease.

And she was really quite instrumental, I think, in popularizing that. She has some of her children inoculated, yes, which was seen as being really dangerous at the time. Because, of course, it was a live virus that they were using. This is something that was brought over from Turkey by Lady Mary Wartley-Wontagu. Wartley-Montagu. Yes. That is interesting that in Hanover it took another hundred years

to introduce smallpox inoculation and just shows how little cross-fertilisation there was. It was under the French occupation when they started to vaccinate against smallpox. Can I go back for a moment of the cultural impact? It was colossal, wasn't it? Handler alone was colossal. Oh yeah, yes, very much so. It handled becomes sort of the quintessential English composer. And we think of doing any coronation now.

We're thinking of Zadok the priest. And, you know, absolutely important there. He's involved in all kinds of things, including things like the involvement in the Foundling Hospital in London. And that, again, is something that gets initiated because of the fact that Coram, who has connections to the court, uses the court women to get to Caroline, who then builds on that.

Now, that's later than the Hanoverian succession. But that's part of that kind of, wider implication of what's going on. And yes, early on there was a great deal of ridiculing of the Hanavirans. How bitter was that? When, if, did it die out? Of course, it was very bitter. The fact that the licensing act lapsed and created the opportunity for a unique, critical

public sphere was, on the one hand, wonderful. and all proto-liberals were fascinated by what happened in England. But of course, if you had the receiving end, it was a complicated thing. And the Hanoverians, but not only the kings, it was also the government, was very much at the receiving end. And we can think about satires like Swift, Gulliver's travels, which is a bitter satire on, particularly on the weeks, but also on the king.

And then as from 1720, more printed caricatures started to appear. The South Sea bubble was one of the first very successful prints where the king and his government, but also his mistresses, were attacked because they profited partly or they had invested massively. But all they could do is basically follow things up through libel. and they partly did that. But I think they soon learned that this didn't have the right effect, and they just had to grin and bear it.

And it went on, George the second, George the third, and basically died down probably with George the Fourth a bit, but not really. All the churches were subject of ridicule, and behind it, at least the beginning, was a lot of the chakabot. hate against them. There were sort of

portrait as brutes, whoring round town and uncivilized people. The background is also the age of politeness where they've seemed not to fit into that. And then, of course, their foreigners and there was a lot of London

xenophobia involved in it. Yeah, I think the xenophobia is a really important one, but it's also part of what George I first gets is the, for criticism, comes from sort of sexual criticism because of the fact that when he comes over to England, he's coming with his mistress, and long-term mistress, Melisina von de Schoenberg,

but he's also coming with his half-sister, Sophia Charlotte von Kilmenzeg. And the English don't know what to do with these two. And first of all, they call them the elephant in the maypole, because one is very heavy and one is very thin, and neither of them are seen to be particularly pretty, but they also are thinking this is sexually deviant. You know,

what in the world is going on here? Are they both his mistresses? And so the idea that he's a brute, he's not very civilized, he doesn't like socializing, he hides out, he doesn't have very good English, and he's got all these weird women. So this is all something that's

used to attack him. Finally. Maybe the French Revolution also salvages some of the Georgian reputation, because the challenge from the Republican French means in some way a sort of focal point of attention on the monarchy in Britain and around George III in the way that it hadn't done beforehand. And you get a lot of popular enthusiasm for the monarchy,

not always that long lived, but the monarchy becomes a really central institution in the way that it hadn't done before. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Elaine Chalice, Mark Knights and Andreas Gersick. Next week we go to the 12th century for probably the great, greatest writer of epic romances in Persian, Nizami Ganjabi. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Starting with you, Elaine. What would you like to have said you didn't get time to say?

I suppose the thing I would like to say is when thinking, sort of expanding a bit more on how people in England actually thought about or learned about what was going on with the Hanoverian succession. And I think we could say a little bit more about that because I think it works on multiple levels. And so we've got personal stuff going on, people talking to each other, the gossip and the news, the court, socializing, the assemblies, people going back into the local counties, and the Assize meets and the race meets,

going to bath to take the waters. All of these places are places where gossip and news is spread. But it's also, and I think we picked up, and we touched on this a bit, this is a period of a huge bout of development of the press, real press activity. And so we've got our first daily newspaper in 1702, the Daily Courant. And by 1711, we've got the Tatler, the Spectator, Jonathan Swift's Examiner. They're all there. They're all publishing.

And you've got press in the localities as well. So Newcastle, Dublin, the bigger towns all have their own newspapers. And so we're getting the news out there. And the papers are spreading this news. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting when I was doing a little bit of digging around was thinking about the uncertainty that we've talked about in that lead-up, the very lead-up to the actual succession.

And it's already there in 1712. So, for instance, the Newcastle Courant in 1712, June in 1712, leads on its front page with a reprint of the address from the Lord Mayor of London and the alderman and the common councilmen asking the Queen, Queen Anne, to commit publicly to the Hanoverian succession. It's that concerning, there's that nervousness. They've got an answer from her then following immediately after that on the page,

front page of the paper, saying yes, she confirms to it. But even three or four pages further in that paper, there's another report, this time from the House of Commons, having had a vote, to say that they have entire confidence in her magic. for ensuring the Protestant succession. This is 1712, two years before, and it's already out there. So people are actually learning about what's going on, not only because it's something they talk about

and it's something that the Act of Settlement's done, but because of the fact that it's in the press, it's there for them. They could read it or they can have it read to them. Mark? Well, very much picking up on that. I'm interested in talking more about the press and some of the sort of golden age of political journalism. at this time.

So we heard a little bit about Swift. Swift was extremely active during the reign of Queen Anne. He was one of the principal propagandists for Anne's ministry of Robert Harley in particular, who recruited him to write for the government, as was Daniel Defoe. Daniel Defoe sent as an agent to Scotland in order to cultivate public opinion in Scotland for the Act of Union and producing a lot of propaganda. and also other really important writers like Joseph Addison and Richard Steele,

who wrote this incredibly influential periodical called The Spectator, again, articulating the weak vision. But interestingly, Steele and Addison fall out slightly after the Hanoverian accession. Steele is much more of a populist than Addison, and he's always banging on about liberty and the rights of the people. And Addison is much more interested in order. Let's just get everything peaceful. And eventually these two really able writers who had worked so closely together

move further and further apart, and they actually have a breach in 1719 when they fall out over another piece of legislation in which they have very, very different views about. It's called the P. Erich Act. So you get these really interesting dynamics amongst the sort of key journalists. And in some ways that reflects sort of changing patterns of censorship as well. So there isn't a formal censorship in this period after 1695. But there are all sorts of

ways in which the government can clamp down on writers and on publishers. And during the Tory ascendancy, let's put it like that, between 1710 and 1714, lots of Whig publishers and Whig writers are prosecuted and put out of business. And then the pendulum swings the other way. And in the early years of George I reign, equally there's a lot of repression of Jacobite newspapers. I think 13 Jacobite newspapers are forced to cease publication. There's real control over what's said even without the sort of formal mechanisms of censorship. Andreas?

Perhaps I would like to add a little bit to these ongoing debates about the succession in newspapers and in Parliament. And it's very interesting that in 1706, I think it was, Elector Sophia tried to come to England. And she wanted to be recognised by Parliament. and she also wanted some money. But Queen Anne was absolutely against it. She couldn't see eye to eye with Sophia and said it was like looking at her coffin every day

seeing the Hanoverians around at the court. And similarly, they wanted George, the latest George II and Canada wanted to send her, their son, to England beforehand so that he got a bit of English manner. and that was rejected as well. So it wasn't the possibility of them sort of gradually filtering in was prevented primarily by the court. And at the same time, there was Bonimbrook in 1710

and others negotiating with the pretender whether he would convert to take over the throne. So everything was open until then. And it was most of the... of it was out in the public and people were agitated about it. Just to pick up on that as well, when Sophia plays that game effectively and it's a game that's played with the Tories, and the Tories are using that as a political trick to get the wigs into a bad spate.

And I think that's really interesting because it brings us back to the kind of politics we have nowadays where the idea of issuing this invitation to, Sophia to come to England is if the Whigs had disapproved of them, if they vote against it, well then they're going to support the Queen, but they're going to look like they don't support the Hanoverian succession.

And so you've got some really interesting maneuvering going on. But what you do get that comes out of that a little later on is the Regency Act. And that's one of the things I think we hadn't actually talked about is how do you ensure that we have a peaceful, smooth line of succession?

And what they've done is what we get is we get the passage of the Regency Act, which basically says government's going to go on as it was for the next six months if necessary until the king gets here. And we will basically hold everything more or less till then. And that works. And of course, one of the key things about the succession is it is peaceful, it is smooth. And George doesn't actually arrive until September, what, 18th or something like that. And Anne had died on the 1st of August. So there's a period there where effectively we could have had chaos. All kinds of chaos, and we don't.

Well, our producer, Simon Tillotson, is about to enter. Does anyone want tea or coffee? Melvin? I think I'll try a cup of coffee for a change. Coffee? Coffee, black. Tea, please. Tea.

Thank you very much. Thank you. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson, and it's a BBC Studios audio production. What happens when at-home DNA tests reveal more than you bargained for? My birth mom was still here. She's still alive. Six new stories of reconnecting and rupturing families. I just couldn't believe it.

I had a sister after all. Lives upended and long-buried secrets. I then wrote back and said, look, the ripples from this will be enormous. What do you want to do? The new series of The Gift with me, Jenny Clemen, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds. Thank you.