← In Our Time
In Our Time
The Hanoverian Succession
00:50:54
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the politics that led to the coronation of George I.
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- [00:00]
Melvin Bragg
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Narrator
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Elaine Challis
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Andreas Gestrich
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- [00:54]
Mark Knights
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Andreas Gestrich
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Melvin Bragg
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Elaine Challis
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Melvin Bragg
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 find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. 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 surviving children, and following the old rules, there were at least 50 Catholic candidates ahead of any Protestant one. Yet by passing the act of settlement in 1701, focus turned to Europe and the Protestant Princess Sophia, an electress 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 are Andreas Gestrich, professor emeritus at Trier University and former director of the German Historical Institute in London, Elaine Challis, 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 1701?
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Mark Knights
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 II, 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 success, they failed. He did become king, he became James ii. 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 Hanoverian line. All the more so because England's arch enemy, France, had recognised James II's 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 succession.
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Melvin Bragg
Which party was most in favor of a Hanoverian ruler in the early days? And if so, why?
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Mark Knights
So the later Stuart period, the later 17th century, early 18th century, is characterized 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 Whigs stood for tolerance towards Protestant dissent. 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, in a way the natural supporters of the, 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.
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Melvin Bragg
Thank you very much, Elaine. Elaine Schalus, how did they arrive at the idea that a successor from Hanover would be the answer?
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Elaine Challis
Well, I think from what Mark has already said, we're 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. Sophia 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 prints, her son's image later. George I, his images in prints, you know, these people are talked about. There's gossip, there's news, the newspapers are talking, there's lots of information coming out.
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Melvin Bragg
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.
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Elaine Challis
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 with the 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.
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Melvin Bragg
So they were the least bad option?
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Elaine Challis
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 a 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 Whig politician. Also, they're very active against Louis xiv, you know, and Louis 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 some ways in England.
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Melvin Bragg
Andreas the Hanoverians had their own considerations, obviously, who was supporting them in advancing their case.
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Andreas Gestrich
Well, it's 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 English 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 electors of the Holy Roman Empire. Traditionally, there were seven electors in the Golden Bull of 1356, and only after the peace Office failure there was, for peace sake, they created an eighth electorship. 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.
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Melvin Bragg
Can you tell the listeners who Leibniz was and why he played an important part in this?
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Andreas Gestrich
Yes, Leibniz had a very close relationship to Sophia. They were engaged in continuous debates, theological, philosophical. And Leibniz was also basically the court historiographer of the Hanoverians, and he had the task to write a history of the Guelphs, because the Hanoverians, or the electors of Brunswick Luneburg, as they are officially called, came from the family of the Guelphs. And Leibniz, in that context, was very keen not only to support the electorship, but also 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 Guelph family and the British royal families were much closer, or have been closer for a long time. And he went right back to Matilda, daughter of Henry II Blantagenet, 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 recognized the birthright, but there was a different tone to it, a republican tone.
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Melvin Bragg
What other reservations, if any, did the Hanoverians have about the act of settlement of 1701?
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Andreas Gestrich
The family, as from 1701, the family, and particularly Ernst August, was dead. His son George, later George I, 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, Stuart Prince might convert to Protestantism again. The Bolling 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 elector became the main defender of Protestantism in the Reich. He took over this role from August von Sachsen, who had converted to Catholicism in order to conquer the Polish crown. And so the Hanoverians tried to step into that void and become the leading power in the Imperial Diet and in the Reich, Protestant power.
- [14:13]
Melvin Bragg
Thank you, Mark. There's 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?
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Mark Knights
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.
- [15:01]
Melvin Bragg
Of Parliament on this issue alone, or on many issues.
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Mark Knights
On many, many issues.
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Melvin Bragg
Such as?
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Mark Knights
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. It was 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 non conformists 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 Sacheverell 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.
- [17:29]
Melvin Bragg
Elaine. Elaine Jollis. A lot of the major figures here are women. Queen Anne, of course, and before her, Mary, then Princess Sophia, and then Caroline of Anspach, married to Sophia's grandson, also George. What does she have to offer?
- [17:46]
Elaine Challis
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 Stuarts had not been able to do. And so when George I 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 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 actually 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, you know, printed and published, 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, doubtful throne, but boast her progeny's 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.
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Melvin Bragg
Thank you very much, Andreas. In 1714, Sophia died and then Anne died and George I was crowned and obliged to live in London. How is it supposed to run Hanover from London?
- [19:35]
Andreas Gestrich
That was one of the biggest problems of the 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 advisors. So the act of Settlement said, no Germans can be employed in within the British government, and likewise no British should be employed in Hanoverian government or on the British payroll.
- [20:13]
Melvin Bragg
That sounds as if it's going to be very awkward then.
- [20:16]
Andreas Gestrich
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 with 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, on both sides were 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 Hanoverians 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 to Holland and Hanover paid for the postal stamps from Holland to Hanover. But there was also employing eight 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 it 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 politicians said, don't do that. That will throw this country back into complete disarray and we will repeat the Stuart Protestant succession.
- [22:46]
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- [23:59]
Melvin Bragg
There was plenty of disorder and array mark around the coronation of George I. More than a celebration.
- [24:07]
Mark Knights
Yes, indeed. Although rioting of course wasn't new.
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Melvin Bragg
What did the rioters do?
- [24:11]
Mark Knights
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 Sacheverell 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 28 May was George I'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 29 May marked the accession of the Stuarts, the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. 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 Stuarts. So you get these sort of almost festive, ritualized moments of contestation between rival groups, and they become 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 failed 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.
- [26:48]
Melvin Bragg
Was any or many people shot?
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Mark Knights
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.
- [27:14]
Melvin Bragg
London sounds to urbanian and other cities and towns, I mean, a sort of controlled uproar. Elaine, can you just develop the idea of that 1715 rebellion just a little, so that listeners are up to speed on it?
- [27:27]
Elaine Challis
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 they're 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 some diagnostic concern 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 is already encouraging people to vote Whig in this election, they come in with the 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.
- [28:24]
Melvin Bragg
Thank you, Andreas. We had George I straddling Britain and Europe. Did one benefit more than the other? What was the balance there?
- [28:32]
Andreas Gestrich
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 Whigs also extended to the different foreign policy aims. And the Tories were a blue water party. They wanted a navy and no standing army. The Whigs were more on the side of we need balance of power in Europe for our security as well, especially to end 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 wood and navy stores, basically from the East. But it's clear that Hannover 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 1716, 17, Hannover 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.
- [30:44]
Melvin Bragg
Mark, can we take that on a bit? Can we detail the economic impact that the succession had on Great Britain and Ireland?
- [30:52]
Mark Knights
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 4800 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 actual 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.
- [32:47]
Melvin Bragg
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.
- [32:58]
Elaine Challis
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 has come to the throne, he's quite inexperienced, 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 and George II 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 Melusina, George I's mistress, and he works through Caroline, George II's Prince of Wales 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.
- [34:48]
Melvin Bragg
Thank you. We've mentioned this, but I'd like to go back there again, Mark, for a moment. The impact of the Hanoverian succession on Scotland and Ireland.
- [34:59]
Mark Knights
So in. 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. 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 risings 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 Jacobites lacked arms, they lacked real organization. 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. Sighs OF relief, I think, when that was brought to a close.
- [36:48]
Melvin Bragg
Elaine, what impact did this have on the lives of the general public?
- [36:53]
Elaine Challis
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. The landed gentry, or if you were a member of the aristocracy and you were playing your cards right, that was, if you happened to be a Whig or you had to be Whig aligned, 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 of Anspach, 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 is very involved in military. He controls the military patronage, effectively. 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 Handel's music comes over. There are all kinds of different aspects to where people could have cultural impact, if not necessarily direct personal impact.
- [38:42]
Melvin Bragg
Mark.
- [38:42]
Mark Knights
And Caroline's also really important in inoculation, isn't she?
- [38:45]
Elaine Challis
Absolutely.
- [38:46]
Mark Knights
Spreading the idea that inoculation wasn't dangerous. This was a new Enlightenment scientific idea to. To prevent disease. And she was really quite instrumental, I think, in popularizing that.
- [38:58]
Elaine Challis
She has some of her. Her children inoculated. Yes. Which was. It was seen as being really dangerous at the time because, of course, it was a live. A live virus that they were using. This is something that was brought over from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
- [39:13]
Melvin Bragg
Yes.
- [39:13]
Andreas Gestrich
But it's interesting that in Hanover it took another hundred years to introduce smallpox inoculation and just shows how little cross fertilization there was. It was under the French occupation when they started to vaccinate against smallpox.
- [39:31]
Melvin Bragg
Can we go back for a moment to the cultural impact? It was colossal, wasn't it? Handel alone was colossal.
- [39:37]
Elaine Challis
Oh, yeah, yes, very much so. Handel 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 Hannesburyan succession, but that's part of that kind of wider implication of what's going on.
- [40:16]
Melvin Bragg
Andreas, early on, there was a great deal of ridiculing of the Hanoverians. How bitter was that and when, if did it die out?
- [40:25]
Andreas Gestrich
Of course, it was very bitter. The fact that the Licensing act lapsed and created the opportunity for unique critical public spirit, 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 at the very much at the receiving end. And we can think about, yeah, satires like Swift, Gulliver's Travels, which is a bitter satire on, particularly on the Rigs, but also on. 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 ii, George iii and basically died down probably as George IV a bit, but not, not really. All the Georges were subject of ridicule and behind it, at least the beginning, was a lot of the Jacobite hate against them. They were sort of portrayed as brutes whoring around town and uncivilized people. It's in the background is also the age off politeness where they seem not to fit into that. And then of course, they're foreigners and there was a lot of London xenophobia involved in it.
- [42:35]
Elaine Challis
Yeah, I think the xenophobia is a really important one. But it's also part of what George I 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, Melusina von Denschulenberg, but he's also coming with his half sister, Sophia Charlotte von Kilmensegg. And the English don't know what to do with these two. First of all, they call them the elephant and 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. What in the world's going on here? Are they both his mistresses? And so the idea that, you know, 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, you know, so this is all something that's used to attack him.
- [43:32]
Mark Knights
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 a 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.
- [44:01]
Melvin Bragg
Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Elaine Cellus, Mark Nice and Andres Gerstic. Next week we go to the 12th century for probably the greatest writer of epic romances in Persian, Nizami Ganjavi. Thanks for listening.
- [44:17]
Elaine Challis
And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.
- [44:24]
Melvin Bragg
Starting with you, Elaine, what would you like to have said you didn't get time to say?
- [44:28]
Elaine Challis
I suppose the thing I would like to say is we're thinking sort of expanding a bit more on how people in England actually think, 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, you know, the gossip and the news, the court socializing, the assemblies, people going back into the. 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 are spread. But it's also, and I think we picked up and we touched on this a bit, this is a period of 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, bigger towns all have their own newspapers. 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. It's already there. In 1712, for instance, the Newcastle Courant in 1712, June of 1712, leads on its front page with a reprint of the address from the Lord Mayor of London and the aldermen and the common councilmen asking the Queen, Queen Anne, to commit publicly to the Hanoverian succession. It's that concerning. There's that nervousness. She then 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 Majesty 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.
- [46:56]
Melvin Bragg
Mark.
- [46:58]
Mark Knights
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 Stacy Steele, who wrote this incredibly influential periodical called the Spectator, again articulating the Whig 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 which they have very, very different views about. It's called the Peerage 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 supreme 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's reign, equally, there's a lot of repression of Jacobite newspapers. I think certain 13 Jacobite newspapers are forced to cease publication. So there's real control over what's said, even without the sort of formal mechanisms of censorship.
- [49:39]
Melvin Bragg
Andreas, perhaps I would like to add.
- [49:41]
Andreas Gestrich
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 ectress Sophia tried to come to England and she wanted to be recognized 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 the court. And similarly, they wanted George, the latest George ii, and Caroline wanted to send her, their son, to England beforehand so that he got a bit of English manners or. And that was rejected as well. So it wasn't. The possibility of them sort of gradually filtering in was prevented primarily by the courts. And at the same time, there was Bolingbroke 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 it was out in the public and people were agitated about it.
- [51:07]
Elaine Challis
Just to pick up on that as well. When Sophia plays that game effectively and is a game that's played with the Tories, and the Tories are using that as a. As a political trick to get the Whigs into a bad state. And I think that's really interesting because it brings us back to the kind of politics we have nowadays where, you know, the idea of issuing this invitation to Sophia to come to England is if the Whigs had disapproved of that, if they vote against it, well, then they're. 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, 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.
- [52:31]
Melvin Bragg
Well, I. Producer Simon Tillerson, is about to enter.
- [52:34]
Mark Knights
Say I want Tea or coffee, Melvin?
- [52:37]
Melvin Bragg
I think I'll try a cup of coffee for a show.
- [52:40]
Mark Knights
Coffee, black tea, please.
- [52:42]
Andreas Gestrich
Tea.
- [52:43]
Mark Knights
Thank you very much. Thank you.
- [52:44]
Elaine Challis
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.
- [52:57]
Mark Knights
My birth mum was still here.
- [52:58]
Elaine Challis
She's still alive. Six new stories of reconnecting and rupturing families. I just couldn't believe it. I. I had a sister after all. Lives upended and long buried secrets.
- [53:13]
Mark Knights
I then wrote back and said, look, the ripples from this will be enormous. What do you want to do?
- [53:21]
Elaine Challis
The new series of the Gift with me, Jenny Kleeman from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.
- [53:37]
Narrator
Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.
- [53:51]
Miranda
It felt a really safe and welcoming space after the yoga classes. I felt amazing.
- [53:58]
Narrator
But soon that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders.
- [54:11]
Miranda
I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards. I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in.
- [54:19]
Andreas Gestrich
A house and not feeling like they can leave.
- [54:22]
Narrator
World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations.
- [54:38]
Elaine Challis
You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize.
- [54:46]
Miranda
And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand.
- [55:05]
Narrator
Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network.
- [55:08]
Miranda
I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future.
- [55:32]
Elaine Challis
To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power.
- [55:43]
Narrator
World of Secrets Season 6 the Bad Guru Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:58]
Ryan Seacrest
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Ryan Seacrest
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