Soo Chow

SOO CHOW, a town in the province of Kiang-su, with a population estimated (1926) at 500,000. It is on the Grand canal to the east of Lake Tai-hu and about 55 m. W.N.W. of Shanghai, with which it is connected by rail. The walls are about i o m. in circumference and there are many large suburbs. The town was founded in 484 by Ho-lu-Wang, whose grave is covered by the artificial "Hill of the Tiger," in the vicinity of the town.

SOPHIA (163o-1714), electress of Hanover, twelfth child of Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, by his wife Elizabeth, a daughter of the English king James I., was born at The Hague on Oct. 14, 163o. Residing after 1649 at Heidelberg with her brother, the restored elector palatine, Charles Louis, she married in 1658 Ernest Augustus, who became elector of Brunswick Liineburg, or Hanover, in 1692. Her married life was not a happy one. Sophia became a widow in the year 1698, but before then her name had been mentioned in connection with the English throne. When considering the Bill of Rights in 1689 the House of Commons refused to place her in the succession, and the matter rested until 1700 when the state of affairs in England was more serious. William III. was ill and childless; William, duke of Gloucester, the only surviving child of the princess Anne, had just died. The electress was the nearest Protestant heir. Accord

ingly by the Act of Settlement of 1701 the English Crown, in default of issue from either William or Anne, was settled upon "the most excellent princess Sophia, electress and duchess dowager of Hanover" and "the heirs of her body, being Pro testant." Sophia watched affairs in England during the reign of Anne with great interest, although her son, the elector George Louis, objected to any interference in that country, and Anne disliked all mention of her successor. An angry letter from Anne possibly hastened Sophia's death, which took place at Herren hausen on June 8, 1714; less than two months later her son, George Louis, became king of Great Britain and Ireland as George I. on the death of Anne.

See

Memoiren der Kurfiirstin Sophie von Hannover, edited by A. Kocher (Leipzig, 1879 ; Eng. trans., i888) ; Briefwechsel der Herzogin Sophie von Hannover mit ihrein Bruder, etc., edited by E. Bodemann (Leipzig, 1885 and i888) ; A. W. Ward, The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession (London, 1909) ; 0. Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart (Vienna, 1875-88) ; Correspondance de Leibnitz avec l'ilectrice Sophie, edited by 0. Klopp (Hanover, 1864-75) ; and R. S. Rait, Five Stuart Princesses (London, 1902).