GEORGE I (GEORGE Lewis), king of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover: b. Hanover, Germany, 28 March 1660; d. Osnabruck, 12 June 1727. He was the son of the Elector Ernest Augustus, by Sophia, daughter of Frederick, elector palatine, and granddaughter to James I. In 1682 he married his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, daughter of the Duke of Celle. The union was not a happy one. George I was both a faithless and a jealous husband, and when his wife, who was guilty of some imprudences, brought on herself the suspicion of carrying on an illicit intrigue with Count Konigsmark, he caused her to be imprisoned and kept her in confinement for the rest of her life. The off spring of the marriage were George, Prince of Wales, afterward George II, and Sophia, the mother of Frederick the Great. In 1698 he suc ceeded to the electorate, and in this succession was joined in the alliance against France. The command of the imperial army was conferred upon him in 1707, but owing to jealousies among his confederates he resigned the com mand at the end of three campaigns. At the Peace of Rastadt Louis XIV recognized the electoral dignity in the house of Lunenburg, as he had already by the Treaty of Utrecht recog nized the succession of the same house to the throne of Great Britain, which event took place on the death of Anne in 1714, when the elector was in the 55th year of his age. His reign in
England was disturbed first by a rising in 1715 of the Scottish Jacobites in favor of the son of James II, and afterward by wars with Spain, undertaken first in conjunction with Holland and France (the Triple Alliance of 1717), after ward in addition with Austria (the Quadruple Alliance of 1718), with the view of checking the schemes of the Spanish minister Alberoni. The bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 caused an acute financial crisis. George I was plain and simple in his tastes and appearance; he had a high personal courage; he possessed much natural prudence and good sense, and management of his German dominions, to which he showed more attachment than to his English dominions, was able. His preference for Hanover and the greed of his German mis tresses and favorites made him unpopular in England. His inability to speak English made him unable to preside over his council of min isters and led to the cabinet system of govern ment in Great Britain. Consult Coxe, 'Life of Walpole' (1808) ; Wright, 'England Under the House of Hanover' (1848) ; Thackeray, 'The Four Georges) (1860) ; Melville, 'The First George in Hanover and England' (1908).