ctress
Sophia was the mother of George, afterwards the First of England. She
seems to have had good-sense as well as talent; her close friend
Leibnitz once said of her that she was not only given to asking why,
but also wanted to know the why of the whys. She was not very anxious
to see her son George made sovereign of England, and appeared to be
under the impression that his training and temper would not allow him
to govern with a due regard for the notions of constitutional liberty
which prevailed even then among Englishmen. It even seems that Sophia
made the suggestion that James Stuart, the Old Pretender, as he has
since been called, would do well to become a Protestant, go in for
constitutional Government, and thus have a chance of the English
throne. It is certain that she strongly objected to his being compared
with Perkin Warbeck, or called a bastard. She accepted, however, the
position offered to her and her son by the Act of Settlement, and
appears to have become gradually reconciled to it, and even, as she
sank into years, is said to have expressed a hope many times that the
name of Queen of England might be inscribed upon her coffin. She came
very near to the gratification of her wish. She died in June, 1714,
being then in her eighty-fourth year--only a very few days before {5}
Queen Anne received her first warning of the near approach of death.
Her son George succeeded to her claim upon the crown of England.

[Sidenote: 1714--The House of Brunswick]

The reigning house of Hanover was one of those lucky families which
appear to have what may be called a gift of inheritance. There are
some such houses among European sovereignties; whenever there is a
breach in the continuity of succession anywhere, one or other of them
is sure to come in for the inheritance. George the Elector, who was
now waiting to become King of England as soon as the breath should be
out of Anne's body, belonged to the House of Guelf, or Welf, said to
have been founded by Guelf, the son of Isembert, a count of Altdorf,
and Irmintrude, sister of Charlemagne, early in the ninth century. It
had two branches, which were united in the eleventh century by the
marriage of one of the Guelf ladies to Albert Azzo the Second, Lord of
Este and Marquis of Italy. His son Guelf obtained the Bavarian
possessions of his wife's step-father, a Guelf of Bavaria. One of his
descendants, called Henry the Lion, married Maud, daughter of Henry the