The Coinage Of George I, 1714–1727
For more than 200 years, from 1714 to 1917, the House of Hanover furnished the kings and queens that ruled the United Kingdom. It all began in 1688 when James II was driven from the English throne and replaced by his daughter Mary and her husband William. William was actually of the Dutch nobility but was also related to the British royal family. Mary died not long afterwards but William III, as he was known, ruled until March 1702.
Mary’s sister Anne then inherited the throne but she and her husband were unfortunate in the matter of children, as her numerous pregnancies resulted either in a stillborn or a child that died at a young age.
With no further sisters to inherit the throne, and no living heirs, the throne was legally bound to go to the nearest blood relation in the Stuart family. This meant that a granddaughter of James I (1603–1625), a German princess named Sophia, was in line for this honor.
The reason for the German connection was that James I’s daughter had married a nobleman in that country. They in turn had a daughter, Sophia, who married Ernest Augustus, ruler of a patchwork of small German states. Their son, Georg Ludwig, the future George I of England, was born in May 1660. (Georg Ludwig
