2 - Britain, Hanover and the protestant interest prior to the Hanoverian succession

Summary

The confessional politics of George I and George II were crucial to British and Hanoverian foreign policy in the first half of the eighteenth century. A sense of confessional unity brought Britain and Hanover together and also provided a justification for British involvement in continental politics. Concern with the protestant interest and the desirability of protestant monarchy did not begin in 1714, however. Rather George I and George II were part of the continuing drama of the protestant succession in Britain. This chapter considers both William III, a model protestant hero, and the changes which the Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 brought about. Constraints of space mean that the rich vein of scholarship on William III's protestant credentials can only be mentioned briefly. Instead the focus is on themes important for the whole work: the shifting patterns of Hanoverian interest in the British thrones, the role played by Huguenots in the promotion of international protestant ideals and the concerns of protestants in the Empire about the fate of protestantism.

Older accounts of the Glorious Revolution tended to see it as the triumph of whig constitutionalist politics – another, albeit important, step down the road towards progress and the triumph of reform in the nineteenth century. Recent accounts have been more sensitive to contemporary fears, such as the twin perils that James II's government was believed to encapsulate – popery and arbitrary government. Worries from sections of the political nation about the likely effects of a catholic monarch, as well as fears about the direction of Charles II's rule, had prompted attempts to exclude James from the succession in the latter years of his brother's reign. The parties of the whigs and tories first began to form in this period. Whigs believed that both English liberties and the protestant religion would be threatened by a catholic monarch. Tories, on the other hand, argued that the rights of the crown, particularly over the succession, could not be altered by parliament. Succession was based upon indefeasible hereditary right, not human choice. Moreover it was argued that the Church of England had adequate legal protection and so could survive a catholic king. These partisan divisions remained important well into the eighteenth century.