George II of Britain (9 November 1683–25 October 1760) was King of Great Britain and Ireland and the Elector of Hanover from 11 June 1727 to 25 October 1760, succeeding George I and preceding George III.
Biography[]
Georg Augustus von Hannover was born in Hanover in 1683, the son of Elector George I and Sophia Dorothea of Celle. He was raised in Germany, but, in 1707, his grandmother Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant descendants became heirs to the throne of Great Britain. George married Caroline of Ansbach in 1705, and, in 1714, he became Prince of Wales after his father became King George. In the first years of his father's reign, George quarreled with his father due to his father's jealousy over his popularity; while King George I only spoke German, Prince George immediately adopted English culture as his own. He was banned from St James's Palace in 1718, and he opposed his father's moves to increase religious freedom in Great Britain and expand Hanover's German territories at the expense of Sweden. Hs frequently hosted opposition politicians Robert Walpole and Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend at Leicester House, and Walpole rose to the pinnacle of government following the South Sea Bubble's collapse in 1721.
George II succeeded his father in 1727 at the age of 43. George exercised little control over domestic policy, which was controlled by the "Whig supremacy" Parliament, and he quarreled with his own son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, who supported the parliamentary opposition. In 1743, King George II assumed nominal command of a British-Hanoverian army at the Battle of Dettingen during the War of the Austrian Succession, marking the last time a reigning British monarch led troops in combat. In 1745, an attempt by the Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuart to seize the throne from George II was defeated at the Battle of Culloden. Frederick died in 1751, and, on George II's death, his grandson George III succeeded him.
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