George II 1683-1760
King of Great Britain and Ireland and Elector of Hanover

He was born in Herrenhausen, Hanover, the son of George I, whom he succeeded in 1727. In 1705 he married Caroline of Ansbach. Despite the personal antipathy that had existed between father and son during most of George's adult life and his opposition to his father's government, he maintained his father's principal minister, Sir Robert Walpole, in power. Walpole dominated British politics until his fall in 1742, and thereafter the system that he had established continued to operate, little altered, under his successors. Walpole's peace policy was breached by war with Spain in 1737 and British participation in the War of Austrian Succession (1742-48). The king, the last British monarch to take part in a battle, took the field as commander of the British army at the Battle of Dettingen (1743), which he won. In 1745 a Jacobite rising in Scotland under the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart, was at first alarmingly successful, but without the hoped-for aid from France the Scots had little real chance against the British army and were savagely cut down at Culloden by George's second son, William Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland. British involvement (1756-57) in the Seven Years War (1756-63) was largely undertaken in defence of Hanover, but, while Great Britain suffered reverses in Europe, this was more than offset by successes further afield. Robert Clive's victory at Plassey in 1757 helped to lay the foundations of British India and the capture of Quebec by James Wolfe in 1759 established British supremacy in North America.

Bibliography: Charles Trench, George II (1973)