George I of Great Britain

Hanover is in Saxony, kind of in the middle towards the top, if you want to look at a map.

Jörg Ludwig became King George I of Great Britain.

How did that go?

Well, it went well, surprisingly well, I would say, for a number of reasons.

With George I, the interesting aspect is that he crosses the sea to be crowned King of Britain.

But of course, a part of his new kingdom don't want that.

They're the Jacobites.

His clarion or coach horn, or whatever instrument of music it was he blew, has vanished.

The parish book records that in the time of George I, a boy broke it off, melted it down, and was publicly flogged in consequence, the last time, apparently, that the whipping post was used.

But Gabriel still twists about as manfully as he did when old Peter, the famous smith, fashioned and set him up with his own hand in the last year of King Henry VIII, as it is said to commemorate the fact that on this spot stood the stakes to which Cecily Harfleet, Lady of Blossholm, and her foster mother, Emlyn, were chained to be burned as witches.

So it is with everything at Blossholm, a place that time has touched but lightly.

Queen Anne died on August 1, 1714, and for a time the skies over Hendel threatened to cloud, for on the very day of her passing the Elector of Hanover was proclaimed by the secret council King of England.

He arrived in London on September 20, and was crowned George I at Westminster a month later.

Here was a pretty kettle of fish, his former master to whose service he had most certainly not returned in a reasonable time, suddenly seated on the English throne, and not even a new te deum prepared against his coming to the land which Hendel now regarded as home.

Hendelian luck got him out of what might have been a serious predicament.

he must have trusted to his destiny in the first place to help him out of an obviously awkward situation and being tactful he made no open move to aggravate it george i was and remained intensely german brought to england with him a compact body of germans chamberlains secretaries even his pair of elderly mistresses the baroness kiel monsega and madame schulemberg and all manner of comforts and consolations he could not find in his new island kingdom he made no effort to shed his german love of music wherefore as roland points out he could not punish handel without punishing himself and after he heard handel's fascinating new opera amadigi in may seventeen fifteen he lost all idea if indeed he ever harbored any of disciplining his former servant He appointed Handel music master to the Little Princesses, and when, in 1716, the monarch had to go to Hanover, the composer accompanied him on the trip, took occasion to study musical developments in Germany, and even wrote a passion on a text by Heinrich Brooks.

Here is the point to consider for a moment the tale of the water music, one of the most venerable Hendelian anecdotes.

The story runs somewhat as follows.

Strange, all this difference should be twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

We have had in England kings who did not understand our language.

George I had no English, and Walpole, as we know, managed him with good punch and bad Latin.

And it is more than possible that, what with the Latin and what with the punch, George I had not at all times a precise idea of the British constitution or of the significance of the documents which he signed.

But it has not been suggested that the badness of Walpole's Latin had any more effect on the validity of those documents than the goodness of the punch, or that the Elector of Hanover was absolved from the obligations imposed by the English coronation oath because he thought that it meant something else in German.

Nor is the Act of Settlement invalid because George was not able to read it, and the document by which he and his successors are bound, and in virtue of which they occupy the throne, was the English version understood and accepted by the nation, and not the possibly inaccurate Latin version in which it was explained to the king.

We are familiar with the journals, newspaper advertisements, and other writings that provide contemporary reports on this custom, but it is to the artist we turn for a more clearly defined view.

The painter saw, arranged, and gave us a visual image, sometimes richly informative, as in Tea Party in the Time of George I, of the different tea time items and how they were used.

The unknown artist of this painting, done about 1725, has carefully illustrated each piece of equipment considered appropriate for the tea ceremony and used for brewing the tea in the cups held with such grace by the gentleman and child.

Throughout the 18th century, the well-equipped tea table would have displayed most of the items seen in this painting, a teapot, slop bowl, container for milk or cream, tea canister, sugar container, tongs, teaspoons, and cups and saucers.

Even a brief investigation of about 20 inventories, itemized lists of the goods and property of deceased persons that were required by law, reveal that in New York between 1742 and 1768, teapots, cups and saucers, teaspoons, and tea canisters were owned by both low and high income groups in both urban and rural areas.

The design and ornament of the tea vessels and utensils, of course, differed according to the fashion of the time, and the various items associated with the beverage provide a good index of the stylistic change in the 18th century.

The simple designs and unadorned surfaces of the plump, pear-shaped teapot in Tea Party in the Time of George I and the spherical one seen in the portrait Susanna Truax mark these pieces as examples of the late Baroque style popular in the early part of the 18th century.

About mid-century, teapots of inverted pear shape associated with the Rococo style began to appear.