Picture cropped from an unknown e-mail source, possibly from someone who would have preferred Al Gore or someone else
Between 1714 and 1830, England had four successive monarchs called King George, belonging to the House of Hanover. These kings followed four other kings and one queen from the House of Stuart.
There was also a period of Republican rule between 1649 and 1660, which ended when Parliament decided that Oliver Cromwell's son and hier (Richard) was a disaster and decided to restore the monarchy by recalling Charles II from exile in France in 1660.
Charles II was a Protestant, but the others in his family were Catholics. Parliament at this time was very anti-Catholic and in 1662 a law was passed making all religious services illegal, except those of the Church of England. The problem for Parliament was that Charles II and his Catholic wife did not produce any children, so when Charles II died in 1685, his brother James II succeeded him.
James II was a devout Catholic. His first wife had been a Protestant, so his eldest daughter Mary who married William III of Orange, leader of the Dutch Protestants, was an acceptable hier. However, in June 1688, James II's second wife gave birth to a son. Since sons had precedence over daughters, it looked as if James II would be succeeded by another Catholic king.
James II was totally unprepared when his first daugher Mary and the Dutch leader William III decided to invade England. To make matters worse, his second daughter Anne also joined the Protestants. He had no alternative but to escape to France.
A peaceful transition of power took place when William of Orange and Mary became king and queen of England in 1688. Mary, in fact, had first claim to the throne, but William refused to take second place. Parliament agreed for them to be both king and queen, so although Mary died in 1694, it was not until the death of William in 1702 that James II's other daughter Anne became Queen.
To make matters clear, in 1689 (a year after William of Orange and Mary became joint king and queen) Parliament passed the "Declaration of Rights", the law which prevented an English monarch from being a Catholic or married to a Catholic. When Queen Anne died in her sleep in 1714, she left no hier so the House of Stuart reached the end of the line. The only remaining Stuart with a claim to the throne was the exiled son of James II (by his second marriage). He was known as James Edward (the "Old Pretender"). Two Members of Parliament promised that they would support his claim to the English throne if he gave up the Catholic Religion, but James Edward refused.
In August 1714, the first English monarch from the House of Hanover was the German Prince George, Elector of Hanover, who became George I.
George I was naturally suspicious of "the Tories" in the English Parliament, who had tried to get James Edward ("the old pretender") to convert to the Protestant religion and become king. He therefore gave the other party in Parliament "the Whigs" more power and Robert Walpole, one of their leading politicians, became Britain's first Prime Minister. George I also had a language problem. He did not speak English, so he had to talk French to his ministers.
The House of Hanover