tined, by act of Parliament, to the nearest Protestant heir, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, the daughter of King James VI. Sophia having predeceased Queen Anne, it descended of course to her son George, Elector of Hanover, who accordingly came over to England and assumed the sovereignty, to the exclusion of his cousin the Chevalier.

GEORGE I was scarcely seated on the throne, when an insurrection was raised against him by the friends of his rival. It was, suppressed, however; and he continued to reign, almost without further disturbance, till his death in 1727.

GEORGE II acceded to the crown on the death of his father. Meanwhile, the Chevalier St George had married Clementina, grand-daughter of John Sobieski, the heroic, King of Poland, by whom he had a son, Charles Edward Lewis Cassimir, born December 31, 1720, the hero of the civil war of 1745, and another son, Henry Benedict, born 1725, afterwards well known by the name of Cardinal de York. James was himself a man of weak character, to which the failure of his attempt in 1715 is mainly to be attributed. But the blood of Sobieski seems to have corrected that quality in his eldest son, whose daring and talent, as displayed in 1745-6, did every thing but retrieve the fortunes of his family.