Sophia of Hanover

Who was Sophia of Hanover?

Sophia of the Palatinate was the Electress of Hanover from 1692 to 1698. She was also an heiress to the crowns of England and Ireland. She was declared heiress presumptive to Queen Anne by the Act of Settlement 1701, which was passed by the English parliament, and therefore only applied to the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Ireland. A few years later, the Kingdom of Scotland agreed to accept the Hanoverian succession for the new single throne of a new country, the Kingdom of Great Britain that Scotland and England had agreed to unite as, and which came into being under the Acts of Union, 1707. Sophia, a granddaughter of James VI and I, died less than two months before she would have become queen; her claim to the thrones passed on to her eldest son, George Louis, Elector of Hanover, who ascended them as George I on 1 August 1714.

Born to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and Elizabeth Stuart, in 1630, Sophia grew up in the Dutch Republic, where her family had sought refuge after the sequestration of their Electorate during the Thirty Years' War. Sophia's brother Charles Louis was, as part of the Peace of Westphalia, restored to the Palatinate. Sophia married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1658. Despite his jealous tempers and frequent absences, Sophia loved him, and bore him seven children who survived to adulthood. Initially a landless cadet, Ernest Augustus succeeded in having the House of Hanover raised to electoral dignity in 1692. Therefore, Sophia became Electress of Hanover, the title by which she is best-remembered. A patroness of the arts, Sophia commissioned the palace and gardens of Herrenhausen and sponsored philosophers, such as Gottfried Leibniz and John Toland.