Dr Kat and Sophia of Hanover

hello and welcome back to the channel if you're new here hi you're very welcome this is reading the past and I'm dr. Kat before I hop into the meat of today's video I do want to engage in some shameless self-promotion first next month I'm very excited to say that on the 9th of October 2019 I will be speaking at Kensington Palace in the evening it as part of their bright nights series of events and on the 9th I'm going to be talking about Empire and its origins if that sounds interesting to you if your base in the UK or even if you have plans to be in the UK at the start of next month then please do follow the link in my description box to the event and tickets if you do turn up then come and find me and say hello I would love to hear from you but today's video is on a different topic today I want to talk about a really interesting woman as far as I'm concerned she was almost a queen of this country in fact she only missed out on taking up that role by a couple of months nevertheless she is the matriarch of a truly great and famous royal dynasty today I want to talk about Sophia of Hanover [Music] [Music] Sophia the princess Palatine of the Rhine Electress of Hanover was the second youngest of her parents 13 children those parents were frederick v elector palatine and winter king of bohemia and his wife elizabeth the daughter of James's sick of Scots and first of England at Sophia's birth on the 4th of October 1630 her family were living in exile Bohemia had an elected monarchy and when her mother and father were crowned in November 1619 no doubt hopes were high those hopes however were swiftly frustrated and they were deposed on the 8th of November 1620 the family reached their exile in the hague the place where Sophia is born on the 14th of April 1621 in 1632 when Sofia was around two years old frederick v her father passed away much of Sophia's early life her formative years if you will were spent at Leiden she was there until 1641 when she was sent to rejoin her mother's court at the hague Sophia's education was a comprehensive one by any standard she was taught French German English Dutch Latin Greek theology history mathematics and law it was suggested for Sophia to marry her cousin charles ii who at that point was living as an exiled english king following the English Civil War which saw Charles the second father Charles the first executed outside the banking house the monarchy abolished and a Republic prison its place under the headship of oliver cromwell therefore theoretically these two people Sophia and Charles would have had quite a lot in common firstly they were cousins they also knew the pain of losing their father albeit under quite different circumstances and additionally the personal tragedy of being forced live in exile away from the land that they themselves or their families had a claim to rule nevertheless despite these similarities and points of connection the marriage never took place Sophia does eventually marry in 1658 the exact day that the marriage takes place isn't quite clear we think it's the 17th of October her husband is Ernst August of brunswick-lüneburg and by him she has seven children six sons and a daughter the eldest of these boys is called George we know him better as King George the first and how he gets on the English throne is a matter for later in the video but the chain of events that precipitates it starts two years after Sofia's marriage when in 1660 Sophia's cousin and suggested spouse charles ii is able to become that in more than just name he is invited to return from exile and reclaim his Father's throne charles ii is also known as the merry monarch and it seems that's a fairly fitting moniker he follows a number of children none by his wife and so these children are not legitimate and they cannot claim the throne after his death Charles is heir therefore is his brother James and he becomes James the second James had two surviving daughters from his first marriage to Anne Hyde their names were Mary and Ann it was long suspected that James was what's known as a crypto Catholic that he had secretly returned to the old faith this was made public and realized to be true in 1673 in that year he married his second wife Mary of moderner who was also a Catholic with his brother's death in 1685 James becomes King James the second perhaps all could have been well James may have ruled as a Catholic King but the Protestants knew that his daughter who had been raised in the Church of England would become Queen after him that was until 1688 when Mary of moderner gives birth to a son we have a Catholic king with his Catholic Queen and now they're male Catholic heir almost at once rumors circulate that this is no true royal birth but instead a changeling child has been brought in perhaps in a warming pan which is the early modern equivalent of a hot-water bottle the rumor is scurrilous and frankly absurd but it speaks to a wider sense of discontent and this discontent motivates a select number of the nobility to make a petition to marry the elder daughter of James and her husband William of Orange to invite them to invade England and depose her father and that is what happens from 1688 to 1689 is the period known as the Glorious Revolution and by the end of it we have two new co regnant monarchs Mary the second daughter of James a second and her husband William the third William and Mary had no children Mary died aged just 32 in 1694 as they had been joint rulers William was able to rule after her death as a lone regnant monarch of course as he did a remarried there was not going to be an heir to succeed him of his body but fortunately James ii had another protestant daughter waiting in the wings the future Queen Anne she is the queen that features in the favorite and as we know from the favorite she had a number of children but by 1700 none are still alive in fact she loses her last child William Duke of Gloucester in 1700 two years later in 1702 her brother-in-law William dies and an a sense of the throne it's fairly obvious to all concerned that she is not going to produce an heir of her body either and so the question becomes who will take the throne after her death and that is where Sophia and her family step in and personal tragedy of 1700 the death of her last surviving child William Duke of Gloucester precipitates legal change in 1701 the English government passes the act a settlement which states that nobody who is a Roman Catholic can inherit or be heir to the and this clears the way for Sophia and her family indeed after this act of settlement Sophia becomes an x' direct heir her trust and faith and the Protestant faith of her children allows them to supersede the claim of some 57 Roman Catholics who had a arguably better claim to the English throne in terms of blood right but who was Sophia and what sort of Queen would she have made in the very year that Anne was no doubt experiencing her greatest tragedy the loss of her final child I believe that Sophia was showing us just who she was because in that year 1700 Sophia is recorded as having debated with the Abbey of locum her hard Walter Molina's and they discussed philosophy and philosophical principles this was not the only time that Sophia engaged in discussions like this in fact it is well known that she shared a professional relationship and personal friendship with this man he is the famed German polymath philosopher mathematician and logician Gottfried Leibniz he is perhaps most famous for inventing the differential and integral calculus which he does independent of Isaac Newton and he was employed by Sofia's court in Hanover I believe that Sophia's keen intellect explains their strong friendship and I believe it was a strong friendship because in addition to their in-person contact at the court of Hanover some 600 items of their correspondence exist today now some of these are certainly drafts their friendship endures all the way up until Sofia's death in 1714 and their letters cover almost every conceivable topic some take the contents of these letters and claim that it shows that Sophia was nothing more than the most basic hobbyist of philosophers she is constantly asking for clarification she asserts when she does not understand what Leibniz is talking about and for some this points to her ineptitude of the topic however I think this is perhaps a rather unkind oversimplification simply because you asked somebody what they mean by something that you demand Cara fication of the terms they are using that does not necessarily mean that you do not understand the discipline rather it can mean quite the opposite perhaps you are so well versed in the discipline that you are demanding that clarity is it possible that Sofia is acting almost like a peer reviewer for Leibnitz for more on peer review I will link the video that I made on it last week is she demanding like the best peer reviewers should that Leibnitz talk in terms that are understandable that he clarified when he is being potentially obscure or opaque well of course I am not the only one to view Sofia and Leibnitz correspondence in these terms and Lloyd Strickland backs me up writing in 2009 he asserts that through Sofia's letters she quote reveals herself to be an independently minded thinker prepared to follow her own philosophical instincts undeterred by the concerns of others Sofia enjoyed all of the privilege of a well-rounded and broad education and she was able I believe to make the most of it because of her keen intellect and inquisitive nature I see in Sofia a woman who is interested and interesting willing to discuss and debate and I think that's fascinating and I really wish she'd been our queen in terms of what kind of a Queen of England she would have made or report state that she wanted to come to England that all she wanted was to be England's Queen Anne never allowed her to visit the realm that theoretically would have been hers one day she kept her arm's length is it possible that Anne was a little bit jealous of Sofia despite the fact that Sofia was considerably older than Anne she was known to be in far better health and additionally we can see that she probably had a keener intellect that she was better educated and perhaps a little bit more interesting and charismatic did and want to keep her successor arm's length so that her people and her court wouldn't see what was waiting in the wings and think it preferable I see it as a national tragedy that we never got Queen Sophia to rule over us despite the fact that she was 34 years older than an I think a lot of people were quite surprised that she didn't outlive her as the favorite film shows and was in notoriously bad health so I can't imagine the surprise of people when aged 83 the former leaf it's the fiddle Sophia is out walking in her gardens in Germany apparently the rains begin to fall and she rushes inside she seemingly catch the chill and dies on the 28th of May 1714 with her dreams of being our queen unfulfilled a little over two months later on the 1st of August 1714 and also dies she is aged 49 I'd love to know what you think of so fear of Hanover her life and legacy are you like me do you think that it was a real tragedy that we never got the chance to have Queen Sophia to reign over us let me know what you think in the comment section down below or come and find me over on my social media I'll leave the links in the description box follow me there and we can continue the conversation my comment section and social media are also great places to come if you've got ideas for a video topic that you'd like me to make but I do hope you've enjoyed this video and found it useful if you did then let me know by hitting the thumbs up please also subscribe to this channel and click the belly icon so that YouTube tells you when I've next uploaded I hope you're going to have a great day whatever you're doing and I look forward to speaking to you in my next video take care of yourselves bye bye for now [Music] [Music]

Channel: Reading the Past

Views: 42,695

Rating: 4.9688082 out of 5

Keywords: Bohemia, Sophia of Hanover, House of Hanover, George I, Glorious Revolution, House of Stuart, Monarchy, Education, Literature, Culture, History, Early Modern, Renaissance, Women's History

Id: 5KfM0xmztiM

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019