page_title: George II of Great Britain
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: George II of Great Britain / Later life
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of George II of Great Britain (1683-1760)
context_page_description: George II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and a prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death in 1760.
  George is the most recent British monarch born outside Great Britain: he was born and brought up in northern Germany. The Act of Settlement 1701 and the Acts of Union 1707 positioned his grandmother, Sophia of Hanover, and her Protestant descendants to inherit the British throne. After the deaths of Sophia and Anne, Queen of Great Britain, in 1714, his father, the Elector of Hanover, became George I of Great Britain. In the first years of his father's reign as king, George was associated with opposition politicians, until they rejoined the governing party in 1720.
  As king from 1727, George exercised little control over British domestic policy, which was largely controlled by the Parliament of Great Britain. As elector, he spent twelve summers in Hanover, where he had more direct control over government policy. He had a difficult relationship with his eldest son, Frederick, who supported the parliamentary opposition.
context_section_description: In the general election of 1747 the Prince of Wales again campaigned actively for the opposition but Pelham's party won easily. Like his father before him, the Prince entertained opposition figures at his house in Leicester Square. When the Prince of Wales died suddenly in 1751, his eldest son, Prince George, became heir apparent. The king commiserated with the Dowager Princess of Wales and wept with her. As her son would not reach the age of majority until 1756, a new British Regency Act was passed to make her regent, assisted by a council led by the Duke of Cumberland, in case of George II's death. The king also made a new will, which provided for Cumberland to be sole regent in Hanover. After the death of his daughter Louisa at the end of the year, George lamented, "This has been a fatal year for my family. I lost my eldest son – but I am glad of it ... Now [Louisa] is gone. I know I did not love my children when they were young: I hated to have them running into my room; but now I love them as well as most fathers."
caption: Portrait by John Shackleton, in or after 1755
exif: {}