Divorce from the Past
This story all started with the desire to know what King George II looked like in 1758. We celebrated his birthday in Winchester VA in 10 Nov 1756, but not in 1757 (GW struggling with dysentery), nor in 1758 (GW on the Forbes Campaign). In looking for an image of King George II in 1758, we find a pattern that has lasted generations.
That pattern is a divorcing pattern. We are continually a land divorcing ourselves from the Past.
We see it in the last 4 "Georges."
King George I, King George II, King George III and finally President George Washington.
Each "George" rebelled from the previous "George."
Each King's rebellious son resided at Leicester House, Next time you drive down Leicester Street in Winchester VA you will remember this story of a shadow opponent government.
And the final rebellious George resided across the Big Pond, the Atlantic.
We will return to those Georges after taking a look at this picture.
This picture represents that divorcing quality.
If any picture indicates
wariness and distance
between father and child,
it is this picture
and his son,
the future King James II.
These two
of the Stuart family
had a great impact on our area.
Charles I, the father, is the one who gave a gift of land to the Culpepers. That's a name you will recognize as a town in Virginia. That gift eventually became the Lord Fairfax proprietary lands, a sort of independent colony the size of Connecticut within the colony of Virginia. James Wood had to give in to that. He got land from the Governor of Virginia, but Lord Fairfax disputed that gift and won.
King James II had an adversary in Monmouth. Monmouth tried to topple King James II. Winchester VA has a street named after the London street Monmouth itself in turn named after this rebel Monmouth. Next time you drive down Monmouth street you will remember the story of Monmouth's beheading.
Charles, the father, set a boundary between PA and MD that overlapped a previous boundary. Eventually it contributed to Cresap's War, where both colonies overlapped their tax collecting claims. The Cresap name has a lot of history in the PA-MD-VA area.
And then another divorce, the Glorious Revolution ended King James II reign.
And that Stuart family tried to resume power after William and Mary but that was stopped by the Hanoverian King George II in 1746 in the Battle of Culloden. The rebel participants were run down by the "Butcher" Cumberland, King George II's last son, whose name adorns several towns and areas, like Fort Cumberland in Cumberland MD. Read the sad story of the demise of this relationship between the father, King George II and his son, Duke of Cumberland.
Our divorcing history goes way back.
The original scars of divorce seemed to be imprinted on our national DNA.
We seem to replay the original trauma of divorce.
We are continually in the throes of divorce,
either from our past or from each other.
We're not going to solve that issue. It's imprinted in our DNA, just as it is in the DNA of democratic republics.
But we can take a look at some of those fathers and stepfathers.
Especially we should do so because we are not only the children of divorce.
We are orphans divorced from our past.
We really don't know our parents or our past.
Ultimately humankind doesn't yet really know exactly. As Carl Sagan said we are an orphan dropped at the doorstep.
We can take a second look
at some of our so called Fathers and Stepfathers of our Divorces.
Look at King George II circa 1755
This depiction is made after his son Frederick died by health complications after a cricket accident in 1751.
Frederick County Virginia is named
after the son of King George II.
That son, Frederick, has a fascinating story.
He was supposed to be the next King.
He had high hopes and desires
to change
the nature of the monarchy.
He was going to start a Camelot
of devotion, of inspiration.
That Frederick paid the writer of the lyrics,
Britannia Rules the World.
See more on that below.
He traveled in an awesome boat down the Thames, still preserved for display.
Winchester, in Frederick County Virginia,
celebrated the birthday of that son's father,
George II on 10 Nov 1756.
Our Colonel George Washington
of the Virginia Regiment
ordered 3 cannon fires
at Fort Loudoun
sitting above the town of Winchester VA to take note of this birthday.
Winchester, Tuesday the 9th November 1756.
To-morrow being the anniversary of His Majestys Birth-day; the men to be drawn up at 12 o’clock, and marched to the Fort, there to fire three vollies, which is to be taken from the cannon—officers to appear in their Regimentals; and the Soldiers to dress as clean as possible.
Founders Online:
Look at King George II in circa 1759
In 4 years time that same King George II is displayed in a much less imposing way.
This is even more striking
because 1759 is the year of miracles,
right at the height
of Britain conquering the globe,
giving rise to the phrase,
after the close of the French and Indian War (Seven Years War).
And since we are still reviewing the year 1758
in this year of 2022,
we wanted to know
what the "Great White Father"
looked like during 1758.
The closest picture
we found is circa 1759,
so although health
can change to the worse rapidly,
perhaps our King George II looked closer to this in 1758.
in 1759, the year before his death, this same King George II is depicted this way.
That's it.
That's our lead story.
There's always more.
Skip around.
Read bits and pieces.
Compiled and authored by Jim Moyer 6/24/2022, 6/25/2022
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Our last 3 King Georges:
Linda Colley in her book, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 writes,
" . . . the spectre of the Stuarts made the first two Hanoverian Kings [ King George I, King George II ] defensive. Instead of responding as they might have done, by increasing the momentum of royal ceremonial, public display and propaganda, George I and his successor all too often sought refuge in the seclusion of the court, or in the poisoned embrace of unalloyed Whiggery, or in the periodic escape to Hanover [Germany]. Irritated, or austere, or self conscious, or simply absent, only rarely did either man seem entirely assured and happy in his new inheritance. And this lack of confidence showed, not least in the images they left behind.
Typically these images were few in number and mainly private. The only outdoor statue erected to George I in London during his lifetime was placed on top of a church tower, out of view except at a distance. The two metropolitan statues of George II were both commissioned by private donors, not placed there by royal command with public money.
Neither king was interest in using the arts to foster a personality cult around himself;
and neither liked posing for portrait busts and court paintings.
The few that survive suggest more than anything else the inability of both men to relax into their status.
Like other European monarchs by this time,
they had no desire to be painted or sculpted
in the trapping of classical or Christian divinity;
no wish to appear,
n the guise of Solomon, or as David,
or as any other actor immediately under the direction of the Deity.
Even Sir James Thornhill's celebration of George I and his family at Greenwich,
crammed full with allegory though it is,
makes it absolutely clear that the king himself is human not divine.
But having shed the buttress of divinity,
either the kings or their artists shrank from going all the way a
nd adopting the easy conversation-piece style
that was becoming so fashionable
in royal portraiture on the Continent.
Hogarth did get as far as making a preparatory sketch for a royal conversation piece in 1733, showing the younger princesses and princesses playing in front of their parents, George II and Queen Caroline; but royal approval was notably unforthcoming.
[ That picture shows the garden in Richmond, a name you will notice as the current capital of Virginia.]
Instead, the first two Hanoverian monarchs
[ King George i and King George ii ]
almost invariably represented
wearing formal court dress,
or clad in full armour,
or warlike on horseback,
or as Roman emperors;
and almost without exception,
they were portrayed alone.
it was as if,
in these earlier royal images,
the sword
could never be seen
to be sheathed
nor the royal stance
softened.
Even the last, strangely moving portrait of George II, painted by Robin [Robert] Edge Pine in 1759. when Britannia was conquering the world, shows the elderly king, blind, toothless and evidently frail, corseted still in his court dress, standing aloof in his dark palace, with only his armed guards waiting in the wings -- waiting in case they are needed."
End of Excerpt.
Source:
Page 203-204 of Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837
published 1992 by Yale University Press, authored by Linda Colley
Who I am and what I do
I am a British-born historian, currently based at Princeton University, who started out working on 18th century England. Over the course of a long career, my interests have evolved and spread: into curiosity about the forging and the fractures of the United Kingdom; into explorations of aspects of, and individual actors in Britain’s overseas empire; and – in recent decades – into a fascination with how to approach and grapple with the demands of global history. Throughout, I have been intrigued with issues of identity and their fluctuations, and all my books touch on this in some ways.
My first book, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714-1760 (1982), was about partisan identity under pressure.
Namier (1988) was a short study of a major historian torn between his Polish and Jewish roots, his interest in Marx and Freud, and his growing desire for English acceptance and real and imagined stabilities.
Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (1992), which won the Wolfson Prize for history and is now in its fifth edition, was a study of nation-makings and possible breakings. Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (2002) examined and re-interpreted sectors of the “British” empire by looking at some of the many English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish men and women who got caught out and trapped while crossing over into other peoples’ lands and seas, and the strains of these experiences on their birth identities. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History (2007), chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of that year, treated just one of these captives. It was also an attempt to write a different kind of biography: an attempt to track down the life-story of a possibly mixed race and incurably itinerant woman, while intermeshing this with passages in 18th century global history.
I have always sought to combine academic, archival and scholarly research with experimenting with different forms of writing and reaching out to different kinds of readers and audiences. My sixth book, Acts of Union and Disunion, was an expanded version of fifteen lectures commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and broadcast early in 2014 in advance of the referendum on Scottish independence. As with these talks (which are still available as BBC podcasts) this book seeks to elucidate, in short compass, the composite and shifting nature of what is now the United Kingdom. I anticipate that future revisions are bound to be needed.
Over the past ten years or so, however, my main interest has not been with matters British and Irish. Instead, I have been working on a big book spanning global history from 1750 until after the First World War, which seeks to re-vitalize and unpack constitutional history by connecting it with some of the histories of war. This book – The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World – is set to be published on both sides of the Atlantic in March/April 2021. You can pre-order it here.
.
Frederick, son of King George II
Frederick is also father of King George III
From a book, “Britons, Forging the Nation 1707-1837″ by Linda Colley, 1992 Yale University Press, Page 206.
.
“…Frederick Lewis [Anglicized] , one of the great might-have-beens of British history. From the 1730s, Frederick — so often dismissed as just another puny princeling — had recognized what was wrong with the Hanoverian Dynasty [King George I, and King George II, his grandfather and father both born in Hanover Germany] practice of monarchy …”
.
“His gold and graceful state barge, now in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, shows how much he wanted to make a visual impact, how much he relished letting the Thames carry him through his capital city in style.”
.
“With Frederick, the image of the Hanoverian Dynasty changed, becoming softer and markedly more sympathetic. George I and George II had sought primarily to survive; Frederick, like his successor [his son George III], wanted to appeal and to impress.”
.
Ed note: So, . . . Frederick Co VA is named after the Father of the much maligned King George III, the tyrant depicted in the Declaration of the Independence.
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“Frederick had spent money and time associating himself with the making of a patriotic culture, planning the creation of a national academy of art, and commissioning Thomas Arne and James Thomson to write, Rule Britannia.”
.
This link doesn't say that the Prince commissioned the writer of the poem, but rather says the Prince paid the author 100 lbs annually.
In 1740, he collaborated with Mallet on the masqueAlfred which was first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Thomson's words for "Rule Britannia", written as part of that masque and set to music by Thomas Arne, became one of the best-known British patriotic songs – quite apart from the masque which is now virtually forgotten. The Prince gave him a pension of £100 per annum. He had also introduced him to George Lyttelton, who became his friend and patron.[8]
From the Wikipedia link:
.
RULE BRITANNIA was first performed at Cliveden, country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales (the eldest son of George II and father of the future George III, as well as the great-grandfather of Queen Victoria), on 1 August 1740…
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RULE BRITANNIA
George Washington went to Philadelphia in March of 1757 to see Lord Loudoun.
See that story here:
Loudoun was holding a conference with many of the leaders of the colonies there to map our the mid-Atlantic and southern strategy to be pursued while he launched his campaign against Fortress Louisbourg up north.
While there in Philadelphia GW attended a play, whose finale song is Rule Britannia. This has a special association to GW. Most of his defensive fort network lies in the frontier old Frederick Co VA - a county named after Prince Frederick of Wales who was the next in line to be King and who was the first of English royalty along with Admiral Vernon to hear the first play production with Rule Britannia in it.
This is the play:
The 1757 College of Philadelphia Production of Alfred: A Masque—Some New Observations
The work was initially devised as a masque in 1740 and was first performed at Cliveden, country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales, on 1 August 1740 to commemorate the accession of George I and the birthday of the Princess Augusta.[1] Arne later revised the work turning it into an all-sung oratorio in 1745 and then an opera in 1753. It is best known for its finale "Rule, Britannia!".
This play
was first presented at
on 1 August 1740.
Attending were
who was next in line to be King,
and for his wife's birthday
and for Admiral Vernon .
In 1740, he collaborated with Mallet on the masqueAlfred which was first performed at Cliveden, the country home of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Thomson's words for "Rule Britannia", written as part of that masque and set to music by Thomas Arne, became one of the best-known British patriotic songs – quite apart from the masque which is now virtually forgotten. The Prince gave him a pension of £100 per annum. He had also introduced him to George Lyttelton, who became his friend and patron.[8]
He was the first son of King George II.
Frederick Co VA is named after that Frederick.
Source:
. . . Plays like Alfred: A Masque addressed contemporary political issues between America and England, which Washington saw performed in Philadelphia in 1757. (4)
Interestingly, at the same time this was happening, the first public concert in Philadelphia occurred in the Assembly Room on Lodge Alley (near Second and Chestnut (or Walnut) Streets) under the direction of a John Palma. The fist such concert was on January 25, 1757; the second was on March 17. This appears to be the first known chamber music subscription series in the colonies, as well as the first known public concert in America). Among those who attended the second concert was a young colonel named George Washington.
McGinley, Kevin J. "The 1757 College of Philadelphia Production of Alfred: A Masque - Some New Observations." Huntington Library Quarterly 77.1 (2014): 37-58. JSTOR. Web.
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