ABSTRACT
Any discussion of the Stuarts in exile after the Glorious Revolution involves a willingness to consider that British history might have developed in a different direction during the first half of the eighteenth century. This is not easy because, viewed from the perspective of the twenty-first century, there seems a certain inevitability about the sequence of events after the deposition of the Catholic James II. The Bill of Rights excluded all Catholics from the royal succession; the Act of Settlement excluded all non-Anglicans; and consequently the Elector George of Hanover succeeded as King George I of Great Britain in 1714. We all know, and perhaps take for granted, that George II peacefully succeeded his father in 1727, to be succeeded in turn by his own grandson, George III, in 1760. The Hanoverian dynasty, despite its German origins, was by then established and accepted, so that its descendants have continued to occupy the British throne until the present day.
