George II of Great Britain - Later Life

Later Life

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 made 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 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."

Read more about this topic:  George II Of Great Britain

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    The woods were as fresh and full of vegetable life as a lichen in wet weather, and contained many interesting plants; but unless they are of white pine, they are treated with as little respect here as a mildew, and in the other case they are only the more quickly cut down.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)