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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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House of Hanover
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(1714–1901) The descendants on the throne of Britain of Ernest August, the elector of Hanover, and his wife Sophia, who was a granddaughter of James I (see the *royal house). The Act of *Settlement had limited the inheritance to Sophia and her heirs. The first five of the dynasty (George I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV) also inherited the throne of Hanover. Thereafter the *Salic law separated the two thrones, for the next in line in Britain was a woman, Victoria. Her son, Edward VII, following the dynastic line of his father Prince Albert, was of the house of *Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
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The 18C rulers of Hanover were *'electors' in a fanciful survival of a medieval custom by which certain German princes elected the Holy Roman Emperor. It was by then meaningless, for ' Holy Roman Emperor' had become a hereditary title in the ruling house of Austria. Even as a fiction the empire was formally brought to an end in 1806, when Austria was threatened by the imperial ambitions of Napoleon, and Hanover was reclassified as a kingdom at the congress of *Vienna in 1814.
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