than for the interests of his
kingdom. His first aim was to use the power of his new monarchy to
strengthen his position in North Germany. At this moment that position
was mainly threatened by the hostility of the king of Sweden. Denmark
had taken advantage of the defeat and absence of Charles the Twelfth to
annex Bremen and Verden with Schleswig and Holstein to its dominions;
but in its dread of the Swedish king's return it secured the help of
Hanover by ceding the first two towns to the Electorate on a promise of
alliance in the war against him. The despatch of a British fleet into
the Baltic with the purpose of overawing Sweden identified England with
the policy of Hanover; and Charles, who from the moment of his return
bent his whole energies to regain what he had lost, retorted by joining
in the schemes of Alberoni, and by concluding an alliance with the
Russian Czar, Peter the Great, who for other reasons was hostile to the
court of Hanover, for a restoration of the Stuarts. Luckily for the new
dynasty his plans were brought to an end at the close of 1718 by his
death at the siege of Frederickshall; but the policy which provoked them
had already brought about the dissolution of the Whig Ministry. When
George pressed on his cabinet a treaty of alliance by which England
shielded Hanover and its acquisitions from any efforts of the Swedish
King, Townshend and Walpole gave a reluctant assent to a measure which
they regarded as sacrificing English interests to that of the
Electorate, and as entangling the country yet more in the affairs of the
Continent. For the moment indeed they yielded to the fact that Bremen
and Verden were not only of the highest importance to Hanover, which was
brought by them in contact with the sea, but of hardly less value to
England itself, as they placed the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, the
chief inlets for British commerce into Germany, in the hands of a
friendly state. But they refused to take any further steps in carrying
out a Hanoverian policy; and they successfully withstood an attempt of
the king to involve England in a war with the Czar, when Russian troops
entered Mecklenburg. The resentment of George the First was seconded by
intrigues among their fellow-ministers; and in 1717 Townshend and
Walpole were forced to resign their posts.

[Sidenote: The Stanhope Ministry.]

The want of their good sense soon made itself felt. In the reconstituted
cabinet Lords Sunderland and Stanho