CHAPTER IV
GEORGE I.—GEORGE II.—GEORGE III.—GEORGE IV.—WILLIAM IV.
On the succession to the English crown passing to the Hanoverian line, another important change was made in the royal coat of England. George I. substituted for the fourth quarter, which had been hitherto a repetition of the first, the arms of his family, Brunswick, impaling Luneburg, and in the base point the coat of Saxony, over all an escutcheon, charged with the crown of Charlemagne, as a badge of the office of High Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire. George II. bore the same coat as did George III. up to 1801, when, on the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland, the coat was officially altered to first and fourth England; second, Scotland; third, Ireland, with over all an escutcheon, bearing the arms of the royal dominions in Germany, ensigned with the electoral bonnet, which was again changed to the Hanoverian royal crown when Hanover was elevated to the rank of a kingdom in 1816. This last coat was used by George IV. and William IV., and, without the Hanoverian escutcheon, it is the present royal coat of England.
The bindings of George I. and George II. are generally much alike. There are good specimens of each at Windsor. They are generally in red morocco, with either coats-of-arms in the centre or monograms. At Windsor there is one bound in vellum, it is a manuscript Report on States of Traytors, 1717, and bears the full royal coat in the centre, enclosed in rectangular mitred borders, with delicate gold stamped work at the sides. In the British Museum is a finely stamped Account of Conference concerning the Succession to the Crown, 1719, very delicately and tastefully ornamented, having the coat-of-arms in the centre, with crowned initials at the corners, and delicate gold work of floral sprays and curves borrowed from Le Gascon, a great French binder.
Fig. 23.—Account of what passed in a Conference
concerning the Succession to the Crown, MS. George I.