George I of Great Britain

George I was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 1698 until his death in 1727, the first British monarch of the House of Hanover. He was born in Hanover to Ernest Augustus and Sophia of Hanover, and in 1682 married his cousin Sophia Dorothea of Celle, with whom he had two children, before the couple divorced in 1694. As the senior Protestant descendant of his great-grandfather James VI and I, George inherited the British throne in 1714 after the deaths of his mother Sophia and his second cousin Anne, Queen of Great Britain; during his reign the powers of the monarchy diminished and Britain began its transition to cabinet government led by a prime minister. Jacobites attempted but failed to depose him in favour of James Francis Edward Stuart, and toward the end of his reign real political power was held by Robert Walpole, recognised as Britain's first de facto prime minister. George died in 1727 on a journey to Hanover, where he was buried, the most recent British monarch buried outside Britain.