*
* After Mary’s death in 1694, William’s heir was Mary’s sister Anne and her son the duke of Gloucester, but in 1701, when the child died, William and Parliament agreed an Act of Settlement, organizing the succession through the nearest Protestant heir, Sophia, electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I, and her son George, bypassing the rightful but Catholic family of James II. The Act arranged the succession into the twenty-first century.
* Carlos was thirty-eight. His post-mortem revealed that ‘His heart was the size of a peppercorn; his lungs corroded; his intestines rotten and gangrenous; he had a single testicle, black as coal, and his head was full of water.’
* As Long Ben divided up the swag, the English launched a worldwide manhunt to catch him. He escaped to the Caribbean, bribing his way. Six of his pirates were tried and hanged for the outrage, but Long Ben himself and the treasure vanished, fate unknown.
* It took a few years to cut and sell: the buyer was the regent, Philippe, duc d’Orléans, who had it set into the crown of Louis XV.
* There is a tendency to backdate the rise of democracy. As we will see, Walpole is traditionally named as ‘the first prime minister’, but there was little difference in style from his patron Godolphin. Both were appointed by sovereigns, not chosen by Parliament, and both were expert managers of finance and Parliament. But Godolphin was the first to fund a European war; Walpole never had to. Godolphin trained Walpole, who adored and respected him, even resigning to protect his patron. It would be eighty years before Parliament could force a monarch to appoint a minister and before prime ministers became the leader of their cabinet in the modern sense.
* Scotland’s population was one-ninth of England’s, its wealth a fortieth of England’s: by population, the Scots would receive eighty-five MPs at Westminster; by wealth thirteen. It was agreed that Scotland should receive forty-five MPs in the Commons and sixteen lords.
* Eugen was the son of a Savoy prince and Olympe, niece of Mazarin, mistress of Louis. But Olympe was implicated in the Affair of the Poisons, which cast a shadow over Eugen. Part of a coterie of homosexual aristocrats, the unprepossessing Eugen was despised by Louis, who told him to become a priest. Driven out of Versailles, he served the Austrian Habsburgs, seizing much of the Ottoman Balkans. As a general he was mobile, fluid and clear-sighted, reflecting on discipline: ‘You should only be harsh when, as often happens, kindness proves useless.’
* Peter offered Marlborough the exotic titles prince of Kyiv or prince of Siberia if he could persuade Charles to attack the Habsburgs.
* Peter crushed the Ukrainian Cossacks under Hetman Ivan Mazeppa, who, after being his ally, had switched sides to support the Swedes and bid for independence. Charles and Mazeppa escaped to Benderi in Ottoman territory. Charles later made it back to Sweden, an eclipsed force. Mazeppa died, succeeded as hetman by Ivan Skoropadsky, a Russian client. A semi-independent hetmanate, closely allied to Russia, survived until 1775. Peter’s attempt to expand into Ottoman Ukraine, Moldova and Wallachia (Romania) ended in disaster in July 1711 when he was defeated and almost captured by the grand vizier at Staˇniles¸ti. In 1722–3, the voracious empire builder attacked Persia, seizing parts of Azerbaijan.
* George I arrived with his German mistresses, one so cadaverous she was nicknamed the Scarecrow, the other obese. Londoners nicknamed them Elephant and Castle after a famous London pub, itself named after the west African trade. George was even less attractive than he looked: in 1694, the elector had discovered that his wife was having an affair with a young Swede, Count Philipp von Königsmarck, whom he had murdered and probably dissected and buried under the Hanover palace; his wife was imprisoned for thirty years and never allowed to see her children again.
