Sophia, Electress of Hanover

b. 1630; d. 1714

Daughter of the Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, and granddaughter of James I (VI of Scotland), born at The Hague. She married in 1658 Ernest Augustus, the youngest of the four brothers representing the Lüneburg branch of the house of Brunswick, their eldest son, George Louis, afterwards becoming king of England as George I. Ernest Augustus became elector of Hanover in 1692. An Act of Settlement was proposed in the English Parliament in January 1701, settling the crown at the death of Anne upon the Princess Sophia and her heirs, 'being Protestant', which received the royal assent in June of the same year. In June 1714 the Electress Sophia died suddenly at Herrenhausen, and on the death of Queen Anne, which followed soon after, Sophia's eldest son succeeded to the throne of England.

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