William Bramley/The Gods of Eden/23/231

happened because the banknotes could be redeemed for coins in which the people had faith. After the Bank of France became nationalized, however, it issued a severe overabundance of notes, not just a careful and gradual increase. People quickly realized that there were far more paper notes in circulation than there were coins to back them up. The result was a shattering of popular confidence in the notes and a consequent upheaval of the French economy.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 not only gave us the Bank of England, which is still Great Britain's central bank today, it also gave us England's current royal family: the House of Windsor. The House of Windsor is directly descended from the royal family of German Hannover, which had intimate ties to the House of Orange and to other German principalities in the treacherous marry-and-overthrow clique. After William III of Orange/England died, his sister Anne was seated on the British throne. By prior arrangement, upon Anne's death, the British throne was relinquished by the Orange family to the rulers of the German state of Hannover, who had also earlier married into the British Stuart family. Hannover's first elector [prince], Duke Ernest Augustus (1629-1698), had married a granddaughter of England's King James I. As was true with the House of Orange, the Hannoverian nuptials to the Stuart family did not legally entitle any of the Hannoverians to sit on the British throne, but with the overthrow of James II by the Whigs and House of Orange, the rules were changed to suit the victors.

The first Hanoverian king to take the British throne was George Louis, who became George I of England. George I could not speak English and he viewed England as a temporary possession. He continued to devote most of his attention and care to his German homeland. As generations of Hanoverians ascended to the British throne, they became permanently entrenched in British society. The Hanoverians provided England with all of its monarchs