The Electress Sophia was the widow of Ernest Augustus, first Elector of Hanover. She was a great princess in every sense of the word, and with her husband had raised Hanover from a petty dukedom to the rank of an electorate. She was the granddaughter of King James the First of England; the daughter of the Princess Elizabeth of England, Queen of Bohemia; the sister of Prince Rupert, who had fought for the royal cause throughout the great rebellion; the niece of Charles the First, and first cousin to Charles the Second and to James the Second, the old King who had lately died in exile at St. Germains.[20] By Act of Parliament the succession to the throne of England was vested in the Electress Sophia and the heirs male of her body _being Protestant_, and according to this Act the only life between her and the British crown was that of the reigning Queen, Anne, who was childless and in bad health. Sophia was inordinately proud of her English ancestry, and though she had never been in England, or had seen any of her English relatives since Charles the Second mounted the throne of his ancestors, she was much more English than German in her habits, tastes and inclinations. She had unbounded admiration for “her country,” as she called it, and its people; she spoke the language perfectly, and kept herself well acquainted with events in England. She even tried to understand the English Constitution, though here, it must be admitted, she was sometimes at fault. She had her mother’s soaring ambition: “I care not when I die,” said she, “if on my tomb it be written that I was Queen of England”. In her immediate circle she loved to be called “the Princess of Wales,” though, of course, she had no right to the title, and she frequently spoke of herself by the designation which was afterwards inscribed upon her tomb, “The heiress of Great Britain”.