_W. T. McCullagh, Industrial History of Free Nations, chapters 8 and 10 (volume 2)._ GUELDERLAND: A. D. 1713. The Spanish province ceded to Prussia. See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714. ----------GUELDERLAND: End---------- GUELF PARTY, Captains of the. See FLORENCE: A. D. 1358. GUELF PARTY: Guelfic origin of the House of Hanover, or Brunswick-Lüneburg. See ENGLAND: A. D. 1714; also, GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES; and ESTE, HOUSE OF. ----------GUELFS: Start-------- GUELFS, OR GUELPHS, AND GHIBELLINES: German origin of these Factions and their feuds. On the death (A. D. 1125) of Henry V., the last of the Franconian dynasty of Germanic emperors, Lothaire, Duke of Saxony, was elected emperor, in rather a tumultuous and irregular manner. Lothaire, and the Saxons generally, were embittered in enmity against the house of Franconia, and against the new family—the Suabiau or Hohenstauffen—which succeeded by inheritance, through the female line, to the Franconian claims. It was the object of his reign, moreover, to pass the imperial crown from his own head to that of his son-in-law, Henry the Proud. Hence arose a persecution of the Suabian family, under Lothaire, which stirred deep passions. Henry the Proud, for whose succession Lothaire labored, but vainly, united in himself several ancient streams of noble blood. He "was fourth in descent from Welf [or Guelf], son of Azon marquis of Este, by Cunegonda, heiress of a distinguished family, the Welfs of Altorf in Suabia." His ancestor, Welf, had been invested with the duchy of Bavaria. He himself represented, by right of his mother, the ancient ducal house of Saxony; and, by favor of his imperial father-in-law, the two powerful duchies, Bavaria and Saxony, were both conferred on him. He also received Hanover and Brunswick as the dowry of his wife. "On the death of Lothaire in 1138 the partisans of the house of Suabia made a hasty and irregular election of Conrad [one of the Hohenstauffen princes], in which the Saxon faction found itself obliged to acquiesce. The new emperor availed himself of the jealousy which Henry the Proud's aggrandizement had excited. Under pretence that two duchies could not legally be held by the same person, Henry was summoned to resign one of them, and on his refusal, the diet pronounced that he had incurred a forfeiture of both. Henry made but little resistance, and before his death, which happened soon afterwards, saw himself stripped of all his hereditary as well as acquired possessions. Upon this occasion the famous names of Guelf [or Guelph] and Ghibelin were first heard, which were destined to keep alive the flame of civil dissension in far distant countries, and after their meaning had been forgotten. The Guelfs, or Welfs, were, as I have said, the ancestors of Henry, and the name has become a sort