In 1681, at the age of twenty-two, master of all manly vices, and ready for any adventure, he was once more in England, where he seized the opportunity afforded him by the times and their events, and hastened to join the expedition against Tangier. On the conclusion of the warm affair at Tangier, he went as an amateur against the Algerines, and without commission inflicted on them and their ‘uncle’ (as the word dey implies) as much injury as though he had been chartered general at the head of a destroying host. When he returned to England, he was received with enthusiasm. His handsome face, his long flaxen hair, his stupendous periwig for state occasions, and his ineffable impudence, made him the delight of the impudent people of those impudent times.
Now, of all those people, the supercilious Charles John cared but for one, and she, there is reason to believe, knew little and cared less for this presuming scion of the House of Königsmark.
Joscelyn, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, who died in the year 1670—the last of the male line of his house—left an only daughter, four years of age, named Elizabeth. Her father’s death made her the possessor—awaiting her majority—of vast wealth, to which increase was made by succession to other inheritances. Her widowed mother married Ralph Montague, English ambassador in Paris. When the widow of Joscelyn espoused Montague, her daughter Elizabeth went to reside with the mother of Joscelyn, Dowager Countess of Northumberland, and co-heiress to the Suffolk estate, destined to be added to the possessions of the little Elizabeth. She was an intriguing, indelicate, self-willed, and worthless old woman; and with respect to the poor little girl of whom she was the unworthy guardian, she made her the subject of constant intrigues with men of power who wished for wealth, and with rich men who wished for rank and power. Before the unhappy little heiress had attained the age of thirteen, her grandmother had bound her in marriage with Henry Cavendish, Earl Ogle. Though the ceremony was performed, the parties did not, of course, reside together. The dowager countess and the earl were satisfied that the fortune of the heiress was secured, and they were further content to wait for what might follow.
That which followed was what they least expected—death; the bridegroom died within a year of his union with Elizabeth Percy; and this child, wife, and widow was again at the disposal of her wretched grandmother. The heiress of countless thousands was anything but the mistress of herself.
At this period the proprietor of the house and domain of Longleat, in Wiltshire, was that Thomas Thynne, whom Dryden has celebrated as the Issachar of his ‘Absalom and Achitophel.’ He was the friend of the Duke of Monmouth, was spoken of as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ and was a very unworthy fellow, although the member of a worthy house. Tom’s Ten Thousand virtues were of that metal which the Dowager Countess of Northumberland most approved; and her grand-daughter had not been many months the widow of Lord Ogle, when her precious guardian united her by private marriage to Thynne. The newly-married couple were at once separated. The marriage was the result of an infamous intrigue between infamous people, some of whom, subsequently to Thynne’s death, sued his executors for money which he had bound himself to pay for services rendered to further the marriage.
When Charles John Königsmark returned to England, in January 1682, all England was talking of the match wherein a poor child had been sold, although the purchaser had not yet possession of either his victim or her fortune. The common talk must have had deep influence on the count, who appears to have been impressed with the idea that if Thynne were dead, Count Charles John Königsmark might succeed to his place and expectations.
On the evening of Sunday, the 12th of February 1682, Thynne was in his coach, from which the Duke of Monmouth had only just previously alighted, and was riding along that part of Pall-Mall which abuts upon Cockspur Street, when the carriage was stopped by three men on horseback, one of whom discharged a carbine into it, whereby Tom of Ten Thousand was so desperately wounded that he died in a few hours.
The persons charged with this murder were chiefly discovered by means of individuals of ill repute with whom they associated. By such means were arrested a German, Captain Vratz, Borosky a Pole, and a fellow, half knave, half enthusiast, described as Lieutenant Stern. Vratz had accompanied Königsmark to England. They lodged together, first in the Haymarket, next in Rupert Street, and finally in St. Martin’s Lane. Borosky had been clothed and armed at the count’s expense; and Stern was employed as a likely tool to help them in this enterprise. It was proved on the trial, that, after the deed was committed, these men were at the count’s lodgings, that a sudden separation took place, and that the count himself, upon some sudden fear, took flight to the water-side; there he lay hid for a while, and then dodged about the river, in various disguises, in order to elude pursuit, until he finally landed at Gravesend, where he was pounced upon by two expert thief-catchers.
The confession of the accomplices, save Vratz, did not affect the count. His defence took a high Protestant turn—made allusion to his Protestant ancestors and their deeds in behalf of Protestantism, lauded Protestant England, alluded to his younger brother, brought expressly here to be educated in Protestant principles, and altogether was exceedingly clever, but in no wise convincing. It was known that the King would learn with pleasure that the count had been acquitted. As this knowledge was possessed by judges who were removable at the King’s pleasure, it had a strong influence; and the arch-murderer, the most cowardly of the infamous company, was acquitted accordingly. In his case, the verdict, as regarded him, was given in, last. The other three persons were indicted for the actual commission of the fact, Königsmark as accessory before the fact, hiring them, and instigating them to the crime. Thrice he had heard the word ‘Guilty’ pronounced, and, despite his recklessness, was somewhat moved when the jury were asked as to their verdict respecting him. ‘Not Guilty,’ murmured the foreman; and then the noble count, mindful only of himself, and forgetful of the three unhappy men whom he had dragged to death, exclaimed in his unmanly joy, ‘God bless the King, and this honourable bench!’ The meaner assassins were flung to the gallows. Vratz went to his fate, like Pierre; declared that the murder was the result of a mistake, that he had no hand in it, and that as he was a gentleman, God would assuredly deal with him as such! This ‘gentleman’ accounted for his presence at the murder as having arisen by his entertaining a quarrel with Mr. Thynne, whom he was about to challenge, when the Pole, mistaking his orders and inclinations, discharged his carbine into the carriage, and slew the occupant. The other two confessed to the murder, as the hired instruments of Vratz. Count Charles John repaired to the Court of France, where he was received in that sort of gentlemanly fashion which Vratz looked for in Paradise. His sword gleamed in many an action fought in various battle-fields of Europe during the next few years, at the head of a French regiment, of which he was colonel. Finally, in 1686, he was in the service of the Venetians in the Morea. On the 29th of August he was before Argos, when a sortie was made by the garrison, and in the bloody struggle which ensued he was mortally wounded. For Thynne’s monument in Westminster Abbey a Latin inscription was prepared, which more than merely hinted that Königsmark was the murderer of Tom of Ten Thousand. ‘Small, servile, Spratt,’ then Dean of Westminster, would not allow the inscription to be set up; and his apologists, who advance in his behalf that he would have done wrong had he allowed a man, cleared by a jury from the charge of murder, to be permanently set down in hard record of marble as an assassin, have much reason in what they advance.
The youthful maid, wife, and widow, Lady Ogle, remained at Amsterdam (whither she had gone, some persons said fled), after her marriage with Thynne, until the three of his murderers, who had been executed, had expiated their crime, as far as human justice was concerned, upon the scaffold. She then returned to England; but the young lady did not ‘appear public,’ as the phrase went, for six or seven weeks, and when she did so, it was found that she had just married Charles Seymour, third Duke of Somerset—a match which made one of two silly persons and a couple of colossal fortunes.