From the day of the issuing of that order, she was never allowed to walk, even in the garden of the castle, without a guard. She never rode out, or drove through the neighbouring woods, without a strong escort. Even parts of the castle were prohibited from being intruded upon by her; and so much severity was shown in this respect, that when, on one occasion, a fire broke out in the edifice, to escape from which she must have traversed a gallery which she was forbidden to pass, she stood short of the proscribed limit, her jewel-box in her arms, and herself in almost speechless terror, but refusing to advance beyond the prohibited line until permission reached her from the proper authority.
On such a prisoner time must have hung especially heavy. She had, however, many resources, and every hour, with her, had its occupation. She was the land-steward of her little ducal estate, and performed all the duties of that office. She kept a diary of her thoughts as well as actions; and if this be extant it would be well worthy of being published. The one which has been put forth as hers is a poor work of fancy by some writer unknown, set in dramatic scenes, and altogether to be rejected. Her correspondence, during the period she was permitted to write, was extensive. Every day she had interviews with, and gave instructions to, each of her servants, from the chief of the three cooks downwards. With this, she was personally active in charity. Finally, she was the Lady Bountiful of the district, laying out half her income in charitable uses for the good of her neighbours, and, as Boniface said of the good lady of Lichfield, ‘curing more people in and about the place within ten years, than the doctors had killed in twenty; and that’s a bold word.’
There was a church in the village, which was in rather ruinous condition when her captivity commenced; but this she put in thorough repair, decorated it handsomely, presented it with an organ, and was refused permission to attend there after it had been reopened for public service. For her religious consolation a chaplain had been provided, and she was never trusted, even under guard, to join with the villagers in common worship in the church of the village below. In this respect a somewhat royal etiquette was observed. The chaplain read prayers to the garrison and household in one room, to which the princess and her ladies listened rather than therewith joined, placed as they were in an adjacent room, where they could hear without being seen.
With no relative was she allowed to hold never so brief an interview; and at last even her mother was not permitted to soften by her presence for an hour the rigid and ceremonious captivity of her luckless daughter. Mother and child were allowed to correspond at stated periods, their letters passing open. The princess herself was as much cut off from her own children as if these had been dead and entombed. The little prince and princess were expressly ordered to utterly forget that they had a mother—her very name on their lips would have been condemned as a grievous fault. The boy, George Augustus, was in many points of character similar to his father, and, accordingly, being commanded to forget his mother, he obstinately bore her in memory; and when he was told that he would never have an opportunity afforded him to see her, mentally resolved to make one for himself.
It is but justice to the old Elector to say that in his advanced years, when pleasant sins were no longer profitable to him, he gave them up; and when the youngest of his mistresses had ceased to be attractive, he began to think such appendages little worth the hanging on to his Electoral dignity. For, ceasing to love and live with his ‘favourites,’ he did not the more respect, or hold closer intercourse with, his wife—a course about which the Electress Sophia troubled herself very little.
Ernest Augustus, when he ceased to be under the influence of the disgraced Countess von Platen, began to be sensible of some sympathy for his daughter-in-law, Sophia. He softened in some degree the rigour of her imprisonment and corresponded with her by letter; a correspondence which inspired her with hope that her freedom might result from it. This hope was, however, frustrated by the death of Ernest Augustus, on the 20th of January 1698. From that time the rigour of her imprisonment was increased fourfold.
If the heart of her old father-in-law began to incline towards her as he increased in years, it is not to be wondered at that the heart of her aged father melted towards her as time began to press heavily upon him. But it was the weakest of hearts allied to the weakest of minds. In the comfortlessness of his great age he sought to be comforted by loving her whom he had insanely and unnaturally oppressed—the sole child of his heart and house. In his weakness he addressed himself to that tool of Hanover at Zell, the minister Bernstorf; and that individual so terrified the poor old man by details of the ill consequences which might ensue if the wrath of the new Elector, George Louis, were aroused by the interference of the Duke of Zell in matters which concerned the Elector and his wife, that the old man, feeble in mind and body, yielded, and for a time at least left his daughter to her fate. He thought to compensate for the wrong which he inflicted on her under the impulse of his evil genius, Bernstorf, by adding a codicil to his will.
By this codicil he bequeathed to the daughter whom he had wronged all that it was in his power to leave, in jewels, moneys, and lands; but liberty he could not give her, and so his love could do little more than try to lighten the fetters which he had aided to put on. But there was a short-lived joy in store, both for child and parents. The fetters were to be cast aside for a brief season, and the poor captive was to enjoy an hour of home, of love, and of liberty.
The last year of the seventeenth century (1700) brought with it an accession of greatness to the Electoral family of Hanover, inasmuch as in that year a bill was introduced into parliament, and accepted by that body, which fixed the succession to the crown of England after the Princess Anne, and in default of such princess dying without heirs of her own body, in the person of Sophia of Hanover. William III. had been very desirous for the introduction of this bill; but under various pretexts it had been deferred, the commonest business being allowed to take precedence of it, until the century had nearly expired. The limitations to the royal action, which formed a part of the bill as recommended in the report of the committee, were little to the King’s taste; for they not only affected his employment of foreign troops in England, but shackled his own free and frequent departures from the kingdom. It was imagined by many that these limitations were designed by the leaders in the cabinet, in order to raise disputes between the two houses, by which the bill might be lost. Such is Burnet’s report; and he sarcastically adds thereto, that when much time had been spent in preliminaries, and it was necessary to come to the nomination of the person who should be named presumptive heir next to Queen Anne, the office of doing so was confided to ‘Sir John Bowles, who was then disordered in his senses, and soon after quite lost them.’ ‘He was,’ says Burnet, ‘set on by the party to be the first that should name the Electress-dowager of Brunswick, which seemed done to make it less serious when moved by such a person.’ So that the solemn question of naming the heir to a throne was entrusted to an idiot, who, by the forms of the house, was appointed chairman of the committee for the conduct of the bill. Burnet adds, that the ‘thing,’ as he calls it, was ‘still put off for many weeks at every time that it was called for; the motion was entertained with coldness, which served to heighten the jealousy; the committee once or twice sat upon it, but all the members ran out of the house with so much indecency that the contrivers seemed ashamed of this management; there were seldom fifty or sixty at the committee, yet in conclusion it passed, and was sent up to the Lords.’ Great opposition was expected from the peers, and many of their lordships designedly absented themselves from the discussion. The opposition was slight, and confined to the Marquis of Normanby, who spoke, and the Lords Huntingdon, Plymouth, Guildford, and Jefferies, who protested, against the bill. Burnet affirms, that those who wished well to the Act were glad to have it passed any way, and so would not examine the limitations that were in it, and which they thought might be considered afterwards. ‘We reckoned it,’ says Burnet, ‘a great point carried that we had now a law on our side for a Protestant successor.’ The law was stoutly protested against by the Duchess of Savoy, grand-daughter of Charles I. The protest did not trouble the King, who despatched the Act to the Electress-dowager, and the Garter to her son, by the hands of the Earl of Macclesfield.
The earl was a fitting bearer of so costly and significant a present. He had been attached to the service of the mother of Sophia, and was highly esteemed by the Electress-dowager herself. The earl had no especial commission beyond that which enjoined him to deliver the Act, nor was he dignified by any official appellation. He was neither ambassador, legate, plenipotentiary, nor envoy. He had with him, however, a most splendid suite; which was in some respects strangely constituted, for among its members was the famous Toland, whose book in support of rationality as applied to religion had been publicly burnt by the hangman, in Ireland.