The welcome to this body of gentlemen was right royal. It may be said that the Electoral family had neither cared for the dignity now rendered probable for them, nor in any way toiled or intrigued to bring it within their grasp; but it is certain that their joy was great when the Earl of Macclesfield appeared on the frontier of the Electorate with the Act in one hand and the Garter in the other. He and his suite were met there with a welcome of extraordinary magnificence, betokening ample appreciation of the double gift he brought with him. He himself seemed elevated by his mission, for he was in his general deportment little distinguished by courtly manners or by ceremonious bearing; but it was observed that, on this occasion, nothing could have been more becoming than the way in which he acquitted himself of an office which brought a whole family within view of succession to a royal and powerful throne.
On reaching the confines of the Electorate, the members of the deputation from England were received by personages of the highest official rank, who not only escorted them to the capital, but treated them on the way with a liberality so profuse as to be the wonder of all beholders. They were not allowed to disburse a farthing from their own purses; all they thought fit to order was paid for by the Electoral government, by whose orders they were lodged in the most commodious palace in Hanover, where as much homage was paid them as if each man had been a Kaiser in his own person. The Hanoverian gratitude went so far, that not only were the ambassador and suite treated as favoured guests, and those not alone of the princess but of the people—the latter being commanded to refrain from taking payment from any of them for any article of refreshment they required—but for many days all English travellers visiting the city were made equally free of its caravansaries, and were permitted to enjoy all that the inns could afford without being required to pay for the enjoyment.
The delicate treatment of the Electoral government extended even to the servants of the earl and his suite. It was thought that to require them to dine upon the fragments of their master’s banquets would be derogatory to the splendour of the hospitality of the House of Hanover and an insult to the domestics who followed in the train of the earl. The government accordingly disbursed half-a-crown a day to each liveried follower, and considered such a ‘composition’ as glorious to the reputation of the Electoral house. The menials were even emancipated from service during the sojourn of the deputation in Hanover, and the Elector’s numerous servants waited upon the English visitors zealously throughout the day, but with most splendour in the morning; then, they were to be seen hurrying to the bed-rooms of the different members of the suite, bearing with them silver coffee and tea pots, and other requisites for breakfast, which meal appears to have been lazily indulged in—as if the legation had been habitually wont to ‘make a night of it’—in bed. And there was a good deal of hard drinking on these occasions, but all at the expense of the husband of Sophia Dorothea, who, in her castle of Ahlden, was not even aware of that increase of honour which had fallen upon her consort, and in which she had a right to share.
For those who were, the next day, ill or indolent, there were the ponderous state coaches to carry them whithersoever they would go. The most gorgeous of the fêtes given on this occasion was on the evening of the day on which the Act was solemnly presented to the Electress-dowager. Hanover, famous as it was for its balls, had never seen so glorious a Terpsichorean festival as marked this particular night. At the balls in the old Elector’s time Sophia Dorothea used to shine, first in beauty and in grace; but now her place was ill supplied by the not fair and quite graceless Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg. The supper which followed was Olympian in its profusion, wit, and magnificence. This was at a time when to be sober was to be respectable, but when to be drunk was not to be ungentlemanly. Consequently we find Toland, who wrote an account of the achievements of the day, congratulating himself and readers by stating that, although it was to be expected that in so large and so jovial a party some would be found even more ecstatic than the occasion and the company warranted, yet that, in truth, the number of those who were guilty of excess was but small. Even Lord Mohun kept himself sober, and to the end was able to converse as clearly and intelligibly as Lord Saye and Sele, and his friend ‘my Lord Tunbridge.’
This day of presentation of the Act, and of the festival in honour of it, was one of the greatest days which Hanover had ever seen. Speaking of the mother-in-law of Sophia Dorothea, Toland says:—‘The Electress is three-and-seventy years old, which she bears so wonderfully well, that, had I not many vouchers, I should scarce dare venture to relate it. She has ever enjoyed extraordinary health, which keeps her still very vigorous, of a cheerful countenance, and a merry disposition. She steps as firm and erect as any young lady, has not one wrinkle in her face, which is still very agreeable, nor one tooth out of her head, and reads without spectacles, as I have often seen her do, letters of a small character, in the dusk of the evening. She is as great a writer as our late queen (Mary), and you cannot turn yourself in the palace without meeting some monument of her industry, all the chairs of the presence-chamber being wrought with her own hands. The ornaments of the altar in the electoral chapel are all of her work. She bestowed the same favour on the Protestant abbey, or college, of Lockurn, with a thousand other instances, fitter for your lady to know than for yourself. She is the most constant and greatest walker I ever knew, never missing a day, if it proves fair, for one or two hours, and often more, in the fine garden at Herrnhausen. She perfectly tires all those of her court who attend her in that exercise but such as have the honour to be entertained by her in discourse. She has been long admired by all the learned world as a woman of incomparable knowledge in divinity, philosophy, history, and the subjects of all sorts of books, of which she has read a prodigious quantity. She speaks five languages so well, that by her accent it might be a dispute which of them was her first. They are Low Dutch, German, French, Italian, and English, which last she speaks as truly and easily as any native; which to me is a matter of amazement, whatever advantages she might have in her youth by the conversation of her mother; for though the late king’s (William’s) mother was likewise an Englishwoman, of the same royal family; though he had been more than once in England before the Revolution; though he was married there, and his court continually full of many of that nation, yet he could never conquer his foreign accent. But, indeed, the Electress is so entirely English in her person, in her behaviour, in her humour, and in all her inclinations, that naturally she could not miss of anything that peculiarly belongs to our land. She was ever glad to see Englishmen, long before the Act of Succession. She professes to admire our form of government, and understands it mighty well, yet she asks so many questions about families, customs, laws, and the like, as sufficiently demonstrate her profound wisdom and experience. She has a deep veneration for the Church of England, without losing affection or charity for any other sort of Protestants, and appears charmed with the moderate temper of our present bishops and other of our learned clergy, especially for their approbation of the liberty allowed by law to Protestant Dissenters. She is adored for her goodness among the inhabitants of the country, and gains the hearts of all strangers by her unparalleled affability. No distinction is ever made in her court concerning the parties into which Englishmen are divided, and whereof they carry the effects and impressions with them whithersoever they go, which makes others sometimes uneasy as well as themselves. There it is enough that you are an Englishman; nor can you ever discover by your treatment which are better liked, the Whigs or the Tories. These are the instructions given to all the servants, and they take care to execute them with the utmost exactness. I was the first who had the honour of kneeling and kissing her hand on account of the Act of Succession; and she said, among other discourse, that she was afraid the nation had already repented their choice of an old woman, but that she hoped none of her posterity would give her any reasons to grow weary of their dominion. I answered, that the English had too well considered what they did to change their minds so soon, and they still remembered they were never so happy as when they were last under a woman’s government. Since that time, sir,’ adds the courtly but unorthodox Toland to the ‘Minister of State in Holland,’ to whom his letter is addressed, ‘we have a further confirmation of this truth by the glorious administration of Queen Anne.’
The record would be imperfect if it were not accompanied by another ‘counterfeit presentment,’ that of her son, Prince George Louis, the husband of Sophia Dorothea. Toland describes him as ‘a proper, middle-sized, well-proportioned man, of a genteel address, and good appearance;’ but he adds, that his Highness ‘is reserved, and therefore speaks little, but judiciously.’ ‘He is not to be exceeded,’ says Toland, ‘in his zeal against the intended universal monarchy of France, and so is most hearty for the common cause of Europe,’ for the very good reason, that therein ‘his own is so necessarily involved.’ Toland adds, that George Louis understood the constitution of England better than any ‘foreigner’ he had ever met with; a very safe remark, for our constitution was ill understood abroad; and even had the theoretical knowledge of George Louis been ever so correct, his practice with our constitution betrayed such ignorance that Toland’s assertion may be taken only for what it is worth. ‘Though,’ says the writer just named, ‘though he be well versed in the art of war, and of invincible courage, having often exposed his person to great dangers in Hungary, in the Morea, on the Rhine, and in Flanders, yet he is naturally of peaceable inclination; which mixture of qualities is agreed, by the experience of all ages, to make the best and most glorious princes. He is a perfect man of business, exactly regular in the economy of his revenues’ (which he never was of those of England, seeing that he outran his liberal allowance, and coolly asked the parliament to pay his debts), ‘reads all despatches himself at first hand, writes most of his own letters, and spends a considerable part of his time about such occupations, in his closet, and with his ministers.’ ‘I hope,’ Toland says, ‘that none of our countrymen will be so injudicious as to think his reservedness the effect of sullenness or pride; nor mistake that for state which really proceeds from modesty, caution, and deliberation; for he is very affable to such as accost him, and expects that others should speak to him first, which is the best information I could have from all about him, and I partly know to be true by experience.’... ‘As to what I said of his frugality in laying out the public money, I need not give a more particular proof than that all the expenses of his court, as to eating, drinking, fire, candles, and the like, are duly paid every Saturday night; the officers of his army receive their pay every month, so likewise his envoys in every part of Europe; and all the officers of his household, with the rest that are on the civil list, are cleared off every half-year.’ We are then assured that his administration was equable, mild, and prudent—a triple assertion which his own life and that of his hardly-used wife flatly denied. Toland, however, will have it that there never existed a prince who was so ardently beloved by his subjects. Hanover itself is said to be without division or faction, and all Hanoverians as being in a condition of ecstasy at the Solomon-like rectitude and jurisdiction of his very Serene Highness. He describes Madame Kielmansegge as a woman of sense and wit; and of ‘Mademoiselle Schulemberg,’ he says that she is especially worthy of the rank she enjoys, and that ‘in the opinion of others, as well as mine, she is a lady of extraordinary merit!’ Of Sophia Dorothea, Toland makes no note whatever.
There only remains to be added, that the legation left Hanover loaded with presents. The earl received the portrait of the Electress, with an Electoral crown in diamonds by way of mounting to the frame. George Louis bestowed upon him a gold basin and ewer. Gold medals and snuffboxes were showered among the other members. The chaplain, Dr. Sandys, was especially honoured by rich gifts in medals and books. He was the first who ever read the service of our Church in the presence of the Electress. She joined in it with apparent fervour, and admired it generally; but when a hint was conveyed to her that it might be well were she to introduce it in place of the Calvinistic form used in her chapel, as of the Lutheran in that of the Elector, she shook her head, with a smile; said that there was no difference between the three forms, in essentials, and that episcopacy was merely the established form in England. She thought for the present she would ‘let well alone.’ And it was done accordingly!
In the year 1705 the war was raging which France was carrying on for the purpose of extending her limits and influence, and which England and her allies had entered into in order to resist such aggression and restore that terribly oscillating matter—the balance of European power. The Duke of Marlborough had, at the prayer of the Dutch States, left the banks of the Moselle, in order to help Holland, menaced on the side of Liège by a strong French force. Our great duke left General D’Aubach at Trèves to secure the magazines which the English and Dutch had laid up there; but upon the approach of Marshal Villars, D’Aubach destroyed the magazines and abandoned Trèves, of which the French immediately took possession. This put an end to all the schemes which had been laid for attacking France on the side of the Moselle, where her frontiers were but weak, and carried her confederates back to Flanders, where, as the old-fashioned chronicler, Salmon, remarks, ‘they yearly threw away thousands of brave fellows against stone walls.’ Thereupon, Hanover became menaced. On this, Horace Walpole has something in point:
‘As the genuine wife was always detained in her husband’s power, he seems not to have wholly dissolved their union; for on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne’s reign, the Duchess of Halle (Ahlden) was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore, though in vain, that she might continue to reside with them.’ On the return of ‘the genuine wife’ to captivity some of the old restrictions were taken off. There was no prohibition of intercourse with the parents; for the Duke of Zell had resolved on proceeding to visit his daughter, but only deferred his visit until the conclusion of a grand hunt in which he was anxious to take part. He went; and between fatigue, exposure to inclement weather, and neglect on his return, he became seriously ill, rapidly grew worse, died on the 28th of August 1705, and by his death gave the domains of a dukedom to Hanover and deprived his daughter of a newly-acquired friend.
The death of the Duke of Zell was followed by honour to Bernstorf. George Louis appointed him to the post of prime-minister of Hanover, and at the same time made him a count. The death of the father of Sophia Dorothea was, however, followed by consequences more fatal than those just named. The severity of the imprisonment of the princess was much aggravated; and though she was permitted to have an occasional interview with her mother, all application to be allowed to see her two children was sternly refused—and this refusal, as the poor prisoner used to remark, was the bitterest portion of her misery.