Within a month, the general festivities were a little marred by the proclamation of the Pretender, dated from Lorraine, wherein he laid claim to the throne which George was declared to have usurped. At this period the Duke of Lorraine was a sovereign prince, maintaining an envoy at our court; but the latter was ordered to withdraw from the country immediately after the arrival of the ‘Lorraine proclamation’ by the French mail. Already George I. began to feel that on the throne he was destined to enjoy less quiet than his consort in her prison.
The counter-proclamations made in this country, chiefly on account of the Jacobite riots at Oxford and some other places, were made up of nonsense and malignity, and were well calculated to make a good cause wear the semblance of a bad one. They decreed, or announced, thanksgiving on the 20th of January, for the accession of the House of Hanover; and, to show what a portion of the people had to be thankful for, they ordered a rigorous execution of the laws against papists, non-jurors, and dissenters generally, who were assumed to be, as a matter of course, disaffected to the reigning house.
After some of the first troubles of his reign had been got over, the King visited Hanover, where he invested his brother, the Duke of York, and Prince Frederick with the Order of the Garter. He even partook of the pleasures of the chase in the woods around Ahlden; but except ordering a more stringent rule for the safe-keeping of his consort, he took no further notice of Sophia Dorothea. He returned to London on the 18th of January 1716–17, and on that day week, hearing that the episcopal clergy of Scotland continued to refuse to pray for him, he issued a decree, which compelled many to fly the country or otherwise abscond. The English clergy experienced even harsher treatment for less offence. I may mention, as an instance, the case of the Rev. Laurence Howell, who, for writing a pamphlet called ‘The State of Schism in the Church of England truly stated,’ was stripped of his gown by the executioner, fined 500l., imprisoned three years, and was sentenced to be twice publicly whipped by the hangman!
On the first absence of the King from England, the Prince of Wales was appointed regent, but he was never entrusted with that high office a second time. ‘It is probable,’ says Walpole, ‘that the son discovered too much fondness for acting the king, as that the father conceived a jealousy of his having done so. Sure it is, that on the King’s return, great divisions arose in the court, and the Whigs were divided—some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown and others to the expectant.’ So that, in the second year of his reign, the King not only held his wife in prison, but his son and heir was banished from his presence.
Passing over the record of public events, the next interesting fact connected with the private life of the faithless husband of Sophia Dorothea was the marriage of his illegitimate daughter Charlotte with Lord Viscount Howe. The bride’s mother was Charlotte Sophia, daughter of the Countess von Platen; and Charlotte Sophia was decently married to Baron Kielmansegge, Master of the Horse to George I. In 1719, at the time of the above marriage, the baroness was a widow. George I. himself gave away the bride as the baroness’s niece. ‘The King,’ says Walpole, ‘was indisputably her father; and the first child born of this union was named George, after the King.’ The Princess Amelia, daughter of George II., ‘treated Lady Howe’s daughter, “Mistress Howe,” as a princess of the blood-royal, and presented her with a ring, containing a small portrait of George I., with a crown in diamonds.’ The best result of this marriage was, that the famous Admiral Howe was one of the sons born of it, and that was the only benefit which the country derived from the vicious conduct of George I. If the marriage of the child of one mistress tended to mortify the vanity of another, as is said to have been the case with Von der Schulenburg, King George found a way to pacify her. That lady was already Duchess of Munster, in Ireland, and the King, in April 1719, created her a baroness, countess, and duchess of Great Britain, by the name, style, and title of Baroness of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and Duchess of Kendal; and this done, the King soon after embarked at Gravesend for Hanover.
The year 1720 saw King George more upon the Continent than at home, where indeed universal misery reigned, in consequence of the bursting of the great South Sea Bubble, which had promised such golden solidity—which ended in such disappointment and ruin, and for furthering which the Duchess of Kendal and her daughter received bribes of 10,000l. each. In April of the following year, William Augustus was born at Leicester House. The daughter of Sophia Dorothea was his godmother; her husband and the Duke of York were the godfathers. This son of George Augustus and Caroline of Anspach, Prince and Princess of Wales, was afterwards famous as the Duke of Cumberland.
On the 17th of January 1721, the royal family went into mourning, and this was the only domestic incident of the reign in which Sophia Dorothea was allowed to participate. With her, the mourning was not a mere formality; it was not assumed, but was a testimony offered, in sign of her sorrow, for the death of her mother, Eleanora, Duchess of Zell. The Duchess had seen little of her daughter for some time previous to her death, but she bequeathed to her as much of her private property as she had power to dispose of by will.
Sophia Dorothea had now a considerable amount of funds placed to her credit in the bank of Amsterdam. Of the incidents of her captivity nothing whatever is known, save that it was most rigidly maintained. She was forgotten by the world, because unseen, and they who kept her in prison were as silent about her as the keepers of the Man in the Iron Mask were about that mysterious object of their solicitude. Where little is known there is little to be told. The captive bore her restraint with a patience which even her daughter must have admired; but she was not without hopes of escaping from a thraldom from which it was clear she could never be released by the voluntary act of those who kept her in an undeserved custody. It is believed that her funds at Amsterdam were intended by her to be disposed of in the purchase of aid to secure her escape; but it is added that her agents betrayed her, embezzled her property, and by revealing for what purpose they were her agents, brought upon her a closer arrest than any under which she had hitherto suffered. Romance has made some additions to these items of intelligence—items, great portions of which rest only on conjecture. The undoubted fact that much of the property which she inherited was to pass to her children rendered the death of a mother a consummation to be desired by (it was said) so indifferent a son and daughter as the Prince of Wales and the Queen of Prussia. The interest held by her husband was of a similar description, and the fatal consequences that might follow were not unprovided for by the friends of the prisoner. ‘It is known,’ says Walpole, ‘that in Queen Anne’s time there was much noise about French prophets. A female of that vocation (for we know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care of his wife, as he would not survive her a year. That oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, who might be apprehensive that the Duchess of Kendal might be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Germans are superstitious, even such as have few other impressions of religion. George gave such credit to the denunciation, that, on the eve of his last departure, he took leave of his son and the Princess of Wales with tears, telling them he should never see them more. It was certainly his own approaching end that melted him, not the thought of quitting for ever two persons that he hated.’
The poor princess, ‘Queen of Great Britain,’ as those who loved her were wont to call her, had been long in declining health, born of declining hopes; and yet she endured all things with patience, contenting herself in her last moments with reasserting her innocence, commending herself to God, naming her children, and pardoning her oppressors. On the 2nd of November 1726, after much hope, not only deferred but crushed out; after much disappointment of expectations, built on the promises of false friends; and after marked but gradual decrease of health, Sophia Dorothea became suddenly and dangerously ill. She lost all consciousness, and on the 13th of the month she lay dead on her bed in the castle of Ahlden.
The news soon reached Hanover, where the authorities, with a feeling of becomingness, ordered a general mourning as for the death of a queen in the land. As soon as this decent step was known in England, the King was vulgar in his wrath. He sent peremptory orders to Hanover to do away immediately with all signs of mourning, and the officials, if not the public, went into ordinary, or holiday, gear.