How did these alleged autograph letters find their way into Sweden?
They had previously been kept, we are gravely told, in a drawer in Oefiwedskloster, by the widowed Countess Amelia Ramel (a Löwenhaupt by birth), at whose death, in 1810, they came into the possession of her son, a Count de la Gardie. Löberod was acquired by a Count Jacob Gustus de la Gardie in 1817.
But how did the Lady Amelia Ramel become the holder of these extraordinary documents?
The answer is: As the descendant of General Karl von Löwenhaupt, who had married Amelia, one of the two sisters of Königsmark. This lady is stated to have made over this mass of letters to her children, with this observation: Here are the letters captured again (wiedererobert) at great peril, which cost a brother his life and a king’s mother her freedom.
Captured, seized, recovered at great peril! When? where? by whom? from whom?
No reply; not the smallest particle of evidence is given on these important points. If they were obtained under circumstances of great danger, it must have been from some one who considered them of great importance, but who must have allowed himself to be plundered of them with great indifference. No one ever heard of the robbery or capture, nor of the means by which it was effected.
In 1838 one letter saw the light. In 1847 several were published in Germany and Sweden. To all enquiry, no other answer has been made than that the letters had existed since 1810 in the keeping of the persons above named; that they had come down from Amelia Königsmark, who had wedded with a Löwenhaupt; that they were genuine letters, and that they conclusively proved the guilt of Sophia Dorothea and Count Königsmark.
Sophia Dorothea, it must be remembered, never had the guilt implied laid to her charge. The name of Königsmark was never once uttered at her trial—if it may so be called. She was punished for alleged disobedience to, and desertion of, her husband. She retained so much of the character of a wife that she was not allowed to marry again. She remained till her death the wife of a King of England, with whom she would hold no association. Her husband kept her for more than thirty years a state prisoner. How could this cruelty be better justified than by blasting her character and memory for ever—long after all parties were far beyond questioning? How could this dire penalty be inflicted, after death, more easily than by preparing a correspondence between the two personages, which might be kept in a cloister drawer till it could be produced to serve its infamous purpose?
The persons who held these papers in later years may have conscientiously believed in their genuineness. Of the contemporaries of Sophia Dorothea, the Countess von Platen and even Bernstorf are said to have been able to imitate the handwriting of Sophia Dorothea. We do not insinuate that they were willing to forge these letters. But some one probably did so. Königsmark’s letters may indeed be genuine; but it does not follow that they were addressed to the wife of him who was afterwards George I. Without name, date, or address, they might serve to calumniate any other lady of Sophia Dorothea’s time.
Of the letters themselves, Palmblad, who inspected the precious collection, states in his ‘Aurora Königsmark,’ or rather in an appendix to the first part of that historical romance, that they consist of several hundreds, of which two-thirds are by Königsmark, the other third by Sophia Dorothea, and that in print they would fill a stout volume.