It is asserted of this clever lady, that she was the first who caused the Bishop of Osnaburgh thoroughly to comprehend that Sophia Dorothea would form a very desirable match for his son George Louis. The young lady had lands settled on her which might as well be added to the territory of that electoral Hanover of which the prince-bishop was soon to be the head. Every acre added to the possessions of the chief of the family would be by so much an increase of dignity, and little sacrifices were worth making to effect great and profitable results. The worthy pair, bishop and female prime-minister, immediately proceeded to employ every conceivable engine whereby they might destroy the fortress of the hopes of Sophia Dorothea and Augustus of Wolfenbüttel. They cared for nothing, save that the hand of the former should be conferred upon the bishop’s eldest son, George Louis, who had as little desire to be matched with his cousin, or his cousin with him, as kinsfolk can have who cordially detest each other.
George Louis was not shaped for a lover. He was mean in person and in character. George was brave indeed; to none of the princes of the House of Brunswick can be denied the possession of bravery. In all the bloody and useless wars of the period, he had distinguished himself by his dauntless courage and his cool self-possession. He was not heroic, but he really looked heroic at the head of his squadron, charging across the battle-field, and carrying his sword and his fringed and feathered hat into the very thickest of the fray. He did not fail, it may be added, in one of the characteristics of bravery, humanity on the field. For a wounded foe he had a thorough respect. Out of the field of battle George Louis was an extremely ordinary personage, except in his vices. He was coarsely minded and coarsely spoken, and his profligacy was so extreme of character—it bore about it so little of what Lord Chesterfield recommended when he said a man might be gentlemanlike even in his vices—that the bishop, easy as he was both as parent and prelate, and rich as he was himself in evil example to a son who needed no such warrant to plunge headlong into sin—even the bishop felt uncomfortable for awhile. He thought, however, that marriage would cure profligacy.
George Louis was now in his twenty-second year. He was born in 1660, and he had recently acquired increase of importance from the tact of his sire having succeeded to the estates, grandeur, and expectations of his predecessor, Duke John Frederick. The latter was on his way to Rome, in 1679, a city which he much loved, holding in respect a good portion of what is taught there. He was proceeding thither with a view of a little more of pleasure and something therewith of instruction, when a sudden attack of illness carried him off; and his death excited as much grief in the bishop as it possibly could in one who had little reverence for the duke, by whose death he profited largely.
When the bishop (now Duke Ernest Augustus, of Hanover), as a natural consequence of this death, established a gayer court at Hanover than had ever yet been seen there, and had raised George Louis to the rank of a ‘Crown Prince’—a title given to many heirs who could inherit nothing but coronets—the last-named individual began to consider speculatively as to what royal lady he might, with greatest prospect of advantage to himself, make offer of his hand.
At this time Charles II. was King in England. The King’s brother, James, Duke of York, had a daughter, ‘Lady Anne,’ who is better known to us all by her after-title of ‘good Queen Anne.’ In the year 1680, George of Hanover came over to England with matrimonial views respecting that young princess. He had on his way visited William of Orange, at the Hague; and when that calculating prince was made the confidential depository of the views of George Louis respecting the Princess Anne of England, he listened with much complacency, but is suspected of having forthwith set on foot the series of intrigues which, helped forward by Madame von Platen, ended in the recall of George from England, and in his hapless marriage with the more hapless Sophia Dorothea.
George of Hanover left the Hague with the conviction that he had a friend in William; but William was no abettor of marriages with the Princess Anne, and least of all could he wish success to the hereditary prince of Hanover, whose union with one of the heiresses of the British throne might, under certain contingencies, miserably mar his own prospects. The Sidney Diary fixes the arrival of George Louis at Greenwich on the 6th of December, 1680. On the 29th of the month, Viscount Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill, and at this lively spectacle George of Hanover was probably present, for on the 30th of the month he sends a long letter to her Serene Highness, his mother, stating that ‘they cut off the head of Lord Stafford yesterday, and made no more ado about it than if they had chopped off the head of a pullet.’ In this letter, the writer enters into details of the incidents of his reception in England. The tenor of his epistle is, that he remained one whole day at anchor at ‘Grunnwitsch’ (which is his reading of Greenwich) while his secretary, Mr. Beck, went ashore to look for a house for him, and find out his uncle Prince Rupert. Scant ceremony was displayed, it would appear, to render hospitable welcome to such a visitor. Hospitality, however, was not altogether lacking. The zealous Beck found out ‘Uncle Robert,’ as the prince ungermanises Rupert, and the uncle, having little of his own to offer to his nephew, straightway announced to Charles II. the circumstance that the princely lover of his niece was lying in the mud off Grunnwitsch. ‘His Majesty,’ says George Louis, ‘immediately ordered them apartments at Writhall’—and he then proceeds to state that he had not been there above two hours when Lord Hamilton arrived to conduct him to the King, who received him most obligingly. He then adds, ‘Prince Robert had preceded me, and was at Court when I saluted King Charles. In making my obeisance to the King, I did not omit to give him the letter of your Serene Highness; after which he spoke of your Highness, and said that he “remembered you very well.” When he had talked with me some time, he went to the Queen, and as soon as I arrived, he made me kiss the hem of her Majesty’s petticoat. The next day I saw the Princess of York (the Lady Anne), and I saluted her by kissing her, with the consent of the King. The day after I went to visit Prince Robert, who received me in bed, for he has a malady in his leg, which makes him very often keep his bed. It appears that it is so, without any pretext, and he has to take care of himself. He had not failed of coming to see me one day. All the lords come to see me, sans prétendre la main chez moi’ (probably, rather meaning without ceremony, without kissing hands, than, as has been suggested, that ‘they came without venturing to shake hands with him’).
Cold and deaf did the Princess Anne remain to the suit of the Hanoverian wooer. The suit, indeed, was not pressed by any sanction of the lady’s father, who, during the three months’ sojourn of George Louis in England, remained in rather secluded state at Holyrood. Neither was the suit opposed by James. James was troubled but little touching the suitor of his daughter. He had personal troubles enough of his own wherewith to be concerned, and therewith sundry annoyances.
Among the ‘celebrations’ of the visit of George Louis to this country, was the pomp of the ceremony which welcomed him to Cambridge. Never had the groves or stream of Cam been made vocal by the echoes of such laudation as was given and taken on this solemnly hilarious occasion. There was much feasting, which included very much drinking, and much expenditure of heavy compliment in very light Latin. George and his trio of followers were made doctors of law by the scholastic authorities. The honour, however, was hardly more appropriate than when a similar one was conferred, in after years, upon Blucher and the celebrated artillery officer, Gneisenau. ‘Ah!’ exclaimed the veteran leader, ‘they are going to make me a doctor; but it was Gneisenau that furnished all the pills.’
That parliament was convened at Oxford whereby there was, as Evelyn remarks, ‘great expectation of his Royal Highness’s cause, as to the succession against which the house was set,’ and therewith there was, according to the same diarist, ‘an extraordinary sharp, cold spring, not yet a leaf upon the trees, frost and snow lying while the whole nation was in the greatest ferment.’ Such was the parliament, and such the spring, when George Louis was suddenly called home. He was highly interested in the bill, which was read a first time at that parliament, as also in the ‘expedients’ which were proposed in lieu of such bill, and rejected. The expedients proposed instead of the Bill of Exclusion in this parliament, were that the whole government, upon the death of Charles II., should be vested in a regent, the Princess of Orange, and if she died without issue, then the Princess Anne should be regent. But if James, Duke of York, should have a son educated a Protestant, then the regency should last no longer than his minority, and that the regent should govern in the name of the father while he lived; but that the father should be obliged to reside five hundred miles from the British dominions; and if the duke should return to these kingdoms, the crown should immediately devolve on the regent, and the duke and his adherents be deemed guilty of high treason.
Here was matter in which the Hanoverian suitor was doubly interested both as man and as lover. Nor was there anything unnatural or unbecoming in such concern. The possible inheritance of such a throne as that of England was not to be contemplated without emotion. An exclusive Protestant succession made such a heritage possible to the House of Brunswick, and if ever the heads of that house, before the object of their hopes was realised, ceased to be active for its realisation, it was when assurance was made doubly sure, and action was unnecessary.