Minor Queries.
Count Konigsmark.
—Horace Walpole, in his Reminiscences, says distinctly that Count Konigsmark, the admirer of the ill-fated Princess Sophia Dorothea of Zelle, was the same person as the instigator of Mr. Thynne's assassination. Sir E. Brydges, in his edition of Collins's Peerage, on the other hand, calls them brothers. Which of these writers is correct? The fact may not be important otherwise than as giving us an instance (if Walpole be correct) of the righteous judgment of heaven in visiting a murderer with such fearful retribution. I cannot find what became of Konigsmark, after the murder of Mr. Thynne, in 1681-2. It is said in the Harleian Miscellany, that he was taken by one of Monmouth's attendants, who seized him as he was going on ship-board. The three actual assassins were, we know, executed; but it is added, "by some foul play, Konigsmark, who had employed them, and came over to England expressly to see they executed their bloody commission, was acquitted." What was this foul play, and how came the greatest villain of the four to escape? I have not the State Trials to refer to: that work may give some explanation.
Walpole, who was familiar from childhood with the events of the courts of the first three Georges, is likely to have been accurate as to the identity of Konigsmark; but his occasional mistakes and misrepresentations, as we are aware, have been frequently exposed by Mr. Croker.
J. H. MARKLAND.
"O Leoline! be absolutely just."—
"O Leoline! be absolutely just,
Indulge no passion and betray no trust.
Never let man be bold enough to say
Thus and no farther shall my passion stray.