A month after the Queen’s death the new King departed for the Hague, without any ceremony. He took with him a train of Hanoverians, including Bernstorff, his Prime Minister, and Robethon, a councillor, two Turks, Mustapha and Mahomet, and his two mistresses, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. The former was even more reluctant than her master to quit Hanover, and feared for the King’s safety. But George consoled her with the grim assurance that “in England all the king-killers are on my side,” and like the others she came to regard England as a land of promise wherein she might enrich herself. Kielmansegge was eager to go to England, but she did not find it so easy, as she was detained at Hanover by her debts, which George would not pay. After some difficulty she managed to pacify her creditors by promises of the gold she would send them from his Majesty’s new dominions; they let her go, and she caught up the King at the Hague. The Countess Platen did not accompany him. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says that this was due to the enmity of Bernstorff, who hated her because she had obtained the post of cofferer for her favourite, the younger Craggs. “Bernstorff was afraid that she might meddle in the disposition of places that he was willing to keep in his own hands, and he represented to the King that the Roman Catholic religion that she professed was an insuperable bar to her appearance in the Court of England, at least so early; but he gave her private hopes that things might be so managed as to make her admittance easy, when the King was settled in his new dominions.”
George was warmly welcomed at the Hague, where he stayed a fortnight, transacting business, receiving Ministers and Ambassadors, and waiting for the remainder of his Hanoverian suite to join him. At the Hague he determined that Bolingbroke should be dismissed from all his offices, and appointed Lord Townshend Secretary of State in his place. On September 16th George embarked at Oranje Polder, in the yacht Peregrine, and, accompanied by a squadron of twenty ships, set sail for England.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER VI:
[32] Macpherson Stuart Papers, vol. ii.
[33] Letter of James to Queen Anne, May, 1711. In this letter he styles himself “The Chevalier St. George”. It is to be noted that he does not speak of the Electress Sophia as a foreigner, but only of her descendants.
[34] Letter of Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, to the Electress Sophia, 12th January, 1714.
[35] Despatch of Bromley to Harley, 16th April, 1714.
[36] Harley’s letter, 11th May, 1714.
[37] Memorial of the Electress Dowager of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and the Elector of Hanover to Queen Anne, 4th May, 1714.
[38] This would apply to the Elector, the Electoral Prince, Prince Ernest Augustus, brother of the Elector, and the young Prince Frederick, son of the Electoral Prince. It would exclude Prince Maximilian, brother of the Elector, who had become a Roman Catholic.