The King had landed in Holland four days after leaving Greenwich, and he set out to accomplish the overland journey to Hanover, apparently in his usual health. The Duchess of Kendal stayed behind at the Hague to recover from the crossing, which always made her ill. Attended by a numerous escort, the King reached Delden, on the frontier of Holland, on June 9th. Hard by he paid a visit to the house of Count Twittel, where he ate an enormous supper, including several water-melons. His suite wished him to stay the night at Delden, but after resting there a few hours to change horses, he set off again at full speed in the small hours of the morning. According to Lockhart it was here that the letter was thrown into the King’s coach which had been written by the ill-fated Sophie Dorothea, upbraiding her husband with his cruelty, and reminding him of the prophecy that he would meet her at the divine tribunal within a year and a day of her death.[129] Whether it was the letter, or the supper, or a combination of both, it is impossible to say, but soon after leaving Delden the King became violently disordered and fell forward in a fit. When he partly recovered, his attendants again urged him to rest, but he refused. The last stage of the journey was accomplished in furious haste, the King himself urging on the postilions and shouting: “To Osnabrück, to Osnabrück!” Osnabrück was reached late at night, but by that time the King was insensible. His brother, the Duke of York, Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, came out to meet him. The King was borne into the castle, and restoratives were applied, but he never recovered consciousness, and breathed his last in the room where he had been born sixty-seven years before.
Thus died the first of our Hanoverian Kings. To judge him impartially we must take into consideration his environment and the age in which he lived. So viewed, there is something to be said in extenuation, something even in his favour. His profligacy was common to the princes of his time, his coarseness was all his own. He was a bad husband, a bad father, bad in many relations of life, but he was not a bad king. He kept his compact with England, he was strictly a constitutional monarch, he respected the rights of the people, and his views on civil and religious liberty were singularly enlightened. His excessive fondness for Hanover was an undoubted grievance to his English subjects, but, on the other hand, it did him honour, as it showed that he did not forget his old friends in the hour of prosperity. Though as King of England he was a stranger in a strange country, and surrounded by faction and intrigue, he played a difficult part with considerable skill. The great blot upon his reign was the execution of the Jacobite peers; the great stain upon his private life, the vindictive cruelty with which he hounded his unfortunate wife to madness, and death. For the first he was only partly responsible, the second admits of no palliation. Yet with all his failings he was superior to his son, who now succeeded him as King George the Second.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK II, CHAPTER XI:
GEORGE II.=CAROLINE OF ANSBACH.
|
+—————+
|
+—Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales,
| b. at Herrenhausen, 1707.
| M., 1736, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha,
| d., 1751.
| Had issue, George III. and others.
|
+—Anne, Princess Royal,
| b. at Herrenhausen, 1709.
| M., 1733, Prince of Orange, d. 1759.
|
+—Amelia Sophia Eleanora, b. at Herrenhausen,
| 1710, d. 1786, unmarried.
|
+—Caroline Elizabeth, b. at Herrenhausen, 1715.
| d. 1757, unmarried.
|
+—George William, b. 1717, at St. James’s Palace,
| died in infancy.
|
+—William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland,
| b. at Leicester House, 1721,
| d. 1765, unmarried.
|
+—Mary, b. at Leicester House, 1722.
| M., 1740, Frederick of Hesse Cassel, d. 1772.
|
+—Louisa, b. at Leicester House, 1724.
| M., 1743, King of Denmark, d., 1751.
[118] Wentworth Papers. Lord Berkeley to Lord Strafford, 12th November, 1720.
[119] The Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 7th March, 1724.
[120] The Daily Post, 3rd March, 1725.
[121] The Daily Journal, 14th March, 1726.
[122] Ibid., 1st April, 1727.