THE
QUEENS OF ENGLAND
OF THE
HOUSE OF HANOVER

VOL. I.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

LIVES
OF THE
QUEENS OF ENGLAND
OF THE
HOUSE OF HANOVER

BY
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘TABLE TRAITS’ ‘HABITS AND MEN’ ETC.

FOURTH EDITION

CAREFULLY REVISED AND MUCH ENLARGED

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.

LONDON
RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET
Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty
1875

TO
HENRY HILL, Esq., F.S.A.
ONE OF THE MOST ZEALOUS OF ANTIQUARIES
AND
MOST HOSPITABLE OF FRIENDS
This New and Revised Edition is Inscribed
BY
THE AUTHOR

CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.

LIVES
OF THE
QUEENS OF ENGLAND.

SOPHIA DOROTHEA, OF ZELL,
WIFE OF GEORGE I.

Das Glänzende ist nicht immer das Bessere.

Kotzebue, Bruder Moritz.

CHAPTER I.
GEORGE OF BRUNSWICK-ZELL AND ELEANORE D’OLBREUSE.

Woden, the father of the line of Brunswick—The seven brothers at dice, for a wife—D’Esmiers d’Olbreuse and his daughter Eleonora—Love-passages, and a marriage—A Bishop of Osnaburgh—Birth of Sophia Dorothea.

When George I. ascended the throne of England, the heralds provided him with an ancestry. They pretended that his Majesty, who had few god-like virtues of his own, was descended from that deified hero Woden, whose virtues, according to the bards, were all of a god-like quality. The two had little in common, save lack of true-heartedness toward their wives.

The more modest builders of ancestral pride, who ventured to water genealogical trees for all the branches of Brunswick to bud upon, did not dig deeper for a root, or go farther for a fountain head, than into the Italian soil of the year 1028. Even then, they found nothing more or less noble than a certain Azon d’Este, Marquis of Tuscany, who having little of sovereign about him, except his will, joined the banner of the Emperor Conrad, and hoped to make a fortune in Germany, either by cutting throats, or by subduing hearts whose owners were heiresses of unencumbered lands.

Azon espoused Cunegunda of Guelph, a lady who was not only wealthy, but who was the last of her race. The household was a happy one; and when an heir to its honours appeared in the person of Guelph d’Este the Robust, the court-poet who foretold brilliant fortunes for his house failed to see the culminating brilliancy which awaited it in Britain.

This same Prince ‘Robust,’ when he had come to man’s estate, wooed no maiden heiress as his father had done, but won the widowed sister-in-law of our great Harold, Judith, daughter of Baldwin de Lisle, Count of Flanders, and widow of Tostic, Earl of Kent. He took her by the hand while she was yet seated under the shadow of her great sorrow, and, looking up at Guelph the Robust, she smiled and was comforted.

Guelph was less satisfactorily provided with wealth than the comely Judith; but Guelph and Judith found favour in the eyes of the Emperor Henry IV., who forthwith ejected Otho of Saxony from his possessions in Bavaria, and conferred the same, with a long list of rights and appurtenances, on the newly-married couple.

These possessions were lost to the family by the rebellion of Guelph’s great-grandson against Frederick Barbarossa. The disinherited prince, however, found fortune again, by help of a marriage and an English king. He had been previously united to Maud, the daughter of Henry II., and his royal father-in-law took unwearied pains to find some one who could afford him material assistance. He succeeded, and Guelph received, from another emperor, the gift of the countships of Brunswick and Luneburg. Otho IV. raised them to duchies, and William (Guelph) was the first duke of the united possessions, about the year 1200.

The early dukes were for the most part warlike, but their bravery was rather of a rash and excitable character than heroically, yet calmly firm. Some of them were remarkable for their unhappy tempers, and they acquired names which unpleasantly distinguish them in this respect. Henry was not only called the ‘young,’ from his years, and ‘the black,’ from his swarthiness, but ‘the dog,’ because of his snarling propensities. So Magnus, who was surnamed ‘the collared,’ in allusion to the gold chain which hung from his bull neck, was also known as the ‘insolent’ and the ‘violent,’ from the circumstance that he was ever either insufferably haughty or insanely passionate.

The House of Brunswick has, at various times, been divided into the branches of Brunswick-Luneburg, Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Brunswick-Zell, Brunswick-Danneberg, &c. These divisions have arisen from marriages, transfers, and interchanges. The first duke who created a division was Duke Bernard, who, early in the fifteenth century, exchanged with a kinsman his duchy of Brunswick for that of Luneburg, and so founded the branch which bears, or bore, that double name.

The sixteenth duke, Otho, was the first who is supposed to have brought a blot upon the ducal scutcheon, by honestly marrying rather according to his heart than his interests. His wife was a simple lady of Brunswick, named Matilda de Campen. It became the common object of all the dukes of the various Brunswick branches to increase the importance of a house which had contributed something to the imperial greatness of Germany. They endeavoured to accomplish this common object by intermarriages; but the desired consummation was not achieved until a comparatively recent period, when the branch of Brunswick-Luneburg became Electors, and subsequently Kings of Hanover, and that of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Sovereign Dukes of Brunswick.

The grandfather of our George I., William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, had seven sons, and all these were dukes, like their father. On the decease of the latter, they affected to discover that if the seven heirs, each with his little dukedom, were to marry, the greatness of the house would suffer alarming diminution. They accordingly determined that one alone of the brothers should form a legal matrimonial connection, and that the naming of the lucky re-founder of the dignity of Brunswick should be left to chance!

The seven brothers met in the hall of state in their deceased father’s mansion, and there threw dice as to who should live on in single blessedness, and which should gain the prize, not of a wife, but of permission to find one. ‘Double sixes’ were thrown by George, the sixth son. The lady whom he cavalierly wooed and readily won, was Anne Eleanore, daughter of the Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt.

The heir-apparent of this marriage was Frederick Ernest Augustus, who, in 1659, married Sophia, the daughter of Frederick and Elizabeth, the short-lived King and Queen of Bohemia; the latter the daughter of James I. The eldest child of this last marriage was George Louis, who ultimately became King of Great Britain.

When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, the French Protestants who refused to be converted were executed or imprisoned. Some found safety, with suffering, in exile; and confiscation made beggars of thousands. When towns, where the Protestants were in the majority, exhibited tardiness in coming over to the king’s way of thinking, dragoons were ordered thither, and this order was of such significance, that when it was made known, the population, to escape massacre, usually professed recantation of error in a mass. This daily accession of thousands who made abjuration under the sword, and walked thence to confession and reception of the Sacrament under an implied form in which they had no faith, was described to the willingly duped king by the ultra-montane bishops as a miracle as astounding as any in Scripture.

Of some few individuals, places at court for themselves, commissions for their sons, or honours which sometimes little deserved the name, for their daughters, made, if not converts, hypocrites. Far greater was the number of the good and faithful servants who left all and followed their Master. Alexander D’Esmiers, Seigneur D’Olbreuse, a gallant Protestant gentleman of Poitou, preferred exile and loss of estate to apostacy. When he crossed the frontier, a banished man, he brought small worldly wealth with him, but therewith one child, a daughter, who was to him above all wealth; and, to uphold his dignity, the memory of being descended from the gallant Fulques D’Esmiers, the valiant and courteous Lord of Lolbroire.

Father and daughter sojourned for a time beyond the northern frontier of the kingdom, having their native country within sight. There they tabernacled in much sorrow, perplexity, and poverty, but friends ultimately supplied them with funds; and M. D’Esmiers, Seigneur D’Olbreuse, found himself in a condition to appear in Brussels without sacrifice of dignity. Into the gay circles of that gay city he led his daughter Eleanora, who was met by warm homage from the gallants, and much criticism at the hands of her intimate friends—the ladies.

The sharpest criticism could not deny her beauty; and her wit and accomplishments won for her the respect and homage of those whose allegiance was better worth having than that of mere petits maîtres with their stereotyped flattery. Eleanora, like the lady in Göthe’s tragedy, loved the society and the good opinion of wise men, while she hardly thought herself worthy of either. She was a Frenchwoman, and consequently she was not out of love with gaiety. She was the fairest and the liveliest in the train of the brilliant Duchess of Tarento, and she was following and eclipsing her noble patroness at a ball, when she was first seen by George William, second son of George, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, and heir to the pocket but sovereign dukedom of Zell.

The heir of Zell became an honest wooer. He whose gallantry had been hitherto remarkable for its dragooning tone, was now more subdued than Cymon in the subduing presence of Iphigenia. He had hated conversation, because he was incapable of sustaining it; but now love made him eloquent. He had abhorred study, and knew little of any other language than his own; but now he took to French vocabularies and dictionaries, and long before he had got so far as to ask Eleanora to hear him conjugate the verb aimer ‘to love,’ he applied to her to interpret the difficult passages he met with in books; and throughout long summer days the graceful pair might have been seen sitting together, book in hand, fully as happy and twice as hopeful as Paolo and Francesca.

George William was sorely puzzled as to his proceedings. To marriage he could have condescended with alacrity, but unfortunately there was ‘a promise in bar.’ With the view common to many co-heirs of the family, he had entered into an engagement with his brother Ernest Augustus, of Brunswick-Luneburg, and Bishop of Osnaburgh, never to marry. This concession had been purchased at a certain cost, and the end in view was the further enlargement of the dominions and influence of the House of Brunswick. If George William should not only succeed to Zell, but should leave the same to a legitimate heir, that was a case which Ernest Augustus would be disposed to look upon as a grievous wrong. A price was paid, therefore, for the promised celibacy of his brother, and that brother was now actively engaged in meditating as to how he might, without disgrace, break a promise, and yet retain the money by which it had been purchased. His heart leaped within him as he thought how easily the whole matter might be arranged by a morganatic marriage—a marriage, in other words, with the left hand; an union sanctioned by the church but so far disallowed by the law that the children of such wedlock were, in technical terms, infantes nullius, ‘children of nobody,’ and could of course succeed to nobody’s inheritance.

George William waited on the Seigneur d’Olbreuse with his morganatic offer; the poor refugee noble entertained the terms with much complacency, but left his child to determine on a point which involved such serious considerations for herself. They were accordingly placed with much respect at Eleanora’s feet, but she mused angrily thereon. She would not listen to the offer.

In the meantime, these love-passages of young George William were productive of much unseemly mirth at Hanover, where the Bishop of Osnaburgh was keeping a not very decorous court. He was much more of a dragoon than a bishop, and indeed his flock were more to be pitied than his soldiers. The diocese of Osnaburgh was supplied with bishops by the most curious of rules; the rule was fixed at the period of the peace which followed the religious wars of Germany, and this rule was, that as Osnaburgh was very nearly divided as to the number of those who followed either church, it should have alternately a Protestant and a Romanist bishop. The result has been that Osnaburgh has had sad scapegraces for her prelates, but yet, in spite thereof, has maintained a religious respectability which might be envied by dioceses blessed with two diverse bishops at once, for ever anathematising the flocks of each other and their shepherds.

The Protestant Prince-Bishop of Osnaburgh made merry with his ladies at the wooing of his honest and single-minded brother, whom he wounded to the uttermost by scornfully speaking of Eleanora d’Olbreuse as the duke’s ‘Madame.’ It was a sorry and unmanly joke, for it lacked wit, and insulted a true-hearted woman. But it had the effect also of arousing a true-hearted man.

George William had now succeeded to the little dukedom of Zell, not indeed without difficulty, for as the ducal chair had become vacant while the next heir was absent, paying homage at Brussels to a lady rather than receiving it from his lieges in Zell, his younger brother, John Frederick, had played his lord-suzeraine a shabby trick, by seating himself in that chair, and fixing the ducal parcel-gilt coronet on his own brows.

George William having toppled down the usurper from his ill-earned elevation, and having bought off further treason by pensioning the traitor, returned to Brussels with a renewal of his former offer. He added weight thereto by the intimation, that if a morganatic marriage were consented to now, he had hopes, by the favour of the emperor, to consolidate it at a subsequent period by a legal public union, whereat Eleanora d’Olbreuse should be recognised Duchess of Zell, without chance of that proud title ever being disputed.

Thereupon a family council was holden. The poor father thought a morganatic marriage might be entered upon without ‘derogation;’ au reste, he left all to his daughter’s love, filial and otherwise. Eleanora did not disappoint either sire or suitor by her decision. She made the first happy by her obedience, her lover by her gentle concession; and she espoused the ardent duke, with the left hand, because her father advised it, her lover urged it, and the council and the suit were agreeable to the lady, who professed to be influenced by them to do that for which her own heart was guide and warrant.

The marriage was solemnised in the month of September, 1665, the bride being then in the twenty-sixth year of her age. With her new position, she assumed the name and style of Lady von Harburg, from an estate of the duke’s so called. The Bishop of Osnaburgh was merrier than ever at what he styled the mock marriage, and more unmanly than ever in the coarse jokes he flung at the Lady of Harburg. But even this marriage was not concluded without fresh concessions made by the duke to the bishop, in order to secure to the latter an undivided inheritance of Brunswick, Hanover, and Zell. His mirth was founded on the idea that he had provided for himself and his heirs, and left the children of his brother, should any be born, and these survive him, to nourish their left-handed dignity on the smallest possible means. The first heiress to such dignity, and to much heart-crushing and undeserved sorrow, soon appeared to gladden for a brief season, to sadden for long and weary years, the hearts of her parents. Sophia Dorothea was born on the 15th of September, 1666. Her birth was hailed with more than ordinary joy in the little court of her parents: at that of the bishop it was productive of some mirth and a few bad epigrams. The bishop had taken provident care that neither heir nor heiress should affect his succession to what should have been their own inheritance, and, simply looking upon Sophia Dorothea as a child whose existence did not menace a diminution of the prospective greatness of his house, he tolerated the same with an ineffable, gracious condescension.

CHAPTER II.
WIVES AND FAVOURITES.

A ducal household—Elevation in rank of the mother of Sophia Dorothea—Births and deaths—A lover for Sophia—The Bishop of Osnaburgh an imitator of the Grand Monarque—Two successful female adventurers at Osnaburgh.

Such a household as the one maintained in sober happiness and freedom from anxiety by the duke and his wife was a rare sight in German courts. The duke was broadly ridiculed because of his faithful affection for one who was worthy of all the truth and esteem which a true-hearted wife could claim. The only fault ever brought by the bitterest of the enemies of the wife of the Duke of Zell against that unexceptionable lady was, that she was over-fond of nominating natives of France to little places in her husband’s little court. Considering that the Germans, who looked upon her as an intruder, would not recognise her as having become naturalised by marriage, it is hardly to be wondered at that she gathered as much of France around her as she could assemble in another land.

Three other children were the fruit of this marriage, whose early deaths were deplored as so many calamities. Their mother lived long enough to deplore that Sophia Dorothea had survived them. The merits of the mother won, as they deserved to do, increase of esteem and affection on the part of the duke. His most natural wish was to raise her to a rank equal to his own, as far as a mere name could make assertion of such equality. It was thought a wonderful act of condescension on the part of the emperor, that he gave his imperial sanction to the elevation of the Lady of Harburg to the rank and title of Countess of Wilhelmsburg.

The Bishop of Osnaburgh was harder to treat with than the emperor. He bound down his brother by stringent engagements, solemnly engrossed in lengthy phrases, guarding against all mistake by horribly technical tautology, to agree that the encircling his wife with the coronet of a countess bestowed upon her no legal rights, and conferred no shadow of legitimacy, in the eye of the law, on the children of the marriage, actual or prospective. For such children, modest yet sufficient provision was secured; but they were never to dream of claiming cousinship with the alleged better-born descendants of Henry the Dog, or Magnus the Irascible.

Duke George William, however, was resolved not to rest until his wife should also be his duchess. He appealed to the Estates of Germany. The Estates thought long and adjourned often before they came to a tardy and reluctant conclusion, by which the boon sought was at length conceded. The emperor added his consent. The concession made by the Estates, and the sanction superadded by the emperor, were, however, only obtained upon the military bishop withholding all opposition.

The princely prelate was, in fact, bought off. Again his muniment-box was unlocked; once more he and his staff of lawyers were deep in parchments, and curious in the geography of territorial maps and plans. The result of much dry labour and heavy speculation was an agreement entered into by the two brothers. The Duke of Zell contracted that the children of his marriage with the daughter of the Poitevin seigneur should inherit only his private property, and the empty title of Counts, or Countesses, of Wilhelmsburg. The territory of Zell with other estates added to the sovereign dukedom were to pass to the prince-bishop or his heirs. On these terms Eleanora of Olbreuse, Lady of Harburg, and Countess of Wilhelmsburg, became Duchess of Zell.

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the very apostolic bishop to the dissolute disciples at his court, on the night that the family compact was made an accomplished fact, ‘my brother’s French Madame is not a jot the more his wife for being duchess’—which was true, for married is married, and there is no comparative degree of intensity which can be applied to the circumstance. ‘But she has a dignity the more, and therewith may Madame rest content’—which was not true, for no new title could add dignity to a woman like the wife of Duke George William.

When Sophia Dorothea was but seven years old, she had for an occasional playfellow in the galleries and gardens of Zell and Calenberg, a handsome lad, Swedish by birth, but German by descent, whose name was Philip Christopher von Königsmark. He was a few years older than Sophia Dorothea (some accounts say ten years older), and he was in Zell for the purpose of education, and he fulfilled the office of page. Many of his vacation hours were spent with the child of George William, who was his father’s friend. When gossips saw the two handsome children, buoyant of spirit, beaming with health, and ignorant of care, playing hand in hand at sports natural to their age, those gossips prophesied of future marriage. But their speculation had soon no food whereon to live, for the young Königsmark was speedily withdrawn from Zell, and Sophia bloomed on alone, or with other companions, good, graceful, fair, accomplished, and supremely happy.

But, even daughter as she was of a left-handed marriage, there was hanging to her name a dower sufficiently costly to dazzle and allure even princely suitors. To one of these she was betrothed before she was ten years old. The suitor was a soldier and a prince. Augustus Frederick, Crown Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was allured by the ‘beaux yeux de la casette’ of the little heiress, which contained, after all, only one hundred thousand thalers, fifteen thousand pounds sterling; but an humble dower for a duke’s only daughter. In the meantime the affianced lover had to prove himself, by force of arms, worthy of his lady and her fortune. To the siege of Philipsburg, in the year 1676, repaired the chivalrous Augustus of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He bore himself with a dignity and daring which entitled him to respect, but a fatal bullet slew him suddenly: a brief notice in a despatch was his soldierly requiem, and when the affianced child-bride was solemnly informed by circumstance of Hof-Marshal that her lord was slain and her heart was free, she was too young to be sorry, and too unconscious to be glad.

Meanwhile, the two courts of the Bishop of Osnaburgh and the Duke of Zell continued to present a striking contrast. The bishop was one of those men who think themselves nothing unless they are imitating some greater man, not in his virtues but his vices. There was one man in Europe whom Ernest Augustus described as a ‘paragon,’ and that distinguished personage was Louis XIV. The vices, extravagance, the pomposity of the great king, were the dear delights of the little prince. As Louis neglected his wife, so Ernest Augustus disregarded his. Fortunately, Sophia, the wife of the latter, had resources in her mind, which made her consider with exemplary indifference the faithlessness of her lord.

At this court of Hanover, two sisters, Catherine and Elizabeth von Meisenbuch, had, for some time, set the fashion of a witchery of costume, remarkable for its taste, and sometimes for outraging it. They possessed, too, the great talent of Madame de Sillery Genlis, and were inimitable in their ability and success in getting up little fêtes, at home or abroad, in the salon or al fresco—formal and full-dressed, or rustic and easy—where major-generals were costumed as agricultural swains, and ladies of honour as nymphs or dairymaids, with costumes rural of fashioning, but as resplendent and costly as silkman and jeweller could make them. At a sort of Masque, invented by the sisters von Meisenbuch, one appeared as Diana, the other as Bellona, and they captivated all hearts, from those of the prince-bishop and his son to that of the humblest aspirant in the court circle.

These young ladies came to court to push their fortunes. They hoped in some way to serve the sovereign bishop; or, failing him, to be agreeable to his heir, George Louis (afterwards George I. of England). But even this prince, a little and not an attractive person, to say nothing of the bishop, seemed for a time a flight above them. They could wait a new opportunity; for as for defeat in their aspirations, they would not think of it. They had the immense power of those persons who are possessed by one single idea, and who are under irresistible compulsion to carry it out to reality. They could not all at once reach the prince-bishop or his heir, and accordingly they directed the full force of their enchantments at two very unromantic-looking personages, the private tutors of the young princes of Hanover. The ladies were soon mighty at Greek particles, learned in the aorists, fluent on the digamma, and familiar with the mysteries of the differential calculus.

Catherine and Elizabeth von Meisenbuch opened a new grammar before their learned pundits, the Herrn von Busche and von Platen (the latter was of a noble and ancient house); and truth to tell, the philosophers were nothing loth to pursue the new study taught by such professors. When this educational course had come to a close, the public recognised at once its aim, quality, and effects, by learning that the sage preceptors had actually married two of the liveliest and lightest-footed of girls who had ever danced a branle at the balls in Brunswick. The wives, on first appearing in public after their marriage, looked radiant with joy. The tutors wore about them an air of constraint, as if they thought the world needed an apology, by way of explaining how two Elders had permitted themselves to be vanquished by a brace of Susannas. Their ideas were evidently confused, but they took courage as people cheerfully laughed, though they may have lost it again on discovering that they had been drawn into matrimony by two gracefully-graceless nymphs, whose sole object was to use their spouses as stepping-stones to a higher greatness.

There must have been many attendant advantages in connection with such an object, or the two married philosophers would hardly have worn the air of content which they put on as soon as they saw the aim of their estimable wives, and felt the gain thence accruing.

Elizabeth von Meisenbuch, the wife of von Platen, was the true mistress of the situation. Von Platen, principally through her intrigues, had been appointed prime-minister of the sovereign bishop. The time passed by von Platen with his sovereign master afforded him ample leisure to talk of his wife, praise her political abilities, and over-eulogise her. The prince-bishop felt his curiosity excited to study more nearly this phœnix of a woman. It was, therefore, the most natural of consequences that von Platen should lead his lady to his master’s feet, though it perhaps was not so natural that he should leave her there to ‘improve’ the position thus reached.

The lady lost no time in justifying all that her husband had advanced in warranty of her talent, skill, and willingness to use them for the advantage of the bishop and his dominions; the powerful prelate was enchanted with her—enchanted with her in every sense. To sum up all, Madame von Platen became the mistress of her husband’s master; and her sister, who had given her hand to von Busche, gave herself body and soul to the bishop’s son, George Louis. This arrangement seemed in no way to disturb the equanimity of the bishop’s wife, the prince’s mother.

CHAPTER III.
THE BRUNSWICKER IN ENGLAND.

Prince Augustus of Wolfenbüttel, the accepted lover of Sophia—Superstition of the Duke of Zell—Intrigues of Madame von Platen—A rival lover—Prince George Louis: makes an offer of marriage to Princess Anne—Policy of the Prince of Orange—Prince George in England: festivities on account of his visit—Execution of Lord Stafford—Illness of Prince Rupert—The Bill of Exclusion, and the Duke of York at Holyrood—Probable succession of the House of Brunswick—Prince George recalled—Successful intrigues of Sophia, wife of Ernest—A group for an artist—Ill-fated marriage of Sophia—Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia—‘Goody Palsgrave’—The Electress Sophia, and her intellectual skirmishes.

While all was loose and lively at the court of the bishop, the daily routine of simple pleasures and duties alone marked the course of events at the modest court of the Duke of Zell. The monotony of the latter locality was, however, agreeably interrupted by the arrival there of his Serene Highness Prince Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel. He had just been edified by what he had witnessed during his brief sojourn in the episcopal circle of Osnaburgh, where he had seen two ladies exercising a double influence, Madame von Platen ruling her husband and his master, while her sister Caroline von Busche was equally obeyed by her consort and his Highness George Louis, the bishop’s son.

Prince Augustus of Wolfenbüttel was the brother of that early suitor of the little Sophia Dorothea who had met a soldier’s death at the siege of Philipsburg. He was, like his brother, not so rich in gold pieces as in good qualities, and was more wealthy in virtues than in acres. He was a bachelor prince, with a strong inclination to lay down his bachelorship at the feet of a lady who would, by addition of her dowry, increase the greatness and material comforts of both. Not that Augustus of Wolfenbüttel was mercenary; he was simply prudent. A little princely state in Germany costs a great deal to maintain, and when the errant prince went forth in search of a lady with a dower, his last thought was to offer himself to one who had no heart or could have no place in his own. If there was some system, a little method, and an air of business about the passion and principle of the puissant Prince Augustus, something thereof must be laid to the charge of the times, and a little to the princely matter-of-fact good sense: he is a wise and merciful man who, before he comes to conclusions with a lady on the chapter of matrimony, first weighs prospects, and establishes, as far as in him lies, a security of sunshine.

Augustus Wolfenbüttel had long suspected that the sun of his future home was to be found at Zell, and in the person of his young cousin Sophia Dorothea. Even yet, tradition exists among Brunswick maidens as to the love-passages of this accomplished and handsome young couple. Those passages have been enlarged for the purposes of romance writers, but divested of all exaggeration there remains enough to prove, as touching this pair, that they were well assorted both as to mind and person; that their inclinations were towards each other; and that they were worthy of a better fate than that which fell upon the honest and warm affection which reigned in the hearts of both.

The love of these cousins was not the less ardent for the fact of its being partially discouraged. The Duke of Zell looked upon the purpose of Prince Augustus with an unfavourable eye. The simple-minded duke had an unfeigned superstitious awe of the new lover; and the idea of consenting to a match under the circumstances as they presented themselves, seemed to him tantamount to a species of sacrilege, outraging the manes and memory of the defunct brother. The duke loved his daughter, and the daughter assuredly loved Augustus of Wolfenbüttel; and, added thereto, the good Duchess Eleanora was quite disposed to see the cherished union accomplished, and to bestow her benediction upon the well-favoured pair. The father was influenced, however, by his extensive reading in old legendary ballad-lore, metrical and melancholy German romances, the commonest incident in which is the interruption of a marriage ceremony by a spiritual personage professing priority of right.

The opposition to the marriage was not, however, all surmounted when the antagonism of the duke had been successfully overcome. Madame von Platen has the credit of having carried out her opposition to the match to a very successful issue.

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.

It is not easy to determine what part William of Orange had in the recall of George Louis from England, but the suddenness of that recall was an object of some admiring perplexity to a lover, who left a lady who was by no means inconsolable, and who, two years afterwards, was gaily married at St. James’s to the Prince of Denmark, on the first leisure day between the executions of Russell and of Sidney.

George Louis, however, obeyed the summons of his sovereign and father, but it was not until his arrival in Hanover that he found himself called upon to transfer the prosecution of his matrimonial suit from one object to another. The riding idea in the mind of Ernest Augustus was, that however he might have provided to secure his succession to the dominion of Zell, the marriage of his son with the duke’s only child would add many broad acres to his possessions in Hanover.

Sophia Dorothea was still little more than a child; but that very circumstance was made use of in order to procure the postponement of her marriage with Augustus of Wolfenbüttel. The Duke of Zell did not stand in need of much argument from his brother to understand that the union of the young lovers might more properly be celebrated when the bride was sixteen than a year earlier. The duke was ready to accept any reasoning, the object of which was to enable him to retain his daughter another year at his side.

The sixteenth birthday of Sophia Dorothea had arrived, and George Louis had made no impression on her heart—the image of the absent Augustus still lived there; and the whole plot would have failed, but for the sudden, and active, and efficient energy of one who seemed as if she had allowed matters to proceed to extremity, in order to exhibit the better her own powers when she condescended to interfere personally and remedy the ill-success of others by a triumph of her own. That person was Sophia, the wife of Ernest, a lady who rivalled Griselda in one point of her patience—that which she felt for her husband’s infidelities. In other respects she was crafty, philosophical, and free-thinking; but she was as ambitious as any of her family, and as she had resolved on the marriage of her son, George Louis, with Sophia Dorothea, she at once proceeded to accomplish that upon which she had resolved.

It had suddenly come to her knowledge that Augustus of Wolfenbüttel had made his reappearance at the Court of Zell. Coupling the knowledge of this fact with the remembrance that Sophia Dorothea was now sixteen years of age, and that at such a period her marriage had been fixed, the mother of George Louis addressed herself at once to the task of putting her son in the place of the favoured lover. She ordered out the heavy coach and heavier Mecklenburg horses, by which German potentates were wont to travel stately and leisurely by post some two centuries ago. It was night when she left Hanover; and although she had not further to travel than an ordinary train could now accomplish in an hour, it was broad daylight before this match-making and match-breaking lady reached the portals of the ducal palace of Zell.

There was something delightfully primitive in the method of her proceeding. She did not despise state, except on occasions when serious business was on hand. The present was such an occasion, and she therefore waited for no usher to marshal her way and announce her coming to the duke. She descended from her ponderous coach, pushed aside the sleepy sentinel, who appeared disposed to question her before he made way, and, entering the hall of the mansion, loudly demanded of the few servants who came hurrying to meet her, to be conducted to the duke. It was intimated to her that he was then dressing, but that his Highness would soon be in a condition to descend and wait upon her.

Too impatient to tarry, and too eager to care for ceremony, she mounted the stairs, bade a groom of the chamber point out to her the door of the duke’s room; and, her order having been obeyed, she forthwith pushed open the door, entered the apartment, and discovered the dismayed duke in the most negligé of déshabilles. She neither made apology nor would receive any; but, intimating that she came upon business, at once asked, ‘Where is your wife?’ The flurried Duke of Zell pointed through an open door to a capacious bed in the adjacent room, wherein lay the wondering duchess, lost in eider-down and deep amazement.

The ‘old Sophia’ could have wished, it would seem, that she had been further off. She was not quite rude enough to close the door, and so cut off all communication and listening; but, remembering that the Duchess of Zell was but very indifferently acquainted with German, she ceased to speak in the language then common to the German courts—French—and immediately addressed the duke in hard Teutonic phrase, which was unintelligible to the vexed and suspecting duchess.

Half undressed, the duke occupied a chair close to his toilet-table, while the astute wife of Ernest Augustus, seated near him, unfolded a narrative to which he listened with every moment an increase of complacency and conviction. The Duchess Eleanora, from her bed in the adjacent room, could see the actors, but could not comprehend the dialogue. But, if the narrative was unintelligible to her, she could understand the drift of the argument, as the names of her daughter and lover were being constantly pronounced with that of George Louis.

The case was forcibly put by the mother of George. She showed how union makes strength, how little profit could arise from a match between Sophia Dorothea and Augustus of Wolfenbüttel, and how advantageous must be an union between the heir of Hanover and the heiress of the domains which her provident father had added to Zell, and had bequeathed to his daughter. She spoke of the certainty of Ernest Augustus being created arch-standard-bearer of the empire of Germany, and therewith Elector of Hanover. She hinted at the possibility even of Sophia Dorothea one day sharing with her son the throne of Great Britain. The hint was something premature, but the astute lady may have strengthened her case by reminding her hearer that the crown of England would most probably be reserved only for a Protestant succession, and that her son was, if a distant, yet not a very distant, and certainly a possible heir.

The obsequious Duke of Zell was bewildered by the visions of greatness presented to his mind by his clever sister-in-law. With ready lack of honesty he consented to break off the match between Sophia Dorothea and her lover, and to bestow her hand upon the careless prince for whom it was now demanded by his mother. The latter returned to Hanover perfectly satisfied with the work of that night and morning.

The same satisfaction was not experienced by the Duchess Eleanora. When she came to learn the facts, she burst forth in expressions of grief and indignation. The marriage which had now been definitely broken, had been with her an affair of a mother’s heart. It had not been less an affair of a young girl’s heart with Sophia Dorothea. Duke Anton Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel came in person to Zell, to ask the fulfilment of the promise of her hand to his son. On learning that the alleged promise had been broken, he left Zell with the utmost indignation; and romance, at least, says of Königsmark, that he too, had left it with a feeling of sorrow that Sophia Dorothea was to be sacrificed to such an unworthy person as George Louis. It was a pitiable case! There were three persons who were to be rendered irretrievably wretched, in order, not that any one might be rendered happy, but that a man without a heart might be made a little more rich in the possession of dirt. The acres of Zell were to bring misery on their heiress, and every acre was to purchase its season of sorrow.

No entreaty could move the duke.[1] In his dignity he forgot the father: and the prayers and tears of his child failed to touch the parent, who really loved her well, but whose affection was dissolved beneath the fiery heat of his ambition. He was singularly ambitious; for the possible effect of a marriage with George Louis was merely to add his own independent duchy of Luneburg to the dominions of Hanover. His daughter, moreover, detested her cousin, and his wife detested her sister-in-law; above all, the newly accepted bridegroom, if he did not detest, had no shadow, nor affected to have any shadow of respect, regard, or affection for the poor young victim who was to be flung to him with indecent and unnatural disregard of all her feelings as daughter and maiden. Sophia Dorothea’s especial distaste for George Louis was grounded not only in her knowledge of his character, but also of his want of respect for her mother, of whom he always spoke in contemptuous terms. Sophia Dorothea’s inclinations, her father said, he would never constrain; but when this seemed to give her some hope of release, her father observed that a good daughter’s inclinations were always identical with those of her parents. She had a heart to listen to, she thought. She had a father whom she was bound to obey, he said—and said it with terrible iteration. Her aversion is reported to have been so determined that, when the portrait of her future lord was presented to her, she flung it against the wall with such violence that the glass was smashed, and the dismounted diamonds were scattered over the room.

The matter, however, was urged onward by Sophia of Hanover; and in formal testimony of the freedom of inclination with which Sophia Dorothea acted, she was brought to address a formal letter to the mother of her proposed husband, expressive of her obedience to the will of her father, and promissory of the same obedience to the requirements of her future mother-in-law. It is a mere formal document, proving nothing but that it was penned for the assumed writer by a cold-hearted inventor, and that the heart of the copier, subdued by sickness, was far away from her words. This document is in the British Museum. During the time that intervened before George Louis arrived at Zell to take his bride to Hanover, Sophia Dorothea seemed to have passed years instead of weeks. It was only when her mother looked sadly at her that she contrived painfully to smile. She even professed a sort of joyful obedience; but when the bridegroom dismounted at her father’s gate, Sophia Dorothea fainted in her mother’s arms.

After a world of misery and mock wooing, crowded into a few months, the hateful and ill-omened marriage took place at Zell on the 21st of November, 1682. The bride was sixteen, the bridegroom twenty-two. Of the splendour which attended the ceremony court historiographers wrote in loyal ecstasy and large folios, describing every character and dress, every incident and dish, every tableau and trait, with a minuteness almost inconceivable, and a weariness saddening even to think of. They thought of everything but the heart of the principal personage in the ceremony—that of the bride. They could describe the superb lace which veiled it, and prate of its value and workmanship; but of the worth and woe of the heart which beat beneath it, these courtly historians knew no more than they did of honesty. Their flattery was of the grossest, but they had no comprehension of ‘the situation.’ To them all mortals were but as ballet-dancers and pantomimists; and if they were but bravely dressed and picturesquely grouped, the describers thereof thought of nothing beyond. The bride preserved her mournful dignity on that dark and fierce November day. Tradition says that there was a storm without as well as sorrow within; and that the moaning of the wind and strange noises in the old castle seemed as if the elements and the very home of the bride’s youth sympathised with her present and her future destiny.

CHAPTER IV.
THE HOUSEHOLD OF GEORGE AND SOPHIA.

Reception of Sophia at the Court of Ernest Augustus—Similar position of Marie Antoinette and Sophia—Misfortune of the abigail Use—Compassionated by the Duchess of Zell—Intrigues and revenge of Madame von Platen—A new favourite, Mademoiselle Ermengarda von der Schulenburg—A marriage fête, and intended insult to the Princess Sophia—Gross vice of George Louis.

It is said that a certain becomingness of compliment was paid to the bride in an order given to Katharine von Busche to absent herself from the palace when the bride was brought home. The mistress, it is alleged, deferred her departure till it was too late, and from a window of Madame von Platen’s bedchamber the sisters witnessed the sight of George Louis dismounting from his horse, and hastening to help his wife to descend from the carriage.

Madame von Platen, as she gazed, may have thought that her sister’s influence was over. If she did, Madame von Busche felt convinced of the contrary. The latter took her departure, for a season. The other prepared herself to join in the splendid court festivities held in honour of the event by the command of Ernest Augustus. Sophia Dorothea, subdued by past suffering, was so gentle that even Madame von Platen would have found it difficult to have felt offended with her sister’s rival.

For a few months after Sophia Dorothea’s husband had taken her to Hanover, she experienced, perhaps, a less degree of unhappiness than was ever her lot subsequently. Her open and gentle nature won the regard even of Ernest Augustus. That is, he paid her as much regard as a man so coarsely minded as he was could feel for one of such true womanly dignity as his daughter-in-law.

His respect for her, however, may be best appreciated by the companionship to which he sometimes subjected her. He more frequently saw her in society with the immoral Madame von Platen than in the society of his own wife. Ernest looked gratefully upon her as the pledge of the future union of the two duchies under one duke. On this account, even if she had possessed less attractive qualities, he would have held Sophia Dorothea in great esteem. A certain measure of esteem Ernest experienced for all who had in any way furthered his scheme. His mistress, Madame von Platen, had always pretended to think favourably of the scheme, and admiringly of the wisdom of the schemer; in return for which, Ernest made his mistress’s husband a baron, and afterwards a count. Let us employ the higher dignity. In the beginning, George Louis seemed fairly in love with his wife; there appeared a promise of increased felicity when the first child of this marriage was born at Hanover, on the 30th of October 1683; his father conferred on him the names of George Augustus, he expressed pleasure at having an heir, and he even added some words of regard for the mother. The second child of this marriage was a daughter, born in 1687. She was that Sophia Dorothea who subsequently married the King of Prussia. In tending these two children the mother found all the happiness she ever experienced during her married life. Soon after the birth of the daughter, George Louis openly neglected and openly exhibited his hatred of his wife. He lost no opportunity of irritating and outraging her, and she could not even walk through the rooms of the palace which she called her home without encountering the abandoned female favourites of her husband, whose presence beneath such a roof was the most flagrant of outrages. Her very sense of helplessness was a great grief to her. All that her own mother could do when her daughter complained to her of the presence near her of her husband’s mistress, was to advise her to imitate, on this point, the indifference of her mother-in-law, and make the best of it!

The Countess von Platen kept greater state in Hanover than Sophia Dorothea herself. In her own palatial mansion two dozen servants helped her helplessness. Every morning she had ‘a circle,’ as if she were a royal lady holding a court. Her dinners were costly banquets; her ‘evenings’ were renowned for the brilliancy of her fêtes and the reckless fury of gambling. Sophia Dorothea, whose talent for listening and for putting apt and sympathetic questions when the conversation required it, gave considerable satisfaction to her clever, but somewhat pedantic mother-in-law, failed to at all satisfy the Countess von Platen. This lady had tried to bring the princess into something like sympathy with herself, but she found only antipathy. She detested Sophia Dorothea accordingly, and she obtained permission to invite her sister, Madame von Busche, to return to Hanover.

The prime mover of the hatred of George Louis for his consort was the Countess von Platen, and this fact was hardly known to George Louis himself. There was one thing in which that individual had a fixed belief: his own sagacity and, it may be added, his own imaginary independence of outward influences. He was profound in some things; but, as frequently happens with persons who fancy themselves deep in all, he was very shallow in many. It was often impossible to guess his purpose, but quite as often his thoughts were as clearly discernible as the pebbles in the bed of a transparent brook. The Countess von Platen saw through him thoroughly, and she employed her discernment for the furtherance of her own detestable objects.

Sophia Dorothea had, however, contrived to win the good opinion of her mother-in-law, and also the warm favour of Ernest Augustus. The latter took her with him on a journey he made to Switzerland and Italy. It was on this journey that her portrait was taken, at Venice, by Gascar, who, when in England, had painted, among others, that of Louise de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This portrait of Sophia Dorothea is still in existence in Germany. The beauty of the lady represented is so remarkable, it is said, as to justify the admiration she generally excited. This admiration sometimes went beyond decent bounds. One French adorer, the celebrated and eccentric Marquis de Lassay, was impudent enough, not only to address declarations of love to her, but subsequently, in his ‘Memoirs,’ to publish his letters. It has not yet occurred to the ever-busy autograph fabricators on the continent to forge the supposed replies of the princess.

After the return of Ernest Augustus and his daughter-in-law to Hanover, the praise of Sophia Dorothea was ever the theme which hung on the lips of the former, and such eulogy was as poison poured in the ears of Madame von Platen. She dreaded the loss of her own influence over the father of George Louis, and she fancied she might preserve it by destroying the happiness of the wife of his son. Her hatred of that poor lady had been increased by a circumstance with which she could not be connected, but which nearly concerned the Duchess of Zell.

Ernest Augustus used occasionally to visit Madame von Platen at her own residence, with more than enough of publicity. He was more inclined to conversation with her than with his prime-minister, her husband; and she had wit enough, if not worth, to give warrant for such preference. Now and then, however, the ducal sovereign would repair to pay his homage to the lady without previous notice being forwarded of his coming; and it was on one of these occasions that, on arriving at the mansion, or in the gardens of the mansion of his minister’s spouse, he found, not the lady of the house, who was absent, but her bright-eyed, ordinary-featured, and quick-witted handmaid, who bore a name which might have been given to such an official in Elizabethan plays by Ford or Fletcher. Her name was ‘Use.’

Ernest Augustus found the wit of Use much to his taste; and the delighted abigail was perfectly self-possessed, and more brilliant than common in the converse which she sustained for the pleasure of the sovereign, and her own expected profit. She had just, it is supposed, come to the point of some exquisitely epigrammatic tale, for the prince was laughing with his full heart, and her hand in his, and the ’tiring maiden was as radiant as successful wit and endeavour could make her, when Madame von Platen interrupted the sparkling colloquy by her more fiery presence. She affected to be overcome with indignation at the boldness of a menial who dared to make merry with a sovereign duke; and when poor Use had been rudely dismissed from the two presences—the one august and the other angry—the Countess von Platen probably remonstrated with Ernest Augustus, respectfully or otherwise, upon his deplorable want of dignity and good taste.

Revenge certainly followed, whether remonstrance may or may not have been offered. Ernest Augustus went to sojourn for a time at one of his rural palaces, and he had no sooner left his capital than the countess committed the terrified Use to close imprisonment in the common gaol. The history of little German courts assures us that this exercise and abuse of power were not at all uncommon with the ‘favourites’ of German princes. Their word was ‘all potential as the duke’s,’ and doubtless the Countess von Platen’s authority was as good warrant for a Hanoverian gaoler to hold Use in custody as if he had shut up that maid, who offended by her wit, under the sign manual of Ernest Augustus himself.

Use was kept captive, and very shabbily treated, until the Countess von Platen had resolved as to the further course which should be ultimately adopted towards her. She could bring no charge against her, save a pretended accusation of lightness of conduct and immorality scandalous to Hanoverian decorum. Under this charge she had her old handmaid drummed out of the town; and if the elder Sophia heard the tap of the drums which accompanied the alleged culprit to the gates, we can only suppose that she would have expelled the countess to the same music. But, in the first place, the wives of princes were by no means so powerful as their favourites; and secondly, the friend of the philosophical Leibnitz was too much occupied with the sage to trouble herself with the affairs which gave concern to the Countess von Platen.

Use found herself outside the city walls, friendless, penniless, with a damaged character, and nothing to cover it but the light costume which she had worn in the process of her march of expulsion to the roll of ‘dry drums.’ When she had found a refuge, her first course was to apply to Ernest Augustus for redress. The prince, however, was at once oblivious, ungrateful, and powerless; and, confining himself to sending to the poor petitioner a paltry eleemosynary half-dozen of gold pieces, he forbade her return to Hanover, counselled her to settle elsewhere, and congratulated her that she had not received even rougher treatment.

Use next made full statement of her case to the Duchess of Zell; and that lady, deeming the case one of peculiar hardship, and the penalty inflicted on a giddy girl too unmeasured for the pardonable offence of amusing an old prince who encouraged her to the task, after much consideration, due weighing of the statement, and befitting inquiry, took the offender into her own service, and gave to the exiled Hanoverian a refuge, asylum, and employment in Zell.

These are but small politics, but they illustrate the nature of things as they then existed at little German courts. They had, moreover, no small influence on the happiness of Sophia Dorothea. The Countess von Platen was enraged that the mother of that princess should have dared to give a home to one whom she had condemned to be homeless; and she in consequence is suspected of having been fired with the more satanic zeal to make desolate the home of the young wife. She adopted the most efficient means to arrive at such an end. Her wicked zeal was stimulated by the undisguised contempt with which Sophia Dorothea treated her on all public occasions. She urged her sister, Madame von Busche, to recover her power over George Louis. Madame von Busche embraced with alacrity the mission with which she was charged, again to throw such meshes of fascination as she was possessed of around the heart of the not over-susceptible prince. But George Louis stolidly refused to be charmed, and Madame von Busche gave up the attempt in a sort of offended despair. Her sister, like a true genius, fertile in expedients, and prepared for every emergency, bethought herself of a simple circumstance, whereby she hoped to attain her ends. She remembered that George Louis, though short himself of stature, had a predilection for tall women. At the next fête at which he was present at the mansion of Madame von Platen, he was enchanted by a majestic young lady, with a name almost as long as her person—it was Ermengarda Melusina von der Schulenburg.

She was more shrewd than witty, this ‘tall mawkin,’ as the Electress Sophia once called the lofty Ermengarda; and, as George Louis was neither witty himself, nor much cared for wit in others, she was the better enabled to establish herself in the most worthless of hearts. This was the work of the countess, who saw in the tender blue eyes, the really fine features, the imposing figure, and the nineteen years of Ermengarda, means to an end. When the countess hinted at the distinction that was within reach of her, the tall beauty is said to have blushed and hesitated, and then to have yielded herself with alacrity to the glittering circumstance. She and the prince first met on his return from a campaign in Hungary. He was at once subjected to her magic influences. She was an inimitable flatterer, and in this way she fooled her victim to ‘the very top of his bent.’ She exquisitely cajoled him, and with exquisite carelessness did he surrender himself to be cajoled. Gradually, by watching his inclinations, anticipating his wishes, admiring even his coarseness, and lauding it as candour, she so won upon the lazily excited feelings of George Louis that he began to think her presence indispensable to his well-being. If he hunted, she was in the field, the nearest to his saddle-bow. If he went out to walk alone, he invariably fell in with Ermengarda. At the court theatre, when he was present, the next conspicuous object was the towering von der Schulenburg, ‘in all her diamonds,’ beneath the glare of which, and the blazing impudence of their wearer, the modest Sophia Dorothea was almost extinguished. Ermengarda was speedily established at Hanover, as hof-dame, or lady-in-waiting.

Madame von Platen had announced a festival, to be celebrated at her mansion, which was to surpass in splendour anything that had ever been witnessed by the existing generation. The occasion was the second marriage of her sister, Madame von Busche, who had worried the poor ex-tutor of George Louis into the grave, with General Weyhe, a gallant soldier, equal, it would seem, to any feat of daring. Whenever the Countess von Platen designed to appear with more than ordinary brilliancy in her own person, she was accustomed to indulge in the extravagant luxury of a milk bath; and it was added by the satirical or the scandalous, that the milk which had just lent softness to her skin was charitably distributed among the poor of the district wherein she occasionally affected to play the character of Dorcas.

The fête and the giver of it were not only to be of a splendour that had never been equalled, but George Louis had promised to grace it with his presence, and had even pledged himself to ‘walk a measure’ with the irresistible Ermengarda Melusina von der Schulenburg. Madame von Platen thought that her cup of joy and pride and revenge would be complete and full to the brim if she could succeed in bringing Sophia Dorothea to the misery of witnessing a spectacle, the only true significance of which was, that the faithless George Louis publicly acknowledged the gigantic Ermengarda for his ‘favourite.’

More activity was employed to encompass the desired end than if the aim in view had been one of good purpose. It so far succeeded that Sophia Dorothea intimated her intention of being present at the festival given by the Countess von Platen; and when the latter lady received the desired and welcome intelligence she was conscious of an enjoyment that seemed to her an antepast of Paradise.

The eventful night at length arrived. The bride had exchanged rings with the bridegroom, congratulations had been duly paid, the floor was ready for the dancers, and nothing lacked but the presence of Sophia Dorothea. There walked the proudly eminent von der Schulenburg, looking blandly down upon George Louis, who held her by the hand; and there stood the impatient von Platen, eager that the wife of that light-o’-love cavalier should arrive and be crushed by the spectacle. Still she came not; and finally her lady of honour, Fräulein von Knesebeck, arrived, not as her attendant but her representative, with excuses for the non-appearance of her mistress, whom unfeigned indisposition detained at her own hearth.

The course of the festival was no longer delayed; in it the bride and bridegroom were forgotten, and George and Ermengarda were the hero and heroine of the hour. After that hour no one doubted as to the bad eminence achieved by that lady—unworthy daughter of an ancient and honourable race. So narrowly and sharply observant was the lynx-eyed von Knesebeck of all that passed between her mistress’s husband and that husband’s mistress, that when she returned to her duties of dame d’atours, she unfolded a narrative that inflicted a stab in every phrase and tore the heart of the despairing listener.

CHAPTER V.
THE ELECTORATE OF HANOVER.

The House of Hanover ranges itself against France—Ernest Augustus created Elector—Domestic rebellion of his son Maximilian—His accomplice, Count von Moltke, beheaded—The Electors of Germany.

While Sophia Dorothea was daily growing more unhappy, her father-in-law was growing more ambitious and the prospects of her husband more brilliant. The younger branch of Brunswick was outstripping the elder in dignity, and not merely an electoral but a kingly crown seemed the prize it was destined to attain.

When Ernest’s elder brother, John Frederick, died childless, and left him the principalities of Calemberg and Grubenberg, with Hanover or a ‘residenz,’ he hailed an increase of influence which he hoped to see heightened by securing the Duchy of Zell also to his family. He had determined that George Louis should succeed to Hanover and Zell united. In other words, he established primogeniture, recognised his eldest son as heir to all his land, and only awarded to his other sons moderate appanages whereby to support a dignity which he considered sufficiently splendid by the glory which it would receive, by reflection, from the head of the house.

This arrangement by no means suited the views of one of Ernest’s sons, Maximilian. He had no inclination whatever to borrow glory from the better fortune of his brother, and was resolved, if it might be, to achieve splendour by his own. He protested loudly against the accumulation of the family territorial estates upon the eldest heir; claimed his own share; and even raised a species of domestic rebellion against his sire, to which weight, without peril, was given by the alleged adhesion of a couple of confederates, Count von Moltke and a conspirator of burgher degree.

Ernest Augustus treated ‘Max’ like a rude child. He put him under arrest in the paternal palace, and confined the filial rebel to the mild imprisonment of his own room. Maximilian was as obstinate as either Henry the Dog or Magnus the Violent, and he not only opposed his sire’s wishes with respect to the aggrandisement of the family by the enriching of the heir-apparent, but went counter to him in matters of religion. In after-years he was not only a good Jacobite, but he also conformed to the faith of the Stuarts, and Maximilian ultimately died, a tolerable Roman Catholic, in the service of the Emperor.

In the meanwhile, his domestic antagonism against his father was not productive of much inconvenience to himself. His arrest was soon raised, and he was restored to freedom, though not to favour or affection. It went harder, however, with his friend and confederate Count von Moltke, against whom, as nothing could be proved, much was invented. An absurd story was coined to the effect, that at the time when Maximilian was opposing his father’s projects, Count von Moltke, at a court entertainment, had presented his snuff-box to Ernest Augustus. This illustrious individual having taken therefrom the pungent tribute respectfully offered, presented the same to an Italian greyhound which lay at his feet, who thereon suddenly sneezed and swiftly died. The count was sent into close arrest, and the courtly gossips forged the story to account for the result. The unfortunate von Moltke was, indeed, as severely punished as though he had been a murderer. He was judged in something of the old Jedburgh fashion, whereby execution preceded judgment; and the head of Count von Moltke had fallen before men could well guess why he had forfeited it. The fact was that this penalty had been enacted as a vicarious infliction on Prince Maximilian. The more ignoble plotter was only banished, and in the death of a friend and the exile of a follower, Maximilian, it was hoped, would see a double suggestion from which he would draw a healthy conclusion. This course had its desired effect. The disinherited heir accepted his ill-fortune with a humour of the same quality, and, openly at least, he ceased to be a trouble to his more ambitious than affectionate father.

The next important public circumstance was the raising Hanover to an Electorate; and this was not effected without much bribery and intrigue. In those warlike times, when France and the German empire were in antagonism, the attitude assumed by such a state as Hanover was matter of interest to the adverse powers. It is said that the last argument which decided the Emperor’s course was a hint from De Groot, the Hanoverian minister, that Ernest Augustus might cast in his lot with France. A prince who had so often well served the empire was not to be allowed to assist France for lack of flinging to him the title of Elector. This title was granted, but under heavy stipulations. The two Dukes of Hanover and Zell bound themselves, as long as the war lasted, on the side of the Emperor against the French and against the Turks, to pay annually 500,000 thalers, to furnish a contingent amounting to 9,000 men, to uphold the claim of the Arch-Duke Charles on the Spanish throne, and at any election of a new Emperor to vote invariably for the eldest heir of the House of Hapsburg. The 19th of December 1692 was the joyful day on which Ernest Augustus was nominated Elector of Hanover.

The day, however, was anything but one of joy to the branch of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. That elder branch felt itself dishonoured by the august dignity which had been conferred upon the younger scion of the family. The elder branch, and the Sacred College with it, affirmed that the Emperor was invested with no prerogative by which he could, of his own spontaneous act, add a ninth Elector to the eight already existing. Originally there were but seven, and the accession of one more to that time-honoured number was pronounced to be an innovation by which ill-fortune must ensue. Something still more deplorable was vaticinated as the terrible consequence of a step so peremptorily taken by the Emperor, in despite of the other Electors.

It was said by the supporters of the Emperor and Hanover that the addition of a ninth and Protestant Elector was the more necessary, that there were only two Electors on the sacred roll who now followed the faith of the Reformed Church, and that the sincerity of one, at least, of these was very questionable. The reformed states of Germany had a right to be properly represented, and the Emperor was worthy of all praise for respecting this right. With regard to the nomination, it was stated that, though it had been made spontaneously by the Emperor, it had been confirmed by the Electoral College—a majority of the number of which had carried the election of the Emperor’s candidate.

Now, this last point was the weak point of the Hanoverians; for it was asserted by many adversaries, and not denied by many supporters, that in such a case as this no vote of the Electoral College was good unless it were an unanimous vote. To this objection, strongly urged by the elder branch of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, no answer was made, except, indeed, by praising the new Elector, of whom it was correctly stated that he had introduced into his states such a taste for masquerades, operas, and ballets as had never been known before; and that he had made a merry and a prosperous people of what had been previously but a dull nation, as regarded both manners and commerce. The Emperor only thought of the good service which Ernest Augustus had rendered him in the field, and he stood by the ‘accomplished fact’ of which he was the chief author.

The College was to the full as obstinate, and would not recognise any vote tendered by the Elector of Hanover, or of Brunswick, as he was at first called. For nearly sixteen years was this opposition carried on. At length, on the 30th of June 1708, this affair of the ninth electorate was adjusted, and the three colleges of the empire resolved to admit the Elector of Hanover to sit and vote in the Electoral College. In the same month, he was made general of the imperial troops, then assembled in the vicinity of the Upper Rhine.

His original selection by the Emperor had much reference to his military services. The efforts of Louis XIV. to get possession of the Palatinate, after the death of the Palatine Louis, had caused the formation of the German Confederacy to resist the aggression of France—an aggression not checked till the day when Marlborough defeated Tallard, at Blenheim. Louis was hurried into the war by his minister, Louvois, who was annoyed by his interference at home in matters connected with Louvois’s department. It was to make the confederation more firm and united that Ernest Augustus was created, rather than elected, a ninth Elector. The three Protestant Electors were those of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Hanover; the three Roman Catholic, Bohemia, Bavaria, and the Palatinate; and the three spiritual Electors, the Prince-Archbishops of Metz, Trèves, and Cologne.

The history of the creation of the ninth Electorate would not be complete without citing what is said in respect thereof by the author of a pamphlet suppressed by the Hanoverian government, and entitled ‘Impeachment of the Ministry of Count Munster.’ It is to this effect: ‘During the war between Leopold I. and France, at the close of the 17th century, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and administrator of Osnabrück, father of George I., had been paid a considerable sum of money on condition of aiding the French monarch with ten thousand troops. The Emperor, aware of the engagement, and anxious to prevent the junction of these forces with the enemy, proposed to create a ninth electorate, in favour of the Duke, provided he brought his levies to the imperial banner. The degrading offer was accepted, and the envoys of Brunswick-Luneberg received the electoral cap, the symbol of their master’s dishonour, at Vienna, on the 19th of December 1692. From the opposition of the college and princes, Ernest was never more than nominally an Elector, and even his son’s nomination was with difficulty accomplished in 1710. It was in connection with this new dignity that Hanover, a name till then applied only to a principal and almost independent city of the Dukedom of Brunswick, became known in the list of European sovereignties.’

But while the Court of Hanover was engaged in the important or trivial circumstances which have been already narrated, a notable individual had been pursuing fortune in various countries of Europe, and had made his appearance on the scene at Hanover, to play a part in a drama which had a tragical catastrophe—namely, Count Königsmark.

CHAPTER VI.
THE KÖNIGSMARKS.

Count Charles John Königsmark’s roving and adventurous life—The great heiress—An intriguing countess—‘Tom of Ten Thousand’—The murder of Lord John Thynne—The fate of the count’s accomplices—Court influence shelters the guilty count.

The circumstance of the sojourn of a Count Königsmark at Zell, during the childhood of Sophia Dorothea, has been before noticed. Originally the family of the Königsmarks was of the Mark of Brandenburgh, but a chief of the family settled in Sweden, and the name carried lustre with it into more than one country. In the army, the cabinet, and the church, the Königsmarks had representatives of whom they might be proud; and generals, statesmen, and prince-bishops, all labouring with glory in their respective departments, sustained the high reputation of this once celebrated name. From the period, early in the seventeenth century, that the first Königsmark (Count John Christopher) withdrew from the imperial service and joined that of Sweden, the men of that house devoted themselves, almost exclusively, to the profession of arms. This Count John is famous as the subduer of Prague, in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Of all the costly booty which he carried with him from that city, none has continued to be so well cared for by the Swedes as the silver book containing the Mœso-Gothic Gospels of Bishop Ulphilas, still preserved with pride at learned Upsal.

John Christopher was the father of two sons. Otho William, a marshal of France, a valued friend of Charles XII., and a gallant servant of the state of Venice, whose government honoured his tomb with an inscription, Semper Victori, was the younger. He was pious as well as brave, and he enriched German literature with a collection of very fervid and spiritual hymns. The elder son, Conrad Christopher, was killed in the year 1673, when fighting on the Dutch and imperial side, at the siege of Bonn. He left four children, three of whom became famous. His sons were Charles John, and Philip Christopher. His daughters were Maria Aurora (mother of the famous Maurice of Saxony) and Amelia Wilhelmina. The latter was fortunate enough to achieve happiness without being celebrated. If she has not been talked of beyond her own Swedish fireside, she passed there a life of as calm felicity as she and her husband, Charles von Loewenhaupt, could enjoy when they had relations so celebrated, and so troublesome, as Counts Charles John and Philip Christopher, and the Countess Maria Aurora, the ‘favourite’ of Augustus of Poland, and the only royal concubine, perhaps, who almost deserved as much respect as though she had won greatness by a legitimate process.

It was this Philip Christopher who was for a brief season the playfellow or companion of Sophia Dorothea, in the young days of both, in the quiet gardens and galleries of Zell. It is only told of him that, after his departure from Zell, he sojourned with various members of his family, travelled with them, and returned at intervals to reside with his mother, Maria Christina, of the German family of Wrangel, who unhappily survived long enough to be acquainted with the crimes as well as misfortunes of three of her children.

In the year 1682, Philip Christopher was in England. The elder brother, who had more than once been a visitor to this country, and a welcome, because a witty, one at the Court of Charles II., had brought his younger brother hither, in order (so it was said) to have him instructed more completely in the tenets of the Protestant religion, and ultimately to place him at Oxford. In the meantime Charles John lodged Philip with a ‘governor,’ at the riding academy, near the Haymarket, of that Major Foubert, whose second establishment (where he taught ‘noble horsemanship’) is still commemorated by the passage out of Regent Street, which bears the name of the French Protestant refugee and professor of equestrianism.

The elder brother of these two Königsmarks was a superb scoundrel. He had led a roving and adventurous life, and was in England when not more that fifteen years of age, in the year 1674. During the next half-dozen years he had rendered the ladies of the Court of France ecstatic at his impudence, and had won golden opinions from the ‘marine knights’ of Malta, whom he had accompanied on a ‘caravane,’ or cruise, against the Turks, wherein he took hard blows cheerfully, and had well-nigh been drowned by his impetuous gallantry. At some of the courts of southern Europe he appeared with an éclat which made the men hate and envy him; but nowhere did he produce more effect than at Madrid, where he appeared at the period of the festivities held to celebrate the marriage of Charles II. with Maria Louisa of Orleans. The marriage of the last-named august pair was followed by the fiercest and the finest bull-fights which had ever been witnessed in Spain. At one of these Charles John made himself the champion of a lady, fought in her honour in the arena, with the wildest bull of the company, and got dreadfully mauled for his pains. His horse was slain, and he himself, staggering and faint, and blind with loss of blood, and with deep wounds, had finally only strength enough left to pass his sword into the neck of the other brute, his antagonist, and to be carried half-dead and quite senseless out of the arena, amid the approbation of the gentle ladies, who purred applause upon the unconscious hero, like satisfied tigresses.

In 1681, at the age of twenty-two, master of all manly vices, and ready for any adventure, he was once more in England, where he seized the opportunity afforded him by the times and their events, and hastened to join the expedition against Tangier. On the conclusion of the warm affair at Tangier, he went as an amateur against the Algerines, and without commission inflicted on them and their ‘uncle’ (as the word dey implies) as much injury as though he had been chartered general at the head of a destroying host. When he returned to England, he was received with enthusiasm. His handsome face, his long flaxen hair, his stupendous periwig for state occasions, and his ineffable impudence, made him the delight of the impudent people of those impudent times.

Now, of all those people, the supercilious Charles John cared but for one, and she, there is reason to believe, knew little and cared less for this presuming scion of the House of Königsmark.

Joscelyn, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, who died in the year 1670—the last of the male line of his house—left an only daughter, four years of age, named Elizabeth. Her father’s death made her the possessor—awaiting her majority—of vast wealth, to which increase was made by succession to other inheritances. Her widowed mother married Ralph Montague, English ambassador in Paris. When the widow of Joscelyn espoused Montague, her daughter Elizabeth went to reside with the mother of Joscelyn, Dowager Countess of Northumberland, and co-heiress to the Suffolk estate, destined to be added to the possessions of the little Elizabeth. She was an intriguing, indelicate, self-willed, and worthless old woman; and with respect to the poor little girl of whom she was the unworthy guardian, she made her the subject of constant intrigues with men of power who wished for wealth, and with rich men who wished for rank and power. Before the unhappy little heiress had attained the age of thirteen, her grandmother had bound her in marriage with Henry Cavendish, Earl Ogle. Though the ceremony was performed, the parties did not, of course, reside together. The dowager countess and the earl were satisfied that the fortune of the heiress was secured, and they were further content to wait for what might follow.

That which followed was what they least expected—death; the bridegroom died within a year of his union with Elizabeth Percy; and this child, wife, and widow was again at the disposal of her wretched grandmother. The heiress of countless thousands was anything but the mistress of herself.

At this period the proprietor of the house and domain of Longleat, in Wiltshire, was that Thomas Thynne, whom Dryden has celebrated as the Issachar of his ‘Absalom and Achitophel.’ He was the friend of the Duke of Monmouth, was spoken of as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand,’ and was a very unworthy fellow, although the member of a worthy house. Tom’s Ten Thousand virtues were of that metal which the Dowager Countess of Northumberland most approved; and her grand-daughter had not been many months the widow of Lord Ogle, when her precious guardian united her by private marriage to Thynne. The newly-married couple were at once separated. The marriage was the result of an infamous intrigue between infamous people, some of whom, subsequently to Thynne’s death, sued his executors for money which he had bound himself to pay for services rendered to further the marriage.

When Charles John Königsmark returned to England, in January 1682, all England was talking of the match wherein a poor child had been sold, although the purchaser had not yet possession of either his victim or her fortune. The common talk must have had deep influence on the count, who appears to have been impressed with the idea that if Thynne were dead, Count Charles John Königsmark might succeed to his place and expectations.

On the evening of Sunday, the 12th of February 1682, Thynne was in his coach, from which the Duke of Monmouth had only just previously alighted, and was riding along that part of Pall-Mall which abuts upon Cockspur Street, when the carriage was stopped by three men on horseback, one of whom discharged a carbine into it, whereby Tom of Ten Thousand was so desperately wounded that he died in a few hours.

The persons charged with this murder were chiefly discovered by means of individuals of ill repute with whom they associated. By such means were arrested a German, Captain Vratz, Borosky a Pole, and a fellow, half knave, half enthusiast, described as Lieutenant Stern. Vratz had accompanied Königsmark to England. They lodged together, first in the Haymarket, next in Rupert Street, and finally in St. Martin’s Lane. Borosky had been clothed and armed at the count’s expense; and Stern was employed as a likely tool to help them in this enterprise. It was proved on the trial, that, after the deed was committed, these men were at the count’s lodgings, that a sudden separation took place, and that the count himself, upon some sudden fear, took flight to the water-side; there he lay hid for a while, and then dodged about the river, in various disguises, in order to elude pursuit, until he finally landed at Gravesend, where he was pounced upon by two expert thief-catchers.

The confession of the accomplices, save Vratz, did not affect the count. His defence took a high Protestant turn—made allusion to his Protestant ancestors and their deeds in behalf of Protestantism, lauded Protestant England, alluded to his younger brother, brought expressly here to be educated in Protestant principles, and altogether was exceedingly clever, but in no wise convincing. It was known that the King would learn with pleasure that the count had been acquitted. As this knowledge was possessed by judges who were removable at the King’s pleasure, it had a strong influence; and the arch-murderer, the most cowardly of the infamous company, was acquitted accordingly. In his case, the verdict, as regarded him, was given in, last. The other three persons were indicted for the actual commission of the fact, Königsmark as accessory before the fact, hiring them, and instigating them to the crime. Thrice he had heard the word ‘Guilty’ pronounced, and, despite his recklessness, was somewhat moved when the jury were asked as to their verdict respecting him. ‘Not Guilty,’ murmured the foreman; and then the noble count, mindful only of himself, and forgetful of the three unhappy men whom he had dragged to death, exclaimed in his unmanly joy, ‘God bless the King, and this honourable bench!’ The meaner assassins were flung to the gallows. Vratz went to his fate, like Pierre; declared that the murder was the result of a mistake, that he had no hand in it, and that as he was a gentleman, God would assuredly deal with him as such! This ‘gentleman’ accounted for his presence at the murder as having arisen by his entertaining a quarrel with Mr. Thynne, whom he was about to challenge, when the Pole, mistaking his orders and inclinations, discharged his carbine into the carriage, and slew the occupant. The other two confessed to the murder, as the hired instruments of Vratz. Count Charles John repaired to the Court of France, where he was received in that sort of gentlemanly fashion which Vratz looked for in Paradise. His sword gleamed in many an action fought in various battle-fields of Europe during the next few years, at the head of a French regiment, of which he was colonel. Finally, in 1686, he was in the service of the Venetians in the Morea. On the 29th of August he was before Argos, when a sortie was made by the garrison, and in the bloody struggle which ensued he was mortally wounded. For Thynne’s monument in Westminster Abbey a Latin inscription was prepared, which more than merely hinted that Königsmark was the murderer of Tom of Ten Thousand. ‘Small, servile, Spratt,’ then Dean of Westminster, would not allow the inscription to be set up; and his apologists, who advance in his behalf that he would have done wrong had he allowed a man, cleared by a jury from the charge of murder, to be permanently set down in hard record of marble as an assassin, have much reason in what they advance.

The youthful maid, wife, and widow, Lady Ogle, remained at Amsterdam (whither she had gone, some persons said fled), after her marriage with Thynne, until the three of his murderers, who had been executed, had expiated their crime, as far as human justice was concerned, upon the scaffold. She then returned to England; but the young lady did not ‘appear public,’ as the phrase went, for six or seven weeks, and when she did so, it was found that she had just married Charles Seymour, third Duke of Somerset—a match which made one of two silly persons and a couple of colossal fortunes.

This red-haired lady died in the fifty-sixth year of her age, A.D. 1722; and the duke, then sixty-four, found speedy consolation for his loss in a marriage with the youthful Lady Charlotte Finch, who was at once his wife, nurse, and secretary. It is said of her, that she one day, in the course of conversation, tapped her husband familiarly on the shoulder with her fan; whereupon that amiable gentleman indignantly cried out: ‘Madam, my first wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty!’

Königsmark, whose fate was so bound up with that of Sophia Dorothea, left England with his brother, and like his brother, he led an adventurous and roving life, never betraying any symptom of the Christian spirit of the religion of the Church of England, of which he first tasted what little could be found in Major Foubert’s riding-school. A portion of his time was spent at Hamburg with his mother and two sisters. His renown was sufficient for a cavalier who loved to live splendidly; and when he appeared at the Court of Hanover, in search of military employment, he was welcomed as cavaliers are who are so comfortably endowed. In 1688 we first hear of him in the electoral capital, bearing arms under the Elector and a guest at the table of George Louis and Sophia Dorothea. This was a year after the birth of the second and last child of that ill-matched couple.

CHAPTER VII.
KÖNIGSMARK AT COURT.

Various accomplishments of Count Philip Christopher Königsmark—The early companion of Sophia Dorothea—Her friendship for him—An interesting interview—Intrigues of Madame von Platen—Foiled in her machinations—A dramatic incident—The unlucky glove—Scandal against the honour of the princess—A mistress enraged on discovery of her using rouge—Indiscretion of the princess—Her visit to Zell—The Elector’s criminal intimacy with Madame von der Schulenburg—William the Norman’s brutality to his wife—The elder Aymon—Brutality of the Austrian Empress to ‘Madame Royale’—Return of Sophia, and reception by her husband.

The estimation in which Count Philip Christopher von Königsmark was held at the Court of Hanover was soon manifested, by his elevation to the post of Colonel of the Guards. He was the handsomest colonel in the small electoral army, and passed for the richest. His household, when thoroughly established, in 1690, consisted of nine-and-twenty servants; and about half a hundred horses and mules were stalled in his stables. His way of life was warrant for the opinion entertained of his wealth, but more flimsy warrant could hardly have existed, for the depth of a purse is not to be discovered by the manner of life of him who owns it. He continued withal to enchant every one with whom he came in contact. The spendthrifts reverenced him, for he was royally extravagant; the few people of taste spoke of him encouragingly, for at an era when little taste was shown, he exhibited much both in his dress and his equipages. These were splendid without being gaudy. The scholars even could speak with and of him without a sneer expressed or reserved, for Philip Christopher was intellectually endowed, had read more than most of the mere cavaliers of his day, and had a good memory, with an understanding whose digestive powers a philosopher might have envied. He spelt, however, and he wrote little better than his grooms. He was not less welcome to the soldier than the scholar, for he had had experience in ‘the tented field,’ and had earned in the ‘imminently deadly breach’ much reputation, without having been himself, in the slightest degree, ‘illustriously maimed.’ Königsmark was as daring in speech as in arms. It is said of him that when George Louis in crowded court once asked him why he had quitted the Saxon service, Königsmark replied, ‘It moved me to anger to see a prince poison the life and happiness of his lovable young wife, by his connection with an impudent and worthless mistress!’ The whole audience gaped with astonishment, and the speech was reported in many a ball-room. But ball-rooms also re-echoed with the ringing eulogiums of his gracefulness, and his witty sayings are reported as having been in general circulation; but they have not been strong enough to travel by the rough paths of time down to these later days. He is praised, too, as having been satirical, without any samples of his satire having been offered for our opinion. He was daringly irreligious, for which free-thinkers applauded him as a man of liberal sentiments, believing little, and fearing less. He was pre-eminently gay, which, in modern and honest English, means that he was terribly licentious; and such was the temper of the times, that probably he was as popular for this characteristic as for all the other qualities by which he was distinguished, put together.

There was nothing remarkable in the fact that he speedily attracted the notice of Sophia Dorothea. She may, without fault, have remembered with pleasure the companion of her romping youth; and have ‘wished him well and no harm done,’ as Pierre says. He was not a mere stranger; and the two met, just as the husband of Sophia Dorothea had publicly insulted her by ostentatiously parading his attachment and his bad taste for women, no more to be compared with her in worth and virtue than Lais with Lucretia. Up to this time, the only confidantes of her secret sorrows were her mother and her faithful von Knesebeck. She had repulsed the affected sympathy of the Countess von Platen; and had concealed her feelings, when her jealousy was stirred by allusions to the countess’s sister and to Ermengarda von der Schulenburg. The Countess von Platen, mature of age, cast admiring eyes on Königsmark. It is asserted, that the count had scarcely been made Colonel of the Guards when the Countess von Platen fixed upon him as one of the instruments by which she would ruin Sophia Dorothea, and relieve George Louis of a wife whose virtues were a continual reproach to him.

The princess had been taking some exercise in the gardens of the palace, returning from which she met her little son, George Augustus, whom she took from his attendant, and with him in her arms began to ascend the stairs which led to her apartments. Her good will was greater than her strength, and Count Königsmark happened to see her at the moment when she was exhibiting symptoms of weakness and irresolution, embarrassed by her burthen, and not knowing how to proceed with it. The count at once, with ready gallantry, not merely proffered, but gave his aid. He took the young prince from his mother, ascended the stairs, holding the future King of England in his arms, and at the door of the apartment of Sophia Dorothea again consigned him to maternal keeping. They tarried for a few brief moments at the door, exchanging a few conventional terms of thanks and civility, when they were seen by the ubiquitous von Platen, and out of this simple fact she is supposed to have gradually worked the subsequent terrible calamity which may be said to have slain both victims, for Sophia Dorothea was only for years slowly accomplishing death, which fell upon the cavalier so surely and so swiftly.

This incident was reported to Ernest Augustus (Mon Sieur, as the countess used to call him) with much exaggeration of detail, and liberal suggestion not warranted by the facts. The conduct of the princess was mildly censured as indiscretion, that of the count as disloyal impertinence; and, thereto, a mountain of comment seems to have been added, and a misty world of hints, which annoyed the duke without convincing him.

Foiled in her first attempt to ruin Sophia Dorothea, von Platen addressed herself to the task of cementing strict friendship with the count; and he, a gallant cavalier, was nothing loth, nought suspecting. Of the terms of this friendly alliance little is known. They were only to be judged of by the conduct of the parties whom that alliance bound. A perfect understanding appeared to have been established between them; and the Countess von Platen was often heard to rally the count upon the love-passages in his life, and even upon his alleged admiration of Sophia Dorothea. What was said jokingly, or was intended to seem as if said jokingly, was soon accepted by casual hearers as a sober, and a sad as sober, truth. The countess referred often to his visits paid to Sophia Dorothea as ‘rendezvous’; but at these, Fräulein von Knesebeck was (as she subsequently affirmed) present from first to last; and two other ladies-in-waiting, pages, women, and George Louis’ own servant, Soliman (a Turk), had free and frequent ingress and egress.

This first step having been made, no time was lost in pursuing the object for which it had been accomplished. At one of those splendid masquerades, in which Ernest Augustus especially delighted, Königsmark distinguished himself above all the other guests by the variety, as well as richness, of his costume, and by the sparkling talent with which he supported each assumed character. He excited a universal admiration, and—so it was said by the Countess von Platen—in none more than in Sophia Dorothea. This may have been true, and the poor princess may possibly have found some oblivion for her domestic trials in allowing herself to be amused with the exercise of the count’s dramatic talent. She honestly complimented him on his ability, and on the advantages which the fête derived from his presence, his talent, and his good-nature. Out of this compliment the countess forged another link of the chain whereby she intended to bind the princess to a ruin from which she should not escape. At this time the countess is said to have hated the handsome Königsmark as much as she had previously admired him. He had met her liberal advances with disregard, or had disregarded her after reciprocating them. In either case, the offence was deadly.

The next incident told is more dramatic of character, perhaps, than any of the others. The countess had engaged the count in conversation in a pavilion of the gardens in the Electoral Palace, when, making the approach of two gentlemen an excuse for retiring, they withdrew together. The gentlemen alluded to were George Louis and the Count von Platen; and these entering the pavilion which had just been vacated, the former picked up a glove which had been dropped by the countess. The prince recognised it by the embroidery, and perhaps by a crest, or some mark impressed upon it, as being a glove belonging to his consort. He was musingly examining it, when a servant entered the place, professedly in search of a glove which the princess had lost. On some explanation ensuing, it was subsequently discovered that Madame von Weyhe, the sister of the Countess von Platen, had succeeded in persuading Prince Maximilian to procure for her this glove, on pretext that she wished to copy the pattern of the embroidery upon it, and that the prince had thoughtlessly done so, leaving the glove of Madame von Weyhe in its place. But this, which might have accounted for its appearance in the pavilion, was not known to George Louis, who would probably in such case have ceased to think more of the matter, but that he was obligingly informed that Count Königsmark had been before him in the pavilion where the glove was found; been there, indeed, with the excellent Countess von Platen, who acknowledged the fact, adding, that no glove was on the ground when she was there, and that the one found could not have been hers, inasmuch as she never wore Netherland gloves—as the one in question was—but gloves altogether of different make and quality. Königsmark had been there, and the glove of the Princess Sophia Dorothea had been found there, and this German specimen of Mrs. Candour knew nothing beyond.

Thenceforth, George Louis was not merely rude and faithless to his wife, but cruel in the extreme—the degrading blow, so it was alleged, following the harsh word. The Elector of Hanover was more just than his rash and worthless son: he disbelieved the insinuations made against his daughter-in-law. The Electress was less reasonable, less merciful, less just, to her son’s wife. She treated her with a coolness which interpreted a belief in the slander uttered against her; and when Sophia Dorothea expressed a wish to visit her mother, the electoral permission was given with an alacrity which testified to the pleasure with which the Electress of Hanover would witness the departure of Sophia Dorothea from her court.

Sophia Dorothea, as soon as she descended at the gates of her father’s residence, found a mother there, indeed, ready to receive her with the arms of a mother’s love, and to feel that the love was showered upon a daughter worthy of it. Not of like quality were the old duke’s feelings. Communications had been made to him from Hanover, to the effect that his daughter was obstinate, disobedient, disrespectful to the Elector and Electress, neglectful of her children, and faithless in heart, if not in fact, to their father. The Duke of Zell had been, as he thought, slow to believe the charges brought against his child’s good name, and had applied to the Elector for some further explanation. But poor Ernest Augustus was just then perplexed by another domestic quarrel. His son, the ever troublesome Prince Maximilian, having long entertained a suspicion that the Countess von Platen’s denial of the light offence laid to her charge, of wearing rouge, was also a playful denial, mischievously proved the fact one day, by not very gallantly ‘flicking’ from his finger a little water in which peas had been boiled, and which was then a popularly mischievous test to try the presence of rouge, as, if the latter were there, the pea-water left an indelible fleck or stain upon it. At this indignity, the Countess von Platen was the more enraged as her denial had been disproved. She rushed to the feet of the Elector, and told her complaint with an energy as if the whole state were in peril. The Elector listened, threatened Prince Maximilian with arrest, and wished his family were as easy to govern as his electoral dominions. He had scarcely relieved himself of this particular source of trouble, by binding Prince Maximilian to his good behaviour, when he was applied to by the Duke of Zell on the subject of his daughter. He angrily referred the duke to three of his ministers, who, he said, were acquainted with the facts. Now these ministers were the men who had expressly distorted them.

These worthy persons, if report may be trusted, performed their wicked office with as wicked an alacrity. However the result was reached, its existence cannot be denied, and its consequences were fatal to Sophia Dorothea. The Electress Sophia is said to have at last so thoroughly hated her daughter-in-law, as to have entered partly into these misrepresentations, which acquired for her the temporary wrath of her father. But of this enmity of her mother-in-law the younger Sophia does not appear to have suspected anything. Sophia Dorothea, at all events, bore her father’s temporary aversion with a wondering patience, satisfied that ‘time and the hour’ would at length do her justice.

The duke’s prejudice, however, was rather stubborn of character, and he was guilty of many absurdities to show, as he thought, that his obstinacy of ill-merited feeling against his own child was not ill-founded. He refused to listen to her own statement of her wrongs, in order to show how he guarded himself against being unduly biassed. The mother of the princess remained her firmest friend and truest champion. If misrepresentations had shaken her confidence for a moment, it was only for a moment. She knew the disposition of Sophia Dorothea too well to lend credit to false representations which depicted her as a wife, compared with whom Petruchio’s Katherine would have been the gentlest of Griseldas. As little did she believe—and to the expression of her disbelief she gave much indignant force of phrase—as little did she believe in the suggestions of the ministers of the Elector that the familiar terms which, as they alleged, existed between the Electoral Princess and Count Königsmark were such as did wrong to her husband George Louis. Those judges of morality had jumped to the conclusion that youth and good looks were incompatible with propriety of conduct.

The worst that could have been alleged against Sophia Dorothea at this period was, that some letters had passed between her and Count Königsmark, and that the latter had once or twice had private audience of the Electoral Princess. Whatever may be thought of such things here in England, and in the present age, they have never been accounted of in Germany but as common-place circumstances, involving neither blame nor injury. A correspondence between two persons of the respective ranks of the Electoral Princess and the count was not an uncommon occurrence; save that it was not often that two such persons had either the taste or capacity to maintain such intercourse. As to an occasional interview, such a favour, granted by ladies of rank to clever conversational men, was as common an event as any throughout the empire; and as harmless as the interviews of Leonora and that very selfish personage, the poet Tasso. The simple fact appears to have been that, out of a very small imprudence—if imprudence it may be called—the enemies of Sophia Dorothea contrived to rear a structure which should threaten her with ruin. Her exemplary husband, who affected to hold himself wronged by the alleged course adopted by his consort, had abandoned her, in the worst sense of that word. He had never, in absence, made her hours glad by letters, whose every word is dew to a soul athirst for assurances of even simple esteem. In his own household his conversation was seldom or never addressed to his wife; and, when it was, never to enlighten, raise, or cheer her. She may have conversed and corresponded with Königsmark, but no society then construed such conversation and correspondence as crimes; and even had they approached in this case to a limit which would have merited censure, the last man who should have stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the reputation of his consort was that George Louis, whose affected indignation was expressed from a couch with Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg at his side, and their very old-fashioned (as to look, but not less illegitimate as to fact) baby, playing, in much unconsciousness of her future distinction, between them.

It was because Sophia Dorothea had not been altogether tamely silent touching her own wrongs, that she had found enemies trumpet-tongued publishing a forged record of her transgressions. When Count von Moltke had become implicated in the little domestic rebellion of Prince Maximilian, some intimation was conveyed to him that, if he would contrive, in his defence, to mingle the name of Sophia Dorothea in the details of the trumpery conspiracy, so as to attach suspicion to such name, his own acquittal would be secured. The count was a gallant man, refused to injure an unoffending lady, and was beheaded; as though he had conspired to overthrow a state, instead of having tried to help a discontented heir in the disputed settlement of some family accounts.

The contempt of Sophia Dorothea, on discovering to what lengths the intimacy of George Louis and Ermengarda von der Schulenburg had gone, found bitter and eloquent expression. Where an angry contest was to be maintained, George Louis could be eloquent too; and in these domestic quarrels, not only is he said to have been as coarse as any of his own grooms, but, at least on one occasion, to have proceeded to blows. His hand was on her throat, and the wife and mother of a King of England would have been strangled by her exasperated lord, had it not been for the intervention of the courtiers, who rushed in, and, presumedly, prevented murder. To such a story wide currency was given; and, if not exact to the letter, neither can it be said to be without foundation.

The circumstances which led Sophia Dorothea to formally complain of the treatment she experienced at her husband’s hands were these. One evening, after being one of a group in the open air, witnessing an eclipse of the moon, and listening to Leibnitz’s explanations, Sophia Dorothea (attended by Fräulein Knesebeck and Madame Sassdorf) returned towards the castle. The ladies missed their way in the dark, but they found themselves at last at the door of a newly-erected building, which Sophia Dorothea entered, despite Frau Sassdorf’s entreaties to the contrary. She equally disregarded the same lady’s urgent entreaties not to enter a room at the end of the ante-chamber where the ladies were standing together. Sophia Dorothea opened the door of the room, and there beheld Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg on a couch; one hand in that of George Louis, who with the other was rocking a sleeping baby (the future Countess of Chesterfield) in a cradle.

After the scene of unseemly violence which followed, and after Sophia Dorothea’s recovery from a consequent illness, she made her indignant complaint to her husband’s parents. ‘Old Sophia’ censured her son, and found fault with Sophia Dorothea’s rashness. Ernest Augustus intimated that all princes had their little weaknesses, and that it was her duty to condone her husband’s.

This treatment drove Sophia Dorothea to Zell; but the wrath of her husband and the intrigues of von Platen made of that residence anything but a refuge. The duke refused to give permission to his daughter to remain longer in his palace than was consistent with the limit of an ordinary visit. She petitioned most urgently, and her mother seconded her prayer with energy as warm, that for the present she might make of Zell a temporary home. Her angry father would not listen to the request of either petitioner; on the contrary, he intimated to his daughter, that if she did not return to Hanover by a stated period, she would be permanently separated from her children. On the expression of this threat, she ceased to press for leave to remain longer absent from Hanover; and when the day named for her departure arrived, she set out once more for the scene of her old miseries, anticipation of misery yet greater in her heart, and with nothing to strengthen her but a mother’s love, and to guide her but a mother’s counsel. Neither was able to save her from the ruin under which she was so soon overwhelmed.

Her return had been duly announced to the Court of Hanover, and so much show of outward respect was vouchsafed her as consisted in a portion of the Electoral family repairing to the country residence of Herrnhausen to meet her on her way, and accompany her to the capital. Of this attention, however, she was unaware, or was scornfully unappreciative, and she passed Herrnhausen at as much speed as could then be shown by Electoral post-horses. It is said that her first intention was to have stopped at the country mansion, where the Electoral party was waiting to do her honour; that she was aware of the latter fact, but that she hurried on her way for the reason that she saw the Countess von Platen seated at one of the windows looking on to the road, and that, rather than encounter her, she offended nearly a whole family, who were more nice touching matters of etiquette than they were touching matters of morality. The members of this family, in waiting to receive a young lady, against whom they considered that they were not without grounds of complaint, were lost in a sense of horror which was farcical, and of indignation at violated proprieties which must have been as comical to look at as it no doubt was intense. The farcical nature of the scene is to be found in the fact, that these good people, by piling their agony beyond measure, made it ridiculous. There was no warrant for their horror, no cause for their indignation; and when they all returned to Hanover, following on the track of a young princess, whose contempt of ceremony tended to give them strange suspicions as to whether she possessed any remnant of virtue at all, these very serene princes and princesses were as supremely ridiculous as any of the smaller people worshipping ceremony in that never-to-be-forgotten city of Kotzebue’s painting, called Krähwinkel.

When Sophia Dorothea passed by Herrnhausen, regardless of the company who awaited her there, she left the persons of a complicated drama standing in utter amazement on one of the prettiest of theatres. Herrnhausen was a name given to trim gardens, as well as to the edifice surrounded by them. At the period of which we are treating the grounds were a scene of delight; the fountains tasteful, the basins large, and the water abundant. The maze, or wilderness, was the wonder of Germany, and the orangery the pride of Europe. There was also, what may still be seen in some of the pleasure-grounds of German princes, a perfectly rustic theatre, complete in itself, with but little help from any hand but that of nature. The seats were cut out of the turf, the verdure resembled green velvet, and the chances of rheumatism must have been many. There was no roof but the sky, and the dressing-rooms of the actors were lofty bowers constructed near the stage; the whole was adorned with a profusion of gilded statues, and kept continually damp by an incessant play of spray-scattering water-works. The grand tableau of rage in this locality, as Sophia Dorothea passed unheedingly by, must have been a spectacle worth the contemplating. Perhaps she had passed the more scornfully as George Louis was there, who, of all men, must at this time have been to her the most hateful.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE CATASTROPHE.

The scheming mother foiled—Count Königsmark too garrulous in his cups—An eaves-dropper—A forged note—A mistress’s revenge—Murder of the count—The Countess Aurora Königsmark’s account of her brother’s intimacy with the princess—Horror of the princess on hearing of the count’s death—Seizure and escape of Mademoiselle von Knesebeck—A divorce mooted—The princess’s declaration of her innocence—Decision of the consistorial court—The sages of the law foiled by the princess—Condemned to captivity in the castle of Ahlden—Decision procured by bribery—Bribery universal in England—The Countess Aurora Königsmark becomes the mistress of Augustus, King of Poland—Her unsuccessful mission to Charles XII.—Exemplary conduct in her latter years—Becomes prioress of the nunnery of Quedlinburg.

With the return of Sophia Dorothea to Hanover, her enemies appear to have commenced more actively their operations against her. George Louis was languidly amusing himself with Ermengarda von der Schulenburg and their little daughter Petronilla Melusina. The Countess von Platen was in a state of irritability at the presence of Sophia Dorothea and the absence of Königsmark. The last-mentioned person had, in his wide-spread adoration, offered a portion of his homage to both the countess and her daughter. The elder lady, while accepting as much of the incense for herself as was safe to inhale, endeavoured to secure the count as a husband for her daughter. Her failure only increased her bitterness against the count, and by no means lent less asperity to the sentiment with which she viewed Sophia Dorothea. She was, no doubt, the chief cause, primarily and approximate, of the ruin which fell upon both.

It was not merely the absence of Königsmark, who was on a visit to the riotous court of Augustus of Saxony, which had scared her spirit; the reports which were made to her of his conversation there gave fierceness to her resentment, and called into existence that desire of vengeance which she accomplished, but without profiting by the wickedness.

There was no more welcome guest at Dresden than Königsmark. An individual, so gallant of bearing, handsome of feature, easy of principle, and lively of speech, was sure to be warmly welcomed at that dissolute court. He played deeply, and whatever sums he might lose, he never lost his temper. He drank as deeply as he played, and he then became as loquacious as Cassio, but more given to slander. He spoke ill of others out of mere thoughtlessness, or at times out of mere vanity. He possessed not what Swift calls the ‘lower prudence’ of discretion. His vanity, and the stories to which it prompted him, seemed to amuse and interest the idle and scandalous court where he was so welcome a guest.

He kept the illustriously wicked company there in an uninterrupted ecstacy by the tales he told, and the point he gave to them, of the chief personages of the Court of Hanover. He retailed anecdotes of the Elector and his son, George Louis, and warmly-tinted stories of the shameless mistresses of that exemplary parent, and no less exemplary child. He did not spare even the Electress Sophia; but she was, after all, too respectable for Königsmark to be able to make of her a subject of ridicule. This subject he found in ladies of smaller virtue and less merit generally. But every word he uttered, in sarcastic description of the life, character, and behaviour of the favourites of the Elector of Hanover and his son, found its way, with no loss of pungency on the road, to the ears of those persons whom the report was most likely to offend. His warm advocacy of Sophia Dorothea, expressed at the table of Augustus of Saxony, was only an additional offence; and George Louis was taught to think that Count Königsmark had no right to ask, with Pierre, ‘May not a man wish his friend’s wife well, and no harm done?’

The count returned to Hanover soon after Sophia Dorothea had arrived there, subsequent to her painful visit to the little court of her ducal parents at Zell. Königsmark, who had entered the Saxon service, returned to Hanover to complete the form of withdrawal from service in the Hanoverian army. It is alleged that Sophia Dorothea, otherwise friendless, entreated him to procure her an asylum, or to protect her in her flight to the court of her kinsman, Duke Anton Ulrich, at Wolfenbüttel. The duke is reported to have been willing to receive her. Other reports state that the princess was more than willing to fly with Königsmark to Paris! Out of all such rumours there is this certainty, that on Sunday, the 1st of July 1694 (George Louis being then in Berlin), Königsmark found a letter in pencil on a table in the sitting-room of his house in Hanover. It was to this effect: ‘To-night, after ten o’clock, the Princess Sophia Dorothea will expect Count Königsmark.’ He recognised the hand of the princess. All that afternoon he was busy writing. His secretary and servants thought his manner strange. He went out soon after ten, unattended. He was in a light, simple, summer-dress. He went on his way to the palace, crossed the threshold, and never was seen outside it again.

The note was a forged document, confessedly by the Countess von Platen, when confession came too late for the repair of evil which could not be undone. Nevertheless, the count, on presenting himself to Mademoiselle Knesebeck, the lady of honour to the princess, was admitted to the presence of the latter. This indiscreet step was productive of terrible consequences to all the three who were present. The count, on being asked to explain the reason of his seeking an interview with the princess at an advanced hour of the evening, produced the note of invitation, which Sophia Dorothea at once pronounced to be a forgery. Had they then separated little of ill consequence might have followed. The most discreet of the three, and the most perplexed at the ‘situation,’ was the lady of honour. The ‘Memoirs’ which bear her name, and which describe this scene, present to us a woman of some weakness, yet one not wanting in discernment.

Sophia Dorothea, it would seem, could dwell upon no subject but that of her domestic troubles, the cruel neglect of her husband, and her desire to find somewhere the refuge from persecution which had been denied to her in her old home at Zell. More dangerous topics could not have been treated by two such persons. The count, it is affirmed, was the first to suggest that Paris would afford her such a refuge, and that he should be but too happy to be permitted to give her such protection as she could derive from his escort thither. This was probably rather hinted than suggested; but however that may be, only one course should have followed even a distant hint leading to so unwarrantable an end. The interview should have been brought to a close. It was still continued, nevertheless, to the annoyance, if not scandal, of the faithful Knesebeck, whose fears may have received some little solace on hearing her mistress reiterate her desire to find at least a temporary home at the court of her cousin, Duke Anton Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel.

While this discussion was proceeding, the Countess von Platen was by no means idle. She had watched the count to the bower into which she had sent him by the employment of a false lure, and she thereupon hastened to the Elector to communicate what she termed her discovery. Ernest Augustus, albeit waxing old, was by no means infirm of judgment. If Königsmark was then in the chamber of his daughter-in-law, he refused to see in the fact anything more serious than its own impropriety. That, however, was crime enough to warrant the arrest which the countess solicited. The old Elector yielded to all she asked, except credence of her assurance that Sophia Dorothea must be as guilty as Königsmark was presuming. He would consent to nothing further than the arrest of him who was guilty of the presumption; and the method of this arrest he left to the conduct of the countess, who urgently solicited it as a favour, and with solicitation of such earnestness that the old Elector affected to be jealous of the interest she took in such a case, and added playfully the expression of his opinion, that, angry as she seemed to be with the count, he was too handsome a man to be likely to meet with ill-treatment at her hands.

Armed with this permission, she proceeded to the body of soldiers or watch for the night, and exhibiting her written warrant for what she demanded, requested that a guard might be given to her, for a purpose which she would explain to them. Some four or five men of this household body were told off, and these were conducted by her to a large apartment, called the Hall of Knights, through which Königsmark must pass, as he had not yet quitted the princess’s chamber.

They were then informed that their office was to arrest a criminal, whose person was described to them, of whose safe custody the Elector was so desirous that he would rather that such criminal should be slain than that he should escape. They were accordingly instructed to use their weapons if he should resist; and as their courage had been heightened by the double bribe of much wine and a shower of gold pieces, they expressed their willingness to execute her bidding, and only too well showed by their subsequent act the sincerity of their expression.

At length Königsmark appeared, coming from the princess’s apartment. It was now midnight. He entered the Ritter Hall, unsuspecting the fate before him. In this hall was a huge, square, ponderous stove, looking like a mausoleum, silent and cold. It reached from floor to roof, and, hidden by one of its sides, the guard awaited the coming of the count. He approached the spot, passed it, was seized from behind, and he immediately drew his sword to defend himself from attack. His enemies gave him but scant opportunity to assail them in his own defence, and after a few wild passes with his weapon, he was struck down by the spear, or old-fashioned battle-axe, of one of the guards, and when he fell there were three wounds in him, out of any one of which life might find passage.

On feeling himself grow faint, he—and in this case, like a true and gallant man—thought of the lady and her reputation. The last words he uttered were, ‘Spare the innocent princess!’ soon after which he expired; but not before, as is reported by those who love to dwell minutely on subjects of horror, not before the Countess von Platen had set her foot triumphantly upon his bloody face.

Such is the German detail of this assassination. It is added, that it gave extreme annoyance to the Elector, to whom it was immediately communicated; that the body was forthwith consigned to a secure resting-place, and covered with lime; and that the whole bloody drama was enacted without any one being aware of what was going on, save the actors themselves.

In Cramer’s ‘Memoirs of the Countess of Königsmark,’ the fate of the count is told upon the alleged evidence of a so-called eye-witness. It differs in several respects from other accounts, but is clear and simple in its details. It is to the following effect:—

‘Bernhard Zayer, a native of Heidelberg, in the Palatinate, a wax-image maker and artist in lacquer-work, was engaged by the Electoral Princess to teach her his art. Being, on this account, continually in the princess’s apartment, he had frequently seen Count Königsmark there, who looked on while the princess worked. He once learned in confidence, from the Electoral Princess’s groom of the chambers, that the Electoral Prince was displeased about the count, and had sworn to break his neck, which Bernhard revealed to the princess, who answered:—“Let them attack Königsmark: he knows how to defend himself.” Some time afterwards there was an opera, but the princess was unwell and kept her bed. The opera began, and as the count was absent as well as the princess, first a page and then the hoff-fourier were sent out for intelligence. The hoff-fourier came back running, and whispered to the Electoral Prince, and then to his highness the Elector. But the Electoral Prince went away from the opera with the hoff-fourier. Now Bernhard saw all this and knew what it meant, and as he knew the count was with the princess, he left the opera secretly, to warn her; and as he went in at the door, the other door was opened, and two masked persons rushed in, one exclaiming, “So! then I find you!” The count, who was sitting on the bed, with his back to the door by which the two entered, started up, and whipped out his sword, saying, “Who can say anything unbecoming of me?” The princess, clasping her hands, said “I, a princess, am I not allowed to converse with a gentleman?” But the masks, without listening to reason, slashed and stabbed away at the count. But he pressed so upon both, that the Electoral Prince unmasked, and begged for his life, while the hoff-fourier came behind the count, and run him through between the ribs with his sword, so that he fell, saying, “You are murderers, before God and man, who do me wrong!” But they both of them gave him more wounds, so that he lay as dead. Bernhard, seeing all this, hid himself behind the door of the other room.’

Bernhard was subsequently sent by the princess to spy out what they would do with Königsmark.

‘When the count was in the vault, he came a little to himself, and spoke:—“You take a guiltless man’s life. On that I’ll die, but do not let me perish like a dog, in my blood and my sins. Grant me a priest, for my soul’s sake.” Then the Electoral Prince went out, and the fourier remained alone with him. Then was a strange parson fetched, and a strange executioner, and the fourier fetched a great chair. And when the count had confessed, he was so weak that three or four of them lifted him into the chair; and there in the prince’s presence was his head laid at his feet. And they had tools with them, and they dug a hole in the right corner of the vault, and there they laid him, and there he must be to be found. When all was over, this Bernhard slipped away from the castle; and indeed Counsellor Lucius, who was a friend of the princess’s, sent him some of his livery to save him; for they sought him in all corners, because they had seen him in the room during the affray.... And what Bernhard Zayer saw in the vault, he saw through a crack.’

Clear as this narrative is in its details, it is contradictory and rests on small basis of truth. The Electoral Prince was undoubtedly absent on the night Königsmark was murdered.

The Countess Aurora of Königsmark has left a statement of her brother’s intimacy with the princess, in which the innocence of the latter is maintained, but his imprudence acknowledged. The statement referred to explains the guilty nature of the intercourse kept up between Königsmark and the Countess von Platen. It is written in terms of extreme indelicacy. We may add that the faithful von Knesebeck, on whose character no one ever cast an imputation, in her examination before the judges, argued the innocence of her accused mistress upon grounds the nature of which cannot even be alluded to. The princess, it is clear, had urged Königsmark to renew his interrupted intrigue with von Platen, out of dread that the latter, taking the princess as the cause of the intercourse having been broken off, should work a revenge, which she did not hesitate to menace, upon the princess herself.

The details of all the stories are marked by great improbability, and they have not been substantiated by the alleged death-bed confessions of the Countess von Platen, and Baumain, one of the guards—the two criminals having, without so intending it, confessed to the same clergyman, a minister named Kramer! Though these confessions are spoken of, and are even cited by German authors, their authenticity cannot be warranted. At all events, there is an English version of the details of this murder given by Horace Walpole; and as that lively writer founded his lugubrious details upon authority which he deemed could not be gainsaid, they may fairly find a place, by way of supplement to the foreign version.

‘Königsmark’s vanity,’ says Walpole, ‘the beauty of the Electoral Princess, and the neglect under which he found her, encouraged his presumptions to make his addresses to her, not covertly, and she, though believed not to have transgressed her duty, did receive them too indiscreetly. The old Elector flamed at the insolence of so stigmatised a pretender, and ordered him to quit his dominions the next day. This princess, surrounded by women too closely connected with her husband and consequently enemies of the lady they injured, was persuaded by them to suffer the count to kiss her hand, before his abrupt departure; and he was actually introduced by them into her bedchamber the next morning before she rose. From that moment he disappeared, nor was it known what became of him, till on the death of George I., on his son, the new King’s first journey to Hanover, some alterations in the palace being ordered by him, the body of Königsmark was discovered under the floor of the Electoral Princess’s dressing-room—the count having probably been strangled there, the instant he left her, and his body secreted. The discovery was hushed up. George II. (the son of Sophia Dorothea) entrusted the secret to his wife, Queen Caroline, who told it to my father; but the King was too tender of the honour of his mother to utter it to his mistress; nor did Lady Suffolk ever hear of it, till I informed her of it several years afterwards. The disappearance of the count made his murder suspected, and various reports of the discovery of his body have of late years been spread, but not with the authentic circumstances.’

To turn to the German sources of information: we are told by these, that after the departure of Königsmark from the chamber of the princess, she was engaged in arranging her papers, and in securing her jewels, preparatory, as she hoped, to her anticipated removal to the Court of Wolfenbüttel. Königsmark must have been murdered and the body made away with silently and swiftly, for not a dweller in the palace was disturbed by the doing of this bloody deed. All signs of its having been done had been so effaced that no trace of it was left to attract notice in the early morning. On that next morning the count’s servants were not troubled at his absence; such an occurrence was not unusual. When it was prolonged and enquiry became necessary, nothing could be learnt of him. Every soul in the palace was silent, designedly or through ignorance. Rumour, of course, was busy and full of confidence in what it put forth. George Louis himself said that the gay count would reappear, perhaps, when least expected. The tremendous secret was faithfully kept by the few who knew the truth; and when speculation was busiest as to the count’s whereabout, there was probably no atom of his body left, if it be true that it had been cast into a drain and had been consumed in slack-lime.

The princess was, for a time, kept in ignorance of the count’s assassination; but she was perplexed by his disappearance, and alarmed when she heard that all his papers had been seized and conveyed to the Elector for his examination. Some notes had passed between them: and, innocent as they were, she felt annoyed at the thought that their existence should be known, still more that they should be perused. To their most innocent expressions the Countess von Platen, who examined them with the Elector, gave a most guilty interpretation; and she so wrought upon Ernest Augustus, that he commissioned no less a person than the Count von Platen to interrogate the princess on the subject. She did not lack spirit; and when the coarse-minded count began to put coarse questions to her, as to the degree of intercourse which had existed between herself and the count, she spiritedly remarked that he appeared to imagine that he was examining into the conduct of his own wife; a thrust which he repaid by bluntly informing her that whatever intercourse may have existed, it would never be renewed, seeing that sure intelligence had been received of Königsmark’s death.

Sophia Dorothea, shocked at this information, and at the manner in which it was conveyed, had no friend in whom she could repose confidence but her faithful lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von Knesebeck. The princess could have had no more ardent defender than this worthy attendant. But the assertions made by the latter, in favour of the mistress whom she loved, were not at all to the taste of the enemies of that mistress, and the speedy result was, that Fräulein von Knesebeck was arrested and carried away to the castle of Schartzfeld in the Hartz. She was there kept in confinement many years; but she ultimately escaped so cleverly through the roof, by the help of a tiler, or a friend in the likeness of a tiler, that the credit of the success of the attempt was given by the governor of the gaol to the demons of the adjacent mountains. She subsequently became lady-in-waiting to Sophia Dorothea’s daughter.

Sophia Dorothea had now but one immediate earnest wish, namely, to retire from Hanover. Already the subject of a divorce had been mooted, but the Elector being somewhat fearful that a divorce might affect his son’s succession to his wife’s inheritance, and even obstruct the union of Zell with Hanover, an endeavour was made to reconcile the antagonistic spouses, and to bury past dissensions in oblivion.

It was previous to this attempt being entered upon, and perhaps because it was contemplated, that the princess voluntarily underwent a very solemn ordeal. The ceremony was as public as it could be rendered by the presence of part of the Electoral family and the great official dignitaries of the church and government. Before them Sophia Dorothea partook of the sacrament, and then made solemn protestation of her innocence, and of her unspotted faith towards the Electoral Prince, her husband. At the termination of this ceremony she was insulted by an incredulous smile which she saw upon the face of Count von Platen; whereat the natural woman was moved within her to ask him if his own excellent wife could take the same oath, in attestation of her unbroken faithfulness to him!

The strange essay at reconciliation was marred by an attempt made to induce the Electoral Princess to confess that she had been guilty of sins of disobedience towards the expressed will of her consort. All endeavour in this direction was fruitless; and though grave men made it, it shows how very little they comprehended their delicate mission. The princess remained fixed in her desire to withdraw from Hanover; but when she was informed of the wound this would be to the feelings of the Elector and Electress, and that George Louis himself was heartily averse to it, she began to waver, and applied to her friends at Zell, among others to Bernstorf, the Hanoverian minister there, asking for counsel in this her great need.

Bernstorf, an ally of the von Platens, secretly advised her to insist upon leaving Hanover. He assured her, pledging his word for what he said, that she would find a happy asylum at Zell; that even her father, so long estranged from her, would receive her with open arms; and that in the adoption of such a step alone could she hope for happiness and peace during the remainder of her life.

She was as untruthfully served by some of the ladies of her circle, who, while professing friendship and fidelity, were really the spies of her husband and her husband’s mistress. They were of that class of women who were especially bred for courts and court intrigues, and whose hopes of fortune rested upon their doing credit to their education.

As the princess not merely insisted upon quitting Hanover, but firmly refused to acknowledge that she had been guilty of any wrong to her most guilty husband, a course was adopted by her enemies which, they considered, would not merely punish her, but would transfer her possessions to her consort, without affecting the long projected union of Zell, after the duke’s death, with the territory of Hanover. An accusation of adultery, even if it could be sustained, of which there was not the shadow of a chance, might, if carried out and followed by a divorce, in some way affect the transfer of a dominion to Hanover, which transfer rested partly on the rights of the wife of the Electoral Prince. A divorce might destroy the ex-husband’s claims; but he was well-provided with lawyers to watch and guard the case to an ultimate conclusion in his favour.

A Consistorial Court was formed, of a strangely mixed character, for it consisted of four ecclesiastical lawyers and four civil authorities of Hanover and Zell. It had no other authority to warrant its proceedings than the command or sanction of the Elector, and the consent of the Duke of Zell, whose ill-feeling towards his child seemed to increase daily. The only charge laid against the princess before this anomalous court was one of incompatibility of temper, added to some little failings of character; not the most distant allusion to serious guilt with Königsmark, or any one else, was made. His name was never once mentioned. Her consent to live again in Hanover and let by-gones be by-gones was indignantly refused by her. She would never, she protested, live again among people who had murdered the only man in the world who loved her well enough to be a friend to her who was otherwise friendless. Her passionate tears flowed abundantly; Fräulein von Knesebeck states that whenever the mysterious fate of Königsmark was referred to, the princess’s grief was so violent that it might almost lead those who witnessed it to suspect that she took too great an interest in the man made away with almost at her chamber-door.

The court affected to attempt an adjustment of the matter; but as the attempt was always based on another to drag from the princess a confession of her having, wittingly or unwittingly, given cause of offence to her husband, she continued firmly to refuse to place her consort in the right by doing herself and her cause extremest wrong.

In the meantime, during an adjournment of the court, she withdrew to Lauenau. She was prohibited from repairing to Zell, but there was no longer any opposition made to her leaving the capital of the Electorate. She was, however, strictly prohibited from taking her children with her. Her parting from these was as painful a scene as can well be imagined, for she is said to have felt that she would never again be united with them. Her son, George Augustus, was then ten years of age; her daughter, Sophia, was still younger. The homage of these children was rendered to their mother long after their hearts had ceased to pay any to their father beyond a mere conventional respect.

In her temporary retirement at Lauenau, she was permitted to enjoy very little repose. The friends of the Electoral Prince seem to have been anxious lest she should publish more than was yet known of the details of his private life. This fear alone can account for their anxiety, or professed anxiety, for a reconciliation. The lawyers, singly or in couples, and now and then a leash of them together, went down to Lauenau to hold conference with her. They assailed her socially, scripturally, legally; they pointed out how salubrious was the discipline which subjected a wife to confess her faults. They read to her whole chapters from Corinthians, on the duties of married ladies, and asked her if she could be so obstinate and unorthodox as to disregard the injunctions of St. Paul. Finally, they quoted codes and pandects, to prove that a sentence might be pronounced against her under contumacy, and concluded by recommending her to trust to the mercy of the Crown Prince, if she would but cast herself upon his honour.

They were grave men; sage, learned, experienced men; crafty, cunning, far-seeing men; in all the circles of the empire men were not to be found more skilled in surmounting difficulties than these indefatigable men, who were all foiled by the simplicity and firmness of a mere child. ‘If I am guilty,’ said she, ‘I am unworthy of the prince: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’

Here was a conclusion with which she utterly confounded the sages. They could not gainsay it, nor refute the logic by which it was arrived at, and which gave it force. They were ‘perplexed in the extreme,’ but neither social experience, nor scriptural reading, nor legal knowledge afforded them weapons wherewith to beat down the simple defences behind which the princess had entrenched herself. They tried repeatedly, but tried in vain. At the end of every trial she slowly and calmly enunciated the same reply:—‘If I am guilty I am unworthy of him: if I am innocent, he is unworthy of me!’

From this text she would not depart; nor could all the chicanery of all the courts of Germany move her. ‘At least,’ said the luminaries of the law, as they took their way homewards, re infecta, ‘at least this woman may, of a surety, be convicted of obstinacy.’ We always stigmatise as obstinate those whom we cannot convince. It is the only, and the poor, triumph of the vanquished.

This triumph was achieved by the Consistory Court, the members of which, unable to prove the princess guilty of crime, were angry because she would not even confess to the commission of a fault; that is, of such a fault as should authorise her husband, covered with guilt triple-piled, to separate from her person, yet maintain present and future property over her estates.

In point of fact, George Louis did not wish to be separated from his wife. His counsel, Rath Livius, accused her, in her husband’s name, of lack of both love and obedience towards him; of having falsely charged him with infidelity, to his parents and her own; and of having repeatedly refused to again live with him; for this act of disobedience, and for no other reason, he asked the judgment of the court. Sophia Dorothea’s own counsellors, Rudolph Thies and Joachin von Bulow, put it to her whether she would return to her husband or abide judgment for disobeying his repeated desire. Nothing could move her. She despised her husband, and would never again live under the same roof with him. Her own desire was to live, henceforward, in seclusion—to pass the remainder of her unhappy life in peace and humiliation.

The court came to a decision on the 28th of December, 1694. Their judgment was, that as she refused to live with her husband, she was guilty of desertion, and on that ground alone a decree of separation, or divorce, was recorded. When told that she had a right to appeal, she contemptuously refused to avail herself of it. The terms of the sentence were extraordinary, for they amounted to a decree of divorce without expressly mentioning the fact. The judgment, wherein nothing was judged, conferred on the prince, George Louis, the right of marrying again, if he should be so minded and could find a lady willing to be won. It, however, explicitly debarred his wife from entering into a second union. Not a word was written down against her, alleging that she was criminal. The name of Königsmark was not even alluded to. Notwithstanding these facts, and that the husband was the really guilty party, while the utmost which can be said against the princess was that she may have been indiscreet—notwithstanding this, not only was he declared to be an exceedingly injured individual, but the poor lady, whom he held in his heart’s hottest hate, was deprived of her property, possession of which was transferred to George Louis, in trust for the children; and the princess, endowed with an annual pension of some eight or ten thousand thalers, was condemned to close captivity in the castle of Ahlden, near Zell, with a retinue of domestics, whose office was to watch her actions, and a body of armed gaolers, whose only duty was to keep the captive secure in her bonds.

Sophia Dorothea entered on her imprisonment with a calm, if not with a cheerful heart: certainly with more placidity and true joy than George Louis felt, surrounded by his mistresses and all the pomp of the Electoral State. All Germany is said to have been scandalised by the judgment delivered by the court. The illegality and the incompetency of the court from which it emanated, were so manifest, that the sentence was looked upon as a mere wanton cruelty, carrying with it neither conviction nor lawful consequence. So satisfied was the princess’s advocate on this point that he requested her to give him a letter declaring him non-responsible for having so far recognised the authority of the court as to have pleaded her cause before it! What is perhaps more singular still is the doubt which long existed whether this court ever sat at all; and whether decree of separation or divorce was ever pronounced in the cause of Sophia Dorothea of Zell and George Louis, Electoral Prince of Hanover.

Horace Walpole says, on this subject: ‘I am not acquainted with the laws of Germany relative to divorce or separation, nor do I know or suppose that despotism and pride allow the law to insist on much formality when a sovereign has reason or mind to get rid of his wife. Perhaps too much difficulty in untying the Gordian knot of matrimony, thrown in the way of an absolute prince, would be no kindness to the ladies, but might prompt him to use a sharper weapon, like that butchering husband, our Henry VIII. Sovereigns who narrow or let out the law of God according to their prejudices and passions mould their own laws, no doubt, to the standard of their convenience. Genealogic purity of blood is the predominant folly of Germany; and the Code of Malta seems to have more force in the empire than the Ten Commandments. Thence was introduced that most absurd evasion of the indissolubility of marriage, espousals with the left hand, as if the Almighty had restrained his ordinance to one half of a man’s person, and allowed a greater latitude to his left side than to his right, or pronounced the former more ignoble than the latter. The consciences both of princely and noble persons in Germany are quieted if the more plebeian side is married to one who would degrade the more illustrious moiety; but, as if the laws of matrimony had no reference to the children to be thence propagated, the children of a left-handed alliance are not entitled to inherit. Shocking consequence of a senseless equivocation, which only satisfies pride, not justice, and is calculated for an acquittal at the herald’s office, not at the last tribunal.

‘Separated the Princess (Sophia) Dorothea certainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal honours of her rank, being thenceforward always styled the Duchess of Halle (Ahlden). Whether divorced is problematic, at least to me; nor can I pronounce—as, though it was generally believed, I am not certain—that George espoused the Duchess of Kendal (Mdlle. von der Schulenburg) with his left hand. But though German casuistry might allow a husband to take another wife with his left hand because his legal wife had suffered her right hand to be kissed by a gallant, even Westphalian or Aulic counsellors could not have pronounced that such a momentary adieu constituted adultery; and, therefore, of a formal divorce I must doubt; and there I must leave that case of conscience undecided until future search into the Hanoverian Chancery shall clear up a point of little real importance.’ Coxe, in his Memoirs of Walpole, says, on the other hand, very decidedly:—‘George I., who never loved his wife, gave implicit credit to the account of her infidelity, as related by his father; consented to her imprisonment, and obtained from the ecclesiastical consistory a divorce, which was passed on the 20th of December 1694.’

The researches into the Chancery of Hanover, which Walpole left to posterity, appear to have been made, and the decree of the Consistorial Court which condemned Sophia Dorothea has been copied and published. It is quoted in the ‘Life of the Princess,’ published anonymously in 1845, and it is inserted below for the benefit of those who like to read history by the light of documents.

It has been said that such a decree could only have been purchased by rank bribery, which is likely enough; for the courts of Germany were so utterly corrupt that nothing could equal them in infamy—except the corruption which prevailed in England.

‘In the matrimonial suit of the illustrious Prince George Louis, Crown Prince of Hanover, against his consort, the illustrious Princess Sophia Dorothea, we, constituted president and judges of the Matrimonial Court of the Electorate and Duchy of Brunswick-Lunenberg, declare and pronounce judgment, after attempts have been tried and have failed, to settle the matter amicably, and, in accordance with the documents and verbal declarations of the Princess, and other detailed circumstances, we agree that her continued denial of matrimonial duty and cohabitation is well founded, and consequently that it is to be considered as an intentional desertion. In consequence whereof, we consider, sentence, and declare the ties of matrimony to be entirely dissolved and annulled. Since, in similar cases of desertion, it has been permitted to the innocent party to re-marry, which the other is forbidden, the same judicial power will be exercised in the present instance in favour of his Serene Highness the Crown Prince.

‘Published in the Consistorial Court at Hanover, December 28th, 1694.

The work from which the above document is extracted furnishes also the following, as a copy of the letter written by the princess at the request of the legal conductor of her case, as ‘security from proceedings in relation to his connexion with her affairs:’—

‘As we have now, after being made acquainted with the sentence, given it proper consideration, and resolved not to offer any opposition to it, our solicitor must act accordingly, and is not to act or proceed any further in this matter. For the rest, we hereby declare that we are gratefully content with the conduct of our aforesaid solicitor of the Court, Thies, and that by this we free him from all responsibility regarding these transactions.

(Signed) ‘Sophia Dorothea.

‘Lauenau, December 31, 1694.’

By this last document it would seem that the Hof-Rath Thies would have denied the competency of the court had he been permitted to do so; and that he was so convinced of its illegality as to require a written prohibition from asserting the same, and acknowledgment of exemption from all responsibility, before he would feel satisfied that he had accomplished his duty towards his illustrious client.

Long before the case was heard, and four months previous to the publication of the sentence of the Consistorial Court, the two brothers, the Elector of Hanover and the Duke of Zell, had actually agreed by an enactment that the unhappy marriage between the cousins should be dissolved. The enactment provided for the means whereby this end was to be achieved, and for the disposal of the princess during the progress of the case. The anonymous author of the biography of 1845 then proceeds to state that ‘It was therein specified that her domestics should take a particular oath, and that the princess should enjoy an annual income of eight thousand thalers (exclusive of the wages of her household), to be increased one-half on the death of her father, with a further increase of six thousand thalers on her attaining the age of forty years. It was provided that the castle of Ahlden should be her permanent residence, where she was to remain well guarded. The domain of Wilhelmsburg, near Hamburg, was, at the death of the Duke of Zell, to descend to the prince, son of the Princess Sophia Dorothea—the Crown Prince, however, during his own life retaining the revenues; but should the grandson die before his father, the property would then, on payment of a stipulated sum, be inherited by the successor in the government of the son of the Elector. By a further arrangement, the mother of the princess was to possess Wienhausen, with an annual income of twelve thousand thalers, secured on the estates of Schernebeck, Garze, and Bluettingen; the castle at Lunenburg to be allowed as her residence from the commencement of her widowhood.’

Never was so much care taken to secure property on one side, and the person on the other. The contracting parties appear to have been afraid lest the prisoner should ever have an opportunity of appealing against the wrong of which she was made the victim; and her strait imprisonment was but the effect of that fear. That nothing might be neglected to make assurance doubly sure, and to deprive her of any help she might hope hereafter to receive at the hands of a father, whose heart might possibly be made to feel his own injustice and his daughter’s sorrows, the Duke of Zell was induced to promise that he would neither see nor hold communication with the daughter he had repudiated.

During the so-called trial, at Lauenau, the princess resided in the chief official residence in that place. At the close of the inquiry she took a really final leave of her children—George Augustus and Sophia Dorothea—with bitter tears, which would have been more bitter still if she had thought that she was never again to look upon them. She had concluded that she would have liberty to live with her mother in Zell. She had no idea that her father had already agreed to his brother the Elector’s desire that she should be shut up in the castle of Ahlden. She found herself a state prisoner.

The oath to be taken by her appointed household, or rather by the personal attendants—counts and countesses in waiting and persons of similar rank—was stringent and illustrative of the importance attached to the safe-keeping of the prisoner. It was to the effect ‘that nothing should be wanting to prevent anticipated intrigues; or for the perfect security of the place fixed as a residence for the Princess Sophia Dorothea, in order to maintain tranquility, and to prevent any opportunity occurring to an enemy for undertaking or imagining anything which might cause a division in the illustrious family.’

CHAPTER IX.
PRISON AND PALACE.

The prison of the captive Sophia Dorothea—Employment of her time—The church of Ahlden repaired by her—Cut off from her children—Sympathy of Ernest Augustus for his daughter-in-law—Her father’s returning affection for her—Opening prospects of the House of Hanover—Lord Macclesfield’s embassy to Hanover, and his right-royal reception—Description of the Electress—Toland’s description of Prince George Louis—Magnificent present to Lord Macclesfield—The Princess Sophia and the English liturgy—Death of the Duke of Zell—Visit of Prince George to his captive mother prevented.

The castle of Ahlden is situated on the small and sluggish stream, the Aller; and seems to guard, as it once oppressed, the little village sloping at its feet. This edifice was appointed as the prison-place of Sophia Dorothea; and from the territory she acquired a title, that of Duchess of Ahlden. She was mockingly called sovereign lady of a locality where all were free but herself!

On looking over the list of the household which was formed for the service, if the phrase be one that may be admitted, of her captivity, the first thing which strikes us as singular is the presence of ‘three cooks’—a triad of ‘ministers of the mouth’ for one poor imprisoned lady!

The singularity vanishes when we find that around this encaged duchess there circled a really extensive household, and there lived a world of ceremony, of which no one was so much the slave as she was. Her captivity in its commencement was decked with a certain sort of splendour, about which she, who was its object, cared by far the least. There was a military governor of the castle, gentlemen and ladies in waiting—spies all. Among the honester servants of the house were a brace of pages and as many valets, a dozen female domestics, and fourteen footmen, who had to undergo the intense labour of doing very little in a very lengthened space of time. To supply the material wants of these, the three cooks, one confectioner, a baker, and a butler, were provided. There was, besides, a military force, consisting of infantry and artillery. Altogether, there must have been work enough for the three cooks.

The forms of a court were long maintained, although only on a small scale. The duchess held her little levées, and the local authorities, clergy, and neighbouring nobility and gentry offered her such respect as could be manifested by paying her visits on certain appointed days. These visits, however, were always narrowly watched by the officials, whose office lay in such service and was hid beneath a show of duty.

The successive governors of the castle were men of note, and their presence betokened the importance attached to the person and safe keeping of the captive. During the first three years of her imprisonment, the post of governor was held by the Hof Grand-Marshal von Bothmar. He was succeeded by the Count Bergest, who enjoyed his equivocal dignity of gaoler-governor about a quarter of a century. During the concluding years of the imprisonment of Sophia, her seneschal was a relative of one of her judges, Georg von Busche.

These men behaved to their prisoner with as much courtesy as they dared to show; nor was her captivity severe in anything but the actual deprivation of liberty, and of all intercourse with those she best loved, until after the first few years. The escape of Fräulein Knesebeck from her place of confinement appears to have given the husband of Sophia Dorothea an affectionate uneasiness, which he evidenced by giving orders that his wife’s safe-keeping should be maintained with greater stringency.

From the day of the issuing of that order, she was never allowed to walk, even in the garden of the castle, without a guard. She never rode out, or drove through the neighbouring woods, without a strong escort. Even parts of the castle were prohibited from being intruded upon by her; and so much severity was shown in this respect, that when, on one occasion, a fire broke out in the edifice, to escape from which she must have traversed a gallery which she was forbidden to pass, she stood short of the proscribed limit, her jewel-box in her arms, and herself in almost speechless terror, but refusing to advance beyond the prohibited line until permission reached her from the proper authority.

On such a prisoner time must have hung especially heavy. She had, however, many resources, and every hour, with her, had its occupation. She was the land-steward of her little ducal estate, and performed all the duties of that office. She kept a diary of her thoughts as well as actions; and if this be extant it would be well worthy of being published. The one which has been put forth as hers is a poor work of fancy by some writer unknown, set in dramatic scenes, and altogether to be rejected. Her correspondence, during the period she was permitted to write, was extensive. Every day she had interviews with, and gave instructions to, each of her servants, from the chief of the three cooks downwards. With this, she was personally active in charity. Finally, she was the Lady Bountiful of the district, laying out half her income in charitable uses for the good of her neighbours, and, as Boniface said of the good lady of Lichfield, ‘curing more people in and about the place within ten years, than the doctors had killed in twenty; and that’s a bold word.’

There was a church in the village, which was in rather ruinous condition when her captivity commenced; but this she put in thorough repair, decorated it handsomely, presented it with an organ, and was refused permission to attend there after it had been reopened for public service. For her religious consolation a chaplain had been provided, and she was never trusted, even under guard, to join with the villagers in common worship in the church of the village below. In this respect a somewhat royal etiquette was observed. The chaplain read prayers to the garrison and household in one room, to which the princess and her ladies listened rather than therewith joined, placed as they were in an adjacent room, where they could hear without being seen.

With no relative was she allowed to hold never so brief an interview; and at last even her mother was not permitted to soften by her presence for an hour the rigid and ceremonious captivity of her luckless daughter. Mother and child were allowed to correspond at stated periods, their letters passing open. The princess herself was as much cut off from her own children as if these had been dead and entombed. The little prince and princess were expressly ordered to utterly forget that they had a mother—her very name on their lips would have been condemned as a grievous fault. The boy, George Augustus, was in many points of character similar to his father, and, accordingly, being commanded to forget his mother, he obstinately bore her in memory; and when he was told that he would never have an opportunity afforded him to see her, mentally resolved to make one for himself.

It is but justice to the old Elector to say that in his advanced years, when pleasant sins were no longer profitable to him, he gave them up; and when the youngest of his mistresses had ceased to be attractive, he began to think such appendages little worth the hanging on to his Electoral dignity. For, ceasing to love and live with his ‘favourites,’ he did not the more respect, or hold closer intercourse with, his wife—a course about which the Electress Sophia troubled herself very little.

Ernest Augustus, when he ceased to be under the influence of the disgraced Countess von Platen, began to be sensible of some sympathy for his daughter-in-law, Sophia. He softened in some degree the rigour of her imprisonment and corresponded with her by letter; a correspondence which inspired her with hope that her freedom might result from it. This hope was, however, frustrated by the death of Ernest Augustus, on the 20th of January 1698. From that time the rigour of her imprisonment was increased fourfold.

If the heart of her old father-in-law began to incline towards her as he increased in years, it is not to be wondered at that the heart of her aged father melted towards her as time began to press heavily upon him. But it was the weakest of hearts allied to the weakest of minds. In the comfortlessness of his great age he sought to be comforted by loving her whom he had insanely and unnaturally oppressed—the sole child of his heart and house. In his weakness he addressed himself to that tool of Hanover at Zell, the minister Bernstorf; and that individual so terrified the poor old man by details of the ill consequences which might ensue if the wrath of the new Elector, George Louis, were aroused by the interference of the Duke of Zell in matters which concerned the Elector and his wife, that the old man, feeble in mind and body, yielded, and for a time at least left his daughter to her fate. He thought to compensate for the wrong which he inflicted on her under the impulse of his evil genius, Bernstorf, by adding a codicil to his will.

By this codicil he bequeathed to the daughter whom he had wronged all that it was in his power to leave, in jewels, moneys, and lands; but liberty he could not give her, and so his love could do little more than try to lighten the fetters which he had aided to put on. But there was a short-lived joy in store, both for child and parents. The fetters were to be cast aside for a brief season, and the poor captive was to enjoy an hour of home, of love, and of liberty.

The last year of the seventeenth century (1700) brought with it an accession of greatness to the Electoral family of Hanover, inasmuch as in that year a bill was introduced into parliament, and accepted by that body, which fixed the succession to the crown of England after the Princess Anne, and in default of such princess dying without heirs of her own body, in the person of Sophia of Hanover. William III. had been very desirous for the introduction of this bill; but under various pretexts it had been deferred, the commonest business being allowed to take precedence of it, until the century had nearly expired. The limitations to the royal action, which formed a part of the bill as recommended in the report of the committee, were little to the King’s taste; for they not only affected his employment of foreign troops in England, but shackled his own free and frequent departures from the kingdom. It was imagined by many that these limitations were designed by the leaders in the cabinet, in order to raise disputes between the two houses, by which the bill might be lost. Such is Burnet’s report; and he sarcastically adds thereto, that when much time had been spent in preliminaries, and it was necessary to come to the nomination of the person who should be named presumptive heir next to Queen Anne, the office of doing so was confided to ‘Sir John Bowles, who was then disordered in his senses, and soon after quite lost them.’ ‘He was,’ says Burnet, ‘set on by the party to be the first that should name the Electress-dowager of Brunswick, which seemed done to make it less serious when moved by such a person.’ So that the solemn question of naming the heir to a throne was entrusted to an idiot, who, by the forms of the house, was appointed chairman of the committee for the conduct of the bill. Burnet adds, that the ‘thing,’ as he calls it, was ‘still put off for many weeks at every time that it was called for; the motion was entertained with coldness, which served to heighten the jealousy; the committee once or twice sat upon it, but all the members ran out of the house with so much indecency that the contrivers seemed ashamed of this management; there were seldom fifty or sixty at the committee, yet in conclusion it passed, and was sent up to the Lords.’ Great opposition was expected from the peers, and many of their lordships designedly absented themselves from the discussion. The opposition was slight, and confined to the Marquis of Normanby, who spoke, and the Lords Huntingdon, Plymouth, Guildford, and Jefferies, who protested, against the bill. Burnet affirms, that those who wished well to the Act were glad to have it passed any way, and so would not examine the limitations that were in it, and which they thought might be considered afterwards. ‘We reckoned it,’ says Burnet, ‘a great point carried that we had now a law on our side for a Protestant successor.’ The law was stoutly protested against by the Duchess of Savoy, grand-daughter of Charles I. The protest did not trouble the King, who despatched the Act to the Electress-dowager, and the Garter to her son, by the hands of the Earl of Macclesfield.

The earl was a fitting bearer of so costly and significant a present. He had been attached to the service of the mother of Sophia, and was highly esteemed by the Electress-dowager herself. The earl had no especial commission beyond that which enjoined him to deliver the Act, nor was he dignified by any official appellation. He was neither ambassador, legate, plenipotentiary, nor envoy. He had with him, however, a most splendid suite; which was in some respects strangely constituted, for among its members was the famous Toland, whose book in support of rationality as applied to religion had been publicly burnt by the hangman, in Ireland.

The welcome to this body of gentlemen was right royal. It may be said that the Electoral family had neither cared for the dignity now rendered probable for them, nor in any way toiled or intrigued to bring it within their grasp; but it is certain that their joy was great when the Earl of Macclesfield appeared on the frontier of the Electorate with the Act in one hand and the Garter in the other. He and his suite were met there with a welcome of extraordinary magnificence, betokening ample appreciation of the double gift he brought with him. He himself seemed elevated by his mission, for he was in his general deportment little distinguished by courtly manners or by ceremonious bearing; but it was observed that, on this occasion, nothing could have been more becoming than the way in which he acquitted himself of an office which brought a whole family within view of succession to a royal and powerful throne.

On reaching the confines of the Electorate, the members of the deputation from England were received by personages of the highest official rank, who not only escorted them to the capital, but treated them on the way with a liberality so profuse as to be the wonder of all beholders. They were not allowed to disburse a farthing from their own purses; all they thought fit to order was paid for by the Electoral government, by whose orders they were lodged in the most commodious palace in Hanover, where as much homage was paid them as if each man had been a Kaiser in his own person. The Hanoverian gratitude went so far, that not only were the ambassador and suite treated as favoured guests, and those not alone of the princess but of the people—the latter being commanded to refrain from taking payment from any of them for any article of refreshment they required—but for many days all English travellers visiting the city were made equally free of its caravansaries, and were permitted to enjoy all that the inns could afford without being required to pay for the enjoyment.

The delicate treatment of the Electoral government extended even to the servants of the earl and his suite. It was thought that to require them to dine upon the fragments of their master’s banquets would be derogatory to the splendour of the hospitality of the House of Hanover and an insult to the domestics who followed in the train of the earl. The government accordingly disbursed half-a-crown a day to each liveried follower, and considered such a ‘composition’ as glorious to the reputation of the Electoral house. The menials were even emancipated from service during the sojourn of the deputation in Hanover, and the Elector’s numerous servants waited upon the English visitors zealously throughout the day, but with most splendour in the morning; then, they were to be seen hurrying to the bed-rooms of the different members of the suite, bearing with them silver coffee and tea pots, and other requisites for breakfast, which meal appears to have been lazily indulged in—as if the legation had been habitually wont to ‘make a night of it’—in bed. And there was a good deal of hard drinking on these occasions, but all at the expense of the husband of Sophia Dorothea, who, in her castle of Ahlden, was not even aware of that increase of honour which had fallen upon her consort, and in which she had a right to share.

For those who were, the next day, ill or indolent, there were the ponderous state coaches to carry them whithersoever they would go. The most gorgeous of the fêtes given on this occasion was on the evening of the day on which the Act was solemnly presented to the Electress-dowager. Hanover, famous as it was for its balls, had never seen so glorious a Terpsichorean festival as marked this particular night. At the balls in the old Elector’s time Sophia Dorothea used to shine, first in beauty and in grace; but now her place was ill supplied by the not fair and quite graceless Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg. The supper which followed was Olympian in its profusion, wit, and magnificence. This was at a time when to be sober was to be respectable, but when to be drunk was not to be ungentlemanly. Consequently we find Toland, who wrote an account of the achievements of the day, congratulating himself and readers by stating that, although it was to be expected that in so large and so jovial a party some would be found even more ecstatic than the occasion and the company warranted, yet that, in truth, the number of those who were guilty of excess was but small. Even Lord Mohun kept himself sober, and to the end was able to converse as clearly and intelligibly as Lord Saye and Sele, and his friend ‘my Lord Tunbridge.’

This day of presentation of the Act, and of the festival in honour of it, was one of the greatest days which Hanover had ever seen. Speaking of the mother-in-law of Sophia Dorothea, Toland says:—‘The Electress is three-and-seventy years old, which she bears so wonderfully well, that, had I not many vouchers, I should scarce dare venture to relate it. She has ever enjoyed extraordinary health, which keeps her still very vigorous, of a cheerful countenance, and a merry disposition. She steps as firm and erect as any young lady, has not one wrinkle in her face, which is still very agreeable, nor one tooth out of her head, and reads without spectacles, as I have often seen her do, letters of a small character, in the dusk of the evening. She is as great a writer as our late queen (Mary), and you cannot turn yourself in the palace without meeting some monument of her industry, all the chairs of the presence-chamber being wrought with her own hands. The ornaments of the altar in the electoral chapel are all of her work. She bestowed the same favour on the Protestant abbey, or college, of Lockurn, with a thousand other instances, fitter for your lady to know than for yourself. She is the most constant and greatest walker I ever knew, never missing a day, if it proves fair, for one or two hours, and often more, in the fine garden at Herrnhausen. She perfectly tires all those of her court who attend her in that exercise but such as have the honour to be entertained by her in discourse. She has been long admired by all the learned world as a woman of incomparable knowledge in divinity, philosophy, history, and the subjects of all sorts of books, of which she has read a prodigious quantity. She speaks five languages so well, that by her accent it might be a dispute which of them was her first. They are Low Dutch, German, French, Italian, and English, which last she speaks as truly and easily as any native; which to me is a matter of amazement, whatever advantages she might have in her youth by the conversation of her mother; for though the late king’s (William’s) mother was likewise an Englishwoman, of the same royal family; though he had been more than once in England before the Revolution; though he was married there, and his court continually full of many of that nation, yet he could never conquer his foreign accent. But, indeed, the Electress is so entirely English in her person, in her behaviour, in her humour, and in all her inclinations, that naturally she could not miss of anything that peculiarly belongs to our land. She was ever glad to see Englishmen, long before the Act of Succession. She professes to admire our form of government, and understands it mighty well, yet she asks so many questions about families, customs, laws, and the like, as sufficiently demonstrate her profound wisdom and experience. She has a deep veneration for the Church of England, without losing affection or charity for any other sort of Protestants, and appears charmed with the moderate temper of our present bishops and other of our learned clergy, especially for their approbation of the liberty allowed by law to Protestant Dissenters. She is adored for her goodness among the inhabitants of the country, and gains the hearts of all strangers by her unparalleled affability. No distinction is ever made in her court concerning the parties into which Englishmen are divided, and whereof they carry the effects and impressions with them whithersoever they go, which makes others sometimes uneasy as well as themselves. There it is enough that you are an Englishman; nor can you ever discover by your treatment which are better liked, the Whigs or the Tories. These are the instructions given to all the servants, and they take care to execute them with the utmost exactness. I was the first who had the honour of kneeling and kissing her hand on account of the Act of Succession; and she said, among other discourse, that she was afraid the nation had already repented their choice of an old woman, but that she hoped none of her posterity would give her any reasons to grow weary of their dominion. I answered, that the English had too well considered what they did to change their minds so soon, and they still remembered they were never so happy as when they were last under a woman’s government. Since that time, sir,’ adds the courtly but unorthodox Toland to the ‘Minister of State in Holland,’ to whom his letter is addressed, ‘we have a further confirmation of this truth by the glorious administration of Queen Anne.’

The record would be imperfect if it were not accompanied by another ‘counterfeit presentment,’ that of her son, Prince George Louis, the husband of Sophia Dorothea. Toland describes him as ‘a proper, middle-sized, well-proportioned man, of a genteel address, and good appearance;’ but he adds, that his Highness ‘is reserved, and therefore speaks little, but judiciously.’ ‘He is not to be exceeded,’ says Toland, ‘in his zeal against the intended universal monarchy of France, and so is most hearty for the common cause of Europe,’ for the very good reason, that therein ‘his own is so necessarily involved.’ Toland adds, that George Louis understood the constitution of England better than any ‘foreigner’ he had ever met with; a very safe remark, for our constitution was ill understood abroad; and even had the theoretical knowledge of George Louis been ever so correct, his practice with our constitution betrayed such ignorance that Toland’s assertion may be taken only for what it is worth. ‘Though,’ says the writer just named, ‘though he be well versed in the art of war, and of invincible courage, having often exposed his person to great dangers in Hungary, in the Morea, on the Rhine, and in Flanders, yet he is naturally of peaceable inclination; which mixture of qualities is agreed, by the experience of all ages, to make the best and most glorious princes. He is a perfect man of business, exactly regular in the economy of his revenues’ (which he never was of those of England, seeing that he outran his liberal allowance, and coolly asked the parliament to pay his debts), ‘reads all despatches himself at first hand, writes most of his own letters, and spends a considerable part of his time about such occupations, in his closet, and with his ministers.’ ‘I hope,’ Toland says, ‘that none of our countrymen will be so injudicious as to think his reservedness the effect of sullenness or pride; nor mistake that for state which really proceeds from modesty, caution, and deliberation; for he is very affable to such as accost him, and expects that others should speak to him first, which is the best information I could have from all about him, and I partly know to be true by experience.’... ‘As to what I said of his frugality in laying out the public money, I need not give a more particular proof than that all the expenses of his court, as to eating, drinking, fire, candles, and the like, are duly paid every Saturday night; the officers of his army receive their pay every month, so likewise his envoys in every part of Europe; and all the officers of his household, with the rest that are on the civil list, are cleared off every half-year.’ We are then assured that his administration was equable, mild, and prudent—a triple assertion which his own life and that of his hardly-used wife flatly denied. Toland, however, will have it that there never existed a prince who was so ardently beloved by his subjects. Hanover itself is said to be without division or faction, and all Hanoverians as being in a condition of ecstasy at the Solomon-like rectitude and jurisdiction of his very Serene Highness. He describes Madame Kielmansegge as a woman of sense and wit; and of ‘Mademoiselle Schulemberg,’ he says that she is especially worthy of the rank she enjoys, and that ‘in the opinion of others, as well as mine, she is a lady of extraordinary merit!’ Of Sophia Dorothea, Toland makes no note whatever.

There only remains to be added, that the legation left Hanover loaded with presents. The earl received the portrait of the Electress, with an Electoral crown in diamonds by way of mounting to the frame. George Louis bestowed upon him a gold basin and ewer. Gold medals and snuffboxes were showered among the other members. The chaplain, Dr. Sandys, was especially honoured by rich gifts in medals and books. He was the first who ever read the service of our Church in the presence of the Electress. She joined in it with apparent fervour, and admired it generally; but when a hint was conveyed to her that it might be well were she to introduce it in place of the Calvinistic form used in her chapel, as of the Lutheran in that of the Elector, she shook her head, with a smile; said that there was no difference between the three forms, in essentials, and that episcopacy was merely the established form in England. She thought for the present she would ‘let well alone.’ And it was done accordingly!

In the year 1705 the war was raging which France was carrying on for the purpose of extending her limits and influence, and which England and her allies had entered into in order to resist such aggression and restore that terribly oscillating matter—the balance of European power. The Duke of Marlborough had, at the prayer of the Dutch States, left the banks of the Moselle, in order to help Holland, menaced on the side of Liège by a strong French force. Our great duke left General D’Aubach at Trèves to secure the magazines which the English and Dutch had laid up there; but upon the approach of Marshal Villars, D’Aubach destroyed the magazines and abandoned Trèves, of which the French immediately took possession. This put an end to all the schemes which had been laid for attacking France on the side of the Moselle, where her frontiers were but weak, and carried her confederates back to Flanders, where, as the old-fashioned chronicler, Salmon, remarks, ‘they yearly threw away thousands of brave fellows against stone walls.’ Thereupon, Hanover became menaced. On this, Horace Walpole has something in point:

‘As the genuine wife was always detained in her husband’s power, he seems not to have wholly dissolved their union; for on the approach of the French army towards Hanover, during Queen Anne’s reign, the Duchess of Halle (Ahlden) was sent home to her father and mother, who doted on their only child, and did retain her for a whole year, and did implore, though in vain, that she might continue to reside with them.’ On the return of ‘the genuine wife’ to captivity some of the old restrictions were taken off. There was no prohibition of intercourse with the parents; for the Duke of Zell had resolved on proceeding to visit his daughter, but only deferred his visit until the conclusion of a grand hunt in which he was anxious to take part. He went; and between fatigue, exposure to inclement weather, and neglect on his return, he became seriously ill, rapidly grew worse, died on the 28th of August 1705, and by his death gave the domains of a dukedom to Hanover and deprived his daughter of a newly-acquired friend.

The death of the Duke of Zell was followed by honour to Bernstorf. George Louis appointed him to the post of prime-minister of Hanover, and at the same time made him a count. The death of the father of Sophia Dorothea was, however, followed by consequences more fatal than those just named. The severity of the imprisonment of the princess was much aggravated; and though she was permitted to have an occasional interview with her mother, all application to be allowed to see her two children was sternly refused—and this refusal, as the poor prisoner used to remark, was the bitterest portion of her misery.

It was of her son that George Louis used to say, in later years, ‘Il est fougueux, mais il a du cœur’—hot-headed but not heartless. George Augustus manifested this disposition very early in life. He was on one occasion hunting in the neighbourhood of Luisberg, not many miles from the scene of his mother’s imprisonment, when he made a sudden resolution to visit her, regardless of the strict prohibition against such a course laid on him by his father and the Hanoverian government. Laying spurs to his horse, he galloped at full speed from the field, and in the direction of Ahlden. His astonished suite, seeing the direction which he was following at so furious a rate, immediately suspected his design and became legally determined to frustrate it. They left pursuing the stag and took to chasing the prince. The heir-apparent led them far away over field and furrow, to the great detriment of the wind and persons of his pursuers; and he would have distanced the whole body of flying huntsmen, but that his steed was less fleet than those of two officers of the Electoral household, who kept close to the fugitive, and at last came up with him on the skirts of a wood adjacent to Ahlden. With mingled courtesy and firmness they represented to him that he could not be permitted to go further in a direction which was forbidden, as by so doing he would not only be treating the paternal command with contempt, but would be making them accomplices in his crime of disobedience. George Augustus, vexed and chafed, argued the matter with them, appealed to their affections and feelings, and endeavoured to convince them both as men and as ministers, as human beings and as mere official red-tapists, that he was authorised to continue his route to Ahlden by every law, earthly or divine.

The red-tapists, however, acknowledged no law under such circumstances but that of their Electoral lord and master, and that law they would not permit to be broken. Laying hold of the bridle of the prince’s steed, they turned its head homewards and rode away with George Augustus in a state of full discontent and strict arrest.

CHAPTER X.
THE SUCCESSION—DEATH OF THE ELECTRESS.

Marriage of Prince George to Princess Caroline of Anspach, and of his sister to the Crown Prince of Prussia—Honours conferred by Queen Anne on Prince George—Intention to bring over to England the Princess Sophia—Opposed by Queen Anne—Foundation of the kingdom of Prussia—The establishment of this Protestant kingdom promoted by the Jesuits—The Electress Sophia’s visit to Loo—The law granting taxes on births, deaths, and marriages—Complaint of Queen Anne against the Electress—Tom D’Urfey’s doggrel verses on her—Death of the Electress—Character of her.

The Elector, meditating on this sudden development of the domestic affections of his son, resolved to aid such development, not by giving him access to his mother, but by bestowing on him the hand of a consort. Caroline of Anspach was a very accomplished young lady, owing to the careful education which she received at the hands of the best-loved child of Sophia Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg, and the first, but short-lived, Queen of Prussia. If the instructress was able, the pupil was apt. She was quick, enquiring, intelligent, and studious. Her application was great, her perseverance unwearied, and her memory excellent. She learned quickly and retained largely, seldom forgetting anything worth remembrance; and was an equally good judge of books and individuals. Her perception of character has, perhaps, never been surpassed. She had no inclination for trivial subjects, nor affection for trivial people. She had a heart and mind only for philosophers and philosophy; but she was not the less a lively girl, or the more a pedant on that account. She delighted in lively conversation, and could admirably lead or direct it. Her knowledge of languages was equal to that of Sophia of Hanover, of whom she was also the equal in wit and in repartee. But therewith she was more tender, more gentle, more generous.

The marriage of George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Brunswick-Hanover, with Caroline, daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Anspach, was solemnised in the year 1705. The wife of George Augustus was of the same age as her husband. She had had the misfortune to lose her father when she was yet extremely young, and had been brought up at the Court of Berlin under the guardianship of Sophia Charlotte, the consort of Frederick of Prussia.

The sister of George Augustus, the only daughter of Sophia Dorothea, and bearing the same baptismal names as her mother, was also married during the captivity of the latter. Three remarkable Englishmen were present at the marriage of the daughter of Sophia Dorothea with the Prince Royal of Prussia. These were Lord Halifax, Sir John Vanbrugh, and Joseph Addison. Queen Anne, who had restored Halifax to a favour from which he had fallen, entrusted him to carry the bill for the naturalisation of the Electoral family and for the better security of the Protestant line of succession, and also the Order of the Garter for the Electoral Prince. On this mission, Addison was the invited companion of the patron whom he so choicely flattered. Vanbrugh was present in his official character of Clarencieux King-at-Arms, and performed the ceremony of investiture. The little Court of Hanover was joyfully splendid on this doubly festive occasion. The nuptials were celebrated with more accompanying gladness than ever followed them. The pomp was something uncommon in its way, and the bride must have been wearied of being married long before the stupendous solemnity had at length reached its slowly-arrived-at conclusion. She became Queen of Prussia in 1712.

Honours now fell thick upon the Electoral family, but Sophia Dorothea was not permitted to have any share therein. In 1706, Queen Anne created her son, George Augustus, Baron of Tewkesbury, Viscount Northallerton, Earl of Milford Haven, Marquis and Duke of Cambridge. With these honours it was also decreed that he should enjoy full precedence over the entire peerage.

There was a strong party in England whose most earnest desire it was that the Electress Sophia, in whose person the succession to the crown of Great Britain was settled, should repair to London—not permanently to reside there, but in order that during a brief visit she might receive the homage of the Protestant party. She was, however, reluctant to move from her books, philosophy, and cards, until she could be summoned as Queen. Failing here, an attempt was made to bring over George Louis, who was nothing loth to come; but the idea of a visit from him was to poor Queen Anne the uttermost abomination. Her Majesty had some grounds for her dislike to a visit from her old wooer. She was nervously in terror of a monster popular demonstration. Such a demonstration was publicly talked of; and the enemies of the house of Stuart, by way of instruction and warning to the Queen, whose Jacobite bearing towards her brother was matter of notoriety, had determined, in the event of George Louis visiting England, to give him an escort into London that should amount to the very significant number of some forty or fifty thousand men.

The journal of the lord-keeper, Cowper, states the official answer of the princess to all the invitations which had been agitated by the Hanoverian Tories during the year 1704 and the succeeding summer. ‘At the Queen’s Cabinet Council, Sunday, the 11th of November 1705, foreign letters read in her Majesty’s presence, the substance remarkable, that at Hanover was a person, agent to the discontented party here, to invite over the Princess Sophia and the Electoral Prince (afterwards George II.) into England, assuring them that a party here was ready to propose it. That the Princess Sophia had caused the same person to be acquainted, “that she judged the message came from such as were enemies to her family; that she would never hearken to such a proposal but when it came from the Queen of England herself;” and withal she had discouraged the attempt so much that it was believed nothing more could be said in it.’

Sophia, who was naturally reluctant to come to England upon a mere popular or partisan invitation, would gladly have come on the bidding of the Queen. This was never given. In one year the Queen sent a request to the Electress to aid her in promoting the peace of Europe, and a present to her god-daughter Anne, the first child of George Augustus and Caroline of Anspach. Earl Rivers carried both letter and present. The letter was acknowledged with cold courtesy by the Electress, in a communication to the Earl of Strafford, secretary of state. The communication bears date the 11th of November 1711; and, after saying that the gift is infinitely esteemed, the Electress adds—‘I would not, however, give my parchment for it, since that will be an everlasting monument in the archives of Hanover, and the present for the little princess will go, when she is grown up, into another family.’

Early in 1714 Anne addressed a powerful remonstrance to the aged Electress, complaining that ever since the Act of Succession had been settled, there had been a constant agitation, the object of which was to bring over a prince of the Hanoverian house to reside in England, even during the writer’s life. She accuses the Electress of having come, though perhaps tardily, into this sentiment, which had its origin in political pretensions, and she adds, that if persevered in, it may end in consequences dangerous to the succession itself, ‘which is not secure any other ways than as the princess who actually wears the crown maintains her authority and prerogative.’

Her Majesty addressed a second letter to George Augustus, as Duke of Cambridge, expressing her thoughts with respect to the design he had of coming into her kingdom. ‘I should tell you,’ she says, ‘nothing can be more dangerous to the tranquillity of my dominions, and the right of succession in your line, and consequently most disagreeable to me.’

The proud Dowager-Electress had declared that ‘she cared not when she died, if on her tomb could be recorded that she was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.’ These words are said to have given great offence to Queen Anne.

There is evidence that the last letters of Anne had something to do with the death of the Electress. They had hardly been received and read, when her health, which had been for some time failing, grew worse. She rallied, however, for a time, and was able to take exercise, but the blow had been given from which she never recovered.

Molyneux, an agent of the Duke of Marlborough at Hanover, says he was on his way to the country palace of the Electress, when he was suddenly informed that she had been seized with mortal illness in one of the garden-walks.

‘I ran up there, and found her fast expiring in the arms of the poor Electoral Princess (Caroline, afterwards Queen of George II.) and amidst the tears of a great many of her servants, who endeavoured in vain to help her. I can give you no account of her illness, but that I believe the chagrin of those villainous letters I sent you last post has been in a great measure the cause of it. The Rheingravine who has been with her these fifteen years has told me she never knew anything make so deep an impression on her as the affair of the prince’s journey, which I am sure she had to the last degree at heart, and she has done me the honour to tell me so twenty times. In the midst of this, however, these letters arrived, and these, I verily believe, have broken her heart and brought her with sorrow to the grave. The letters were delivered on Wednesday, at seven.

‘When I came to court she was at cards, but was so full of these letters that she got up and ordered me to follow her into the garden, where she gave them to me to read, and walked, and spoke a great deal in relation to them. I believe she walked three hours that night. The next morning, which was Thursday, I heard that she was out of order, and on going immediately to court, she ordered me to be called into her bed-chamber. She gave me the letters I sent you to copy; she bade me send them next post, and bring them afterwards to her to court. This was on Friday. In the morning, on Friday, they told me she was very well, but seemed much chagrined. She was dressed, and dined with the Elector as usual. At four, she did me the honour to send to town for some other copies of the same letters; and then she was still perfectly well. She walked and talked very heartily in the orangery. After that, about six, she went out to walk in the garden, and was still very well. A shower of rain came, and as she was walking pretty fast to get to shelter, they told her she was walking a little too fast. She answered, “I believe I do,” and dropped down on saying these words, which were her last. They raised her up, chafed her with spirits, tried to bleed her; but it was all in vain, and when I came up, she was as dead as if she had been four days so.’[2] Such was the end, on the 10th of June 1714, of a very remarkable woman.

CHAPTER XI.
AHLDEN AND ENGLAND.

The neglected captive of Ahlden—Unnoticed by her son-in-law, except to secure her property—Madame von Schulenburg—The Queen of Prussia prohibited from corresponding with her imprisoned mother—The captive betrayed by Count de Bar—Death of Queen Anne—Anxiety felt for the arrival of King George—The Duke of Marlborough’s entry—Funeral of the Queen—Public entry of the King—Adulation of Dr. Young—Madame Kielmansegge, the new royal favourite—Horace Walpole’s account of her—‘A Hanover garland’—Ned Ward, the Tory poet—Expression of the public opinion—The Duchess of Kendal bribed by Lord Bolingbroke—Bribery and corruption general—Abhorrence of parade by the King.

During marriage festivals and court fêtes held to celebrate some step in greatness, Sophia Dorothea continued to vegetate in Ahlden. She was politically dead; and even in the domestic occurrences of her family, events in which a mother might be gracefully allowed to have a part, she enjoyed no share. The marriages of her children and the births of their children were not officially communicated to her. She was left to learn them through chance or the courtesy of individuals.

Her daughter was now the second Queen of Prussia, but the King cared not to exercise his influence in behalf of his unfortunate mother-in-law. Not that he was unconcerned with respect to her. His consort was heiress to property over which her mother had control, and Frederick was not tranquil of mind until this property had been secured as the indisputable inheritance of his wife. He was earnest enough in his correspondence with Sophia Dorothea until this consummation was arrived at; and when he held the writings which secured the succession of certain portions of the property of the duchess on his consort, he ceased to trouble himself further with any question connected with the unfortunate prisoner; except, indeed, that he forbade his wife to hold any further intercourse with her mother, by letter or otherwise.

Few and trivial are the incidents told of her long captivity. The latter had been embittered, in 1703, by the knowledge that Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg was the mother of another daughter, Margaret Gertrude, of whom the Elector was the father. This child was ten years younger than her sister, Petronilla Melusina, who subsequently figured at the Court of George II. as Countess of Walsingham, and who was the uncared-for wife of Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield.

Previous to the prohibition laid on his wife by the King of Prussia, an epistolary intercourse had been privately maintained between Sophia Dorothea and her daughter. Such intercourse had never received the King’s sanction; and when it came to his knowledge, at the period of the settlement of part of the maternal property on the daughter, he peremptorily ordered its cessation. It had been maintained chiefly by means of a Chevalier de Bar; Ludwig, a privy-councillor at Berlin; Frederick, a page of the Queen’s; and a bailiff of the castle of Ahlden. There were too many confederates in a matter so simple, and the whole of them betrayed the poor lady, for whom they professed to act. The most important agent was the chevalier: in him the duchess confided longest, and in his want of faith she was the last to believe. He had introduced himself to her by sending her presents of snuff, no unusual present to a lady in those days—though it is pretended that these gifts bore a peculiar signification, known only to the donor and the recipient. They probably had less meaning than the presents forwarded to the prisoner by her daughter, consisting now of her portrait, another time of a watch, or some other trinket, which served to pass a letter with it, in which were filial injunctions to the poor mother to be patient and resigned, and to put no trust in the Count de Bar.

The prisoner did not heed the counsel, but continued to confide in a man who was prodigal of promise, and traitorous of performance. Her hopes were fixed upon escaping, but they were foiled by the watchfulness of noble spies, who exultingly told her that her husband was a king. And it is asserted that she might have been a recognised queen if she would but have confessed that she had failed in obedience towards her husband. It is certain that a renewed, but it may not have been an honest, attempt at reconciliation was made just previous to the accession of George I., but the old reply fell from the prisoner’s lips:—‘If I am guilty, I am not worthy of him: if I am innocent, he is not worthy of me.’

The death of the Electress Sophia, in 1714, was followed very shortly after by the demise of Queen Anne. This event had taken all parties somewhat by surprise. They stood face to face, as it were, over the dying Queen. The Jacobites were longing for her to name her brother as her successor, whom they would have proclaimed at once at the head of the army. The Hanoverian party were feverish with fears and anticipations; but they had the regency dressed up and ready in the back ground, and Secretary Craggs, booted and spurred, was making such haste as could then be made on his road to Hanover, to summon King George. The Jacobite portion of the cabinet was individually bold in resolving what ought to be done, but they were, bodily, afraid of the responsibility of doing it. Each man of each faction had his king’s name ready upon his lips, awaiting only that the lethargy of the Queen should be succeeded by irretrievable death to give it joyful utterance. Anne died on the 1st of August 1714; the Jacobites drew a breath of hesitation; and in the meantime the active Whigs instantly proclaimed King George, gave Addison the mission of announcing the demise of one sovereign to another, who was that sovereign’s successor, and left the Jacobites to their vexation and their threatened redress.

Lord Berkley was sent with the fleet to Orange Polder, in Holland, there to bring over the new King; but Craggs had not only taken a very long time to carry his invitation to the monarch, but the husband of Sophia, when he received it, showed no hot haste to take advantage thereof. The Earl of Dorset was despatched over to press his immediate coming, on the ground of the affectionate impatience of his new subjects. The King was no more moved thereby than he was by the first announcement of Lord Clarendon, the English ambassador, at Hanover. On the night of the 5th of August that envoy had received an express, announcing the demise of the Queen. At two o’clock in the morning he hastened with what he supposed the joyful intelligence to Herrnhausen, and caused George Louis to be aroused, that he might be the first to salute him as King. The new monarch yawned, expressed himself vexed, and went to sleep again as calmly as any serene highness. In the morning some one delicately hinted, as if to encourage the husband of Sophia Dorothea in staying where he was, that the presbyterian party in England was a dangerous regicidal party. ‘Not so,’ said George, who seemed to be satisfied that there was no peril in the new greatness; ‘not so; I have nothing to fear from the king-killers; they are all on my side.’ But still he tarried; one day decreeing the abolition of the excise, the next ordering, like King Arthur in Fielding’s tragedy, all the insolvent debtors to be released from prison. While thus engaged, London was busy with various pleasant occupations.

On the 3rd of August the late Queen was opened; and on the following day her bowels were buried, with as much ceremony as they deserved, in Westminster Abbey. The day subsequent to this ceremony, the Duke of Marlborough, who had been in voluntary exile abroad, and whose office in command of the imperial armies had been held for a short time, and not discreditably, by George Louis, made a triumphant entry into London. The triumph, however, was marred by the sudden breaking down of his coach at Temple-Bar—an accident ominous of his not again rising to power. The Lords and Commons then sent renewed assurances of loyalty to Hanover, and renewed prayers that the lord there would doff his electoral cap, and come and try his kingly crown. To quicken this, the lower house, on the 10th, voted him the same revenues the late Queen had enjoyed—excepting those arising from the Duchy of Cornwall, which were, by law, invested in the Prince of Wales. On the 13th Craggs arrived in town to herald the King’s coming; and on the 14th the Hanoverian party were delighted to hear that on the Pretender repairing from Lorraine to Versailles, to implore of Louis to acknowledge him publicly as king, the French monarch had pleaded, in bar, his engagements with the House of Hanover, and that thereon the Pretender had returned dispirited to Lorraine. On the 24th of the month the late Queen’s body was privately buried in Westminster Abbey, by order of her successor, who appeared to have a dread of finding the old lady of his young love yet upon the earth. This order was followed by another, which ejected from their places many officials who had hoped to retain them—and chief of these was Bolingbroke. London then became excited at hearing that the King had arrived at the Hague on the 5th of September. It was calculated that the nearer he got to his kingdom the more accelerated would be his speed; but George was not to be hurried. Madame Kielmansegge, who shared what was called his regard with Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg, had been retarded in her departure from Hanover by the heaviness of her debts. The daughter of the Countess von Platen would not have been worthy of her mother had she suffered herself to be long detained by such a trifle. She, accordingly, gave her creditors the slip, set off to Holland, and was received with a heavy sort of delight by the King. The exemplary couple tarried above a week at the Hague; and, on the 16th of September George and his retinue set sail for England. Between that day and the day of his arrival at Greenwich, the heads of the Regency were busy in issuing decrees:—now it was for the prohibition of fireworks on the day of his Majesty’s entry; next against the admission of unprivileged carriages into Greenwich Park on the King’s arrival; and, lastly, one promising one hundred thousand pounds to any loyal subject who might be lucky enough to catch the Pretender in England, and who would bring him a prisoner to London.

On the 18th of September the King landed at Greenwich; and on the two following days, while he sojourned there, he was waited on by various officials, who went smiling to the foot of the throne, and came away frowning at the cold treatment they received there. They who thought themselves the most secure endured the most disgraceful falls, especially the Duke of Ormond, who, as captain-general, had been three parts inclined to proclaim the Pretender. He repaired in gorgeous array to do homage to King George; but the King would only receive his staff of office, and would not see the ex-bearer of it; who returned home with one dignity the less, and for George one enemy the more.

The public entry into London on the 20th was splendid, and so was the court holden at St. James’s on the following day. A lively incident, however, marked the proceedings of this first court. Colonel Chudleigh, in the crowd, branded Mr. Allworth, M.P. for New Windsor, as a Jacobite; whereupon they both left the palace, went in a coach to Marylebone Fields, and there fought a duel, in which Mr. Allworth was killed on the spot. This was the first libation of blood offered to the King.

No poet affected to deplore the decease of Anne with such profundity of jingling grief as Young. He had not then achieved a name, and he was eagerly desirous to build up a fortune. His threnodia on the death of Queen Anne is a fine piece of measured maudlin; but the author appears to have bethought himself, before he had expended half his stock of sorrows, that there would be more profit in welcoming a living than bewailing a defunct monarch. Accordingly, wiping up his tears, and arraying his face in the blandest of smiles, he addressed himself to the double task of recording the reception of George and registering his merits. He first, however, apologetically states, as his warrant for turning from weeping for Anne to cheering for George, that all the sorrow in the world cannot reverse doom, that groans cannot ‘unlock th’ inexorable tomb’; that a fond indulgence of woe is sad folly, for, from such a course, he exclaims, with a fine eye to a poet’s profit—

What fruit can rise or what advantage flow!

So, turning his face from the tomb of Anne to the throne of George, he grandiosely waves his hat, and thus he sings:—

Welcome great stranger to Britannia’s throne!

Nor let thy country think thee all her own.

Of thy delay how oft did we complain!

Our hope reach’d out and met thee on the main.

With pray’r we smooth the billows for thy feet,

With ardent wishes fill thy swelling sheet;

And when thy foot took place on Albion’s shore,