THE 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 Lives of the Queens of England 
 
 of the House of Hanover 
 
 Volume I.
 
 List of Illustrations 
 
 GEORGE THE SECOND (See page 308) . . Frontispiece 
 
 SOPHIA, PRINCESS PALATINE 60 
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA, CONSORT OF GEORGE I. . .124 
 
 GEORGE THE FIRST 258 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK 335
 
 Preface to the Second Edition 
 
 THE guest of Polycrates, who ran away from his 
 host because he was for ever fortunate, was like one 
 of those critics, of the Jeremy Collier school, who 
 cannot witness a modest success without, to speak 
 metaphorically, trying to slit the nose of the author. 
 For my own part, I have little reason to complain ; 
 my task is rather to be grateful, and I take the 
 opportunity of the appearance of a second edition 
 of my anecdotical sketches, to give expression to 
 such gratitude, with all the heartiness which the 
 public patronage deserves. 
 
 In the introduction to the first edition, I made 
 ready acknowledgment of the many defects which 
 marked my volumes, and in the body of the work 
 itself I entered especial protest against my being 
 supposed presumptuous enough to claim the title 
 of "historian," humble "story-teller" was all that 
 I presumed to call myself. To review me under the 
 former title, therefore, would show a culpable disre- 
 gard for truth, or unexampled carelessness on the 
 part of the reviewer. By one such reviewer, some 
 typographical errors have been made the most of ; 
 and mistakes, such as a c for a t in the name of 
 Moltke, are dwelt upon by a critic, who does not 
 trouble himself to write correctly the name of my 
 
 ix
 
 x PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 own publisher. In this he reminds me of Walpole, 
 sneering at the limping syntax of Chesterfield, 
 "Lord Chesterfield," says Horace, "who thought of 
 nothing so much as the purity of his language, says, 
 You and me shall not be well together,' and this not 
 once, but on every such occasion. A friend of mine 
 says that it was certainly to avoid that female inac- 
 curacy of ' They don't mind you and I ; ' and yet," 
 adds the critical Walpole, "the latter is the least bad 
 of the two." 
 
 This sort of criticism recalls to my mind that once 
 famous or infamous individual whose name, as was 
 remarked by Moore, rhymed so well to "bilks." I 
 allude to the notorious John Wilks, Jr., whose bubble 
 schemes scattered such desolation in that year of 
 devastation, 1826. The great ex-M. P. for Sudbury 
 contrived to withdraw from the very particular, but 
 not very flattering, notice of the public for a few 
 years ; but about 1 843 he was in England again, 
 and was employed upon Frase^s Magazine, when 
 chance threw him in my way. His contributions 
 read like those of a highly honourable and a remark- 
 ably pure-minded man, and they chiefly consisted in 
 his "Reminiscences of Men and Things." They 
 who remember his career can best determine if the 
 tone of his productions gave any true idea of the 
 man. He lived loosely, and edited a religious news- 
 paper. 
 
 I had, at the time, but just commenced my own 
 unpretending literary life by some "first appear- 
 ances" in Fraser, and it was Wilks's practice to 
 criticise these with a freedom which was very read- 
 ily excused. "They are all very well," he would
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xi 
 
 say, "and may be acceptable to young ladies, but 
 if you would rise to be a reviewer, you must learn 
 how to wield a tomahawk, and to be careless whether 
 your victim deserve to be murdered or not." I sug- 
 gested to the bubble ^speculator that his patronising 
 Regina would never tolerate a critic who was guided 
 by such a principle. Thereupon he laughed aloud, 
 and told me how, in the early numbers, Byron was 
 stigmatised as a lame malignant, Jeffrey " put down " 
 as a man almost forgotten, Bowring described as ser- 
 vile and sycophantish, the great and glorious Profes- 
 sor Wilson sneered at as a writer of sugary novels 
 for tear-eyed misses ; and Bulwer pooh-poohed as 
 having " no imagination and very little fire," dealing 
 in "vulgar slip-slop," and whose alleged wit and 
 wisdom were only writhings and contortions. I 
 expressed, of course, a conviction that they who 
 said as much of these authors did so after mature 
 study of their works : he laughed aloud again, and 
 opening at page 209 of the second number of the 
 magazine, he pointed to the following passage : " Re- 
 viewers labour under the ill reputation of never read- 
 ing the books which they review, and we plead guilty 
 to having frequently committed that felonious but 
 pleasant practice." "Well," said I, to the highly 
 respectable writer in Fraser, "if I ever produce a 
 book that shall be honoured by the notice of one 
 of your reviewers, I shall not complain, even if I 
 be made the victim of a felonious practice.' " Nor 
 can I say I have suffered in this way. Even if I 
 had, I could accept censure cheerfully from a quarter 
 which sneers at "Christopher North," and affects to 
 think that there is something unmanly in writing
 
 xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 what may gain the peculiar sympathy of women. I 
 beg leave rather to hold with Von Redwitz, that, 
 
 " . . . ist der Schreiber nicht zu neiden, 
 Den nicht die Jungfraun mogen leiden." 
 
 I do not feel authorised to notice otherwise than 
 courteously the critical censure to which I may be 
 justly exposed, on account of errors made through 
 overhaste, but duly corrected. It is a matter of 
 indifference to me whether, in casting such censure, 
 my critic be influenced by irreproachable motives, or 
 by a desire to further the interests of another book 
 on the same subject, by making the most of the real 
 or fancied demerits in mine. In either case, I will, 
 in future, endeavour to profit by the correction ; pro- 
 fessing, at the same time, my right to maintain my 
 own opinion on persons and events, differ from it 
 any illustrious ovSels that may. 
 
 But there remains a special reason why I should 
 venture to reply to the only unfavourable critic whom 
 it has been, as yet, my lot to encounter. This gen- 
 tleman makes the exceedingly foolish assertion, that 
 in my book I let slip no opportunity to blacken and 
 vilify the great ones of the house of Brunswick, 
 whose illustrious descendant sits on the throne of 
 these realms ! Well, it is a pleasure to see a con- 
 ceited man break his head with his own flail, and this 
 my judicious adversary has done effectually. The 
 champion of Brunswick asserts that the correspond- 
 ence published some few years ago as that of Sophia 
 Dorothea and Konigsmark, must be considered au- 
 thentic ; at least, he holds it to be such, although he 
 admits that every one has a right to form his own
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xiii 
 
 opinion thereon. He maintains that this unclean 
 mass, jumble of dates, no dates, and wrong dates, 
 with words supplied to eke out the sense required, 
 is conclusive of the guilt of Sophia Dorothea. The 
 declaration of the latter, made weekly, on her taking 
 the sacrament, protesting her innocence, he holds as 
 worthless. Nay, he goes so far as to say that there 
 are grounds for believing that an illicit intercourse 
 between the too famous pair existed before the mar- 
 riage of Sophia and George Louis. So the enemies 
 of the lady thought, when they used, in London, to 
 speak of George Augustus as "young Konigsmark," 
 considering the count as his father. My reviewer 
 would have shown more judgment had he "conde- 
 scended " to take up the glove he affects to fancy I 
 threw down, touching the matter of Leibnitz, rather 
 than agitate this more delicate question at all. Does 
 he not tremble at the very thought that, if the abom- 
 inable correspondence and his own silly "probabil- 
 ity " be maintainable, he bastardises a truly legitimate 
 branch of Brunswick, and authorises the heralds to 
 clap a bar-sinister on the arms of the royal family of 
 England ? The too eager gentleman, of course, did 
 not see the effect of his own awkward argument. 
 Let me implore him to consider the case of the 
 ass in the fable. That celebrated animal fancied 
 he could, with his hoofs, whisk off the flies from 
 the face of his sleeping master, and what was the 
 result ? He only inflicted an ugly bruise and left a 
 smear behind him. 
 
 Surely, when this critic, after telling his readers 
 that in the story of Sophia Dorothea I had only fur- 
 nished a sentimental romance for ladies, reproaches
 
 xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 me for not making use of this disgusting correspond- 
 ence, he may be said to have allowed his sense of 
 decency to sleep for a moment ; nor has he made 
 any but an infelicitous use of it himself. The earliest 
 date in the correspondence is posterior to the birth 
 of him who was subsequently George the Second; 
 but my reviewer's edifying discovery that there is 
 a probability for believing that the guilty intercourse 
 of the count and George the Second's mother com- 
 menced before her marriage with our first George, 
 only tends to establish the ugly suspicion, one 
 which never even entered into the head of the Pre- 
 tender himself, that a bastard of Konigsmark may 
 have ascended the English throne; an event which 
 was certainly not contemplated by the Act of Suc- 
 cession. 
 
 Compared with this, my culpable inadvertence of 
 making a couple of blunders in a matter of relation- 
 ship sinks into the character of a very venial error. 
 And now, who does most wrong to Brunswick, he 
 who roughly shakes only the unclean bygone princes 
 of that house, or he who, disregarding the sacra- 
 mental assertion of a woman, draws conclusions 
 which, only that they are as worthless as they are 
 heedlessly made, might arm the enemies of the 
 Crown with the most terrible of weapons? 
 
 I would add more, were it worth while, for the ben- 
 efit of a gentleman who " rails by system and detracts 
 by rule," who does not seem to know that Moreri is 
 good authority for speaking of " Henry the Dog," 
 and who gravely asserts that the bishopric of Osna- 
 burgh was "always" given to a younger son of the 
 house of Hanover, when, in truth, it was, quite as
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xv 
 
 often, not in the family at all. But in truth it is 
 only in his capacity of champion for Brunswick (!) 
 that I have to do with him. As such, the illustrious 
 house, for whose members I have as much sincere 
 respect as he, will have found in their champion " not 
 much of a conjuror;" and in that hastily assumed 
 character, I will only say of him what the English 
 nobleman said to the dull old herald who had mis- 
 placed his lordship in a royal procession : " Why, 
 you silly man, you don't understand your own silly 
 business." THE AUTHOR. 
 
 September, 1855.
 
 Contents 
 
 Sophia Dorothea, of Zell 
 Wife of George I. 
 
 CHAPTER i. 
 
 GEORGE OF BRUNSWICK-ZELL AND ELEANORE D'OLBREUSE 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Woden, the Father of the Line of Brunswick The Seven 
 Brothers at Dice, for a Wife D'Esmiers d'Olbreuse and 
 His Daughter Eleanora Love-passages, and a Marriage 
 A Bishop of Osnaburgh Birth of Sophia Dorothea . 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WIVES AND FAVOURITES 
 
 The Single Blessing Allowed to Women A Ducal House- 
 hold 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 18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BRUNSWICKER IN ENGLAND 
 
 Prince Augustus of Wolfenbuttel, the Accepted Lover of 
 Sophia Superstition of the Duke of Zell Intrigues 
 of Madame von Platen A Rival Lover Prince George
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Louis : Makes an Offer of Marriage to Princess Anne 
 Policy of the Prince of Orange Prince George in Eng- 
 land : 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 . 32 
 
 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, Mile. Ermengarde von Schulemberg A Mar- 
 riage Fete, and Intended Insult to the Princess Sophia 
 Gross Vice of George Louis 60 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COURT LIFE IN GERMANY THE ELECTORATE OF HANOVER 
 
 Vienna, the Most Dissolute Capital in Europe Extravagance 
 and Profligacy of Augustus the Strong, afterward King of 
 Poland Fete in Honour of His Mistress, Maria Aurora 
 KSnigsmark The Alchemist, and His Fate Gorgeous 
 Wrecks of His Reign at Dresden Count Bruhl's Profli- 
 gate Expenditure The Court of Bavaria The Sporting 
 Propensities of the Electress Maria Amelia Her Fond- 
 ness for Dogs Reception of George the First's Mis- 
 tresses by the English Mob Infamy of the German 
 Ecclesiastical Princes Expulsion of the Duke of Meck- 
 lenburg-Schwerin His Matrimonial Adventures His 
 Apologist Leibnitz Poverty of Prince Rupert at His 
 Death, and Lottery for His Jewels The House of Han- 
 over Ranges Itself against France Ernest Augustus 
 Created Elector Domestic Rebellion of His Son Maxi- 
 milian His Accomplice, Count Molcke, Beheaded 
 The Electors of Germany 73
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 PACK 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE KONIGSMARKS 
 
 Count Charles John Kbnigsmark'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 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 KONIGSMARK AT COURT 
 
 Various Accomplishments of Count Philip Christopher Kbnigs- 
 mark 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 Dis- 
 covery of Her Using Rouge Indiscretion of the Princess 
 Her Visit to Zell The Elector's Criminal Intimacy 
 with Madame von Schulemberg 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 . . . 108 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CATASTROPHE 
 
 The Scheming Mother Foiled Count Konigsmark Too 
 Garrulous in His Cups An Eavesdropper A Forged 
 Note A Mistress's Revenge Murder of the Count 
 The Countess Aurora Konigsmark'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 Mile, 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 Univer- 
 sal in England The Countess Aurora Konigsmark Be- 
 comes the Mistress of Augustus, King of Poland Her
 
 xx CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Unsuccessful Mission to Charles XII. Exemplary Con- 
 duct in Her Latter Years Becomes Prioress of the 
 Nunnery of Quedlinburg 125 
 
 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 Return- 
 ing 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 Lquis 
 
 Magnificent Present to Lord Macclesfield The Prin- 
 cess Sophia and the English Liturgy Death of the Duke 
 of Zell Visit of Prince George to His Captive Mother 
 Prevented 159 
 
 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 Protes- 
 tant 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 Doggerel 
 Verses on Her Death of the Electress Character of 
 Her 182 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AHLDEN AND ENGLAND 
 
 The Neglected Captive of Ahlden Unnoticed by Her Son-in- 
 law, Except to Secure Her Property Madame von
 
 CONTENTS xxi 
 
 PAGR 
 
 Schulemberg The Queen of Prussia Prohibited from 
 Corresponding with Her Imprisoned Mother The Cap- 
 tive 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 Doctor 
 Young Madame Kielmansegge, the New Royal Favour- 
 ite 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 . . . . .210 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 CROWN AND GRAVE 
 
 Arrival of Caroline, Princess of Wales The King Dines at 
 the Guildhall Proclamation of the Pretender Coun- 
 ter-proclamations Government Prosecutions A Mutiny 
 among the Troops Impeachment of the Duke of Ormond 
 of High Treason Punishment of Political Offenders 
 Failure of Rebellion in Scotland Punishment for Wear- 
 ing Oak-boughs Riot at the Mug-house in Salisbury 
 Court, and Its Fatal Consequences The Prince of 
 Wales Removed from the Palace Dissensions between 
 the King and the Prince > Attempt on the Life of King 
 George Marriage of the King's Illegitimate Daughter 
 The South Sea Bubble Birth of Prince William, the 
 Butcher of Cnlloden Death of the Duchess of Zell 
 Stricter Imprisonment of the Captive of Ahlden Her 
 Calm Death A New Royal Favourite, Mrs. Brett 
 Death of the King ........ 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BERENGARIA AND SOPHIA DOROTHEA, (XEUR DE LION, 
 AND GEORGE OF HANOVER 
 
 Fate of Berengaria The Heiress of Cyprus Comparison 
 of Sophia and the Queen of Coeur de Lion Richard the 
 First and the Elector Statue to George the First, but 
 Denied to Cromwell Tyranny and Cruelty of Richard
 
 xxii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Origin of the Order of the Garter Project to Make 
 Away with the Prince of Wales Character of George I. 
 Anecdotes of Him George the Second as a Young 
 Man Picture of the Court of Prussia Brutality of 
 Frederick to His Wife and Family A Drunkard and 
 Madman 245 
 
 Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea 
 Wife of George II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFORE THE ACCESSION 
 
 Birth of Princess Caroline Her Early Married Life Eulo- 
 gised by the Poets Gaiety of the Court of the Prince 
 and Princess at Leicester House Beauty of Miss Bellen- 
 den Mrs. Howard, the Prince's Favourite Intolerable 
 Grossness of the Court of George the First Lord Ches- 
 terfield and the Princess The Mad Duchess Bucking- 
 ham House Rural Retreat of the Prince at Richmond ; 
 the Resort of Wit and Beauty Swift's Pungent Verses 
 The Fortunes of the Young Adventurers, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Howard The Queen at Her" Toilet Mrs. Clayton, 
 Her Influence with Queen Caroline The Prince Ruled 
 by His Wife Doctor Arbuthnot and Dean Swift The 
 Princess's Regard for Newton and Halley Lord Maccles- 
 field's Fall His Superstition, and That of the Princess 
 Prince Frederick's Vices Not Permitted to Come to 
 England Severe Rebuff to Lord Hardwicke Doctor 
 Mead Courage of the Prince and Princess The Prin- 
 cess's Friendship for Doctor Friend Swift at Leicester 
 House Royal Visit to " Bartlemy Fair " . . -279 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE FIRST YEARS OF, A REIGN 
 
 Death of George the First Adroitness of Sir Robert Wai- 
 pole The First Royal Reception Unceremonious
 
 CONTENTS xxiii 
 
 FAGS 
 
 Treatment of the Late King's Will The Coronation 
 Magnificent Dress of Queen Caroline Mrs. Oldfield, in 
 Queen Catherine, in " Henry VIII." The King's Rev- 
 enue, and the Queen's Jointure, the Result of Walpole's 
 Exertions His Success Management of the King by 
 Queen Caroline Unseemly Dialogue between Walpole 
 and Lord Townshend Gay's " Beggars' Opera," and 
 Satire on Walpole Origin of the Opera Its Great 
 Success Gay's Cause Espoused by the Duchess of 
 Queensberry Her Smart Reply to a Royal Message 
 The Tragedy of " Frederick, Duke of Brunswick " The 
 Queen Appointed Regent Prince Frederick Becomes 
 Chief of the Opposition His Silly Reflections on the 
 King Agitation about the Repeal of the Corporation 
 and Test Acts The Queen's Ineffectual Efforts to Gain 
 over Bishop Hoadly Sir Robert Extricates Himself 
 The Church Made the Scapegoat Queen Caroline 
 Earnest About Trifles Etiquette of the Toilet Fracas 
 between Mr. Howard and the Queen Modest Request 
 of Mrs. Howard Lord Chesterfield's Description of Her 307 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ANNE 
 
 Violent Opposition to the King by Prince Frederick Read- 
 ings at Windsor Castle The Queen's Patronage of 
 Stephen Duck His Melancholy End Glance at Pass- 
 ing Events Precipitate Flight of Doctor Nichols 
 Princess Anne's Determination to Get a Husband Louis 
 XV. Proposed as a Suitor ; Negotiation Broken Off The 
 Prince of Orange's Offer Accepted Ugly and Deformed 
 
 The King and Queen Averse to the Union Dowry 
 Settled on the Princess Anecdote of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough Illness of the Bridegroom Ceremonies 
 Attendant on the Marriage Mortification of the Queen 
 
 The Public Nuptial Chamber Offence Given to the 
 Irish Peers The Queen and Lady Suffolk Homage 
 Paid by the Princess to Her Deformed Husband Dis- 
 content of Prince Frederick His Anxiety Not Unnatural 
 
 Congratulatory Addresses by the Lords and Commons 
 
 Spirited Conduct of the Queen Lord Chesterfield 
 Agitations on Walpole's Celebrated Excise Scheme
 
 xxiv CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 Lord Stair Delegated to Remonstrate with the Queen 
 Awkward Performance of His Mission Sharply Re- 
 buked by the Queen Details of the Interview The 
 Queen's Success in Overcoming the King's Antipathy to 
 Walpole Comments of the Populace Royal Interview 
 with a Bishop 335
 
 Sophia Dorothea, of Zell 
 Wife of George I. 
 
 Das Glanzende ist nicht immer das Bessere. 
 
 KOTZEBUE, Bruder Moritz.
 
 Lives of the Queens of 
 England;;. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GEORGE OF BRUNSWICK - ZELL AND ELEANORS 
 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 
 Eleanora Love-passages, and a Marriage A Bishop of Osna- 
 burgh Birth of Sophia Dorothea. 
 
 WHEN George the First ascended the throne of 
 England, the heralds, with an alacrity at once offi- 
 cious and official, proceeded to furnish him with that 
 sort of greatness without profit and without value, 
 which it is part of their profession to provide for 
 those who are weak enough to need it, and wealthy 
 enough to pay for it. They, in other words, pro- 
 vided him with an ancestry ; and they constructed 
 that crane's foot roll which the Normans knew by 
 the name of a pied de grue, and which pretended, 
 with pleasant disregard of proof, that his Majesty, 
 who had few godlike virtues of his own, was de- 
 
 3
 
 4 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 scended from that deified hero Woden, whose virtues, 
 according to the bards, were all of a godlike quality. 
 Now, George Louis of Brunswick-Lunebourg, with 
 respect to Woden, was, as Dumas remarks of a 
 questionable great-grandson of Charlemagne, " un 
 descendant bien descendu." The two had little in com- 
 mon, 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, before the 
 T,riaces of the family so named ever hoped to sit in 
 the seat of the Conqueror and Coeur de Lion, 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 was as irresistible in field and bower as his 
 almost namesake, Azor, of the fairy tale, and not 
 only did this truly designated soldier of fortune win 
 a name by his sword, but a heart by his tongue. He 
 was doubly lucky, it may be added, in his bride, for 
 when he espoused Cunegunda of Guelph, he married 
 a lady who was not only wealthy, but who had the 
 additional attraction and advantage of being the last 
 of her race. The household was, consequently, a 
 happy one, and when an heir to its honours appeared 
 in the person of Guelph d'Este the Robust, the vatic- 
 inating court poet foretold brilliant fortunes for his
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 5 
 
 house, yet failed to see the culminating brilliancy 
 which awaited it in Britain, beyond their ken. 
 
 It is singular, however, to see how soon the 
 Guelphs of Este became connected with Britain. 
 This same Prince " Robust," of whom I have just 
 spoken, 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. The lady 
 in question was 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 in the days in which he 
 lived provision was easily made, were he who needed 
 it only in favour with the imperial magician, at whose 
 word fortunes rose, disappeared, and were transferred 
 from one prince to another without troubling the legal 
 conveyancers. 
 
 Guelph and Judith had found this important favour 
 in the eyes of the Emperor Henry IV., who forthwith 
 ejected Otho of Saxony from his possessions in Bava- 
 ria, and conferred the same, with a dreadfully 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,
 
 6 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 with that benevolence which prevails so largely in all 
 communities, took unwearied pains to, find some one 
 who could afford him material assistance. He suc- 
 ceeded, and Guelph received, from another emperor, 
 the gift of the countships of Brunswick and Lune- 
 bourg. Otho IV. raised them to duchies, and William 
 (Guelph) was the first duke of the united possessions, 
 about the year 1200. 
 
 Since that period, dukes in Brunswick have seldom 
 failed ; but the heir to the title, if he were a child 
 when he could lay claim to his inheritance, usually 
 found a wicked uncle in possession, who affected to 
 act upon trust, but who never would acknowledge his 
 ward's majority except under the irresistible pressure 
 of force. Thus, Otho the Child would probably have 
 lost all of his inheritance except his claims to it, but 
 for the energetic action in his favour exercised by the 
 Emperor Frederick. 
 
 The early dukes were for the most part warlike in 
 character, 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 acquired names which unpleasantly dis- 
 tinguish them in this respect. I may cite, as instances, 
 Henry, who was not only called the " young," from his 
 years, and " the black," from his swarthiness, but " the 
 dog," because of his undignified 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,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 7 
 
 been divided into the branches of Brunswick-Lune- 
 bourg, Brunswick - Wolfenbiittel, Brunswick - Zell, 
 Brunswick-Danneberg, etc. 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, ex- 
 changed with a kinsman his duchy of Brunswick for 
 that of Lunebourg, 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 Cam- 
 pen. The two lived as happily together as the 
 stirring times and attendant anxieties would allow 
 them ; and they paid as dearly for the felicity which 
 they enjoyed as did their descendant, of whom I 
 shall presently speak, who also espoused a lady below 
 the line of ducal sovereignty, and who gave to Eng- 
 land the second of her queens whose feet never rested 
 upon English soil. 
 
 It became the common object of all the dukes of 
 the various Brunswick branches to increase the im- 
 portance of a house which had contributed something 
 to the imperial greatness of Germany. They en- 
 deavoured to accomplish this common object by 
 intermarriages, but the desired consummation was 
 not achieved until a comparatively recent period, 
 when the branch of Brunswick-Lunebourg became 
 electors, and subsequently Kings of Hanover, and 
 that of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, Sovereign Dukes 
 of Brunswick.
 
 8 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 The great-grandfather of George I., William, Duke 
 of Brunswick-Lunebourg, 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 alarm- 
 ing diminution, and the ducal gem be ultimately 
 crushed into numberless glittering but not very val- 
 uable fragments. They accordingly came to a 
 singular yet natural conclusion. They determined 
 that one alone of the brothers should form a legal 
 matrimonial connection, and that the naming of the 
 lucky refounder of the dignity of Brunswick should 
 be left to chance ! 
 
 The seven brothers, in pursuance of their plan, 
 met in the hall of state in their deceased father's 
 mansion, and there drew lots, or threw dice, for re- 
 ports differ on this point, as to who should live on in 
 single blessedness, wearing bachelor's buttons for 
 ever, and which should gain the prize, not of a wife, 
 but of permission to find one. They must have 
 formed a pictorial, and probably an excited group, 
 those brothers all risking cold celibacy that one might 
 keep warm the dignified vitality of the race. Had 
 the gods been propitious, the lot would surely have 
 fallen upon one who already wore a lady in his heart ; 
 and there undoubtedly was such a one among them 
 whose own heart doubtless beat quickly when " double 
 sixes " were thrown by the brother who had but an 
 indifferent heart of his own, and who had yet to seek 
 to establish an interest in that of some lady. 
 
 The lucky prince was George, the sixth son, and 
 he experienced little difficulty in finding a princess
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 9 
 
 willing to be the mother of a new race of Bruns- 
 wick princes. The lady, cavalierly wooed and ready 
 to be won, was Anne Eleanore, daughter of the Land- 
 graf of Hesse-Darmstadt. 
 
 The brothers are said to have so religiously ob- 
 served their compact, that when the story was told 
 to the Sultan, Achmet I., that potentate, who be- 
 longed to a race which knows nothing of fraternal 
 affection when the latter stands in the way of inter- 
 est, clapped his hands with surprise, solemnly declared 
 that God was great, by way of inapplicable com- 
 ment upon the legend of the seven brothers, and 
 swore that it would be worth while to go on foot 
 from Byzantium to Brunswick only to look at them ! 
 
 One of the sons of this marriage was Frederick 
 Ernest Augustus, who, in 1685, 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 marriage was 
 George Louis, who ultimately became King of Great 
 Britain, and who was then discovered, as I have said, to 
 be a descendant of Woden. He at least espoused a 
 lady who, by the mother's side, was less heroically, 
 yet not less honourably, descended. 
 
 When Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, 
 the Roman Catholic religion in France achieved 
 neither a less sanguinary, nor a less melancholy, nor 
 a less vaunted triumph, than it did on the bloody day 
 of the never-to-be-forgotten St. Bartholomew. Those 
 who refused to be converted were executed or im- 
 prisoned. Some found safety, with suffering, in 
 exile ; and confiscation made beggars of thousands. 
 When towns, where the Protestants were in the
 
 io LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 abju- 
 ration under the sword, and walked thence to confes- 
 sion 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 bishops as a miracle 
 as astounding as any in Scripture. 
 
 Of some few individuals, places at court for them- 
 selves, commissions for their sons, or honours which 
 sometimes little deserved the name, for their daugh- 
 ters, made, if not converts, hypocrites. Far greater 
 was the number of the good and faithful servants 
 who left all and followed their Master. With one 
 especially I have here to do. His name was Alex- 
 ander D'Esmiers, Marquis D'Olbreuse, a gallant 
 Protestant gentleman of Poictiers, who preferred 
 exile and loss of estate to apostasy, and who, when 
 he crossed the frontier, a banished man, 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 de- 
 scended from the gallant Fulques D'Esmiers, the 
 valiant and courteous Lord of Lolbroire. 
 
 Father and daughter had the world before them 
 where to choose, and like unfortunates who, ejected 
 from home, still linger on the loved threshold, they 
 sojourned for a time on the northern frontier of the 
 kingdom, having their native country within sight. 
 There they tabernacled in much sorrow, perplexity,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 1 1 
 
 and poverty, but friends ultimately supplied them 
 with funds ; and however sad a man a French exile 
 may be when his purse is empty and his mind is 
 filled with gloomy thoughts, that same mind speedily 
 becomes serene when steadied by the Ballast of a 
 heavy purse. 
 
 The marquis was not a Croesus even now, but he 
 found himself in a condition to appear in Brussels 
 without sacrifice of dignity, and 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. 
 
 But 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 
 mattres with their stereotyped flattery. Eleanora, 
 like the lady in Goethe's tragedy, loved the society 
 and the good opinion of wise men, while she hardly 
 thought herself worthy of either ; and, like Leonora 
 d'Este, she might have said : 
 
 Ich freue mich wenn kluge Manner sprechen, 
 Dass ich verstehen kann wie sie es meinen." 
 
 It is not to be forgotten, however, that Eleanora 
 was a Frenchwoman, and consequently for being at- 
 tached to the wise 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 follow- 
 ing and eclipsing her noble patroness at a ball, when 
 she was first seen by a prince who had travelled a
 
 12 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 little, and now suddenly felt that he loved much. 
 This prince was George William, second son of 
 George, Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg, and heir to 
 the pocket but sovereign dukedom of Zell. 
 
 The heir of Zell became, what he had never been 
 before, an honest wooer. It is said that he did not 
 become so without a struggle ; but the truth is that 
 his heart was for the first time seriously inclined, and 
 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 inter- 
 pret 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, 
 interesting and interested, fully as happy, and twice 
 as hopeful as that other celebrated and enamoured 
 pair, Paolo and Francesca. 
 
 With this young couple, love's course ran as little 
 smoothly, after a time, as it is said to do proverbially. 
 George William soon saw that something more of 
 sterling homage was expected from him than his 
 becoming the mere pupil of a noble but dowerless 
 maiden from France, and the heir to a duodecimo 
 ducal coronet was sorely puzzled as to his proceed- 
 ings. To marriage he could have condescended 
 with alacrity, but unfortunately there was " a promise
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 13 
 
 in bar." With the view common to many co-heirs 
 of the family, he had entered into an engagement 
 with his brother, Ernest Augustus, heir of the chief 
 of the house of Brunswick, 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 one in- 
 flicting on him and his projects 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 mat- 
 ter might be arranged by a morganatic (or a dimin- 
 ished, as that Gothic word implies) 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 no- 
 body," and could, of course, succeed to nobody's 
 inheritance. 
 
 George William waited on the Marquis 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, musing rather angrily thereon, used
 
 14 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 them as Alnaschzar did his basket of glass : she 
 became angry, and by an impetuous movement 
 shivered them into fragments. 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 Osna- 
 burgh 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 
 necessary 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'Ol- 
 breuse 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 15 
 
 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, with a comic sort of " Gare qui le touche ! " 
 levelled at all assailants generally, and the rightful 
 and fraternal owner particularly. 
 
 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 
 Sovereign Duchess of Zell, without chance of that 
 proud title ever being disputed. 
 
 Thereupon a family council was holden. The poor 
 marquis argued as a father, of his age, and few hopes, 
 might be pardoned for arguing, he thought a mor- 
 ganatic marriage might be entered upon without 
 " derogation " being laid to the account of the de- 
 scendants of Pulques d'Esmiers ; 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 ar- 
 dent duke with the left hand, because her father 
 advised it, her lover urged it, and the counsel and the 
 suit were agreeable to the lady, who professed to be
 
 16 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 ; and probably 
 the last thing she thought of among the dreams con- 
 jured up by the new impressions to which she was 
 now subject, was that the Lady of Harburg (a poor 
 exile from France for the sake of conscience and 
 religion) should be the mother of a Queen of Eng- 
 land whom England should never see, or the ances- 
 tress of one who is more honoured for her descent 
 from the godly D'Esmiers of Poitou, than if she could 
 be proved to be a daughter, far off indeed, and in 
 unbroken line, of the deified and heathenish savage 
 Woden of Walhalla. 
 
 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, maimed as it 
 was, not in rite, but in legal sanction, was not con- 
 cluded 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 unde- 
 served sorrow, soon appeared to gladden for a brief
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 17 
 
 season, to sadden for long and weary years, the hearts 
 of her parents. Sophia Dorothea was born on the 
 1 5th September, 1666. Her names imply, "Wisdom 
 the gift of God ; " and if she had not possessed in after 
 life that wisdom, whose commencement is established 
 in the fear of God, her fate would have been as in- 
 supportable as it was undeserved. 
 
 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 epi- 
 grams. 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 ineffably gracious condescension.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WIVES AND FAVOURITES 
 
 The Single Blessing Allowed to Women 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. 
 
 IT is the remark of Madame de Stael, I think, 
 a lady, by the way, whom the Messrs. Goncourt 
 in their one-sided history of French society have 
 described as having " the face of a lion ; purple, 
 pimpled, and dry-lipped, rude in body as in ideas, 
 masculine in gesture, uttering in the voice of a boy 
 her vigorous and swelling phraseology " nothing 
 of which would be believed by those who have seen 
 her only in Girard's picture, holding in her hand that 
 little branch without which she knew not how to be 
 eloquent ; it is, I repeat, the remark of Madame 
 de Stael, that society, and perhaps even Providence, 
 vouchsafes but a single blessing to women, that 
 of being loved after marriage. Whether this be 
 true or not, the blessing here named appears to have 
 been the undisputed possession of the Lady of 
 Harburg. 
 
 Such a household as that maintained in sober hap- 
 piness and freedom from anxiety by herself and the 
 
 18
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 19 
 
 duke was a rare sight, if not in Germany, at least 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. He could well afford to 
 allow the unprincipled to ridicule what they could 
 not realise; and he held, with more honesty than 
 ever distinguished knight in chivalrous times, that if 
 it were disgraceful to commit a breach of faith even 
 in gaming, it was doubly so to be guilty of such 
 treachery in marriage. 
 
 It may well be imagined how hilariously this senti- 
 ment was contemplated by the princes of Germany, 
 who aped Louis XIV. only in his vices and his arro- 
 gance, and who, while professing to be as wise as 
 Solomon, followed the example of that monarch only 
 in the matter of concubines. 
 
 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. This done, her husband 
 approving, and her child creating for her a new 
 world of emotions and delights, she let those who 
 envied her rail on, having neither time nor inclination 
 to heed them. 
 
 But the sunshine was not all unclouded. Three 
 other children were the fruit of this marriage, whose
 
 20 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 early deaths were deplored as so many calamities. 
 Their mother lived long enough to deplore that 
 Sophia Dorothea had survived them. This was the 
 real sorrow of the mother's life ; and stupendous 
 indeed must be the maternal affliction which is based 
 upon the fact that a beloved and only child does not 
 lie coffined at her parents' feet. 
 
 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. This, 
 however, could only be effected gradually, and with 
 a world of trouble, delay, disappointment, petitioning, 
 and expense. 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. 
 
 George William and Eleanora mildly acquiesced,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 21 
 
 and the Bishop of Osnaburgh turned the key of his 
 family muniment-chest, with the comfortable feeling 
 of a man who has fenced his dignity and prospects 
 with a safeguard which could not possibly be vio- 
 lated. George William looked at his wife with a 
 smile, and uttered, in something of the fashion of 
 the prophetic persons in Shakespeare's tragedy, 
 " Hail ! Countess of Wilhelmsburg, Duchess of Zell, 
 hereafter ! " 
 
 I do not mean to imply, of course, that this was 
 more than mentally uttered. That the idea possessed 
 the duke, and that he acted upon it quite as much 
 as if he had given it expression, and bound himself 
 by its utterance, is clearly distinguishable by his sub- 
 sequent action. He was resolved not to rest until 
 his wife should also be his duchess. A "star- 
 chamber matter " has been made of many a simpler 
 thing, but a smile is allowable when we read of the 
 fact that the Estates of Germany gravely discussed 
 the subject as to whether a worthy wife should be 
 permitted to wear the title which was commonly 
 worn by her husband. This had once before been 
 permitted to a single lady, who had given her hand, 
 or, to speak more in the spirit of Brunswick court 
 lawyers, whose hand had been graciously taken by 
 a Brunswick duke. In the case furnishing a prece- 
 dent, the lady in question was at least a native of 
 the duchy ; but in the present case a great difficulty 
 presented itself, the lady being a foreigner with 
 nothing ennobling her but her virtues. 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. When the
 
 22 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 emperor added his consent, there was many a prin- 
 cess in the various German courts who became 
 tremblingly sensible that Teutonic greatness had 
 been shattered for ever. 
 
 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 terri- 
 torial 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 con- 
 tracted that the children of his marriage with the 
 daughter of the Poitevin marquis 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 duke- 
 dom, was 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 cir- 
 cumstance. "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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 23 
 
 woman like the wife of Duke George William. As 
 to being content, she knew not what it was to 
 lack content until after the period when Brunswick 
 greeted her by an empty name. 
 
 As yet, however, all went if I may employ 
 a simile much cracked by wear all went as merry 
 as a marriage-bell ; save when the knell tolled for 
 the three happy children who were summoned early 
 to occupy graves over which their mistaken parents 
 long and deeply mourned. Sophia Dorothea was 
 the sole daughter then of their house, if not of their 
 hearts, and she was a "thing of beauty," beloved 
 by all, because of her worth, and flattered by none, 
 because she was nobody's heiress. 
 
 Of the personal history of her youth, the most 
 salient circumstance is that, when she was yet 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 
 Konigsmark. He was in Zell for the purpose of 
 education, and many of his vacation hours were 
 spent with the child of George William, who was 
 his father's friend. When gossips saw the two hand- 
 some children, buoyant of spirit, beaming with health, 
 and ignorant of care, playing hand in hand at sports 
 natural to their age, those gossips prophesied, "in 
 bated breath," of future marriage. They could fore- 
 tell " circumstances," like our laureate, and prattle, in 
 reference to these happy children, of 
 
 " Two lovers whisp'ring by an orchard wall, 
 Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease :
 
 24 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Two graves grass-green beside a gray church tower, 
 Wash'd with still rains and daisy blossomed ; " 
 
 but their "circumstance" was as aerial as that of 
 the poet, and they could not foresee the dark reality, 
 one child in a dungeon, the other in a bloody 
 grave. 
 
 Indeed, their speculation in this direction had soon 
 no food whereon to live, for the young Konigsmark 
 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, and although not so much older than his 
 little lady as Richard II. was when, at the age of 
 nine and twenty, he espoused the French Princess 
 Isabella of Valois, with no more years upon her sunny 
 brow than nine, a child whom he married politically, 
 loved paternally, and was beloved by filially, as he 
 well merited, although the disparity was not so 
 great, it was enough to bar anything beyond betroth- 
 ment. 
 
 The princely lover in question was the cousin of 
 the quasi princely lady, Augustus Frederick, Crown 
 Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. This crown prince 
 was allured by the beaux yeux de la casette of 
 the little heiress. If Mr. Justice Alderson takes 
 license to make puns when the court is dull and 
 cases heavy, it may be pardoned a poor chronicler, if 
 he marks down in his record, that the Crown Prince
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 25 
 
 of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel was mightily moved by 
 the crowns set down as the dower which was to go 
 with the hand of the duke's daughter. These were 
 little better than half-crowns after all, thalers worth 
 about three shillings each, and of them one hundred 
 thousand. The lover possibly exclaimed as Boileau's 
 celebrated gentleman did : 
 
 " Elle a cent mille vertus en louis bien compte'es." 
 
 But for louis here were only thalers ; and a hundred 
 thousand thalers is at the most but fifteen thousand 
 pounds sterling, but an humble dower for a duke's 
 only daughter. In the country where merchants are 
 " princes," sires give as much to each of a whole circle 
 of daughters ; but George William was only Duke of 
 Zell. 
 
 In the meantime the affianced lover had to prove 
 himself, by force of arms, worthy of his lady and her 
 fortune. The latter, at least, was hardly worth the 
 risk he ran to show himself deserving, and which 
 deprived him of that in honour of which he put him- 
 self in peril. At the time of which I am speaking, 
 as much murderous bad ambition was abroad in the 
 world as there now is heaping a mountain of responsi- 
 bility for murder upon the head of the late Tsar 
 Nicholas. One of the consequences thereof was the 
 noted siege of Philipsburg, in the year 1676. Thither 
 repaired the chivalrous Augustus of Brunswick-Wolf- 
 enbiittel. He went to the bloody work proudly, 
 plume in helm, scarf on breast, and all the insignia 
 of greatness about him. There was nothing in his 
 nature of that humility, so selfish in aspect, which
 
 26 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 distinguishes Russian officers going into action, 
 gallant leaders, who deck themselves in the great- 
 coats of private soldiers, in order to avoid mortal 
 honour from those opponents who seek to cross 
 swords with men supposed to be worthy of their 
 steel. This novel phasis of strategy, of Russian 
 introduction, was not yet known in the days of Augus- 
 tus of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel. He was accordingly 
 content to take his chance honestly and valiantly, 
 and he bore himself with a dignity and daring which 
 entitled him to respect. With regret it must be 
 added, that the fortune of war deprived him of that 
 which he hoped to reap with the hand of Sophia 
 Dorothea. 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. But glad 
 she would not have been, had she known that by the 
 slaying of one lover at Philipsburg she was ultimately 
 to gain another, the gain of whom would prove a 
 bitter loss. 
 
 Meanwhile, the two courts of the Bishop of Osna- 
 burgh and the Duke of Zell continued to present a 
 striking contrast. At the latter, harmony and re- 
 spectability reigned in common : at that of the bishop 
 there was little of either ; even the ostentatious pat- 
 ronage bestowed on literature was not respectable, 
 because it was ostentatious. It was, however, the 
 best feature of which the court had to boast. 
 
 The bishop was one of those men who think them- 
 selves nothing unless they are imitating some greater
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 27 
 
 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. Assuredly, his, like Israel's 
 incense, was too often cast upon unworthy shrines, 
 and the goddesses who received it were in every 
 respect unworthy of the homage. Every prince is 
 not a Pericles, and if he were, he would find that 
 every Lais, for being the favourite of a prince, is not 
 necessarily as intellectually gifted as the extravagant 
 and accomplished lady of old. 
 
 And yet, as far as regards a particular sort of 
 extravagance and accomplishment, perhaps few ladies 
 could have surpassed those known at Hanover as 
 Catherine and Elizabeth von Meissengen. Introduced 
 to a court of ill-dressed ladies, they set the fashion 
 of a witchery of costume, remarkable for its taste, 
 and sometimes for outraging it. Had they come 
 straight from the euphuistic and gallantly attired 
 circle of the H6tel de Rambouillet, they could not 
 have been nicer of phrase nor more resplendent of 
 garb. They possessed, too, the great talent of 
 Madame de Sillery Genlis, and were inimitable in 
 their ability and success in getting up little fetes, 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
 
 28 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 ladies of honour as nymphs or dairymaids, with 
 costumes rural of fashioning, but as resplendent 
 and costly as silkman and jeweller could make 
 them. 
 
 These young ladies came to court precisely as 
 knights used to do of old, to push their fortunes, 
 but not exactly after a knightly fashion. They 
 hoped in some way to serve the sovereign ; or, failing 
 him, to be agreeable to the Crown Prince George 
 Louis (afterward George I. of England). But even 
 the crown 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 oppor- 
 tunity; 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 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. They were soon 
 mighty at Greek particles, learned in the aorists, 
 fluent on the digamma, and familiar with the myster- 
 ies of the differential calculus. 
 
 Catherine and Elizabeth von Meissengen opened a 
 new grammar before their learned pundits, the Herrn 
 Busche and Platen ; and truth to tell, the philoso- 
 phers were nothing loath 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 29 
 
 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 mar- 
 riage, 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 van- 
 quished 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 con- 
 tent which they put on as soon as they saw the aim 
 of their estimable wives, and felt the gain thence 
 accruing. 
 
 Elizabeth von Meissengen, the wife of Platen, was 
 the true mistress of the situation. Platen, princi- 
 pally through her intrigues, had been appointed prime 
 minister of the sovereign bishop. The business to 
 be transacted by potentate and premier could not 
 have been very extensive, but it was serious on 
 one point, seeing that that had reference to the 
 question of the succession of the house of Brunswick 
 to the throne of Great Britain. But as this question 
 was not one of a " much vexed " character, the time 
 passed by Platen with his sovereign master afforded 
 him ample leisure to talk of his wife, praise her polit- 
 ical abilities, and overeulogise her, as men and women
 
 30 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 do the consorts for whom they have no cause to 
 bear an overheaped measure of respect. 
 
 The prince-bishop felt his curiosity excited to be- 
 ^hold and study more nearly this phoenix of a woman. 
 The curiosity of such a sovereign a loyal subject 
 would, of course, be eager to gratify. It was, there- 
 fore, 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 hus- 
 band 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. Were I treating of mythic, classical, or 
 romantic mediaeval days, it would just be barely 
 possible to throw a poetical feeling round such a 
 "tableau" as that presented by the bishop and the 
 diplomatic Madame von Platen. But " Hebe in Her- 
 cules's arms " is very well in statuary, and " Dido with 
 ./Eneas " may be attractive on canvas, while the love 
 adventures of Arthur, and the adventurous and lib- 
 eral love of Guinevere may amuse us in ballads, 
 but there is a light of reality which does not dazzle 
 us like the light of romance. Full in such illumina- 
 tion is revealed to us the picture of Bishop Ernest 
 and Elizabeth von Platen. A more shameless couple 
 never stood at the tribunal of judgment ; but if they 
 were not ashamed of their own iniquity, therein lies 
 no reason why we should detail it. Quite sufficient 
 will it be to remark, that it had its reward ; and if
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 31 
 
 the wages of sin, in this case, were not literally a 
 death, they were at least quite as retributive, and 
 not the more welcome. 
 
 When Alcides submitted to take the distaff of 
 Omphale, and uncomplainingly endured to be buffeted 
 by her slipper, he only afforded an illustration of 
 how power may playfully make itself the slave of 
 weakness, there is even something pretty in the 
 picture. It is strong man yielding to womanly in- 
 fluence; and the picture only ceases to be heroic, 
 without ceasing to be of an amiable aspect, when the 
 chief character is poor, sickly Cowper winding up 
 cotton in reels for good Mrs. Unwin. 
 
 But the obese Ernest Augustus in the hands of 
 the youthful Elizabeth von Platen, reminds me of 
 nothing so much as of the " Lion in Love," de- 
 servedly having his claws clipped by the clever object 
 of his ridiculous adoration : the fate of the lion was 
 also that of the bishop. He was not, indeed, a man 
 of weak mind, but that of Madame von Platen was 
 still stronger. He could rule his minister, but not 
 his minister's wife ; and most appropriately might he 
 have made paraphrastic application of the line in 
 Othello, and have declared his consciousness with a 
 sigh, that his "general's wife was now the general."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BRUNSWICKER IN ENGLAND 
 
 Prince Augustus of Wolfenbuttel, 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 Holy- 
 rood 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 mod- 
 est 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 Au- 
 gustus William of Wolfenbuttel. 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 mas- 
 ter, while her sister, Caroline von Busche, was 
 equally obeyed by her consort and his Highness 
 George Louis, the bishop's son. 
 
 3 2
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 33 
 
 Prince Augustus of Wolfenbuttel was the brother 
 of that early suitor of the little Sophia Dorothea, 
 who had met a soldier's death at the siege of Philips- 
 burg. 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 bachelor- 
 ship, at the feet of a lady who would, by addition of 
 her dowry, increase the greatness and material com- 
 forts of both. Not that Augustus of Wolfenbuttel 
 was mercenary; he was simply prudent. A little 
 princely state in Germany costs a great deal to main- 
 tain, 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 who had 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, some- 
 thing 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 a 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 of Wolfenbuttel 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 Bruns- 
 wick maidens as to the love-passages of this accom- 
 plished and handsome young couple. Those passages 
 have been enlarged for the purposes of romance 
 writers, but divested of all exaggeration there re- 
 mains enough to prove, as touching this pair, that
 
 34 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 they were well assorted both as to mind and person ; 
 that their inclinations were toward 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. He had indeed 
 nothing to object to the suitor's person, character, 
 position, or prospects. He did not deny that with 
 such a husband his daughter might secure that which 
 M. Necker's daughter has designated as woman's 
 sole blessing, happiness in the married state; but 
 then that suitor was the successor of a dead brother, 
 who had been the prosecutor of a similar suit. 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 kinsman. 
 
 But then, on the other hand, the duke loved his 
 daughter, and the daughter assuredly loved Augustus 
 of Wolfenbiittel ; and, added thereto, the good Duch- 
 ess Eleanora was quite disposed to see the cherished 
 union accomplished, and to bestow her benediction 
 upon the well-favoured pair. Altogether, there were 
 strong odds against the opposition of a father, which 
 rested on no better foundation than a tripod, if one 
 may so speak, of whim, doubt, and a fear of ghosts. 
 He was influenced, possibly, by his extensive reading 
 in old legendary ballad-lore, metrical and melancholy
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 35 
 
 German romances, the commonest incident in which 
 is the interruption of a marriage ceremony by a 
 spiritual personage professing priority of right. 
 
 It was not without infinite trouble that the lovers 
 and the duchess succeeded in breaking down the oppo- 
 sition of the duke. Even when his reluctant consent 
 had been given, he was everlastingly bringing for- 
 ward the subject of the departed suitors, until his 
 remarks became as wearisome as the verses of the 
 German author, who wrote a poem of three hundred 
 lines in length, all about pigs, and every word of 
 which began with the letter P. 
 
 The opposition to the marriage was not, however, 
 all surmounted when the antagonism of the duke had 
 been successfully overcome. A father may be ac- 
 counted for something even in a German dukedom ; 
 but a mistress may be stronger, and Madame von 
 Platen has the credit of having carried out her oppo- 
 sition 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 Han- 
 over 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 pro- 
 ceeded to employ every conceivable engine whereby 
 they might destroy the fortress of the hopes of
 
 36 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Sophia Dorothea and Augustus of Wolfenbiittel. 
 They cared for nothing, save that the hand of the 
 former should be conferred upon the bishop's eldest 
 son ; that George who was subsequently our George 
 I., and 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 
 not indeed so deformed as Prince Riquet with the 
 tuft, but neither was he possessed of that legendary 
 prince's wit, refinement, and most winning ways. 
 George Louis was mean in person and character. 
 Epaminondas was little more than a dwarf, but then 
 he was a giant measured by the stature of his worth. 
 Not so this heir of great hopes ; he was the lord of 
 small virtues ; and his insignificance of person was 
 insignificant only because it bore not about it any 
 manly stamp, or outward promise of an inward merit. 
 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. I have intimated 
 that he was not heroic, but I may correct the phrase ; 
 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, where the thunder was loudest, 
 and death revelled amid the incense of villainous salt- 
 petre. He did not fail, it may be added, in one of the 
 characteristics of bravery, humanity on the field. 
 He had no great heart for the common sufferings, or 
 the mental anguish, of others ; but for a wounded foe
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 37 
 
 he had a thorough English respect, and he no more 
 dreamed of the Muscovite officers' fashion of massa- 
 cring the helpless wounded enemy than he did of the 
 millennium. 
 
 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 recom- 
 mended when he said a man might be gentlemanlike 
 even in his vices, that even 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, as easy fathers do sometimes think, that 
 marriage would cure profligacy. When we read in 
 German ballads of pure young girls being sacrificed 
 to monsters, the meaning probably is, that they are 
 given, unconsulted and unheeded, to lords and mas- 
 ters who are odious to them. 
 
 George Louis was now in his twenty-second year. 
 He was born in 1660, and he had recently acquired 
 increase of importance from the fact of his sire hav- 
 ing succeeded to the estates, grandeur, and expecta- 
 tions 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 some- 
 thing 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
 
 38 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 who had little reverence for the duke, by whose death 
 he profited largely. 
 
 When the bishop, as a natural consequence of this 
 death, established a gayer court at Hanover than had 
 ever yet been seen there, became sovereign duke, 
 made a sovereign duchess of his wife Sophia, of whom 
 I shall have to speak more at large, in a future page, 
 and 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 the time here spoken of, it will be remembered 
 that Charles II. was King in England. The king's 
 brother, James, Duke of York, had a daughter, a 
 certain " Lady Anne," who is better known to us all 
 by her after-title, in which there is undeniable truth 
 seasoned by a little flattery, 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 con- 
 viction that he had a friend in William ; but William
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 39 
 
 was no abettor of marriages with the Princess Anne, 
 and least of all could he wish success to the heredi- 
 tary prince of Hanover, whose union with one of the 
 heiresses of the British throne might, under certain 
 contingencies, miserably mar his own prospects. The 
 case is very succinctly put by Miss Strickland, who 
 makes allusion to the subject of this visit and con- 
 templated marriage in her life of Mary, the wife of 
 William. "If George of Hanover married Anne 
 of York, and the Princess of Orange died first, with- 
 out offspring (as she actually did), William of Orange 
 would have had to give way before their prior claims 
 on the succession ; to prevent which he set at work 
 a threefold series of intrigues, in the household of 
 his sister-in-law, at the court of Hanover, and that 
 of Zell." The plot was as complicated as any in a 
 Spanish comedy, and it is as hard to unravel. 
 
 A history of Brunswick, published anonymously 
 soon after the accession of George I. to the crown 
 of these realms, asserts that the prince arrived in 
 this country to prosecute his suit to the Princess 
 Anne, who had just been somewhat unexpectedly 
 deprived of another lover, on the i /th of November, 
 1680. The % Sidney diary fixes his arrival at Green- 
 wich on the 6th of December of that year. England 
 was much disturbed at the time by a double subject 
 of discussion. Men's minds were much occupied 
 with the question of excluding from the succession 
 to the throne James, the father of the lady to whom 
 George came a-wooing. The second subject of dis- 
 quietude was the trial of Lord Viscount Stafford, then 
 in process of being slowly murdered by a judicial trial, 
 on a charge of conspiring the death of the king. The
 
 40 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 charge was supported by the oaths, made with 
 alacrity, of that pupil of whom Merchant Tailors' 
 School is not proud, Titus Gates, and one or two 
 others liars as stupendous. If George Louis 
 landed at Greenwich, as is said, on the 6th of De- 
 cember, 1680, it was the day on which the calum- 
 niated nobleman entered on his defence. On the 7th 
 he was condemned, and Evelyn, who was present at 
 the trial, rightly remarks upon the guilt or innocence 
 of the accused in this strain : " I can hardly think 
 that a person of his age and experience should en- 
 gage men whom he never saw before (and one of 
 them who came to visit him as a stranger at Paris), 
 pointblank to murder the king ; " but in recollection 
 of the deliberate and hard swearing, he adds, per- 
 plexedly, "God only, who searches hearts, can dis- 
 cover the truth." 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 3Oth 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 the details of 
 the incidents of his arrival and reception in England. 
 His Highness's spelling of the names of places is as 
 defective as that of poor Caroline of Brunswick 
 generally was, and it reminds us, if one may go to 
 the stage for a simile, of the " cacolology "of Lord 
 Duberly. However, the prince spelt quite as cor- 
 rectly as many a lord, or lady either, of his time. 
 The tenor of his epistle is, that he remained one
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 41 
 
 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 pro- 
 ceeds 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 mak- 
 ing 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 're- 
 membered 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 Prin- 
 cess 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
 
 42 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 day. All the lords come to see me, sans prttendre la 
 main ches moi " (probably, rather meaning without 
 ceremony, without kissing hands, as was the common 
 custom in Germany, from inferiors to superiors, and 
 still remains a custom in Southern Germany, than, as 
 has been suggested, that " they came without ventur- 
 ing to shake hands with him "). 
 
 There is something melancholy in the idea of the 
 fiery Rupert held ingloriously prostrate in bed by a 
 sore leg ; and there is a subject for a picture in the 
 profligate little George, saluting the lips of the cold 
 Princess Anne. Cold, at all events, and deaf, if we 
 were to judge by results, did the princess 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. 
 In the seclusion to which he was condemned by 
 Charles, who bade him take patience, a commodity 
 much needed by himself, 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. On 
 the Christmas day of this year, while George of 
 Hanover was enjoying the festivities of this time, 
 at the side of James's daughter, the students of 
 King's College, Edinburgh, entertained James him- 
 self by a spectacle which must have raised a sardonic 
 smile on his usually sardonic face. Those young 
 gentlemen burnt the Pope in effigy, in front of 
 Holyrood House, and beneath the windows of the 
 apartments occupied by James. Sir John Lauder
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 43 
 
 apologises for this rudeness by kindly explaining 
 that "this was highly resented as an inhospitable 
 affront to the Duke of York, though it was only to 
 his religion." As if an affront to what is so sacred, 
 could be excused by an "only." But it was at a 
 time when the actors at the " Theatre Royal " in 
 London were playing "The Female Prelate," and 
 George Louis had a good opportunity of hearing in 
 what rugged hexameters was told the story of Joanna 
 Angelica. How the offended became the slighted 
 mistress of the Duke of Saxony, vowed revenge, 
 turned monk, became Pope, and after revenging the 
 injuries she had received from the duke, as woman, 
 condemned him to the stake for his blasphemies 
 against her as Pope. 
 
 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. Scaliger's assertion, that the Germans do 
 not care what wine they drink, so long as it is wine, 
 nor what Latin they speak, so long as it is Latin, 
 is a calumny. They are nice connoisseurs of both. 
 George and his trio of followers, who were made 
 doctors of law by the scholastic authorities, were too 
 polite to criticise either. 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!" ex-
 
 44 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 claimed 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 extraor- 
 dinary, 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 Parlia- 
 ment, 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 Parlia- 
 ment, 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, who should be 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 he should be obliged 
 to reside five hundred miles from the British do- 
 minions; 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.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 45 
 
 However strenuously some writers may assert that the 
 heads of the house of Brunswick troubled themselves 
 in no wise upon the question of the succession, no 
 one can deny, or doubt, that they had a deep, though, 
 it may be as yet, a distant interest in it. Their con- 
 cern was greater than their professed adherents will 
 consent to acknowledge. Nor was there anything 
 unnatural or unbecoming in such concern. The 
 possible inheritance of even such a throne as that of 
 England was in the days of Charles II., when Britain 
 was treated with a contempt by other nations which 
 of right belonged only to her worthless sovereign 
 even a possible inheritance to even such a throne 
 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 Eng- 
 land, 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 afterward, 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 ruling idea in the
 
 46 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 mind of Ernest Augustus was, that if the territory of 
 Zell were united to that of Hanover, there would be 
 an increased chance of procuring from the emperor 
 its elevation to an electorate ; and he felt that, how- 
 ever he might have provided to secure his succession 
 to the dominions of Zell, the marriage of his son with 
 the duke's only child would add thereto many broad 
 acres, the possession of which would add dignity to 
 the elector. 
 
 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 Wolfenbiittel. 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. Accordingly a betrothal only took place 
 between Sophia and Augustus, and the public cere- 
 mony of marriage was deferred for a year and some 
 supplementary months. 
 
 It was a time which was very actively employed 
 by those who hoped to accomplish much before it 
 had quite expired. Latimer remarks, that the devil 
 is the only prelate he knew who is for ever busy in 
 his diocese. He certainly was unweariedly occupied 
 for a time in that portion of his see which is com- 
 prised in the narrow limits including Hanover and 
 Zell. And it was an occupation in which that dark 
 diocesan must have been especially delighted. The 
 end of the action employed was to destroy the happi-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 47 
 
 ness of two young persons who were bound to each 
 other by the strong bonds of respect and affection. 
 A bad ambition was the impelling motive of such 
 action. The devil, then, never had work which so 
 exactly suited his Satanic nature. 
 
 His ministers, however worthy they may have been 
 of their master, as far as zeal was concerned, did him 
 or themselves little credit with regard to the measure 
 of their success. 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 conde- 
 scended 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 Wolfenbiittel had made his reappear- 
 ance at the court of Zell. Coupling the knowledge 
 of this fact with the remembrance that Sophia Doro- 
 thea was now sixteen years of age, and that at such 
 a period her marriage had been fixed, the mother of
 
 48 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 Meck- 
 lenburg 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 farther 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 forth- 
 with pushed open the door, entered the apartment, 
 and discovered the dismayed duke in the most 
 negligt of deshabilles. She neither made apology 
 nor would receive any, but intimating that she came
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 49 
 
 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 eiderdown and 
 deep amazement. 
 
 The "old Sophia," could have wished, it would 
 seem, that she had been farther 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 utterly unintel- 
 ligible to the vexed and suspecting duchess. 
 
 This was another group for an artist desirous to 
 illustrate the byways of history. 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 Eleanor, 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 ; and as the names of her daughter 
 and lover were being constantly pronounced with that 
 of George Louis, the poor lady continued to lie 
 helpless beneath much alarm and her silk counter- 
 pane. 
 
 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 Dor-
 
 50 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 othea and Augustus of Wolfenbiittel, and how advan- 
 tageous 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 Hano- 
 ver. She hinted at the possibility even of Sophia 
 Dorothea one day sharing with her son the throne 
 of Great Britain. The hint, if really made, was some- 
 what premature, but the astute lady may have 
 strengthened her case by reminding her hearer that 
 the crown of England would most probably be re- 
 served 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's eye 
 by his clever sister-in-law. He was as proud as the 
 poor exiled Stanislaus, who entered his daughter's 
 apartment, on the morning he received the application 
 of Louis XV. for her hand, with the salutation, " Good 
 morning, my child ! you are Queen of France ; " and 
 then he kissed the hand of Marie Leczinska, the 
 happy father, too happy to be the first to render 
 homage to his daughter on her becoming what he 
 had ceased to be a sovereign oppressed by respon- 
 sibilities. The Duke of Zell was almost as eager to 
 go and congratulate his daughter. With ready lack 
 of honesty, he had consented to break off the match 
 between Sophia Dorothea and her affianced lover, and 
 to bestow her hand upon the careless prince for whom 
 it was now demanded by his mother. The latter
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 51 
 
 returned to Hanover perfectly satisfied with the work 
 of that night and morning. 
 
 The same satisfaction was not experienced by the 
 Duchess Eleanor. When she came to learn the facts, 
 she burst forth in expressions of grief and indignation. 
 The marriage which had now been definitively broken, 
 had been with her an affair of the heart, of a 
 mother's heart. It had not been less an affair of the 
 heart of a young girl's heart with Sophia Doro- 
 thea ; and the princely lover from Wolfenbiittel had 
 invested as much heart in the matter as had ever 
 been known in German times when minstrel sang of 
 knights whose chivalry more than half consisted of 
 fidelity in love. It was a pitiable case ! There were 
 three persons who were to be rendered irretrievably 
 wretched, in order, not that any one might be ren- 
 dered happy, but that a man, without a heart, might 
 be made a little more spacious 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. 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 ambi- 
 tious ; for the possible effect of a marriage with 
 George Louis was merely to add his own independent 
 duchy of Lunebourg 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,
 
 52 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 regard, or affection for the poor young victim who 
 was to be flung to him with indecent and un- 
 natural disregard of all her feelings as daughter and 
 maiden. 
 
 The matter was urged onward by Sophia of Han- 
 over ; and in testimony of the freedom of inclination 
 with which Sophia Dorothea acted on this marriage, 
 she addressed 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 obedi- 
 ence 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 was 
 far away from her words. 
 
 After a world of misery and mock wooing, crowded 
 into a few months, the hateful and ill-omened mar- 
 riage took place at Zell on the 2ist of November, 
 1682. The bride was sixteen, the bridegroom twenty- 
 two. There was quite enough on both sides to make 
 happiness, if youth could establish felicity; but in 
 this case the maiden, who was one of the fairest and 
 most refined of German maidens, had neither heart 
 nor regard for the youth, who was one of the least 
 attractive in mind or person who could address him- 
 self to win a maiden's hand, which, on the present 
 occasion, was the very last thing he thought of 
 doing. 
 
 The marriage took place, as I have stated, on the 
 2ist of November, 1682 ; a week after, Prince Rupert, 
 who for some time before had been sunning himself, 
 a poor invalid, beneath the beeches at Windsor, died 
 at his house in Spring Gardens (where he had resided
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA S3 
 
 for eight years) as though the intelligence of the 
 marriage had been too much for his worn-out spirit 
 or its shattered tabernacle. 
 
 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 mi- 
 nuteness almost inconceivable, and a weariness sadden- 
 ing even to think of. They thought of everything 
 but the heart of the principal personage in the cere- 
 mony 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 flat- 
 tery was of the grossest, but they had no comprehen- 
 sion 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 maker of this splendidly miserable marriage 
 was proud of her achievement. She claims a word 
 of description for herself, even though it be at the 
 end of a chapter. 
 
 Chevreau, the friend of the Elector Palatine Charles 
 Louis, the brother of Sophia, said of the Duchess of 
 Hanover, " that in all France there exists no one of a 
 more excellent wit than the Duchess Sophia ; " and, 
 as if to show that there were things in Germany as 
 valuable as wit, he adds, "neither is there any one 
 more deeply instructed in philosophical science than 
 her sister, the Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia." 
 
 Sophia had been born in a school which sharpens
 
 54 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 wit. Her mother was the high-spirited daughter of 
 a meanly spirited king, who allowed her to marry as 
 poor-spirited a prince. Elizabeth, daughter of James 
 I., used to say to her rather provoking and not very 
 Protestant mother, Anne of Denmark, that she would 
 not be a Romanist to gain the most brilliant crown 
 in the world. She was married to Frederick, the 
 Elector Palatine, when the religious revolutions of 
 the time called him to the newly created throne of 
 Bohemia, whereon his gallant wife would have held 
 him, had she only, in return, been supported by her 
 father. " Goody Palsgrave " was hardly a harsh nick- 
 name for such a consort as hers. He had nothing of 
 the manly courage which looks misfortune steadily 
 in the face, and strives to make it lead to ultimate 
 success. He lost a kingdom, with tears in his eyes, 
 like the Moor in Spain, and thereupon submitted, 
 yet with nothing of heroic patience, to destiny. So, 
 he lost the young prince, Frederick Henry, his son, 
 who was drowned in his sight, calling to him for 
 help. He could bewail the lot of his perishing boy, 
 but even parental love could not nerve him to strike 
 out boldly and save the sinking child. Like his mis- 
 fortunes, his children were not few, but they were 
 singularly unlike their father. His son, Charles 
 Louis, perhaps, had some points of resemblance with 
 his sire ; but how unlike him was the fiery Rupert ! 
 how unlike the " Grave Maurice," named so, not 
 from his gravity, but from his rank ! His daughters, 
 too, partook more of their mother's mental qualities 
 than those of her husband. Adversity, tribulation, 
 flattery, or deception, worked in each Elizabeth, 
 Louisa, Henrietta, and Sophia various results ; but
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 55 
 
 the mother's intellect was inherited by all, without all 
 of them possessing the mother's virtues. 
 
 Whilst the mother was dwelling at The Hague, 
 absent from the electoral court of her son, Sophia 
 was the chosen companion, the solace, and the joy of 
 the deep-thinking and wild-dreaming Elizabeth, her 
 sister. The latter heard with some surprise, and 
 still more indignation, that the heavy Duke of Bruns- 
 wick, Ernest Augustus, had made an offer of marriage 
 to the brilliant and light-hearted Sophia. The offer 
 smacked of presumption, for Sophia was the daughter 
 of a king, though but of a poor and brief-reigning 
 monarch ; whereas Ernest Augustus was but a duke, 
 with large pride, but a very small estate, and not rich 
 in expectations. No one could have guessed, when 
 he went a-wooing to the gay and intellectual Sophia, 
 that he would ever be more than Duke of Brunswick 
 and Bishop of Osnaburgh. It did not enter into 
 popular speculation that he would ever be Duke of 
 Brunswick and Elector of Hanover. On the other 
 hand, speculation could hardly have imagined, in the 
 year 1658, that the young Sophia would be the heiress 
 of a throne and t'he mother of a line of kings. Her 
 own mother, the ex-Queen of Bohemia, decidedly 
 looked upon the match as a m/salliance, but it was 
 one of those which may be said, in more than in the 
 popular and proverbial sense, to have been made in 
 heaven ; for though it could not personally benefit the 
 daughter of James I., it gave a crown to the grand- 
 child of her who had so proudly declared that she 
 would rather forfeit the most glorious crown on earth 
 than retain it by the surrender of Protestantism. It 
 was doubly right that in the Protestant child of such
 
 56 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a mother, the succession to the throne of these realms 
 should have been fixed. We shall hear subsequently 
 of the granddaughter of Charles I., the Duchess of 
 Savoy (subsequently Queen of Sardinia), protesting 
 against such an arrangement. Her protest was not 
 valid, only because it was not founded on the princi- 
 ples which were asserted by Elizabeth of Bohemia, 
 and which influenced her daughter Sophia. The 
 daughter of Charles the First's youngest daughter 
 would fain have had the throne of England rendered 
 accessible to herself and heirs, although Romanists, 
 upon the poor understanding of toleration to the 
 reformed faith. Our forefathers would have nothing 
 to do with such compromise, and they who kept to 
 the purer faith gained the splendid prize. 
 
 Sophia was married in 1658, and during a long 
 course of subsequent years she sustained the highest 
 reputation for shrewdness, extensive knowledge, wit, 
 acute observation, originality of conception, and bril- 
 liancy of expression. She had not, indeed, the stern 
 steadiness of principle of her mother, and she was by 
 far more ambitious, while she was less scrupulous as 
 to the means employed for the attainment of her ends. 
 Men of less information than herself were afraid of 
 her, for she was fond of triumphing in argument. But 
 she was previously well armed for securing such 
 triumphs, and the amount of knowledge which she 
 had made her own, amid scenes and trials and dis- 
 sipations little favourable to the amassing of such 
 intellectual treasure, is accounted for by a remark 
 of Leibnitz, with whom she loved to hold close 
 intercourse, to the effect that she was not only 
 given to asking why, but that, as he quaintly puts it,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 57 
 
 she invariably wanted to know the why of the whys. 
 In other words, she accepted no reasons which were 
 not rendered strictly intelligible to her. 
 
 And then, she was as pretty as she was clever ; 
 without a tinge of pertness to spoil her beauty, or a 
 trace of pedantry to mar her scholarship. If she 
 loved to win logical battles by power of the latter, 
 and fought boldly, eagerly, and with every sense 
 awake to profit by the weakness of her adversary, it 
 was all done gaily, and lightly ; and if great wits were 
 rolled over in the dust when they tilted against her 
 in intellectual tournaments, they were ready to ac- 
 knowledge that they were struck down with a most 
 consummate grace. 
 
 She as much enjoyed to see these battlings of 
 brains between other parties, as to sustain the fight 
 herself. When her sister Elizabeth had withdrawn 
 from the world, and retired within the Protestant 
 abbey of Herford, to dream with the dreaming 
 Labadie and his disciples over theories more baseless 
 than dreams themselves, the gay Sophia once sur- 
 prised her too grave sister with a visit. She brought 
 in her train the ecclesiastical superintendent of Osna- 
 burgh for the express purpose of "pitting" him 
 against the prophet and reformer Labadie. Prince 
 Charles, the son of Charles Louis (brother of Eliza- 
 beth and Sophia), and his tutor, Paul Hackenburg, 
 were witnesses or partakers in the intellectual skir- 
 mish. Hackenburg has left a graphic description of 
 the onslaught between the orthodox Osnaburgher and 
 the new apostle Labadie; at which Sophia assisted 
 without uttering a remark, but not without giving 
 evidence of much enjoyment. When all was over,
 
 58 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 says Paul, " during dinner we talked of nothing else 
 but this absurd and quaking sort of piety to which 
 people are sometimes brought, and our astonishment 
 could hardly find words when, alluding to the number 
 of young women of the best families, richly dressed, 
 brilliant with beauty and youth, who were insane 
 enough to give up the conduct of their souls to this 
 worst of men and most powerless of priests (only to 
 be laughed at too by him in secret), and who were so 
 riveted to their delusions that neither the prayers of 
 their parents, nor the pleadings of their betrothed, 
 nor the prospect of maternal joys could tear them 
 away ; some among them said they were surely hypo- 
 chondriacs and unanswerable for what they might do ; 
 others opined that they should all be sent to the baths 
 of Schwalbach or Pyrmont, and that probably they 
 would come back cured. All these remarks and dis- 
 cussions made the Princess Elizabeth highly indig- 
 nant, and she exclaimed against the unkindness which 
 could induce any one to ascribe to bodily infirmity a 
 greater degree of piety wherewith the Holy Ghost 
 chose to inspire a certain number of individuals purer 
 than the rest ! But to this the Electress Sophia, a 
 lady of extraordinary beauty, found an answer which 
 turned all bitterness into general mirth, by asserting, 
 with mock gravity, that her sister's sole reason for 
 holding to the Labadists was that they were stingy 
 housekeepers, and cost little or nothing to keep." 
 Hackenburg says that the accusation was a true one, 
 but it may be added that, whatever the cost of this 
 household, it never incurred debt, never allowed ex- 
 penses to go beyond its means ; and if the Lady of 
 Hanover and her lord had always followed the same
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 59 
 
 vulgar fashion, it would have been none the worse for 
 their reputation and comfort, or for that perhaps of 
 some of their descendants, who might otherwise have 
 profited by example. 
 
 Spittler, writing of Sophia and her husband, says, 
 rather too panegyrically, perhaps : " Through the 
 complicated events of their troublous times, this 
 princely pair are a sort of landmark whereon to 
 rest the eye, and form a proof of how much good may 
 be done by those who hold an exalted position. We 
 must admire that really German intellectual enthusi- 
 asm which made them the friends of Leibnitz, that 
 systematic firmness which characterised their gov- 
 ernment, and allied to ceaselessly active efforts for 
 the public good that untiring patience and longanim- 
 ity so easy to learn in years of discouragement, and 
 generally so easily forgotten when years of greater 
 prosperity are reached." This is rather showing the 
 principal characters in the drama under a flood of 
 pink light, but there is much therein that is fairly 
 applicable to the wife of Ernest Augustus.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLD OF GEORGE AND SOPHIA 
 
 Reception of Sophia at the Court of Ernest Augustus Similar Posi- 
 tion 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, Mile. Er- 
 mengarde von Schulemberg A Marriage Fete, and Intended 
 Insult to the Princess Sophia Gross Vice of George Louis. 
 
 ACCORDING to Pope, it was " to curse Pamela with 
 her prayers " that the gods 
 
 " Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares, 
 The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state, 
 And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate. 
 She glares in balls, front boxes, and the ring, 
 A vain, unquiet, glitt'ring, wretched thing, 
 Pride, pomp, and state but reach her outward part ; 
 She sighs, and is no duchess at her heart." 
 
 The greatness of Sophia Dorothea was no conse- 
 quence of her prayers, and she was unlike the poet's 
 Pamela in all things, save that she had "a fool for 
 mate," spent her time in sighs, and was indeed "no 
 duchess at her heart." For a few months after her 
 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, 
 
 60

 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GEORGE AND SOPHIA 
 
 *t Augustus Similar Posi- 
 - Misfortune of the Abigail 
 
 i ad state i rd part; 
 
 > duchess at her heart." 
 
 The gn f Sophia Dorothea was no conse- 
 
 quence of her p :d she was unlike the poet's 
 
 Pamela in all things, save that she had "a fool for 
 mate," 5 hs, and was indeed "no 
 
 ,1 few months after 
 ! had tai- 
 
 Sophia, Princess Palatine 
 
 Photogravure from the fainting by G. Houtkorst
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 61 
 
 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 appre- 
 ciated 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. The position of Sophia 
 Dorothea with regard to this woman was not unlike 
 that of Marie [Antoinette at the court of Louis XV. 
 with regard to Madame du Barri. Poor Marie Antoi- 
 nette was, in some degree, the worse conditioned of 
 the two, for her own mother, the great Maria Theresa, 
 held friendly intercourse with the king's " favourites," 
 and did not hesitate, when she had a political purpose 
 in view, to address them by letter in terms of famil- 
 iarity, if not of endearment. By her own mother she 
 was exposed to much indecent outrage. It was other- 
 wise with Sophia Dorothea. Her mother deplored 
 her marriage as a miserable event, simply because she 
 was aware, from the character of George Louis, that 
 her husband would heap upon her nothing but insult 
 and indignity. Ever after the separation of mother 
 and daughter, the former seemed as one doomed to 
 sit for ever beneath the shadow of a great sorrow. 
 The first child of this marriage brought with him, 
 however, some transitory promise of felicity. He 
 was born at Hanover, on the 3Oth of October, 1683, 
 and when 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. But expression of regard is worth little 
 unless its sincerity be proved by action. It was not
 
 62 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 so in the present case. The second child of this 
 marriage was a daughter, born in 1684. 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 her 
 daughter, George Louis openly neglected and openly 
 exhibited his hatred of his wife. He lost no oppor- 
 tunity 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 aban- 
 doned female favourites of her husband, whose pres- 
 ence beneath such a roof was the uncleanest of 
 pollutions and the most flagrant of outrages. 
 
 I have said that, in some respects, the position of 
 Sophia Dorothea at Hanover was not unlike that 
 of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. This similarity, 
 however, is perhaps only to be discovered in the cir- 
 cumstances of both being subjected to the degrada- 
 tion of intercourse with women of little virtue but of 
 large influence. Marie Antoinette indeed, like Sophia 
 Dorothea, married a prince who, at the best, contem- 
 plated his wife with supreme indifference, but there 
 was this difference in their respective destinies as 
 married women, Marie Antoinette gradually over- 
 came her husband's want of regard, and he who had 
 been the coldest of bridegrooms became, in after 
 years, the most devoted of husbands and lovers. It 
 was far otherwise with the wife of George Louis. 
 The poor show of enforced ceremony, beneath which, 
 during the first year of his marriage, he hid his want 
 of affection for a wife as gentle and good as she was 
 fair and accomplished, was not maintained after that
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 63 
 
 period. He did not even give himself the trouble to 
 conceal from her his daily increasing aversion. She 
 bore her fierce and bitter trial with calm dignity ; 
 and she was further unlike Marie Antoinette in this 
 respect, that she was not "nearer her sex than her 
 rank ; " a pithy saying of Rivarolle's, which more 
 correctly describes the wife of Louis XVI. than even 
 Rivarolle himself either suspected or understood. 
 
 The prime mover of the hatred of George Louis 
 for his consort was Madame von Platen, and this fact 
 was hardly known to certainly not allowed by 
 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. The Dead Sea is said to be in most places 
 fifteen hundred feet deep, but there are spots where 
 the lead will find bottom at two fathoms. George 
 Louis may be compared with that sea. It was often 
 impossible to divine his purpose, but quite as often 
 his thoughts were as clearly discernible as the pebbles 
 in the bed of a transparent brook. Madame von 
 Platen saw through him thoroughly, and she em- 
 ployed her discernment for the furtherance of her 
 own detestable objects. 
 
 The man who hated Aristides because he was 
 called the "just," was a man with whose feelings 
 Madame von Platen could entertain sympathy. So- 
 phia Dorothea had not merely contrived to win the 
 good opinion of her mother-in-law, but the warm 
 favour of Ernest Augustus. That grand potentate
 
 64 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 looked upon her as the Duchess of Burgundy of his 
 court. She was only so inasmuch as she was affec- 
 tionate and obliging. In most other respects it would 
 be as correct to compare her with Pompadour as with 
 the duchess, who won the regard and penetrated the 
 secrets of the Grand Monarque, only to betray both. 
 
 The praise of his daughter-in-law was ever the 
 theme which hung on the lips of Ernest Augustus, 
 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 her mother, the Duchess of Zell. 
 
 Ernest Augustus used occasionally to visit Madame 
 von Platen at her own residence. He was an imita- 
 tor of the way of life of Louis XIV. ; and as that 
 monarch more than once visited a " favourite," with a 
 military escort attending him, trumpets heralding his 
 passage, and his own queen dragged along in his train, 
 so Ernest Augustus, with diminished state, but with 
 more than enough of publicity, visited Madame von 
 Platen. 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 com- 
 ing ; and it was on one of these occasions that, on 
 arriving at the mansion, or in the gardens of the man- 
 sion of his minister's spouse, he found, not the lady
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 65 
 
 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 
 Madame von Platen probably remonstrated with 
 Ernest Augustus, respectfully or otherwise, upon his 
 deplorable want of dignity and good taste. 
 
 But, to leave hypothesis for fact, we know that 
 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 Madame 
 von Platen committed the terrified Use to close 
 imprisonment in the common gaol. The history of 
 little German courts, as well as novels and dramas, in 
 their illustrations of life, and in the mirror which they
 
 66 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 hold up to nature, assure 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 Madame 
 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 Madame von Platen had resolved as to the 
 further course which should be ultimately adopted 
 toward 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 Duchess Sophia 
 heard the tap of the drums which accompanied the 
 alleged culprit to the gates, we can only suppose that 
 she would have expelled Madame von Platen 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 philosoph- 
 ical Leibnitz was too much occupied with the sage to 
 trouble herself with the affairs which gave concern 
 to Madame von Platen. 
 
 The present affair, however, most nearly concerned 
 poor Use, who 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 Augus- 
 tus for redress. The prince, however, was at once
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 67 
 
 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 else- 
 where, and congratulated her that she had not re- 
 ceived even rougher treatment. 
 
 Use, perhaps, would have quoted the Psalmist, who 
 dissuades men from putting their trust in princes, 
 but for the fact that she hoped, even yet, if not 
 from a prince, to find succour from a princess. She 
 accordingly 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 weigh- 
 ing 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, in bygone 
 days, at little German courts. They had, moreover, 
 no small influence on the happiness of Sophia Doro- 
 thea. Madame 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 home- 
 less : and she in consequence is suspected of having 
 been fired with more satanic zeal to make desolate 
 the home of the young wife. She adopted the most 
 efficient means to arrive at such an end. 
 
 It was the period when Sophia Dorothea had just 
 become the mother of a daughter who bore her name,
 
 68 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and who was subsequently queen-consort of Prussia. 
 It was from this period that George Louis openly 
 treated his wife with the contempt, and the evil 
 genius by whom he was most influenced was Madame 
 von Platen. 
 
 The first attempt to estrange him permanently 
 from Sophia Dorothea was made through her sister, 
 Madame von Busche. The latter lady, previous to 
 her marriage with the tutor of George Louis, had 
 endeavoured, with some slight success, to fascinate 
 his pupil. She 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. 
 If endeavour could merit or achieve success, the 
 attempt of this would-be charmer would have de- 
 served, and would have accomplished, a triumph. 
 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 circum- 
 stance, 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 fete at which he was present at the mansion of 
 Madame von Platen, he was enchanted by a may-pole 
 of a young lady, with a name almost as long as 
 her person, it was Ermengarda Melusina von Schu- 
 lemberg. 
 
 She was more shrewd than witty, this " tall maw- 
 kin," as the Electress Sophia once called the lofty 
 Ermengarda ; and, as George Louis was neither witty
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 69 
 
 himself, nor much cared for wit in others, she was the 
 better enabled to establish herself in the most worth- 
 less of hearts that ever beat beneath an embroidered 
 vest. 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 care- 
 lessness did he surrender himself to be cajoled. Gradu- 
 ally, by watching his inclinations, anticipating his 
 wishes, admiring even his coarseness, and lauding it 
 as candour, she so won upon the lazily excited feel- 
 ings 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 invari- 
 ably fell in with Ermengarda. At the court theatre, 
 when he was present, the next conspicuous object 
 was the towering Von Schulemberg, like Mile. 
 Georges, "in all her diamonds," beneath the glare 
 of which, and the blazing impudence of their wearer, 
 the modest Sophia Dorothea was almost extinguished. 
 Doubly authorised would she have been, as she 
 looked at her unworthy husband, to have exclaimed, 
 as Alfieri afterward did in his autobiography : 
 
 " O picciola cosa pur 1'uomo." 
 
 It is said of the robe originally worn by the prophet 
 Mahomet, and reverently preserved at Mecca, that it 
 was annually washed in a tub of clear water, which 
 was subsequently duly bottled off, and sent as holy 
 water to the various princes of Islam. A fashion 
 alleged to have been adopted by Madame von Platen, 
 is recalled to memory by this matter of the prophet's 
 robe.
 
 70 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 That estimable person had announced a festival, 
 to be celebrated at her mansion, which was to sur- 
 pass in splendour anything that had ever been wit- 
 nessed by the existing generation. The occasion was 
 the marriage of her sister, Madame von Busche, who 
 had worried the poor ex-tutor of George Louis into 
 the grave, with General Wreyke, a gallant soldier, 
 equal, it would seem, to any feat of daring. When- 
 ever Madame 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. 
 
 Be this fable or not and very strange things 
 were done in the old-fashioned circles of Germany in 
 those days the fete 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 Ermen- 
 garda Melusina von Schulemberg. 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 Ermen- 
 garda for his "favourite." 
 
 More activity was employed to encompass the 
 desired end than if the aim in view had been one of
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 71 
 
 good purpose. It so far succeeded that Sophia 
 Dorothea intimated her intention of being present 
 at the festival given by Madame von Platen ; and 
 when the latter lady received the desired and wel- 
 come 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, congratu- 
 lations had been duly paid, and the floor was ready 
 for the dancers, and nothing lacked but the presence 
 of Sophia Dorothea. There walked the proudly 
 eminent Von Schulemberg, 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, the Countess von 
 Knesebeck, arrived, not as her attendant but her 
 representative, with excuses for the non-appearance 
 of her mistress, whom indisposition (unfeigned indis- 
 position to be a witness of a suspected sight) de- 
 tained 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 ; and so 
 narrowly and sharply observant was the lynx-eyed 
 Von Knesebeck of all that passed between her mis- 
 tress's husband and that husband's mistress, that 
 when she returned to her duties of dame (fatours, 
 she unfolded a narrative that inflicted a stab in every 
 phrase, and tore the heart of the despairing listener.
 
 72 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 But court life in Germany was at this, as also at 
 an earlier and till a later period, one of unmixed ex- 
 travagance and viciousness. A few of the social 
 traits of such life will be found in the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 COURT LIFE IN GERMANY THE ELECTORATE OF 
 
 HANOVER 
 
 Vienna, the Most Dissolute Capital in Europe Extravagance and 
 Profligacy of Augustus the Strong, afterward King of Poland 
 Fete in Honour of His Mistress, Maria Aurora K6nigsmark 
 The Alchemist, and His Fate Gorgeous Wrecks of His Reign 
 at Dresden Count Bruhl's Profligate Expenditure The Court 
 of Bavaria The Sporting Propensities of the Electress Maria 
 Amelia Her Fondness for Dogs Reception of George the 
 First's Mistresses by the English Mob Infamy of the German 
 Ecclesiastical Princes Expulsion of the Duke of Mecklenburg. 
 Schwerin His Matrimonial Adventures His Apologist Leib- 
 nitz Poverty of Prince Rupert at His Death, and Lottery for 
 His Jewels The House of Hanover Ranges Itself against 
 France Ernest Augustus Created Elector Domestic Rebel- 
 lion of His Son Maximilian His Accomplice, Count Molcke, 
 Beheaded The Electors of Germany. 
 
 THE extravagance of Madame von Platen, men- 
 tioned in the last chapter, was a reflex of that which 
 made some of the sovereign courts of her day most 
 sadly illustrious. Louis XIV. was not the only mon- 
 arch guilty of impoverishing the people by living in a 
 splendour which made his country bankrupt. The 
 German courts needed not, and did not turn to France 
 for a precedent of superb wickedness. The imperial 
 household at Vienna was a high school, whereat the 
 minor potentates of Germany might take degrees in 
 extravagance and profligacy. Not less than forty 
 
 73
 
 74 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 thousand individuals were attached to the service of 
 that house, and the licentious habits and coarse tone 
 of the majority of these servants of the emperor, from 
 the noble to the lackey, not only had an ill effect upon 
 contemporary society, but may be said to be felt even 
 now in Vienna ; the most dissolute capital in Europe, 
 where the aristocracy point in scorn to the citizens as 
 abandoned to vice, and the citizens scowl at the aris- 
 tocracy as the setters of bad example. 
 
 In the times of which I am treating, there was not 
 the minutest count holding sovereignty over a few 
 acres who did not maintain an ambassadorial estab- 
 lishment at Vienna, the expenses of which swallowed 
 up a very considerable portion of the state repre- 
 sented. These legates of their lords, and often with 
 their lords, and these lords' " ladies " in their com- 
 pany, were busily employed in the imperial city in 
 the solemn occupations of feasting, drinking, dancing, 
 gazing at fireworks, and other business which will 
 less bear mentioning. Two hogsheads of Tokay wine 
 were daily consumed for soaking the bread which was 
 given to the imperial parrots ! The empress's nightly 
 possets required twelve gallons of the same wine. 
 Not that the imperial appetite was equal to such 
 consumption, but that the kitchen supplied that 
 quantity to the household generally ; for in the 
 eighteenth century a German noble or his consort 
 no more thought of going to sleep without the " sac- 
 ramental " posset, than an English squire of the 
 same period. 
 
 I have alluded in another page to the " protector " 
 of the sister of Count Konigsmark, Augustus the 
 Strong, strong in everything but virtue, and utterly
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 75 
 
 worthless as man or monarch in all besides. His 
 reign, after he became King of Poland, was a long 
 course of brutal excess in every shape, and in some 
 cases outraging nature as much as was done in the 
 brutal excesses of Caligula. He left behind him 
 352 children dependent on the state, but whose claims 
 the state soon refused to recognise. 
 
 His extravagant taste exceeded even that of the 
 masters of Vienna or Versailles. In honour of Maria 
 Aurora Kb'nigsmark, the queen of the harem, and the 
 only " favourite " of this crowned brute who ever 
 retained in her bad eminence the refinement of char- 
 acter and conduct which had distinguished her before 
 her elevation, in honour of this " favourite " he gave 
 a festival on the Elbe, at which Neptune appeared in 
 a sea-shell (in very shallow water), surrounded by a 
 fleet of frigates, gondolas, and gunboats, all of true 
 model dimensions, and manned by crews who might 
 have sung in chorus the song from " La Promise," 
 "tna veste, ma veste" so gay, glorious, glittering, and 
 unseamanlike were they, in their satin jackets, their 
 silk stockings, and their paste-diamond shoe-buckles. 
 Soldiers, or civilians in the masquerade of soldiers, of 
 all nations under the sun, and all splendidly attired, 
 lined the banks of the river. The festival lasted 
 throughout a long day, and when night set in, a huge 
 allegorical picture, occupying six thousand yards, 
 nearly four miles of canvas, was illuminated by blaz- 
 ing piles of odoriferous woods. On that day was 
 squandered, in honour of a royal concubine, as much 
 wealth as would have fed and clothed all the hungry 
 and destitute in Dresden for a whole year. 
 
 Nor was this a solitary instance of the profligate
 
 76 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 extravagance of this monarch. On the occasion of a 
 visit to his court by Frederick William of Prussia and 
 the crown prince, he expended $5,000 in porcelain 
 vases for the adornment of their bedchambers, and 
 gave them a gipsy party at Miihlberg, where the 
 rural amusements of a few hours absorbed not less 
 than three millions of dollars. 
 
 Augustus delighted in monster fetes, with all sorts 
 of monster appliances ; and one of these gigantic fes- 
 tivals is spoken of, at which a cake was placed before 
 the guests twenty-eight feet long by twelve broad, the 
 sides of which were cut into by a gaudy official, 
 armed with a silver axe. Into the lap of one of his 
 favourites, Augustus poured no less a sum than 
 twenty millions of dollars. The fortunate recipient 
 was the Countess von Kosel. He spent the same 
 sum in welcoming to his dominions the daughter of 
 the Emperor Joseph I., newly espoused to his son. 
 The festivities were " stupendous," in character, dura- 
 tion, and extravagance. He met the bride with a 
 whole army at his back to give her welcome; and 
 a host, nearly as large, of courtiers, players, min- 
 strels, and dancers, all exerting themselves in their 
 several capacities to win a smile of approbation 
 from the lady, who looked in melancholy on the 
 show. 
 
 She must have been weary of it before it was half 
 over, for it dragged on, in gorgeous ponderosity, 
 through a whole month. Day after day the festival 
 was renewed, and there was more revelry in Dresden 
 than there was in Babylon when Alexander entered 
 it ; and of much the same degree of uncleanness too. 
 To crown the whole, Augustus and his court appeared
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 77 
 
 in the guise of heathen deities ; thus rivalling that 
 Augustus of Rome and his friends, who sat down to 
 the banquet in the likeness of the gods and goddesses 
 of Olympus, less dignified, indeed, than they, but 
 twice as beastly. 
 
 His conduct might fairly be described as that of a 
 maniac, were it not for one circumstance. He flung 
 gold about with a reckless prodigality which betokened 
 insanity, but it must be remembered that, at the very 
 period of his doing so, he entertained the conviction 
 that he was on the point of tearing the veil before 
 the great arcanum of chemistry, mastering the 
 knowledge connected with the transmutation of 
 metals, and becoming the maker of gold, to an 
 extent limited only by his necessities. 
 
 For this purpose he maintained an alchemist in his 
 palace. The professional gentleman, so calling him- 
 self, was right royally lodged as regarded his person, 
 and right profusely provided as respected his voca- 
 tion. His apartments were furnished with a splendour 
 which might have dazzled an emperor, and his labora- 
 tory was a glittering chaos of costly vessels, means, 
 and appliances, such as befitted the arch-deceiver 
 of a king foolish enough to be deceived. 
 
 The experiments were being carried on while 
 Augustus was as insanely experimenting on the 
 patience of his people. The alchemist, however, 
 soon encountered a swifter and more hideous ruin 
 than ultimately fell upon the head of Augustus him- 
 self. His patron became impatient and more exact- 
 ing than ever ; the magician more tricky, more 
 boastful of success, and less satisfactory in realisation 
 of his boasting. His specimens were pronounced
 
 78 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 counterfeit, his gold was scornfully rejected by the 
 goldsmiths of the capital, and, detected as a cheat, 
 he was beheaded by the order of him who had hoped 
 to profit by his address. 
 
 Dresden is yet strewn with the gorgeous wrecks 
 of the profligate reign of Augustus. The "Green 
 Vaults " of the palace, crowded as they are with 
 gems and jewelry, and rich metals wrought into 
 grotesque figures ; the huge ostrich cups, the gigan- 
 tic pearls, the musical clocks, and toys and trifles, 
 for which a "king's ransom" was less than the 
 purchase-money, should awake in the mind of the 
 beholder not so much of admiration for the collec- 
 tion, as of disgust and amazement at the thoughtless 
 extravagance of him who acquired it with the money 
 entrusted to his dishonest stewardship. If the mem- 
 ory of Augustus the Strong can ever be dwelt upon 
 with any measure of respect, it is perhaps when the 
 visitor at Dresden contemplates the gallery of pic- 
 tures there, of which he was the founder. In his 
 profligate expenditure he had a worthy imitator in 
 Count Briihl, the minister of his indolent son and 
 successor, Augustus III. His wardrobe could have 
 supplied half the great families in Europe with cos- 
 tumes ; his collection of embroidered shoes was a 
 sight for all Saxony ; and his museum of Parisian 
 wigs, arranged in chronological order, was the pride 
 of all the petit-maitres who were curious in perukes. 
 The court of Bavaria at the beginning of the last 
 century set no better example to the people, on 
 whose love and allegiance it made a claim which was 
 but shabbily reverenced. The little and delicate 
 electress, Maria Amelia, had the propensities of a
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 79 
 
 gigantic rout. She was delicate only in person, 
 not in mind ; but mind and body were similarly 
 " little " in other respects. She was an excellent 
 shot, followed the chase with the zest of the keenest 
 sportsman, and would toil half the day, across ridge 
 and furrow, or up to her knees in mud, in pursuit of 
 the game, among which she made such deadly havoc. 
 At these times, and often when the occasion was not 
 warrant for the fashion, she appeared in public in 
 male attire, generally of green cloth, her brilliant 
 complexion heightened by a brilliantly powdered 
 white peruke. She loved dogs as well as she did 
 men, rather better perhaps, on the whole ; and was 
 never more pleased than when she dined in no better 
 company than with a dozen of these canine favourites, 
 whose unceremonious clearing of the dishes, before 
 their hostess could help herself, only excited her 
 hearty laughter. 
 
 There were occasions, however, on which she was 
 given to anything rather than laughter, and chiefly 
 when she encountered the favourites of her husband. 
 On these she had no mercy ; and her dog-whip was 
 more than once applied to the shoulders of shame- 
 less rivals, which had perhaps better have been 
 applied to those of the unworthy husband, on 
 whose smiles and hard gold they lived in splendid 
 infamy. 
 
 Other German courts were marked and disgraced 
 by scenes of similar profligacy ; and that of Hanover 
 forms no exception, although it ceased sooner than 
 the others to be so distinguished. This desirable 
 consummation was not a result of greater cleanliness 
 of manner, but of a transportation of the uncleanness
 
 8o LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 to another locality ; and the court of Hanover no longer 
 presented an evil example to the people, because at 
 a later period George I., the unworthy husband of 
 Sophia Dorothea, removed in 1714, "with all his 
 mistresses," to this, the favoured country, which 
 was hardly grateful for the acquisition. 
 
 The lack of gratitude was made manifest enough 
 by the reply of " First Citizen," in a dramatic tumult 
 in the street raised by the arrogance of these women. 
 " Worthy folks ! " said one of them, in broken Eng- 
 lish, "we come here for all your goods." "Yes!" 
 roared "First Citizen," "and for all our chattels too," 
 a remark not far from the truth ; for the mistresses 
 of the first two Georges were supported out of the 
 funds raised by taxation of the people. But we are 
 anticipating events. 
 
 The ecclesiastical princes were not a jot behind 
 their secular highnesses in glaring infamy of conduct. 
 They scorned and outraged public opinion, as they 
 did the laws against clerical luxury and immorality 
 enacted by the Council of Trent. The debauchery 
 and profligacy of the higher orders of the priesthood 
 (mostly sons of princely families) were appalling. 
 An instance of their unseemliness of conduct has 
 been cited from Duclos's memoirs, wherein mention 
 is made of a want of decency manifested by the 
 Prince Archbishop of Cologne, when that electoral 
 dignitary was sojourning at Versailles. He gave 
 notice that he would preach in the Royal Chapel on 
 the ist of April, when a large and august auditory 
 assembled to do honour to the occasion. The 
 preacher, we are told, ascended the pulpit, and 
 bowed gravely to the audience; then shouting,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 81 
 
 " April fools all ! " he ran down the stairs amidst 
 the laughter of the court, and the clang of horns, 
 trumpets, and kettle-drums. 
 
 It was a strange time, when men were allowed to 
 have their particular views, and women their pe- 
 culiar faults, without much censure resulting, pro- 
 vided they respected certain limits. In this they 
 were like the pagans, among whom a woman might 
 swear for ever by Castor, and a man only by 
 Hercules, while ^Edepol was an execratory phrase 
 common to both. 
 
 Among the instances of German social life in the 
 higher classes at this period, may be cited the case of 
 the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who, driven out 
 of his dukedom by the hatred of his oppressed sub- 
 jects, took up his residence in Paris, about the year 
 1672. The duke had been married to a Protestant 
 princess, of whom, growing weary, he divorced him- 
 self from her, for no other reason than that he had 
 seen a Catholic princess who pleased him, for the 
 moment, better than his own wife. He married this 
 second lady, after first making public profession of 
 his conversion to the Church of Rome. Not a very 
 long period elapsed before he became more weary of 
 the new love than he had ever been of the old. He 
 was as tired of the faith, by accepting which he had 
 gained the lady ; and in an affected horror of having 
 committed some terrible sin, he immediately set 
 about procuring a divorce. It was no difficult mat- 
 ter ; and no less a man, judge and philosopher than 
 the great " Leibnitz," less influenced, it is said, by a 
 desire to disarm his foe than by certain juristic 
 sophistries, decided in favour of the divorce, in viola-
 
 82 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 tion of all law, and to the ineffable disgust of all 
 honest men. 
 
 But if princes and people were forgetful of duty, it 
 was perhaps, in part at least, because their teachers, 
 priests, and philosophers either failed to instruct 
 them, or neglected to make example add double force 
 to precept. There was no man in Hanover so 
 honoured as this Leibnitz ; but he was honoured 
 more for his intellectual than his moral worth. 
 There had been no more unreserved eulogist and 
 flatterer of Louis XIV. than he, but at the bidding 
 of Ernest Augustus, who had acquired reputation as 
 patriot and general by the share he had taken in the 
 war against France, Leibnitz attacked the Grande 
 Monarque in a satirical pamphlet, entitled " The 
 Most Christian Mars," in which he miserably suc- 
 ceeded in showing how wittily a clever man might 
 argue against his own convictions. 
 
 The father-in-law of Sophia Dorothea deserves 
 to have it said of him that, however immoral a man 
 he may have been, he was a more honest man than 
 Leibnitz. When Ernest Augustus was aspiring to 
 the electorate, and the emperor was as desirous 
 to form a united empire of amalgamated Catholics 
 and Protestants, Leibnitz, to further the duke's pur- 
 pose, wrote a pamphlet on the points of difference 
 between the two churches, and on the principles 
 which should form the basis and the bonds of a 
 common religion and a common church. The Prot- 
 estant philosopher preferred to publish this pam- 
 phlet anonymously, as the author of it so framed his 
 arguments as to let his readers suppose that he was a 
 Catholic. The duke refused to sanction this dis-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 83 
 
 honesty, and the pamphlet was not published until 
 after the author's death. It appeared as the " The- 
 ological System " of Leibnitz, and there was not an 
 argument in it which was the result of that author's 
 conviction. It was the boast of this philosopher, that 
 he was autodidactos, self-taught. As pupil, it 
 must be confessed that he sometimes had but a very 
 indifferent preceptor. 
 
 While on the subject of social traits of the period, 
 I may not inaptly notice one in England. It has 
 been already observed, that on the arrival of George 
 Louis in England, to ask for the hand of the Princess 
 Anne, he was indebted to his gouty and still fiery 
 uncle, Rupert, for some attentions. In 1683, the 
 gallant prince died too poor to leave wherewith to 
 pay his debts ! A plan was accordingly proposed, 
 whereby the necessary sum was to be raised by the 
 disposing of the prince's jewels by lottery. There 
 had, however, been so much cheating practised in 
 matters of this sort, that the public would take no 
 shares in this particular and princely lottery, unless 
 the king himself would guarantee that all should be 
 conducted fairly and honestly, and also that Mr. 
 Francis Child, the then eminent goldsmith and 
 banker of Temple Bar, should be responsible for 
 the "respection adventures;" that is, the genuine- 
 ness of the tickets. This stipulation proposed by the 
 public appears to have been accepted by the govern- 
 ment, for in the London Gazette of October i, 1683, 
 appears an advertisement, which runs as follows : 
 " These are to give notice, that the jewels of his late 
 Royal Highness, Prince Rupert, have been particularly 
 valued by Mr. Isaac Legouche, Mr. Christopher
 
 84 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Rosse, and Mr. Richard Beauvoir, jewellers, the 
 whole amounting to .20,000, and will be sold by 
 way of lottery; each lot to be 5. The biggest 
 prize will be a great pearl necklace, valued at .3,000, 
 and none less than 100. A printed particular of 
 each appraisement, with their divisions into lots, will 
 be delivered gratis by Mr. Francis Child, of Temple 
 Bar, London, into whose hands, such as are willing to 
 be adventurers are desired to pay their money, on or 
 before the first day of November next. As soon as 
 the whole sum is paid in, a short day will be ap- 
 pointed (which, it is hoped, will be before Christmas), 
 and notified in the Gazette, for the drawing thereof, 
 which will be done in his Majesty's presence, who is 
 pleased to declare that he himself will see all the 
 prizes put in among the blanks, and that the whole 
 will be managed with equity and fairness, nothing 
 being intended but the sale of the said jewels at 
 a moderate value. And it is further notified, for the 
 satisfaction of all as shall be adventurers, that the 
 said Mr. Child shall and will stand obliged to each of 
 them for their several adventures ; and that each 
 adventurer shall receive their (sic) money back, if the 
 said lottery be not drawn and finished before the first 
 day of February next." At a later period, the Gazette 
 announces that "the king will probably, to-morrow, 
 in the Banqueting House, see all ,the blanks told over, 
 that they may not exceed their number, and that the 
 papers on which the prizes are to be written shall be 
 rolled up in his presence, and that a child, appointed 
 either by his Majesty or the adventurers, shall draw 
 the prizes." If the king had never done worse than 
 to preside at the drawing of a lottery for the payment
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 85 
 
 of the debts of his cousin, the uncle of George Louis, 
 we might say that he was undignified, but not that 
 he was, as he really was, ignoble and graceless ; more 
 refined, perhaps, but not less debauched, than Augus- 
 tus of Saxony. 
 
 But, to return finally to Hanover: 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 they were destined 
 to attain. A few brief paragraphs will serve to show 
 how this was effected, before we once more take up 
 the personal history of Sophia Dorothea. 
 
 Whatever opinion may be formed with respect to 
 the opinions and feelings of the Hanover family in 
 reference to its being recognised in the line of legal 
 succession to the crown of England, it is pretty well 
 ascertained that Burnet was the first, and probably 
 not without being commissioned to the task, who 
 seriously opened the subject with the family, and that 
 through the Hanoverian minister at The Hague. 
 Burnet, in 1686, was residing at the latter place, the 
 friend and agent of William of Orange, and one of 
 the most active adversaries of James II., whose aver- 
 sion and perhaps dread of that busy ecclesiastic were 
 not without foundation. 
 
 In the year 1686, the Hanoverian minister at The 
 Hague was acting in strict obedience to the orders of 
 his master, Ernest Augustus, by rather supporting 
 than opposing the ambitious views of France. Louis 
 XIV. had so degraded England as to make Charles
 
 86 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 II. his pensionary, and the French monarch now 
 looked upon James as his ally, ready to follow whither- 
 soever the King of France was disposed to lead the 
 way. The union of these two Roman Catholic mon- 
 archs, if carried out to the ends contemplated by 
 them, threatened to overthrow both the religious and 
 civil liberties of every country over which their influ- 
 ence could be made to extend. It was especially 
 threatening to the princes of the Protestant faith, 
 and particularly so to Holland. To destroy this union 
 would be not only to rescue Holland from the perils 
 which threatened her, but would, perhaps, open the 
 throne of England to a Protestant prince. This 
 prince could not be looked for in the line of Charles 
 I., for the children of his daughter, the Duchess of 
 Orleans, were Romanists ; whereas, failing other 
 branches of the family (the probable nature of which 
 failure has already been adverted to), the line which 
 might hope to inherit the crown was to be found in 
 the immediate descendants of James I., through his 
 daughter, Elizabeth, the Queen of Bohemia, whose 
 daughter Sophia was married to Ernest Augustus of 
 Hanover. 
 
 When Burnet found the minister of the latter 
 prince offending the States General of Holland by his 
 tacit support of the views of France, he at once saw 
 the false position of the minister who was acting in 
 obedience to the instructions of his master, but 
 in opposition to his own sentiments. It was no diffi- 
 cult task for Burnet to prove to this diplomatist that, 
 by supporting the views of France, he was destroying 
 the prospects of Hanover ; whereas if it was his 
 desire to promote the influence and glory, and to
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 87 
 
 elevate the fortunes of the latter house, his course 
 was clear, simple, patriotic, and profitable. Opposi- 
 tion to France on the part of Hanover would be 
 popularly acknowledged with something more than 
 empty gratitude in England, and the time might 
 come when such opposition would receive as splendid 
 a recompense as prince or patriot could desire. 
 
 It is easy to believe that William approved of a 
 communication of such a nature, made, as Burnet 
 protests, without being otherwise than self-prompted 
 thereto. The immediate result would be to secure 
 an ally for Holland, and William might safely leave 
 ulterior contingencies to Providence and time. 
 
 However this may be, it is certain that Burnet 
 was eminently successful in his object with the 
 Hanoverian minister. The latter appears not only 
 to have communicated what passed to his sovereign, 
 but to have added comments thereto which carried 
 conviction to the mind of Ernest Augustus. This 
 conviction is seen by the result which followed. 
 Hanover, in 1688, ranged herself with the European 
 coalition, that is, with England, Holland, and the 
 German Empire, against France. 
 
 There was true "definite policy" in this act. 
 Ernest Augustus was bound indeed to supply a con- 
 tingent to the emperor whenever the latter might 
 call for such aid in behalf of the empire ; but he 
 was not satisfied with this alone ; his own territory 
 was not threatened, and it was too far away from 
 the stage whereon the great drama was being played, 
 or was about to be played out, to give him fears 
 concerning the inviolability of his frontier. He 
 acted, however, as though he had as fierce a quarrel
 
 88 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 with Louis as the more powerful belligerents opposed 
 to that monarch. He recalled his minister from 
 Paris, gave passports to the French ambassador at 
 Hanover, and in short played his grand coup for an 
 electorate now, and a throne in futurity. 
 
 To be elevated to the electorate had certainly 
 been long the dearest among the more immediate 
 objects of his ambition. When his elder brother 
 John Frederick died childless, and left him the 
 principalities of Calemberg and Grubenhagen, with 
 Hanover for a "residenz," he hailed an increase of 
 influence which he hoped to see heightened by secur- 
 ing 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 estab- 
 lished primogeniture, recognised his eldest son as 
 heir to all his land, and only awarded to his other 
 sons moderate appendages 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 terri- 
 torial estates upon the eldest heir ; claimed his own 
 share ; and even raised a species of domestic rebel- 
 lion against his sire, to which weight, without peril, 
 was given by the adhesion of a couple of confed- 
 erates, Count Molcke, and a conspirator of burgher 
 degree.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 89 
 
 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 Marcus 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, and in after years was not only a good 
 Jacobite, but he also conformed to the faith of the 
 Stuarts, and Maximilian ultimately died, a tolerable 
 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 affec- 
 tion. It went harder, however, with his friend and 
 confederate, Count Molcke, 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 
 Molcke, at a court entertainment, had presented his 
 snuff-box to Ernest Augustus. That illustrious indi- 
 vidual having taken therefrom the pungent tribute 
 respectfully offered, presented the same to an Italian 
 greyhound which lay at his feet, who thereon sud- 
 denly 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 
 Molcke was indeed as severely punished as though 
 he had been a murderer by anticipation. He was 
 judged in something of the old Jedburgh fashion, 
 whereby execution preceded judgment ; and the head
 
 90 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 of Count Molcke had fallen before men could well 
 guess why he had forfeited it. The fact was that 
 this penalty had been exacted as a vicarious infliction 
 on Prince Maximilian. In old-fashioned courts in 
 England there used to be a whipping-boy who 
 received castigation whenever the young princes of 
 the royal family behaved ill The latter, in the 
 agony of the actual victim, were supposed to be able 
 to understand what their own deserts were, and what 
 their sufferings would have been, had not their per- 
 sons been far too sacred to endure chastisement for 
 their faults. 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. 
 
 Domestic rebellion having been thus suppressed or 
 got rid of, Ernest Augustus looked to the emperor 
 for the reward of his ready alacrity in supporting the 
 imperial house. It was not without much trouble 
 and vexation that the desired end was achieved. The 
 sacred college opposed the aim of the sovereign of 
 Hanover, but the emperor, of his own accord, made 
 Ernest Augustus an elector ; and the iQth December, 
 1691, was the joyful day of nomination. 
 
 The day, however, was anything but one of joy 
 to the branch of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. That 
 elder branch felt itself dishonoured by the august 
 dignity which had been conferred upon the younger
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 91 
 
 scion of the family. The hatred which ensued 
 between the kinsmen was of that intensity which is 
 said to distinguish the mutual hate of kinsmen above 
 all others. 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 spon- 
 taneous 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 an 
 illegal 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 fol- 
 lowed the faith of the Reformed Church ; and that 
 the sincerity of one, at least, of these was very ques- 
 tionable. 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 adver- 
 saries, 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
 
 92 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 this objection, strongly urged by the elder branch of 
 Brunswick-Wolfenbtittel, 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 re- 
 garded 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. Ernest Augustus sat in the college, as our 
 Bishop of Sodor and Man is said to have done, in the 
 olden time, in the House of Lords, where a seat was 
 prepared for the prelate, which he was allowed to 
 occupy on condition that he had no voice in the pro- 
 ceedings. For nearly sixteen years was this opposi- 
 tion carried on. At length, on the 3Oth 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 93 
 
 formation of the German confederacy to resist the 
 aggression of France, an aggression not finally 
 overcome 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 Lou- 
 vois'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, Bran- 
 denburg, and Hanover ; the three Catholic, Bohemia, 
 Bavaria, and the Palatinate ; and the three spiritual 
 electors, the Prince Archbishops of Metz, Treves, and 
 Cologne. The original number of electors was seven, 
 and their office, according to Schiller, was to encircle 
 the ruler of the world (the emperor) as the company 
 of stars surround the sun : 
 
 " Und alle die Wahler, die Sieben 
 Wie der Sterner Chor um die Sonne sich stellt, 
 Umstanden geschaftig die Herrscher der Welt, 
 Der Wiirde des Amtes zu iiben." 
 
 In the battle-field they stood with their colours 
 round the imperial standard, " like Iris with all her 
 seven." Their efforts against France were not at 
 first marked by success. Marshal Luxembourg 
 routed the Dutch General Waldeck, and in 1691 
 Namur was carried by storm, and Lidge bombarded. 
 In the following year, William III. was defeated at 
 Steinkirk, where the husband of Sophia Dorothea 
 served under him, and learned how great a general 
 may be under defeat, for never was retreat con- 
 ducted in more masterly style. The castle of Heidel- 
 berg, the birthplace of the Electress Sophia, was, at
 
 94 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the same period, blown into ruins by the French ; 
 and in 1697 the Peace of Ryswick humiliated the 
 allies, and gave breathing time to the King of France 
 to frame new projects, which were ultimately foiled 
 by the triumphant sword of Marlborough. But this 
 is anticipating. 
 
 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 sup- 
 pressed by the Hanoverian government, and entitled 
 " Impeachment of the Ministry of Count Munster." 
 It is to this effect : " During the war between Leo- 
 pold I. and France, at the close of the seventeenth 
 century, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and 
 administrator of Osnaburgh, 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-Lunebourg 
 received the electoral cap, the symbol of their 
 master's dishonour, at Vienna, on the iQth Decem- 
 ber, 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 diffi- 
 culty 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."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE KONIGSMARKS 
 
 Count Charles John Konigsmark'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. 
 
 HAVING briefly traced the outline of the history 
 regarding the elevation of the court of Hanover to 
 the rank of an electoral court, I must beg permission 
 for a short space more to be episodical, in order to 
 trace the career of an individual whose residence at 
 that court brought death, dishonour, and destruction 
 in his train. 
 
 The circumstance of the sojourn of a Count 
 Konigsmark at Zell, during the childhood of Sophia 
 Dorothea, has been before noticed. Originally the 
 family of the Konigsmarks was of the Mark of Bran- 
 denburgh, 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 Konigsmarks had representatives of 
 whom they might be proud ; and generals, states- 
 men, and prince-bishops, all labouring with glory in 
 their respective departments, sustained the high 
 
 95
 
 g6 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 reputation of this once celebrated name. From the 
 period, early in the seventeenth century, that the 
 first Konigsmark (Count John Christopher) with- 
 drew 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 especially 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, contain- 
 ing the Moeso-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 Ger- 
 man literature with a collection of very fervid and 
 spiritual hymns. The other, and the older, son was 
 Conrad Christopher. The last name was almost as 
 common an appellation in the family of Konigsmark 
 as those of Timoleon Cosse in the family of Brissac. 
 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 at once famous and infamous. His 
 sons were Charles John and Philip Christopher. His 
 daughters were Maria Aurora (mother of the famous 
 Maurice of Saxony) and Amelia Wilhelmina, who 
 was fortunate enough to achieve happiness without 
 being celebrated, and who, if she has not been
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 97 
 
 talked of beyond her own Swedish fireside, passed 
 there a life of as calm felicity as she and her hus- 
 band, Charles von Lowenhaupt, 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 Au- 
 gustus of Poland, and the only royal concubine, per- 
 haps, who almost deserved as much respect as though 
 she had won her greatness by a legitimate process. 
 
 It was this Philip Christopher who was for a brief 
 season the playfellow of Sophia Dorothea, in the 
 young days of both, in the quiet gardens and gal- 
 leries 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 Wrangle, 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 Eng- 
 land. The elder brother, who had more than once 
 been a visitor to this country, and a welcome, be- 
 cause a witty, one at the court of Charles II., had 
 brought his younger brother hither, in order to have 
 him instructed more completely in the tenets of the 
 Protestant religion, and ultimately to place him at 
 Oxford. In the meantime he placed him in a 
 very singular locality for a theological student. He 
 lodged him with a "governor," at the riding-acad- 
 emy, in the Haymarket, of that Major Foubert, 
 whose second establishment (where he taught the 
 young to witch the world with noble horsemanship)
 
 98 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 is still commemorated by the passage out of Regent 
 Street, which bears the name of the French Prot- 
 estant refugee and professor of equestrianism. 
 
 The elder brother of these two Konigsmarks was 
 a superb scoundrel, and I have no more faith in his 
 professed zeal for Philip Christopher's religion than 
 he had in the truth which Philip was to be taught, 
 after he had learned to ride. He had led a roving 
 and adventurous life, and was in England when not 
 more than 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 accom- 
 panied 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 falat 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, daughter of that 
 Henrietta Maria, who was the youngest child of our 
 Charles I., born at Exeter, never beheld by her sire, 
 and murdered, it is feared, by the connivance of her 
 husband, the Duke of Orleans, as her daughter, this 
 Maria Louisa, was by the negligence or connivance 
 of her consort. 
 
 The marriage of the last named august pair was 
 followed by the fiercest and the finest bull-fights, 
 symbolic of Spanish royal unions, which had ever 
 been witnessed in Spain. At one of these, Charles
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 99 
 
 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 an- 
 tagonist, and to be carried half-dead and quite sense- 
 less out of the arena, amid the fierce approbation of 
 the gentle ladies, who purred applause, like satisfied 
 tigresses, upon the unconscious hero. 
 
 In 1681, at the mature 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. He behaved like a young hero, and, with 
 his appetite for sanguinary adventure whetted by 
 what he had tasted, 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 at the conclusion of this season of adven- 
 ture, he was received, amid those who love adventur- 
 ers, with a peculiar delight. That he was a foreign 
 adventurer, then as now, only increased his attrac- 
 tion ; and, from the king downward, " polite " people, 
 as the aristocracy rudely styled itself with menda- 
 cious exclusiveness, received Count Charles John with 
 enthusiasm. His handsome face, his long flaxen hair, 
 his stupendous periwig for state occasions, and the
 
 ioo LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 boy's 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 
 lad of the house of Konigsmark. 
 
 All the wisdom and science of John Locke, the 
 physician of the last of the Percys, could not save 
 from death, at the age of twenty-six, Joscelyn, elev- 
 enth Earl of Northumberland, who died in the year 
 1670, the last of the male line of his house. He 
 left an only daughter, four years of age, named Eliz- 
 abeth. Her father's death made her the possessor 
 awaiting her majority of vast wealth, to which 
 increase was made by succession to other inherit- 
 ances. Her widowed mother married Ralph Mon- 
 tague, English ambassador in Paris, builder of the 
 " Montague " houses, which occupied successively the 
 site of the present British Museum, and finally, 
 husband, after the death of the widow of Percy, of 
 the mad Duchess of Albemarle, who declared that 
 she would never wed beneath royalty, and whom 
 he wooed, won, and maintained as " Emperor of 
 China." 
 
 When the widow of Joscelyn espoused Montague, 
 her daughter Elizabeth went to reside with the 
 mother of Joscelyn, Dowager Countess of North- 
 umberland, and co-heiress to the Suffolk estate, des- 
 tined 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA . ! ,-3 
 
 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 Issa- 
 char of his " Absalom and Achitophel," who was the 
 friend of the Duke of Monmouth, was alliteratively 
 spoken of as " Tom of Ten Thousand," and who was 
 a very unworthy fellow, although the member of a 
 most 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
 
 i oi LiVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 bound himself to pay for services rendered to further 
 the marriage. 
 
 When Charles John Konigsmark arrived in Eng- 
 land, 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 Konigsmark might suc- 
 ceed to his place and expectations. 
 
 On the evening of Sunday, the I2th 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 fel- 
 low, half knave, half enthusiast, described as Lieu- 
 tenant Stern. Vratz had accompanied Konigsmark 
 to England. They lodged together, first in the Hay- 
 market, 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 sud- 
 den separation took place, and that the count himself,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 103 
 
 upon some sudden fear, took flight to the waterside ; 
 there he lay hid for awhile, and then dodged about 
 the river, in various disguises, in order to elude pur- 
 suit, until he finally landed at Gravesend, where he 
 was pounced upon by two most expert thief -catchers, 
 cunning as Vidocq, determined as Townsend, and 
 farsighted as Field. 
 
 The confession of the instruments, 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 a defence 
 likely to do him good with a jury and people in mor- 
 tal fear of popery, possessed by deadly hatred of a 
 possible popish successor to the throne, and influenced 
 by foolish affection for the Duke of Monmouth, who, 
 being of no religion at all, was consequently no " pa- 
 pist," and might hereafter become a good Protestant 
 king, just as his graceless father had been. It 
 was, moreover, known that the king would learn with 
 pleasure that the count had been acquitted ; and as 
 this knowledge was possessed by judges who were 
 removable at the king's pleasure, it had a very 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, Konigsmark as 
 accessory before the fact, hiring them, and instigat- 
 ing them to the crime. Thrice he had heard the
 
 104 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 word " guilty " pronounced, and, despite his reckless- 
 ness, 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, ex- 
 claimed in his unmanly joy, "God bless the king, 
 and this honourable bench ! " He well knew where 
 his gratitude was due to a graceless monarch, and 
 a servile judge. 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 gen- 
 tleman, God would assuredly deal with him as such ! 
 
 This "gentleman," who looked for civil treatment 
 hereafter, 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, dis- 
 charged his carbine into the carriage, and slew the 
 occupant. The other two confessed to the murder, 
 as the hired instruments of Vratz ; but the latter 
 (who could not have saved his own neck by implicat- 
 ing the count, his employer) kept his own secret as 
 to him who had seduced him to this great sin, and, 
 feeling that he was thus behaving as a " gentleman " 
 of those days was expected to behave, quietly con- 
 fided in the hope that he would be treated hereafter 
 in gentlemanlike fashion, in return. 
 
 Count Philip Christopher gave brief evidence on 
 this trial, simply to speak to his brother's having 
 been engaged in the purchase of horses. As for 
 Count Charles John, he felt for a moment that there
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 105 
 
 was a blot or speck upon the escutcheon of the 
 Konigsmarks. " Tut ! " said he, after a little reflec- 
 tion : " it will all be wiped out by some dazzling 
 action in war, or a lodging on a counterscarp ! " So 
 did this Protestant gentleman settle with his con- 
 science. He proceeded to efface the little speck in 
 question by repairing 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, in most of which he distinguished himself 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. He had done enough, 
 he thought, to wipe out the speck which had for a 
 season sullied the good name of Konigsmark ; and he 
 was grateful to the last for the kind attentions paid 
 to him by the "polite" society of England during 
 the time of his little troubles. In short, this so-called 
 Protestant gentleman, who was a popish colonel in 
 the service of Louis XIV., did not appear to have 
 the remotest idea of the balance likely to be struck 
 against him by the recording angel. Like Vratz, 
 perhaps, he considered that he was too much of a 
 " gentleman " to have his little foibles set down against 
 him in heaven's chancery. 
 
 They were not even recorded against him on 
 Thynne's tomb in Westminster Abbey. A Latin 
 inscription was prepared for the tomb, which more
 
 io6 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 than merely hinted that Konigsmark was the mur- 
 derer of Tom of Ten Thousand. "Small, servile 
 Spratt," then Dean of Westminster, would not, how- 
 ever, 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. 
 
 Before we trace the further outlines of the Konigs- 
 mark annals, it were as well briefly to state what 
 became of the youthful maid, wife, and widow, Lady 
 Ogle. She 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. If 
 her ladyship landed at Harwich, the most frequented 
 port in those days for travellers arriving from or pro- 
 ceeding to Holland, she probably passed the body of 
 one of the assassins, Stern, as she entered London 
 by Mile End. However this may be, 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 met with rude ingratitude 
 from the duke, and was designated by Swift as " your 
 d d Duchess of Somerset." He had reason to be 
 angry, for when she was mistress of the robes to 
 Queen Anne, she contrived to prevent his being 
 raised to a bishopric ; by which she did extremely
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 107 
 
 good service. She was the mother of a numerous 
 family, and her third son married a granddaughter of 
 the first Viscount Weymouth, the cousin and heir 
 of Tom of Ten Thousand. She 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 mar- 
 riage with the youthful Lady Charlotte Finch, who 
 was at once his wife, nurse, and secretary. A very 
 few persons of extreme old age are alive who saw her 
 in their childhood, when she died, in the year 1773. 
 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 gen- 
 tleman indignantly cried out : " Madam, my first wife 
 was a Percy ; and she never took such a liberty ! " 
 
 But it is time to revert to the Konigsmark whose 
 fate was so bound up with that of Sophia Dorothea. 
 He left England with his brother, and did not pursue 
 his researches after Protestantism at the feet of any 
 reformed Gamaliel on the Continent. 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, he was 
 welcomed as cavaliers are who are so comfortably 
 endowed.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 KONIGSMARK AT COURT 
 
 Various Accomplishments of Count Philip Christopher Konigsmark 
 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 Prin- 
 cess 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 Schulemberg 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 Konigsmark 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 colo- 
 nel in the small electoral army, and passed for the 
 richest. 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 
 
 1 08
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 109 
 
 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 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." Ballrooms reechoed with the 
 ringing eulogiums of his gracefulness, and his witty 
 sayings are reported as having been in general cir- 
 culation; 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 freethinkers applauded him as a man of liberal 
 sentiments, believing little, and fearing less. He was 
 preeminently gay, which, in modern and honest Eng- 
 lish, 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. 
 Those times must be more than ordinarily out of joint, 
 when a man is more estimably accounted of for his 
 great sins than for his sterling virtues. 
 
 There was nothing remarkable in the fact that he 
 speedily attracted the notice of Sophia Dorothea. 
 She may, without fault, have remembered with pleas- 
 ure the companion of her youth ; may have " wished
 
 no LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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. 
 
 What follows much more nearly resembles romance 
 than history, but it is without doubt substantially true, 
 and in the details of the catastrophe wholly so. It 
 is asserted, that the count had scarcely been made 
 colonel of the guards when the Countess von Platen 
 fixed upon him as the instrument by which she would 
 ruin Sophia Dorothea, and relieve George Louis of a 
 wife whose virtues were a continual reproach to him. 
 The simplest and most innocent of circumstances ap- 
 peared here the basis whereon to lay the first stone 
 of her edifice of infamy. 
 
 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 
 the arms of his attendant, and with him in her arms 
 began to ascend the stairs which led to her apart- 
 ments. Her good-will was greater than her strength, 
 and Count Konigsmark happened to see her at the 
 moment when she was exhibiting symptoms of weak- 
 ness 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 apart- 
 ment of Sophia Dorothea again consigned him to 
 maternal keeping. They tarried for a few brief
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA in 
 
 i 
 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 gradually worked the subsequent terrible calamity 
 which may be said to have slain both victims, for 
 Sophia Dorothea was only for years slowly accom- 
 plishing death, which fell upon the cavalier so surely 
 and so swiftly. 
 
 This incident was reported to Ernest Augustus 
 with much exaggeration of detail, and liberal sugges- 
 tion 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. If he had a conviction, it 
 was that Von Platen was herself more zealous than 
 discreet, and less discerning than either. 
 
 Foiled in her first attempt to ruin Sophia Doro- 
 thea, she addressed herself to the task of cementing 
 strict friendship with the count ; and he, a gallant 
 cavalier, was nothing loath, 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 under- 
 standing 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 well-known admiration of Sophia 
 Dorothea. What was said jokingly, or was intended 
 to seem as if said jokingly, was soon accepted by cas- 
 ual hearers as a sober, and a sad as sober, truth. 
 
 This first step having been made, no time was
 
 112 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 lost in pursuing the object for which it had been 
 accomplished. At one of those splendid masquerades, 
 in which Ernest Augustus especially delighted, which 
 he managed with consummate taste, and for which 
 he gained as much reputation among the gay, as he 
 had deservedly won for deeds of battle, from the 
 brave, at one of these gorgeous entertainments, 
 given about the time of the duke's elevation to the 
 electorate, Konigsmark 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 in none, 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 fete 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 prin- 
 cess to a ruin from which she should not escape. 
 
 The next incident told is more dramatic of char- 
 acter, 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 113 
 
 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 Wreyke, 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 Wreyke in its place. 
 But this, which might have accounted for its appear- 
 ance 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 Konigsmark 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, inas- 
 much as she never wore Netherland gloves, as the 
 one in question was, but gloves altogether of different 
 make and quality. Konigsmark had been there, and 
 the glove of the Princess Sophia Dorothea had been 
 found there, and this excellent German specimen of 
 Mrs. Candour knew nothing beyond. 
 
 This unlucky glove really effected as much per- 
 plexity, pain, and calamity as the handkerchief in 
 " Othello." Thenceforth, George Louis was not 
 merely rude and faithless to his wife, but cruel in
 
 H4 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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, and was probably disgusted with the domestic 
 trouble with which his electorship had been inaugura- 
 ted. 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. 
 
 Granting that the incidents were all as here related, 
 the persons who were affected by them as damning 
 evidence against the wife of "the electoral prince," 
 as George Louis was now called, must have been 
 singularly void of penetration, or even of common 
 discernment. But some of them, if they lacked 
 clearness of judgment, did not want for wickedness ; 
 and, in truth, it may be rather said, that their pene- 
 tration was not at fault, but that their wickedness 
 would not permit of its being exercised. 
 
 Sophia Dorothea had experience of this as soon as 
 she descended at the gates of her father's residence. 
 She 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, dis-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 115 
 
 obedient, 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 enter- 
 tained 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 " flick- 
 ing" (a good German word, as explaining the con- 
 sequence of what he did) 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 com- 
 plaint with an energy as if the whole state were in 
 peril. The elector listened, threatened Prince Max- 
 imilian 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 min- 
 isters were the men who had expressly distorted them.
 
 n6 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 These worthy persons, if report may be trusted, 
 performed their wicked office, with as wicked an 
 alacrity. However the result was reached, its exist- 
 ence cannot be denied, and its consequences were 
 fatal to Sophia Dorothea. The Electress Sophia is 
 said to have 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 mothers-in-law, the 
 younger Sophia does not appear to have suspected 
 anything. She possessed not those means of dis- 
 covering the treachery of such a relative, which, 
 according to Plutarch, were to be procured by the 
 nations of old. The icy-cold plant called the Phryxa, 
 which grew on the banks of the Tanais, was popularly 
 said to be the guardian angel of those who feared 
 the machinations of step-dames and mothers-in-law. 
 If one of the latter were plotting against the peace 
 of her kindred by marriage, the plant set itself on 
 fire and shot forth a bright flame upon being looked 
 at by the intended victim. On the other hand, the 
 name of a step-dame or mother-in-law breathed over 
 the white violet which grew on the banks of the 
 river Lycormas, caused the flower instantly to wither 
 away, such antipathy did it bear to the persons 
 holding in families the rank and position above 
 named. 
 
 Sophia Dorothea had no means of applying the 
 first test, nor would she, even if the application had 
 resulted in the discovery of her mother-in-law's treach- 
 ery, have had recourse, could she have done so, to 
 the test. She was too gentle of nature, and she bore 
 her father's temporary aversion with a wondering
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 117 
 
 patience, satisfied that "time and the hour" would 
 at length do her justice. 
 
 The duke's prejudice, however, was rather stub- 
 born of character, and he was guilty of many ab- 
 surdities 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 state- 
 ment of her wrongs, in order to show how he guarded 
 himself against being unduly biassed : a proceeding 
 which as much ran counter against profession, as 
 that of the old clergy of the Established Church of 
 Scotland, who had a horror of theatrical entertain- 
 ments, but who, nevertheless, made a point of going 
 to the play in Lent, that they might manifest their 
 contempt for what they considered a remnant of 
 popery ! 
 
 The mother of the princess remained, however, 
 and naturally so, her firmest friend and truest cham- 
 pion. If misrepresentations had shaken her confi- 
 dence 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, rather 
 than assertions, of the ministers of the elector, that 
 the familiar terms which, as they alleged, existed 
 between the electoral princess and Count Konigs- 
 mark, were such as did foul wrong to her husband, 
 George Louis. Those terms were not more familiar 
 than those which existed between the electress her-
 
 n8 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 self and her favourite, Leibnitz ; but the electress 
 was neither fair nor young, and Leibnitz was of 
 neither a seductive look nor age. The judges of 
 morality at once 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 Konigsmark, 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 the present age, 
 they have never been accounted of in Germany but 
 as commonplace 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 occur- 
 rence, 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 con- 
 versational men, was as common an event as any 
 throughout the empire ; and as harmless as the inter- 
 views 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 119 
 
 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 Konigs- 
 mark, but no society then construed such conversa- 
 tion and correspondence as crimes ; and even had 
 they approached in this case to a limit which would 
 have merited stern censure, the last man who should 
 have stooped to pick up a stone to cast at the repu- 
 tation of his consort was that George Louis, whose 
 affected indignation was expressed from a couch with 
 Mile, von Schulemberg 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 publish- 
 ing a forged record of her transgressions. When 
 Count Molcke had become implicated in the little 
 domestic rebellion of Prince Maximilian, some inti- 
 mation was conveyed to him, that, if he would con- 
 trive, 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
 
 120 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 to what lengths the intimacy of George Louis and 
 Ermengarde von Schulemberg 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 even, 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 foun- 
 dation. As little can it be said to be without prece- 
 dent. 
 
 William the Norman was a mirror of knighthood, 
 and he is known to have knocked down the gentle 
 Matilda of Flanders, even in the days of their court- 
 ship. The blow did not put a stop to their wooing, 
 nor did it delay a merry wedding, which one would 
 think could hardly have been merry under such 
 auspices. Then there was that paragon of chivalry, 
 the elder Aymon, sire of the " Quatre fils Aymon " 
 of the romantic legend : that gallant gentleman was 
 not only accustomed to maltreat his lady wife by 
 thumping her into insensibility, but when his eldest 
 son, Reinold, once ventured to comment upon one 
 of those pleasant little domestic scenes, to the 
 effect that they interrupted conviviality, and that 
 his respected sire should either chastise the speaker's 
 mother more gently or elsewhere, the knightly father 
 was so enraged at this approach to interference on
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 121 
 
 the part of a son, in behalf of a mother who was 
 lying senseless at his feet, that, taking him with one 
 hand by the hair, he beat his face with the other and 
 mailed hand, into that pulpy consistency which, Pro- 
 fessor Whewell says, possibly distinguishes the inter- 
 esting inhabitants of the wide and desolate plane of 
 the planet Jupiter. From this contest, however, the 
 old knight came out as little recognisable in human 
 features as his son, so chivalrously had they mauled 
 each other. So much for precedent. 
 
 The example has been followed in Germany since 
 the days of George Louis. Louis XVIII. informs 
 us in his memoirs, that when the daughter of 
 Louis XVI. found a refuge at Vienna, after her 
 liberation from the Temple, she was urged by the 
 empress to consent to a marriage with one of the 
 imperial archdukes, and that the empress became at 
 last so enraged by the firm and repeated refusals of 
 " Madame Royale " to acquiesce in the proposal, that 
 on one occasion her Imperial Majesty seized the 
 royal orphan by the arm, and descended to " votes de 
 fait" in other words, visited the young and destitute 
 princess with a shower of hard blows. 
 
 The ill-treatment of George Louis drove Sophia 
 Dorothea to Zell, and 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
 
 122 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 to her as consisted in a portion of 
 the electoral family repairing to the country residence 
 of Herrnhausen to meet her on her way, and accom- 
 pany her to the capital. Of this attention, however, 
 she was unaware, 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 touch- 
 ing 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 123 
 
 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 Krahwinkel. 
 
 When Sophia Dorothea passed by Herrnhausen, 
 regardless of the company who awaited her there, 
 she left the persons of a complicated drama stand- 
 ing in utter amazement on one of the prettiest of 
 theatres. Herrnhausen, the " master's mansion," 
 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
 
 124 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 been many. There was no roof but the sky, and the 
 dressing-rooms of the actors were lofty bowers con- 
 structed 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.
 
 to '10(1 bi 
 
 \fCT\ V*JV< !
 
 'HE QL'EF 
 
 ms of t; , were lofty 
 
 the whole was adon 
 gilded statues, and kej uafly 
 
 dap by an incessant play of spray-scattering w 
 xs. The grand tableau of rage in this locality 
 
 * passed unheedingly by, must have 
 a spect^ ntemplating. 
 
 Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George I. 
 
 Photogravure from a rare print
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CATASTROPHE 
 
 The Scheming Mother Foiled Count Konigsmark Too Garrulous 
 in His Cups An Eavesdropper A Forged Note A Mis- 
 tress's Revenge Murder of the Count The Countess Aurora 
 Konigsmark's Account of Her Brother's Intimacy with the Prin- 
 cess Horror of the Princess on Hearing of the Count's Death 
 Seizure and Escape of Mile, 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 Konigsmark Becomes the Mis- 
 tress 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 lan- 
 guidly amusing himself with Ermengarde von Schu- 
 lemberg 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 Konigsmark. 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 
 
 125
 
 126 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 sen- 
 timent with which she viewed Sophia Dorothea. She 
 was, no doubt, the chief cause, primarily and approx- 
 imate, of the ruin which fell upon both. 
 
 It was not merely the absence of Konigsmark, 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 bloody vengeance which 
 she accomplished, but without profiting by the 
 wickedness. 
 
 There was no more welcome guest at Dresden 
 than Konigsmark. An individual so gallant of 
 bearing, handsome of feature, easy of principle, 
 and lively of speech, was sure to be warmly wel- 
 comed 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 ; not 
 quite so deeply, perhaps, as the old Emperor Maxi- 
 milian, or as the older Persians, who could boast, 
 when they had nothing else left to boast of, that 
 they could drink more than any other men without 
 being overpowered by their liquor. But Konigsmark 
 was inferior to both the Persians of old, and to the 
 more modern toper Maximilian in discretion under 
 wine. He then became as loquacious as Cassio, but 
 more given to slander. He was then as prodigal, 
 too, of flattery. No man was more open to the 
 double peril named by Doctor South, when he said,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 127 
 
 that "as by flattery a man opens his bosom to his 
 mortal enemy, so, by detraction and slander, he 
 shuts the same to his best friends." It was not that 
 he had that secret propensity of the mind to think 
 ill of all men, which is followed by the utterance of 
 such sentiments in ill-natured expressions, the which, 
 according to Theophrastus, constitutes 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. 
 "Vanity," says Jeremy Collier, "is a strong tempta- 
 tion to lying ; " and in detailing its characteristics 
 and consequences, he names, among others, that it 
 " makes men tell strange stories of their interest and 
 acquaintance." Konigsmark in some degree illus- 
 trated these remarks ; and his vanity, and the stories 
 to which it prompted him, seemed to amuse and in- 
 terest the idle and scandalous court where he was so 
 welcome a guest. 
 
 He kept the illustriously wicked company there in 
 an uninterrupted ecstasy 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 Konigsmark to be 
 able to make of her a subject of ridicule. This sub- 
 ject he found in ladies of smaller virtue and less 
 merit generally. Touching them his anecdotes were 
 of a quality to suit a " Chronique Scandaleuse," to 
 delight Brant6me, and to have made the very ghost
 
 128 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 of Boccaccio smile. But every word he uttered, in 
 sarcastic description of the life, character, and be- 
 haviour 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 advo- 
 cacy 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 
 Konigsmark 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 pain- 
 ful visit to the little court of her ducal parents at 
 Zell. In this connection of circumstances there was 
 nothing prearranged ; and no one could be more sur- 
 prised probably than the count himself, when, shortly 
 after his resuming his duties as colonel of the elect- 
 oral guard, he received a note from the princess, 
 written in pencil, and expressing a wish to see him 
 in her chamber. 
 
 The note was a forged document, as confessed 
 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 Mile. 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 129 
 
 note of invitation, which Sophia Dorothea at once 
 pronounced to be a forgery. Had they then sepa- 
 rated, little of ill consequence might have followed. 
 The most discreet of the three, and the most per- 
 plexed 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. In 
 proof of the latter, it may be stated that, as she had 
 long previously suspected the count to be a worthless 
 libertine, so on this night suspicion was followed by 
 conviction. 
 
 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, ventured 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 lead- 
 ing 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 mis- 
 tress express a desire to find at least a temporary 
 home at the court of her cousin, Duke Anthony 
 Ulric of Wolfenbiittel.
 
 130 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 wax- 
 ing old, was by no means infirm of judgment. If 
 Konigsmark 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 coun- 
 tess solicited. The old elector yielded to all she 
 asked, except credence of her assurance that Sophia 
 Dorothea must be as guilty as Konigsmark was 
 presuming. He would consent to nothing further, 
 than the arrest of him who was guilty of the pre- 
 sumption ; and the method of this arrest he left 
 to the conduct of the countess, who urgently so- 
 licited 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 exhibit- 
 ing 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 apart- 
 ment, called the Hall of Knights, through which
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 131 
 
 Kb'nigsmark must pass, if 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 will- 
 ingness to execute her bidding, and only too well 
 showed by their subsequent act the sincerity of 
 their expression. 
 
 At length Konigsmark appeared, coming from the 
 princess's apartment. It was now midnight. He 
 entered the Ritters' Hall, as unsuspecting of the fate 
 before him as the great Guise was of his destiny 
 when he crossed the vast and dark apartment in the 
 Castle of Blois, and was butchered, ere he reached 
 an opposite door to that through which he entered, 
 by the hired assassins of Henri III. 
 
 The elector, had he cared much for the honour of 
 his daughter-in-law, would have investigated the case 
 himself. The husband of Sophia Dorothea might have 
 been summoned to look to his own honour, and the 
 peril in which it is said to have stood that night ; but 
 it is remarkable that at this very time he was absent 
 on a visit to Berlin, where his sister, the Electress of 
 Brandenburgh, is said to have almost called a blush 
 upon his cheek by her portraiture of his conduct, 
 and a detail of the wrongs by which he had inflicted 
 vast misery upon his wife. In the absence of these
 
 132 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 two competent authorities, the Electress of Hanover 
 troubling herself little with any affairs less weighty 
 than politics, philosophy, and worsted work, the 
 Countess von Platen was sovereign, for the time 
 being, over the small circle of Hanover, of which 
 she was the centre and the sovereign of the hour 
 wielded her might with a prompt and most terrific 
 energy. 
 
 In the Ritters' Hall was a huge, square, ponder- 
 ous 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 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 thoroughly true and gallant man 
 thought of the lady and her reputation. The last 
 words he uttered were, "Spare the innocent prin- 
 cess ! " 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 ;
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 133 
 
 that the body was forthwith consigned to a secure 
 resting-place, and covered with quicklime ; 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 Kbnigs- 
 mark," 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, though it is not to be 
 accepted as authentic, simply on that account. 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 has frequently seen 
 Count Konigsmark 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 Bern- 
 hard revealed to the princess, who answered : ' Let 
 them attack Konigsmark : he knows how to defend 
 himself.' Some time afterward 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 elect- 
 oral prince went away from the opera with the hoff- 
 fourier. Now Bernhard saw all this, and knew what
 
 134 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 sabre, 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 Konigsmark. 
 
 " 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 ;
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 135 
 
 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 contra- 
 dictory in some of them, and yet it probably rests on 
 some basis of truth. 
 
 The Countess Aurora of Konigsmark has left a 
 statement of her brother's connection with the prin- 
 cess, in which the innocence of the latter is main- 
 tained, but his imprudence acknowledged. The 
 statement referred to, explains the guilty nature of 
 the intercourse kept up between Konigsmark and the 
 Countess von Platen. It is written in terms of ex- 
 treme 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 Konigsmark 
 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 both stories are marked by great
 
 136 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 improbability, but they have been in part substanti- 
 ated by the death-bed confessions of the Countess 
 von Platen, and Baumain, one of the guards, the 
 two criminals having, without so intending it, con- 
 fessed to the same clergyman, a minister named 
 Kramer. Though these confessions are spoken of, 
 and are even cited by German authors, their authen- 
 ticity cannot perhaps be warranted. At all events, 
 there is what I may term 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 gain- 
 said, they may fairly find a place, by way of supple- 
 ment to the foreign version. 
 
 " Konigsmark'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 con- 
 nected 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 Hano- 
 ver, some alterations in the palace being ordered by 
 him, the body of Konigsmark was discovered under
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 137 
 
 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 dis- 
 covery 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 afterward. 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 Konigs- 
 mark 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 Wolfenbiittel. She was, of 
 course, 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 examina- 
 tion. 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 ex- 
 pressions, the Countess von Platen, who examined 
 them with the elector, gave a most guilty interpreta- 
 tion ; 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. I have previously said that she did not lack
 
 138 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 Konigsmark'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, Mile, 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 
 Mile, 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. 
 
 Sophia Dorothea had now but one immediate ear- 
 nest 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 139 
 
 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, 
 if I may so speak of the, at least solemn, ceremony 
 to which I here allude. 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 of the body and 
 blood of our Lord and Saviour, and then made 
 solemn protestation of her innocence, and of her 
 unspotted faith toward the electoral prince, her hus- 
 band. At the termination of this touching 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 essay at reconciliation was marred, or was 
 rendered impossible, by an attempt made to induce 
 the electoral princess to confess that she had been 
 guilty of sins of disobedience toward 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 deli- 
 cate 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,
 
 140 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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. 
 
 Worse counsel could not have been given, but it 
 was given exactly because it was the worst. 
 
 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. In 
 some respect they resembled the deformed and mon- 
 strous inmates of the human menagerie of the Em- 
 perors of Mexico ; hideous anomalies, regarded by 
 the Aztecs as a suitable appendage of state, and 
 dwarfed and twisted into hideousness by unnatural 
 parents desirous to procure a provision for their off- 
 spring by thus qualifying them for a place in the 
 royal museum. 
 
 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 141 
 
 would transfer her possessions to her consort, with- 
 out 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 Han- 
 over, 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 the chief ecclesi- 
 astical lawyers, and some 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 toward 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 ; 
 that is, of disposition, which two loving hearts, 
 warmed by a mutual respect, might have adjusted in 
 a few minutes by a brief explanation. 
 
 The court affected to attempt some such adjust- 
 ment of the matter ; but as the attempt was always 
 based on another to drag from the princess a confes- 
 sion 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
 
 142 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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, and her 
 daughter, Sophia, two years 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 reconcili- 
 ation. 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 recommend- 
 ing her to trust to the mercy of the crown prince, 
 if she would but cast herself upon his honour.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 143 
 
 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 inde- 
 fatigable 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 the sciolist, as 
 she was accounted, 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 pure 
 princess had entrenched herself. They tried, tried 
 repeatedly, but tried in vain. At the end of every 
 trial she slowly and calmly enunciated the same con- 
 clusive and insuperable 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 homeward, re infecta, "at least, 
 this woman may, of a surety, be convicted of obsti- 
 nacy." 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
 
 144 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 even confess to the commission of a fault ; that is, 
 of such a fault as should authorise her husband, cov- 
 ered with guilt triple-piled, to separate from her per- 
 son, yet maintain present and future property over 
 her estates. 
 
 The court, however, was a tribunal which did not 
 embarrass itself much either about law or equity ; 
 and its decision, in December, 1694, that separation 
 should be pronounced, on the ground of incompati- 
 bility of temper, surprised no one. 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 the princess from entering into a second 
 union. Not a word was written down against her 
 alleging that she was criminal. The name of Konigs- 
 mark 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 ; not- 
 withstanding 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,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 145 
 
 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 in competency 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 advo- 
 cate 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 unty- 
 ing 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
 
 146 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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, es- 
 pousals 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 heralds' office, not at the last 
 tribunal. 
 
 " Separated the Princess (Sophia) Dorothea cer- 
 tainly was, and never admitted even to the nominal 
 honours of her rank, being thenceforward always 
 styled the Duchess of Halle. 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 (Mile. 
 von Schulemberg) 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,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 147 
 
 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 con- 
 science undecided until future search into the Hano- 
 verian 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 2Oth 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, an ^ it is inserted 
 below for the benefit of those who like to read his- 
 tory 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 very year in which this decree is said to have 
 been bought, bribery and corruption were corroding 
 all ranks here, among ourselves. English officers and 
 soldiers were left unpaid by the government, and al- 
 lowed to exact subsistence money from the owners 
 of the houses on whom they were quartered. The 
 army agents, even when provided with funds, detained
 
 148 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the soldiers' pay, and forced the men to give extrava- 
 gant premiums for the money doled out to them. In 
 this very year, Colonel Hastings was cashiered for 
 compelling his officers to purchase all their regimen- 
 tals of him at an extravagant rate. Craggs, the con- 
 tractor for clothing the army, was deprived of his 
 office, and sent to the Tower, for refusing to exhibit 
 his books ; and Killegrew, Villars, and Gee, commis- 
 sioners for licensing hackney-coaches, were ejected 
 from their office, because they sold licenses which 
 they were commissioned to grant without fee or 
 reward. These punishments were inflicted by an 
 indignant and pure House of Commons, which com- 
 pelled Mr. Bird, an attorney, to go upon his knees, 
 and ask pardon of the assembly for bribery, or for 
 having been detected in awkwardly attempting to 
 bribe certain members of the House. The senators 
 who condemned were themselves corrupt ; and in the 
 dirty path of such corruption, Sir John Trevor, the 
 Speaker, led the way. He was expelled for receiving 
 a bribe of one thousand guineas from the city of Lon- 
 don " for passing the Orphan Bill ; " though men quite 
 as corrupt were left unpunished for receiving vast 
 sums of money from the East India Company, in re- 
 turn for facilitating some bills in which that body was 
 interested. The method adopted by the House to 
 cure the evil is a proof of the strabismic morality 
 which prevailed. The Commons resolved, "That 
 whoever should discover any money, or other gratu- 
 ity, given to any member of the House, for matters 
 transacted in the House, relating to the Orphans Bill, 
 or the East India Company, should (himself) have 
 the indemnity of the House for such guilt." When
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 149 
 
 immorality was so universal in England that Parlia- 
 ment could only attempt to cure it in its own body 
 by encouraging knaves to purchase exemption from 
 penalty by turning informers, we must not be too 
 pharisaically severe upon the owners of the names 
 affixed to the subjoined decree, even if it were pur- 
 chased by what Mr. Paul Clifford's Bagshot friend 
 was wont to call " the oil of palms." It deserves to 
 be remembered that Horace Walpole, who knew 
 something of the history of corruption, said of the 
 Germans of his and his father's time, not only that 
 they were a civil and agreeable people, but, as he 
 believed, "one of the least corrupted nations in 
 Europe." 
 
 " 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- 
 Lunebourg, declare and pronounce judgment after 
 attempts have been tried and have failed, to settle 
 the matter amicably, and in accordance with the doc- 
 uments and verbal declarations of the princess, and 
 other detailed circumstances, we agree that her con- 
 tinued denial of matrimonial duty and cohabitation is 
 well founded, and consequently that it is to be con- 
 sidered 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 per- 
 mitted to the innocent party to remarry, which the 
 other is forbidden, the same judicial power will be
 
 150 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 exercised in the present instance, in favour of his 
 Serene Highness, the Crown Prince. 
 
 " Published in the Consistorial Court at Hanover, 
 December 28th, 1694. 
 
 (Signed) "PHILLIP VON BURSCHE. 
 
 FRANCIS EICHFELD (Pastor). 
 
 ANTHONY GEORGE HILDBERG. 
 
 GUSTAVUS MOLAN. 
 
 GERHARDT ART. 
 
 BERNHARD SPILKEN. 
 
 ERYTHROPAL. 
 
 DAVID RUPERTUS. 
 
 H. L. HATTORF." 
 
 The work from which the above document is 
 extracted furnishes also the following, as the 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 connection 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 solici- 
 tor 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 con- 
 duct of our aforesaid solicitor of the court, Thies, and 
 that by this we free him from all responsibility 
 regarding these transactions. 
 
 (Signed) " SOPHIA DOROTHEA. 
 
 " LauenaUy December ji, 1694."
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 151 
 
 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 writ- 
 ten prohibition from asserting the same, and acknowl- 
 edgment of exemption from all responsibility before 
 he would feel satisfied that he had accomplished his 
 duty toward his illustrious client. 
 
 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 
 agreed, by an enactment, that the unhappy marriage 
 between the cousins should be dissolved. The enact- 
 ment 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 thou- 
 sand thalers (exclusive of the wages of her house- 
 hold), 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 pro- 
 vided that the castle of Ahlden should be her per- 
 manent residence, where she was to remain well 
 guarded. The domain of Wilhelmsburg, near Ham- 
 burg, was, at the death of the Duke of Zell, to de- 
 scend to the prince, son of the Princess Sophia Doro- 
 thea 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
 
 152 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 
 Schernebeck, Garze, and Bluettingen ; the castle at 
 Lunebourg 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 con- 
 tracting 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. 
 
 The oath to be taken by the 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 antici- 
 pated intrigues ; and for the perfect security of the 
 place fixed as a residence for the Princess Sophia 
 Dorothea, in order to maintain tranquillity, and to 
 prevent any opportunity occurring to an enemy for 
 undertaking or imagining anything which might cause 
 a division in the illustrious family."
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 153 
 
 Whatever correspondence may have been held by 
 letter between Sophia Dorothea and Konigsmark, 
 none was ever forthcoming to accuse or absolve. It 
 is indeed said that the letters of the princess to the 
 count were saved by the valet of the latter, and 
 placed in the hands of the Lowenhaupt family, in 
 Sweden, to a member of which a younger sister of 
 Konigsmark was married ; and that among the ar- 
 chives of the Swedish family they are still preserved. 
 This is a very apocryphal story, and not less apocry- 
 phal is the assertion that some score of letters, 
 allegedly from the count to the princess, were dis- 
 covered by George Louis, and copies of them sent to 
 the Duke of Zell. No mention was made of such 
 letters at the period of the trial, as it may be called, 
 of Sophia Dorothea, and though documents, purport- 
 ing to be portions of this epistolary correspondence 
 between Konigsmark and the princess, have been 
 made public, they are entirely unauthenticated, bear 
 neither date, name, nor address, and are, no doubt, 
 very poor forgeries, which may have been committed 
 by the author, to try his skill, but which could have 
 brought as little profit to himself as pleasure to his 
 readers. 
 
 Shortly after the sudden disappearance of the 
 count, his mother and sisters, residing at Hamburg, 
 made application to be put in possession of some 
 property of their deceased relative, which had been 
 deposited by him in the hands of a banker of that 
 city. The latter person, however, naturally enough 
 declined to surrender his trust, until sufficient proof 
 had been adduced of the death of the alleged late 
 owner of the property. The affair lingered for a
 
 154 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 long time, and its prosecution was productive of 
 some important consequences. In the course of that 
 prosecution, the youngest sister of the count, the 
 Countess Maria Aurora, repaired to Dresden to 
 solicit the aid of the Elector of Saxony, Frederick 
 Augustus, that unworthy prince who was subse- 
 quently the unworthy King of Poland. The elector 
 was struck with the beauty of his fair petitioner, and 
 appears to have driven a hard bargain with the hand- 
 some but not too honest suppliant. She became, 
 after a decent show of resistance, first on the roll of 
 the elector's "favourites," and in 1696 she gave 
 birth to that famous Maurice de Saxe, who fought 
 so well, spelled so ill, and loved so lightly ; who pos- 
 sessed no excellence save bravery, was entirely desti- 
 tute of all virtuous principle, and is the ancestor 
 most boasted of by his clever descendant, Madame 
 "George Sand." 
 
 From the period of the birth of Maurice, the 
 Countess Aurora fell, or rose, from the condition of 
 " favourite," to that of counsellor and friend. Even 
 Augustus's poor consort is said to have looked with 
 something of patience and even regard upon the only 
 one of the mistresses of her wretched husband who 
 treated her with respect. But what a condition must 
 mark that household, wherein a neglected wife is 
 reduced to the degradation of feeling grateful for 
 little attentions from the hands of her husband's 
 mistress ! To such degradation Sophia Dorothea 
 would never submit. 
 
 The Countess Aurora had been so triumphant, 
 and yet so triumphed over, when a suppliant to 
 Augustus, that the elector, in 1702, when reduced
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 155 
 
 to the most miserable extremity by the victorious 
 Charles XII., despatched her upon the diplomatic 
 mission of softening that monarch's not very suscep- 
 tible heart. The ambassadress was one of those 
 women who fancy that they can overcome any one 
 who, while listening to their power of tongue, ven- 
 tures to look into their eyes. By magic of the latter, 
 and of speech made up of very persuasive argu- 
 ments, Aurora fondly hoped to touch the sensibili- 
 ties that were supposed to be buttoned up beneath 
 the unbrushed coat of the stoical Charles. The 
 latter, distrusting his own possible weakness, and 
 dreading the lady's united powers, showed himself 
 a true hero by avoiding the temptation thrown in his 
 way, and when the countess solicited an audience he 
 stoutly refused to see her. " Well ! " remarked the 
 blushing Aurora, striving at the same time to wreathe 
 the blush of vexation with the sunniest of her smiles, 
 " I am the only person on whom the King of Sweden 
 ever turned his back ! " 
 
 This want of diplomatic success laid her more 
 open than she had ever been before to the intrigues 
 of her more brazen but less intellectual rivals ; and 
 Maria Aurora was dismissed from the court of her 
 so-called "protector." It is good that vice should 
 be exposed to such downfall, and that women who, 
 like the lovely Aurora, can plead guilty to but a 
 single fault, should be subject to a treatment which 
 is severe discipline to themselves, and profitable 
 example if their sisters would but only condescend 
 to benefit by it. 
 
 Aurora in her retirement more nearly resembled 
 Madame de la Valliere than Heloise. She proved
 
 156 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a noble mother to her superb and graceless son, and 
 she did not pass her time in the -composition of 
 ardent epistolary reminiscences of guilty pleasures, 
 wherein the expressed contempt for bygone dear 
 delights cannot conceal the writer's regret that they 
 were no longer to be enjoyed. Aurora finally retired 
 to the Protestant Abbey of Quedlinburg, in what 
 then was Lower Saxony, and beguiled her long 
 leisure hours by meditations, that would do honour 
 to Krumacher, and by hymns, far more spiritual and 
 sensible than those heavenly songs of the quietist 
 Madame Guyon, and which read so very much like 
 sprightly strains " writ " by Dan Prior, and " set " 
 by mellifluous Travers. 
 
 The ladies of the abbey still exhibit, with author- 
 ised pride, the manuscript collection of psalms and 
 hymns, the composition of which shows that their 
 authoress had warmer love for Heaven than she 
 ever had for man. 
 
 Her position here was one in .which a weaker 
 nature and a less sincere person would have been 
 liable to be surrendered to the exercise of much 
 worldly pride. Quedlinburg, on the Bode, now in 
 Prussia, was an imperial free city, in which emperors 
 had kept their state, the Church held councils, and 
 the city imprisoned its counts in oaken cages. The 
 nunnery of the abbey was founded by Matilda, 
 the wife of the Emperor Henry the Fowler. The 
 abbesses resided in the castle, which dominates 
 above the town, and originally they were ex-officio 
 princesses of the empire, independent of all spiritual 
 sovereignty save that of the Pope, possessors of a 
 vote in the Diet, and a seat on the bench of Rhenish
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 157 
 
 bishops. The entire town, including all the convents, 
 nunneries, and adjacent extensive domains, belonged 
 to the abbess, who counted among her vassals as 
 many nobles of high rank as, among her nuns, ladies 
 of royal and noble birth. When Aurora of Konigs- 
 mark became prioress of the community, the old 
 splendour had been somewhat diminished, and what 
 was left was a trifle tarnished, too. The feudal sov- 
 ereignty departed from it at the Reformation, when 
 the abbess adopted the Lutheran faith and lost the 
 greater part of the abbey estates. Still, in Aurora's 
 time much of splendour was left ; its last spark 
 went out in 1802, when the King of Prussia seques- 
 trated the convent, and converted it, in part, into 
 a school. 
 
 Had Aurora been a weak woman, her pride would 
 have lived here with her beauty ; the former died 
 early, the latter lived with her to the end. She was 
 superb, even throughout her declining life, and when 
 she died, in 1725, there passed away to her account 
 a woman, not without sin, but also not without a 
 sincere repentance. 
 
 Reader, and especially young reader, if thou 
 shouldst ever visit Quedlinburg, you may see there a 
 better sermon than thou art likely to hear. Descend 
 with the good-natured and willing sexton into the 
 vault below the Stiff er Kirche. On the right side 
 of the vault there is a coffin, the lid of which he will 
 remove with a singular alacrity. Look into it, and 
 learn from what thou lookest on. That poor brown, 
 dusty mummy is all that remains of the most beau- 
 tiful woman of her time. That wretched but sug- 
 gestive ruin once tabernacled the " immortal spark "
 
 158 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 which yet lives, but where ? There is a sermon 
 in the sight, and deep instruction in the thought. 
 
 We must leave both, however, to turn to another 
 lady who, as it is believed, sinned less, but suffered 
 longer.
 
 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 Em- 
 bassy 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 ac- 
 quired 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
 
 160 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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, con- 
 sisting of infantry and artillery. It must have cost 
 the governor as little trouble and as much pride to 
 manoeuvre as the army of Thraso cost that valiant 
 captain, when he laid such glorious siege to the 
 strong fortress of that exemplary lady, Thais, in 
 order to recover Pamphila. Altogether, there must 
 have been work enough for the three cooks. 
 
 The forms of a court were long maintained, al- 
 though only on a small scale. The duchess held 
 her little Iev6es, 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, how- 
 ever, 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 cap-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 161 
 
 tive. During the first three years of her imprison- 
 ment, 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 captiv- 
 ity 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 Mile. Knesebeck from her place of confinement 
 appears to have given the husband of Sophia Doro- 
 thea 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 pro- 
 hibited 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 gal- 
 lery 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 permis- 
 sion reached her from the proper authority. 
 
 On such a prisoner time must have hung espe-
 
 1 62 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 cially 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. 
 Her correspondence, during the period she was per- 
 mitted 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 down- 
 ward. With this, she was as personally active in 
 charity as the good Duke de Penthievre and his 
 secretary, Florian, whose very sport it was to vie 
 with each other in discovering the greater number 
 of objects worthy of being relieved. 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." Of George Louis 
 it may be said what Cherry's thirsty father said of 
 Lady Bountiful's son, Squire Sullen, "that he was 
 a man of a great estate, who valued nobody." 
 
 There was a church in the village, which was 
 in rather ruinous condition when her captivity com- 
 menced, but this she put in thorough repair, dec- 
 orated 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 163 
 
 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 not even her mother was 
 permitted to soften by her presence for an hour the 
 rigid and ceremonious captivity of her luckless daugh- 
 ter. Mother and child were allowed to correspond 
 at stated periods, their letters passing open ; but 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 inter-
 
 1 64 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 course with, his wife, a course about which the 
 Electress Sophia troubled herself very little. The 
 elector, in short, was very much like the gentleman 
 in the epigram, who said : 
 
 " I've lost my mistress, horse, and wife, 
 And when I think on human life, 
 
 'Tis well that it's no worse ! 
 My mistress had grown lean and old, 
 My wife was ugly and a scold ; 
 
 I'm sorry for my horse ! " 
 
 In his later days, Ernest Augustus, having little 
 regard for his wife or favourites, began to have much 
 for the good things of the earth, a superabundance of 
 which, as Johnson reminded Garrick, made death so 
 terrible. When he ceased to be under the influence 
 of the disgraced Countess von Platen, he 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 2Oth 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 in- 
 cline toward her as he increased in years, it is not to 
 be wondered at that the heart of her aged father 
 melted toward 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 165 
 
 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 Han- 
 over at Zell, the minister Bernstorf ; and that indi- 
 vidual 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, wherein the name of his 
 daughter is mentioned with an implied love which 
 reminds one of the " and Peter," after the denial, 
 and which told the other Apostles that love divine 
 had not perished because of one poor mortal offence. 
 
 By this codicil he bequeathed to the daughter 
 whom he had wronged, all that it was in his power 
 to leave, in jewels, monies, 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 cap- 
 tive 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 ac- 
 cepted by that body, which fixed the succession to
 
 1 66 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 intro- 
 duction 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 de- 
 signed 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 sar- 
 castically 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 167 
 
 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 conclu- 
 sion 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 con- 
 fined 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 fwere in it, and which 
 they thought might be considered afterward. " We 
 reckoned it," says Burnet, " a great point carried that 
 we had now a law on our side for a Protestant suc- 
 cessor." The law was stoutly protested against by the 
 Duchess of Savoy, granddaughter 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 sig- 
 nificant 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 ambassa- 
 dor, legate, plenipotentiary, nor envoy. He had with 
 him, however, a most splendid suite ; which was in
 
 1 68 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 some respects strangely constituted, for among its 
 members was the famous, or infamous, Janius Junius 
 Toland, whose book in support of rationality as 
 applied to religion, and in denial that there was 
 any mystery whatever in the Christian dispensation, 
 had been publicly burnt by the hangman, in Ireland. 
 
 The welcome. of 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 magnifi- 
 cence, betokening ample appreciation of the double 
 gift he brought with him. He himself seemed ele- 
 vated 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 re- 
 ceived 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 169 
 
 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 Hano- 
 verian gratitude went so far, that not only were the 
 ambassador and suite treated as favoured guests, and 
 that 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 refresh- 
 ment 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 govern- 
 ment accordingly disbursed half a crown a day to the 
 liveried followers, and considered such a "composi- 
 tion " 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 hi the morning, when 
 they were to be seen hurrying to the bedrooms 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
 
 1 70 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 fetes 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 Terpsicho- 
 rean 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 
 Mile, von Schulemberg. 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 war- 
 ranted, 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."
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 171 
 
 With what degree of lucidity these noble gentlemen 
 talked, we are not told, so that we can hardly judge 
 of the measure of Lord Mohun's sobriety. That he 
 was not very drunk, seems to Toland a thing to be 
 thankful for, seeing that it had long been his custom 
 to be so, until of late, when he had delighted the 
 prudent by forswearing sack and living cleanly. 
 
 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. Every one wore a 
 face of joy, at least so we collect from Toland's 
 description of what he saw, and from which descrip- 
 tion we cull a few paragraphs by way of picture of 
 scene and players. Speaking of the mother-in-law 
 of Sophia Dorothea, he 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 indus- 
 try, 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 in-
 
 172 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 stances, fitter for your lady to know than for your- 
 self. 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 like- 
 wise 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 173 
 
 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, espe- 
 cially 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 unparallelled 
 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 them- 
 selves. There it is enough that you are an English- 
 man, 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 remem- 
 bered 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
 
 174 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 this truth by the glorious administration of Queen 
 Anne." 
 
 Such is a picture, rather "loaded," as an artist 
 might say, of the mother-in-law of the prisoner of 
 Ahlden. The record would be imperfect if it were 
 not accompanied by another "counterfeit present- 
 ment," that of her son. 
 
 At the period when Toland accompanied the Earl 
 of Macclesfield to Hanover, with the Act of Succes- 
 sion, the most important personage at that court, 
 next to the electress, the Regina designata Britan- 
 niarum, was 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." George 
 Louis, like " Monseigneur " at Versailles, cared for 
 nothing but hunting. "He is not to be exceeded," 
 says Toland, "in his zeal against the intended uni- 
 versal 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 in- 
 volved." Toland, in the humour to praise everything, 
 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 theoret- 
 ical knowledge of George Louis been ever so correct, 
 his practice with our constitution betrayed such igno- 
 rance that Toland' s assertion may be taken only 
 quantum valuit, for what it is worth. "Though," 
 says the writer just named, " though he be well versed
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 175 
 
 in the art of war, and of invincible courage, having 
 often exposed his person to great dangers in Hun- 
 gary, 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 consider- 
 able part of his time about such occupations, in his 
 closet, and with his ministers." 
 
 Toland, however, was afraid he had not sufficiently 
 gilded over that sullen reserve in the character of 
 the husband of Sophia Dorothea, which alone was 
 sufficient to render him unpopular. " I hope," he 
 says, "that none of our countrymen will be so in- 
 judicious as to think his reservedness the effect of 
 sullenness or pride ; nor mistake that for state, which 
 really proceeds from modesty, caution, and delibera- 
 tion ; 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 expe- 
 rience." 
 
 Then we have a trait in the electoral character 
 which was not to be found subsequently in the king ; 
 "for," says the hanger-on to Lord Macclesfield's am- 
 bassadorial cloak, " 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
 
 176 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 his court, as to eating, drinking, fire, candles, and 
 the like, are duly paid every Saturday night ; the offi- 
 cers 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, in his " lively 
 sense of favours to come," that there never existed 
 a prince who was so ardently beloved by his subjects. 
 On this point, the " Petit Roi d'Yvetot " of Beran- 
 ger sinks into comparative unpopularity. 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. But it must be remembered 
 that all this is said by a man who never condescended 
 to remember that George Louis had a wife. He is 
 entirely oblivious of the captive consort of the elector, 
 but he can afford to express admiration for the elect- 
 or's mistresses. He describes Madame Kielman- 
 segge, the daughter of the Countess von Platen, and 
 who occupied near the prince a station similar to 
 that which her mother held near the prince's father, 
 as a woman of sense and wit ; and of Mile. Schulem- 
 berg, 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 ! " 
 such merit as distinguished the niece of the gov- 
 ernor of the Philippine Islands, who, under the mask 
 of attachment, robbed Gil Bias of his diamond ring.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 177 
 
 There is something suggestive in much of what is 
 here set down. A lunatic proposed that Sophia of 
 Hanover should succeed to the throne of England ; 
 and the hand of that lady, who denied the apostolic 
 succession of bishops, and sneered at the episcopacy, 
 was first kissed, when the Act of Succession was 
 presented to her, by an infidel, the son of a Romish 
 priest, whose book against the mysteries of Christian- 
 ity had been burned in the streets of Dublin by the 
 hands of the hangman. This is historically, and not 
 satirically, set down. Some, at the time, thought it 
 ominous of evil consequences, but we who live to see 
 the consequences may learn therefrom to disregard 
 omens. Whatever may be said upon this point, how- 
 ever, there only remains to be added, that the lega- 
 tion left Hanover, loaded with presents. The earl 
 received the portrait of the electress, with an elec- 
 toral crown in diamonds, by way of mounting to the 
 frame. George Louis bestowed upon him a gold 
 basin and ewer, no unsuitable present to the native 
 of a country whose people were distinguished, to a 
 later period than this, as being the only civilised peo- 
 ple who sat down to meat without previous ablution, 
 even of the hands. Gold medals and snuff-boxes 
 were showered among the other members. The 
 chaplain, Doctor 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 pres- 
 ence 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,
 
 178 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 English Parliament passed 
 an act for naturalising the Princess Sophia, Electress 
 and Duchess-dowager of Hanover, and the issue of 
 her body. This was an act, therefore, which made 
 an Englishman of George Louis. It was not, how- 
 ever, in honour of such an event that a short season 
 of freedom was granted to the prisoner of Ahlden. 
 
 In the year last mentioned, the war was raging 
 which France was carrying on for the purposes of ex- 
 tending 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 Hol- 
 land, menaced on the side of Liege by a strong 
 French force. Our great duke left General D'Aubach 
 at Treves to secure the magazines which the English 
 and Dutch had laid up there ; but upon the approach 
 of Marshal Villars, D'Aubach destroyed the maga- 
 zines and abandoned Treves, 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 Flan- 
 ders, where, as the old-fashioned chronicler, Salmon, 
 remarks, " they yearly threw away thousands of brave 
 fellows against stone walls." Thereupon, Hanover
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 179 
 
 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 dis- 
 solved their union ; for, on the approach of the 
 French army toward 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." 
 
 Of the incidents of this second separation nothing 
 is known, but conjecture may well supply all its grief 
 and pain. It would seem, however, as if some of the 
 restrictions were taken off from the rules by which 
 the captive was held. 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 duke- 
 dom to Hanover, and deprived his daughter of a 
 newly acquired friend. 
 
 The death of the Duke of Zell, if it caused profit 
 to Hanover, was also followed by honour to Berns- 
 torf. The services of that official were so agreeable 
 to George Louis that he 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
 
 i8o LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 applica- 
 tion 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, " II est fougeux, mais il a du cceur," 
 hot-headed but not heartless. George Augustus man- 
 ifested this disposition very early in life. He was on 
 one occasion hunting in the neighbourhood of Luis- 
 berg, 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 pursu- 
 ing 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 house- 
 hold, 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 per- 
 mitted to go farther in a direction which was for-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 181 
 
 bidden, as by so doing he would not only be treating 
 the paternal orders with contempt, but would be 
 making them accomplices in his crime of disobedi- 
 ence. 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. The prince would have made a note 
 of their protest, to shield them subsequently from 
 their master's displeasure, but they were too resolute 
 to be content with merely making a protest against a 
 course which it was in their power to prevent, and 
 accordingly, 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 discon- 
 tent 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 Elect- 
 ress 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 Doggerel Verses on Her Death of 
 the Electress Character of Her. 
 
 IN some of the comedies of Terence, the heroines 
 the most important personages in the play are 
 heard of, but never seen ; much spoken about, but 
 never speaking. What a coil there is in the Phormio, 
 for instance, touching Phanium, the wife of Antipho, 
 and Pamphila, the " serva a Phaedria amata ! " and 
 yet how little is really known about either ! Poor 
 Sophia Dorothea in the drama of her life at Ahlden is 
 something like the two characters in the Athenian 
 drama of the swarthy African ; with this difference, 
 however, that she is not, as they are, the object of a 
 human love. She is off the stage, and little, indeed, 
 is known of her, save that sh$ is immured in a dull 
 castle, or taking exercise within the dull limits of 
 a dull country. Beyond this, there is nothing nar- 
 rated of her during the first ten years of her captivity. 
 
 182
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 183 
 
 Something startling and dramatic had like to have 
 happened when George Augustus suddenly resolved 
 to visit his mother, but was obstructed in his resolu- 
 tion. His sire, meditating on the fact, determined to 
 provide him with a wife. 
 
 The elector then meditating, as I have said, 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. Of this lady I shall have to 
 speak more at length hereafter, for she became 
 Queen Consort of England, at the accession of her 
 husband, George II. In the meantime, it will be 
 sufficient to record here what is said of her by 
 Bur net : 
 
 " While the house of Austria was struggling with 
 great difficulties, two pieces of pomp and magnifi- 
 cence consumed a great part of their treasure : an 
 embassy was sent from Lisbon to demand the 
 emperor's sister for that king, which was done with 
 an unusual and extravagant expense ; a wife was to 
 be sought for King Charles (of Spain) among the 
 Protestant courts, for there was not a suitable match 
 in the Popish courts. He had seen the Princess of 
 Anspach, and was much taken with her ; so that 
 great applications were made to persuade her to 
 change her religion, but she could not be prevailed on 
 to buy a crown at so dear a rate ; and soon after she 
 was married to the prince electoral of Brunswick, 
 which gave a glorious character of her to this nation ; 
 and her pious firmness is likely to be rewarded even 
 in this life, with a much better crown than that 
 which she rejected. The Princess of Wolfenbiittel
 
 1 84 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 was not so firm, so that she was brought to Vienna, 
 and some time after was married by proxy to King 
 Charles, and was sent to Italy on her way to Spain. 
 The solemnity with which these affairs were managed, 
 in all this distress of their affairs, consumed a vast 
 deal of treasure ; for such was the pride of those 
 courts on such occasions that, rather than fail in 
 a point of splendour, they would let their most 
 important affairs go to wrack. That princess was 
 landed at Barcelona, and the Queen of Portugal the 
 same year came to Holland, to be carried to Lisbon 
 by a squadron of the English fleet." 
 
 Caroline of Anspach was a very accomplished 
 young lady, and much of such accomplishments was 
 owing to the careful education which she received at 
 the hands of the best-loved child of the electress, 
 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, inquiring, intelligent, and studious. Her appli- 
 cation was great, her perseverance unvaried, and her 
 memory excellent. She learned quickly, and retained 
 largely, seldom forgetting anything worth remem- 
 brance ; and was an equally good judge of books and 
 individuals. Her perception of character has, per- 
 haps, 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 185 
 
 equal in wit and in repartee. But therewith she was 
 more tender, more gentle, more generous. When 
 she became the wife of George Augustus, it was 
 again like uniting Iphigenia to Cymon. But the 
 Cymon of the Iphigenia of Anspach could not appreci- 
 ate the treasure confided to him, and though he 
 could never despise his wife, it can be hardly said 
 that he ever truly loved her. 
 
 The marriage of George Augustus, Electoral Prince 
 of Brunswick-Hanover, with Caroline, daughter of 
 John Frederick, Margrave of Anspach, was solem- 
 nised in the year 1705. It was rather an eventful 
 year for England. It was that in which Marlborough 
 forced the French lines at Tirlemont, a feat for which 
 the nation rendered public thanksgiving to God. It 
 was the year in which England poured out some of 
 her best blood, in order to secure the throne of Spain 
 to a prince of the house of Austria, a service for 
 which Austria repaid her only with ingratitude. It 
 was the year in which the two Houses of Convocation 
 were vulgarly brawling at each other concerning the 
 right of adjournment ; a dispute, which her Majesty 
 Queen Anne settled by proroguing the contentious 
 assembly, and by addressing a letter to the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, declaratory of her resolution 
 to maintain her supremacy, and the subordination of 
 presbyters to bishops. It was the year in which 
 died Queen Catherine, the patient wife and very 
 resigned widow of the graceless Charles II. ; and 
 finally, it was the year in which the act passed for 
 "naturalising the Princess Sophia, Electress and 
 Duchess-dowager of Hanover, and the issue of her 
 body."
 
 i86 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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, as I have before remarked, brought 
 up at the court of Berlin under the guardianship, 
 and no insufficient one, of Sophia Charlotte, the 
 consort of Frederick of Prussia. She gave promise 
 in her childhood of being a clever woman, and that 
 promise, at least, was not "made to the ear to be 
 broken to the hope." How this promise was fulfilled, 
 we shall be able to see in a future page. 
 
 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. One can hardly conceive of 
 wedding-bells ringing merrily when the mother of 
 the bride is a stigmatised woman, pining in a prison. 
 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. 
 The last-mentioned had yet fresh on his brow the 
 laurels which he had gained by writing what Warton 
 ill-naturedly called his rhyming gazette, "The Cam- 
 paign," in a garret in the Haymarket, and in celebra- 
 tion of the victory at Blenheim. Queen Anne, who 
 had restored Halifax to a favour from which he had 
 fallen, entrusted him to carry the bill for the natu- 
 ralisation 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 united companion 
 of the patron whom he so choicely flattered. Van-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 187 
 
 brugh was present in his official character of Claren- 
 cieux 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. When Addison, some years 
 subsequently, memorialised George I., the petition 
 stated " that my Lord Halifax, upon going to Hanover, 
 desired him to accompany him thither ; at which 
 time, though he had not the title of his secretary, he 
 officiated as such, without any other reward than the 
 satisfaction of showing his zeal for that illustrious 
 family." 
 
 The nuptials of the young princess with Frederick 
 William, Crown Prince of Prussia, lacked neither 
 mirth nor ceremony for the circumstance just alluded 
 to. The pomp was something uncommon in its way, 
 and the bride must have been wearied of being mar- 
 ried long before the stupendous solemnity had at 
 length reached its slowly-arrived-at conclusion. She 
 became Queen of Prussia in 1712, and of her too I 
 shall have to speak a little more in detail in another 
 chapter. Here it will suffice to say that she was by 
 no means indifferent to the hard fate under which 
 her mother groaned. She was the better enabled 
 to sympathise with one who suffered through the 
 cruel oppression and injustice of a husband, from 
 the fact that her own illustrious spouse was, in every 
 sense of the word, her "lord and master," and treated 
 her with as little consideration as though she had 
 been head-servant of his exceedingly untidy establish- 
 ment, rather than consort and queen, to whom, in 
 common with his children, he administered now a
 
 1 88 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 heavy blow and even a harsh word, and whom he 
 never soothed with a kind expression but when he 
 had some evil intention in giving it utterance. 
 
 Honours now fell thick upon the electoral family, 
 but Sophia Dorothea was not permitted to have any 
 share therein. In 1706, Queen Anne created the 
 son of George Louis, the old suitor for her hand, 
 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. It was not 
 merely the feeling which every one with a fortune to 
 leave is said to entertain toward an heir presumptive, 
 but that 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 bearings toward her brother 
 were matter of notoriety, had determined, in the
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 189 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand men. 
 
 It was the Duke of Devonshire who originally 
 moved the House of Lords for leave to bring in a 
 bill to give the Electoral Prince of Hanover, as Duke 
 of Cambridge, the precedence of peers. Leave was 
 given, but some of the adherents of the House of 
 Hanover did not think that the bill went far enough, 
 and accordingly the lord treasurer, previous to the 
 introduction of the Duke of Devonshire's measure, 
 " offered a bill, giving precedence to the whole elect- 
 oral family, as the children and nephews of the 
 Crown ; " and it was intimated that bills relating to 
 honours and precedence ought to come from the 
 Crown. "The Duke of Devonshire," adds Burnet, 
 " would make no dispute on this head ; if the thing 
 passed, he acquiesced in the manner of passing it, 
 only he thought it lay within the authority of the 
 House." On this occasion the court seemed, even 
 to an affectation, to show a particular zeal in promoting 
 this bill ; for it passed through both Houses in two 
 days, it being read thrice in a day in them both. 
 " For all this haste," continues the minute recorder, 
 "the court did not seem to design any such bill till 
 it was proposed by others, out of whose hands they 
 thought fit to take it." In other words, the court 
 would not have been Hanoverian in this matter, but 
 for outward popular pressure. 
 
 Some time previous to this, the Earl of Rochester 
 had designed to bring in a bill which he described as 
 concerning the security of the nation, and the means
 
 190 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 whereby such security was to be accomplished con- 
 sisted in bringing over the Electress Sophia perma- 
 nently to reside in England. 
 
 The party advocating this measure comprised men 
 who were anything but zealous for the interests of the 
 family for whose profit it was designed ; but they 
 favoured it for the sufficient political reason that it 
 was a measure displeasing to Queen Anne. It was 
 hoped by them that out of the discussion a confusion 
 might arise from which something favourable might 
 be drawn for the pretensions of the " Prince of 
 Wales." "They reckoned such a motion would be 
 popular, and if either the court or the Whigs, on 
 whom the court was now beginning to look more 
 favourably, should oppose it, this would cast a load 
 on them as men, who, after all the zeal they had 
 expressed for that succession, did now, upon the 
 hopes of favour at court, throw it up ; and those 
 who had been hitherto considered as the enemies of 
 that house might hope, by this motion, to overcome 
 all the prejudices which the nation had taken up 
 against them; and they might create a merit to 
 themselves in the minds of that family by this early 
 zeal, which they resolved now to express for it." 
 
 In a subsequent session of Parliament, the question 
 of the residence in this country of the declared suc- 
 cessor to the crown was introduced into more than 
 one debate. At all these debates (in the House of 
 Lords) Queen Anne herself was present. Lord 
 Haversham, in his speech arraigning the conduct 
 of the Duke of Marlborough in his various cam- 
 paigns, touched also on this matter. "He said we 
 had declared a successor to the crown who was at
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 191 
 
 a great distance from us, while the Pretender was 
 much nearer, and Scotland was aroused and ready to 
 receive him, and seemed resolved not to have the 
 same successor for whom England had declared. 
 There were threatening dangers that hung over us, 
 and might be near us. He concluded that he did 
 not see how they could be prevented and the nation 
 made safe by any other way but by inviting the next 
 successor to come and live among us." The Duke 
 of Buckingham, the Earls of Rochester, Nottingham, 
 and Anglesea, carried on the debate with great ear- 
 nestness. " It was urged that they had sworn to 
 maintain the succession, and by that they were bound 
 to insist on the motion, since there were no means so 
 sure to maintain it as to have the successor upon the 
 spot ready to maintain his right. It appeared through 
 our whole history that whoever came first into Eng- 
 land had always carried it ; the pretending successor 
 might be in England within three days, whereas it 
 might be three weeks before the declared successor 
 would come. From thence it was inferred that the 
 danger was apparent and dreadful if the successor 
 should not be brought over. With these lords, by a 
 strange reverse, all the Tories joined ; and by another, 
 and as strange a reverse, all the Whigs joined in 
 opposing it. They thought this motion was to be 
 left wholly to the queen ; that it was neither proper 
 nor safe, either for the Crown or the nation, that the 
 heir should not be in an entire dependence on the 
 queen ; a rivalry between two courts might bring us 
 into great destruction, and be attended with very ill 
 consequences. The next successor had expressed a 
 full satisfaction, and rested on the assurances the
 
 192 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 queen had given her of her firm adherence to the 
 title and to the maintaining of it. The nation was 
 prepared for it by orders the queen had given to 
 name her in the daily prayers of the Church. Great 
 endeavours had been used to bring the Scotch nation 
 to declare the same successor. It was true we still 
 wanted one great security, we had not yet made any 
 provisions for carrying on the government, for main- 
 taining the public quiet, for proclaiming and for 
 sending for the successor, and for keeping things in 
 order till the successor should come. It seemed, 
 therefore, necessary to make an effectual provision 
 against the disorders which might happen in such an 
 interval. This was proposed first by myself (Burnet) 
 and seconded by the Lord Godolphin, and all the 
 Whigs went into it ; and so the question was put 
 before the other motion as first put, by a previous 
 division, whether that should be put or not, and was 
 carried in the negative by about three to one." 
 
 If this be not elegantly, it is at least clearly ex- 
 pressed by Burnet, who, in adding that the queen 
 was present throughout this monstrous debate, in- 
 forms us that her Majesty was "annoyed at the 
 behaviour of some who, when they had credit with 
 her, and apprehended that such a motion might be 
 made by the Whigs, had possessed her with deep 
 prejudices against it, for they made her apprehend 
 that, when the next successor should be brought 
 over, she herself would be so eclipsed by it that she 
 would be much in the successor's power, and reign 
 only at her or his courtesy ; yet these very persons, 
 having now lost their interest in her and their posts, 
 were driving on that very motion which they made
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 193 
 
 her apprehend was the most fatal thing that could 
 befall. This the Duchess of Marlborough told me, 
 but she named no person ; and upon it a very black 
 suspicion was taken up by some that the proposers 
 of this matter knew, or at least believed, that the 
 queen would not agree to this motion which way 
 soever it might be brought to her, whether in an 
 address or in a bill ; and then they might reckon that 
 this would give such a jealousy, and create such a 
 misunderstanding between her and the Parliament, 
 or, rather, the whole nation, as would unsettle her 
 whole government, and put all things in disorder. 
 But this was only a suspicion, and more cannot be 
 made of it." 
 
 Plain as all this is in some things and suggestive 
 in others, it does not explain much that is incompre- 
 hensible and unsatisfactory in the history of the suc- 
 cession settlement and the intrigues by which it was 
 accomplished. The question first became a serious 
 one when the son of Anne, her only child, the hope 
 of Protestant England, died in the year 1 700. King 
 William bore the misfortune which had befallen his 
 sister-in-law with that cheerful resignation which the 
 selfish feel for the calamities of other people. He 
 looked very sharply to the pecuniary profits to be 
 made by the suppression of the young duke's house- 
 hold, and he concerned himself very little touching 
 the outward marks of mourning which custom and 
 decency enjoined as observance of respect. He was 
 then himself a widowed king in seclusion at Loo, and 
 such of the Protestant party who believed that the 
 marriage of Anne with George of Denmark would be 
 productive of no further issue, busied themselves in
 
 194 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 finding eligible wives for King William, and congrat- 
 ulated themselves on the prospects of a succession 
 thence to arise. William, however, did not care to 
 second their views ; and he was in this condition of 
 disregard for the succession to the crown when he 
 was visited by the Electress Sophia of Hanover and 
 her daughter, the Electress of Brandenburg. The 
 latter was that Sophia Charlotte under whose super- 
 intendence Caroline of Anspach, the queen-consort 
 of George II., was educated. 
 
 It was said that this visit had no other object than 
 to secure William's influence with the empress for 
 the elevation of the electorate of Brandenburg to 
 the rank of a kingdom under the name of Prussia. 
 William, however, possessed no such influence, and 
 the visit alluded to had no such object. The story 
 of the rise of Prussia may be told in a very few 
 words, and it is not disconnected from the history of 
 Sophia Dorothea, for the crown of that kingdom 
 subsequently rested on the brow of her only 
 daughter. 
 
 The Polish dukedom of Prussia had fallen, by in- 
 heritance, to the Elector of Brandenburg in 1618. 
 About forty years later it was made free of all 
 Polish jurisdiction, and annexed to Brandenburg by 
 treaty. During the following thirty years the pos- 
 sessions of the Great Elector, as he was called, were 
 greatly enlarged, chiefly by marriage treaties or by 
 legal inheritance ; and when Frederick, the son of 
 the Great Elector, succeeded to his father's domin- 
 ions in 1688, he had nothing so much at heart as the 
 elevation of the electorate into a kingdom. He suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining the title of king from the Emperor
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 195 
 
 of Germany not without difficulty. His claim was 
 grounded on the fact that he exercised sovereign 
 right in Prussia, and it only succeeded by being sup- 
 pcf.ed by promises of adherence to the house of 
 Austria in all difficulties, and by a bribe, or purchase- 
 money, of nine millions of thalers, two hundred thou- 
 sand of which went into the pockets of the Jesuits, 
 whose agency brought the negotiation to a successful 
 close. 
 
 In 1701, only a few months after the visit of the 
 Electress Sophia to William at The Hague, the 
 Elector of Brandenburg crowned himself, at Konigs- 
 berg, by the style and title of " Frederick I., King in 
 Prussia ; " and then crowned the electress, his wife, 
 as she knelt before him. Such is the brief history of 
 the foundation of the kingdom of Prussia. Such a 
 consummation had been eagerly obstructed by the 
 knightly orders of Germany, and hotly opposed by 
 Rome. The Pope, who had seen the old protector 
 to Protestantism, the Elector of Saxony, abandon his 
 trust, could not, without much vexation, witness the 
 establishment in Germany of a new stronghold for 
 the reformed religion, and under the more secure and 
 influential form of a kingdom. He represented that 
 such a Protestant kingdom would be the eternal 
 adversary of the Catholic house of Austria, and in 
 such representation he was not to be gainsaid. The 
 most amusing fact connected therewith is, that the 
 Jesuits in Austria, for the sake of a pecuniary " con- 
 sideration," furthered the establishment of the Prot- 
 estant monarchy which was to prove a thorn in the 
 side of the Catholic imperial power. 
 
 Whatever cause attracted the Electress of Hanover
 
 196 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 to Loo, she was but coldly welcomed by William, 
 who paid her one formal visit, and then suddenly 
 departed for England. He probably had a dread of 
 the old and energetic lady, who was not only anxious 
 to settle the succession in her own family, but like 
 the provident gentleman who bowed to the statue of 
 Jupiter in a museum, and begged the god to bear the 
 respect in mind, if he should ever be restored to 
 greatness again was also given to express such 
 concern for the interests of the exiled family as 
 might ensure liberal treatment from them, should 
 they, in popular phrase, ever come to their own 
 again. 
 
 The times, and the men of those times, were full 
 of inconsistencies. Thus, William, who had un- 
 doubtedly first opened, as I have previously stated, 
 negotiations with the Hanoverian family to secure 
 their succession to a throne from which he had 
 ejected James II., went into deep mourning, as did 
 half England, when that exiled monarch died. The 
 Princess Anne did the same, and yet, as queen, she 
 projected and sanctioned the bill of attainder against 
 the son and heir of her father ; a son whom Will- 
 iam III. had proffered to adopt, at the peace of 
 Ryswick ! 
 
 When the old Electress of Hanover visited William 
 at Loo, her visit may probably have had reference to 
 a favourite project of that sovereign, namely, the 
 immediate succession of the electress to the throne, 
 on his demise, to the exclusion of the Princess Anne. 
 His papers, discovered at Kensington after his de- 
 cease, contained many references to this subject ; 
 and it may have been that it was because he had so
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 197 
 
 alluded to the matter, that he was reluctant to treat 
 of it verbally. The report was certainly current at 
 the time, that among the defunct king's papers was 
 a written recommendation, or what might be inter- 
 preted as such, to invite the Electress of Hanover 
 and her son to take possession of the throne of Eng- 
 land immediately after his death. Pamphlets were 
 published in defence of the queen's rights, against 
 such a recommendation of exclusion. The govern- 
 ment, indeed, declared that the report of the intended 
 exclusion was false and groundless ; which may have 
 been the case, without affecting the request that a 
 hint for such a course had really been found in the 
 papers of the deceased king. 
 
 When the accession of Anne brought the husband 
 of Sophia Dorothea one step nearer to the throne of 
 England, there expired a law which was one of the 
 most singular in connection with the law of taxation ; 
 and the singularity alone of which authorises me to 
 make mention of it here. In April, 1695, this law 
 had been passed, under the title of an act for granting 
 to his Majesty certain rates and duties upon mar- 
 riages, births, and burials, and upon bachelors and 
 widowers, "for the carrying on the war against 
 France with vigour." By the graduated scale of this 
 law, which commenced with the deaths, a duke or 
 duchess could not die without paying 50 sterling 
 for the enjoyment of the luxury. It would be more 
 correct, perhaps, to say that the heir could not 
 administer till such impost had been paid. A mar- 
 quis could depart at a diminished cost of 40; 
 while an earl was decreed as worth only $ less 
 than a marquis, and his decease brought into the
 
 198 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 treasury the sum of 3$. The scale descended till 
 it included "every gentleman, or so reputed, or his 
 wife, 2os." and also, "every person having a real 
 estate of $o per annum, or in personal estate 600, 
 to pay 2Os., and for his wife los." Nobody was forgot- 
 ten in this scale. No class was passed over, as the 
 town of Berwick was when the old property tax was 
 laid on, an omission which the indignant town on 
 the Tweed resented as an insult gross and undeserved. 
 
 A similar scale affected the births : a duke (or an 
 archbishop, who throughout the scale ranked as a 
 duke) having a first son born to him, was mulcted of 
 ^50 for the honour ; while the commonest citizen 
 could not legally be a father, at less cost in taxation 
 than " IQS. for every son and daughter." And so 
 again with marriages : a ducal knot carried with it 
 the usual dignified ^50 to the treasury; and the 
 scale ran gradually down till the marriage tax em- 
 braced " every person else that did not receive alms," 
 on whom a levy was made of half a crown to the 
 king, in addition to what was expected by the min- 
 ister. 
 
 It is an ordinary policy to tax luxuries only ; but 
 under this law every condition of life was set down 
 as a luxury. It was right, perhaps, to set down mar- 
 riage as a luxury, for it is intended to be so ; and 
 where such is not the case, the fault lies in the 
 parties who are too self-willed to allow it to be an 
 enjoyment. Bachelors and widowers probably paid 
 the impost with decent cheerfulness. Death, as an 
 undoubted luxury, both to the patient and to the 
 heir who profited by it, might also be fairly placed 
 under the operation of this law. The cruelty in the
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 199 
 
 enactment consisted in the rate put upon births. It 
 was not misery enough that a man should be born, 
 but that his welcome should be put in jeopardy by 
 his coming in company with the tax-gatherer. I can 
 fancy Mr. Shandy having much to say upon this par- 
 ticular point ; and the law is certainly obnoxious to 
 much Shandean observation. The most seriously 
 cruel portion of this law was that, however, which 
 affected a class of persons who could ill afford to be 
 so smitten as this enactment thus smote them. Not 
 only was every person who did not receive alms com- 
 pelled to pay one penny per week, but one farthing 
 per week, in the pound, was levied on all servants 
 receiving wages amounting to 4 per annum. 
 "Those," says Smollett, "who received from ^8 to 
 16, paid one halfpenny in the pound per week." 
 The hard-working recipients of these modest earn- 
 ings, therefore, paid a very serious contribution in 
 order that the war with France might be carried on 
 with vigour. 
 
 To return from this digression to the electoral 
 family and the question of the succession to the 
 crown of England, it may be observed, that on the 
 question as to whether the Electress Sophia, and 
 the husband of the imprisoned Sophia Dorothea, 
 sanctioned an agitation of their interests in England, 
 so as to give a continued uneasiness to the queen, 
 much is to be said on both sides. Miss Strickland, 
 in her picturesque and able " Life of Queen Anne," 
 very zealously essays to prove that the Electress 
 Sophia was unexceptionable and disinterested as to 
 her conduct. The historian just named cites from 
 the journal of the lord-keeper, Cowper, what that
 
 200 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 lady states to be 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 Coun- 
 cil, Sunday, November n, 1705, foreign letters read 
 in her Majesty's presence, the substance remarkable, 
 that at Hanover was a person, agent to the discon- 
 tented party here, to invite over the Princess Sophia 
 and the electoral prince (afterward 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 pro- 
 posal, 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." "The moderate and humane conduct of 
 the Princess Sophia," adds Miss Strickland, "con- 
 duct which the irrefragable evidence of events proved 
 was sincere and true, did not mollify the burning 
 jealousy of Queen Anne. If we may believe the 
 correspondence of the Jacobite writer, Doctor Dave- 
 nant, angry letters were written by Queen Anne to 
 the Princess Sophia, who, knowing how little she had 
 deserved them, and being of a high spirit, retorted 
 with displeasure, yet did not alter the intrinsic integ- 
 rity of her conduct. The Duchess of Marlborough was 
 reckless in her abuse of the Protestant heiress ; and 
 it is certain, by her letters, that she worked on the mind 
 of the queen with all her might, to keep up her jealousy 
 and alarm, regarding the advancement of her high- 
 minded cousin, Sophia. A running fit of angry
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 201 
 
 correspondence was actually kept up between the 
 queen and the Princess Sophia, from March 5, 1705. 
 It was increased at every violent political agitation, 
 until we shall see the scene of this world's glory 
 close almost simultaneously on both the royal kins- 
 women." 
 
 The truth is that Sophia, who was naturally reluc- 
 tant 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, and 
 hence the angry correspondence. It is said that 
 not only Anne, but that Sophia herself, would have 
 sacrificed the interests of the house of Hanover, and 
 would have secured the succession to the son of 
 James II., if the latter would have consented to pro- 
 fess the Protestant religion. The queen and electress 
 were perfectly safe in consenting to such a sacrifice 
 on such a stipulation, for they might have been per- 
 fectly sure that it would never be listened to. Then 
 again, much has been said about the disinterestedness 
 of the electress, and of George Louis, when the re- 
 jected Whig ministry, toward the end of Anne's 
 reign, wrote a letter to Marlborough, yet in command 
 of the army abroad, offering to seize the queen and 
 proclaim the Electress of Hanover as regent, if 
 Marlborough could bring over a force upon which 
 he could depend, to support them. Marlborough 
 is declared to have described such a project as one 
 of rank insanity ; and it is stated that Sophia con- 
 tented herself with recommending her son to the 
 consideration of the actual ministry. This proves 
 nothing more, either for mother or son, than that 
 at a period when the health of Anne was failing,
 
 202 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 they were very prudently contented to wait for an 
 inheritance which every day brought nearer to their 
 grasp, from which any day it might be snatched by 
 popular commotion. 
 
 In one year, the queen sent a request to the elect- 
 ress to aid her in promoting the peace of Europe, 
 and a present to her goddaughter 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 Straf- 
 ford, secretary of state. The communication bears 
 date Nov. n, 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." It 
 is suggested that by " my parchment " is meant the 
 queen's letter to the electress, but the letter was a 
 letter and nothing more. It was no commission, and 
 is not likely to have been engrossed. The word 
 "parchment," it is much more probable, had reference 
 to the Act of Succession, which certainly was, and 
 remains, "an everlasting monument in the archives 
 of Hanover." 
 
 When the daughter of Sophia Dorothea married 
 the Prince of Prussia, the young married couple 
 repaired to Brussels, in the hope of receiving an 
 invitation to England from Queen Anne. They 
 waited in vain, and returned without being noticed 
 at all. There was something more than mere jeal- 
 ousy in this conduct of the British queen, and the
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 203 
 
 angry allusions in the correspondence of Anne and 
 Sophia tend to prove this ; for though the latter may 
 not have been, and probably was not, intriguing 
 against the peace of the queen, she was desirous that 
 the electoral prince should visit the country, while 
 Anne was as determined that he should not come, if 
 she and her ministry could prevent it. 
 
 Early in 1714, Anne addressed a powerful remon- 
 strance 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." 
 The royal writer makes a strong appeal to the feel- 
 ings and loyalty of the dowager-electress, adding 
 such expressions of confidence in her good intentions 
 as courteous people are apt to express to persons in 
 whom they do not fully trust, and whom they would 
 not altogether offend. 
 
 Nor was she satisfied with this alone. Her Majesty 
 addressed a second letter to George Augustus, as Duke 
 of Cambridge, impartially expressing her thoughts with 
 respect to the design he had of coming. into her king- 
 dom. After a rotundity of paraphrase, which is any- 
 thing but Ciceronian, she says, "I should tell you, 
 nothing can be more dangerous to the tranquillity of
 
 204 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 my dominions, and the right of succession in your 
 line, and consequently most disagreeable to me." 
 
 These letters undoubtedly helped to kill the proud 
 dowager-elect ress, although it is said of her that 
 "that illustrious lady had experienced too many 
 changes of capricious fortune in her youth, to be 
 slain with a few capricious words." The conclusion 
 is illogical, and the terms incorrect. The words were 
 not capricious, they were solemn, sober truth; and 
 they thwarted her in one of her great desires. She 
 would have been glad to see the son of the electress 
 take his place in the House of Peers as Duke of 
 Cambridge ; and her not unnatural ambition is mani- 
 fest in the words, 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 ; and some 
 profit to Tom d'Urfey, who, standing at her Majesty's 
 sideboard, during the queen's dessert, after her three 
 o'clock dinner, received, it is said, "a fee of $o for 
 a stanza which he composed soon after Queen Anne's 
 refusal to invite the Elector of Hanover's son, for the 
 purpose of taking his place as Duke of Cambridge in 
 the House of Peers." Here is a verse of the doggerel 
 which delighted the monarch, and brought guerdon to 
 the minstrel. 
 
 " The crown 's far too weighty 
 
 For shoulders of eighty ; 
 She could not sustain such a trophy. 
 
 Her hand, too, already 
 
 Has grown so unsteady, 
 
 She can't hold a sceptre ; 
 
 So Providence kept her 
 Away, poor old dowager Sophy ! "
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 205 
 
 There is evidence that the last letters of Anne 
 really had something to do with the death of the 
 electress. They had hardly been received and read, 
 when her health, which certainly 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, after- 
 ward 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 let- 
 ters 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
 
 206 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 bedchamber. She gave me the 
 letters I sent you to copy ; she bade me send them 
 next post, and bring them afterward 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 been four days so." * 
 
 Such was the end, on June 10, 1714, of a very 
 remarkable woman ; a woman who bore with more 
 complacency than any other trial, that indeed which 
 was scarcely a trial to her at all, the infidelities of 
 her husband. For the honour of that husband she 
 herself was exceedingly jealous. This was exhibited 
 on more than one occasion. 
 
 William III. once showed his gratitude to the 
 Duke of Zell for political services rendered in cab- 
 
 1 Letter to the Duke of Marlborough.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 207 
 
 inet or field, by conferring on him the Order of 
 the Garter. This favour, however, rendered the 
 Electress Sophia furious. She could bear compla- 
 cently the infidelities and the neglect of her hus- 
 band, but her mind, full of reverence for etiquette, 
 propriety, and the fitness of things, as set down 
 by the masters of ceremonies, could not tolerate 
 that a younger brother should wear a distinction 
 which, so far as it went, elevated him above the 
 elder branch of his house. 
 
 The astute lady affected to be unable to compre- 
 hend the reason for thus passing over her husband. 
 The reason, perhaps, was that in principle she herself 
 was a thorough Jacobite, and that Jacobite principles 
 influenced the elder branch of a family which, never- 
 theless, was not without some hopes of rising to a 
 throne through a popular and national triumph over 
 these very principles. 
 
 The electress, it may be added, oscillated very 
 actively between two extremes, and endeavoured to 
 maintain friendship with both parties. She corre- 
 sponded with the dethroned James at St. Germains, 
 and she wrote very affectionate letters to his daugh- 
 ter Mary, who, in succeeding him in the palace from 
 which he had fled, rolled herself over the cushions, 
 on which he had so lately sat, in frolicsome but 
 unfilial delight. Her letters to Anne were marked 
 by more ceremony than those addressed to Mary, 
 and for this reason : she respected the latter as a 
 clever woman, but for Anne she had a contempt, 
 ill concealed, and i a very thin cloak of civility, 
 deeming her to be destitute of ability, and unen- 
 dowed with personal qualities to compensate for the
 
 208 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 defect. She had little more respect for Anne's 
 father than she had for Anne herself, but in the 
 former case she hid her want of attachment beneath 
 a greater weight of ceremony. 
 
 But if she loved neither king nor queen in Eng- 
 land, she had a strong feeling, or at least declared 
 she had, in favour of the country itself. She used 
 to speak of Great Britain as being her own native 
 land, and expressed a wish that she might be buried 
 beside her mother in Westminster Abbey. It is 
 doubtful whether this expression was founded on 
 affection or ambition, for, as we have before stated, 
 she declared she could die happy, were she so to die 
 as to warrant her tomb being distinguished by the 
 inscription, "Here lies Sophia, Queen of England." 
 
 " It is my own country," she used to say ; and 
 she told Lord Dartmouth, when the latter was so- 
 journing at Hanover, that she had once, in her 
 younger days, been on the point of becoming Queen 
 of England, by a marriage which was said to have 
 been projected between her and Charles II. She 
 added, in her coarse way, that England would have 
 profited by such a marriage, for her numerous chil- 
 dren would have rendered, as she suggested, a dis- 
 puted succession less complicated, a conclusion 
 which was by no means logically arrived at, for 
 in England she might not have been the prolific 
 mother she was in Germany ; and, moreover, of 
 that German family, the half went over to that 
 faith, the following of which rendered them ineligible 
 to the crown of Great Britain. 
 
 None knew better than the electress dowager on 
 what basis her claims rested. If she neither openly
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 209 
 
 nor privately agitated the question, she was not indif- 
 ferent as to its consequences ; and though anxious, 
 she was quiet; and was quiet because she was in 
 reality sincere. In a letter, written by the electress 
 on this very subject, and quoted by Miss Benger in 
 her life of the mother of the electress, there is the 
 following passage : " I find all the fine speeches too 
 strong ; they are only fit to amuse the lower orders, 
 for the comparing the Prince of Wales with Perkin 
 is too strong. And it is not he who could by right 
 deprive me of the crown. If a Catholic king could 
 not succeed, the crown is mine by right. Without 
 that, there are many nearer to the succession than 
 I am. So, I do not like that the Prince of Wales 
 should be called bastard ; for I love the truth."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 AHLDEN AND ENGLAND 
 
 The Neglected Captive of Ahlden Unnoticed by Her Son-in-law, 
 Except to Secure Her Property Madame von Schulemberg 
 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 Doctor 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 fetes held to 
 celebrate some step in greatness, Sophia Dorothea 
 continued to vegetate in Ahlden. She was politi- 
 cally 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 com- 
 municated to her. She was left to learn them 
 through chance or the courtesy of individuals. 
 
 Her daughter was now the second Queen of Prus- 
 sia, 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 con-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 211 
 
 sort 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 indis- 
 putable 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. This prohibition was by far too obedi- 
 ently observed, and Sophia Dorothea was in this 
 much like old King Lear, that by endowing a daugh- 
 ter she lost a child. 
 
 Few and trivial are the incidents told of her long 
 captivity. The latter had been embittered in 1 703, 
 by the knowledge that Mile, von Schulemberg was 
 the mother of another daughter, Margaret Gertrude, 
 of whom the elector was the father. This child, of 
 whom little is known, but of whom we shall have to 
 speak in a future reign, was ten years younger than 
 her sister, Petronilla Melusina, who subsequently 
 figured at the court of George II. as Countess of 
 Walsingham, and who, as the careless and uncared- 
 for wife of Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, gave, 
 nevertheless, very considerable trouble to that cele- 
 brated personage, who had the spirit to be a patriot, 
 and the tact to be a gentleman, but who had neither 
 the tact nor the principle to be a Christian. In the 
 latter respect, the parties were, for a time at least, 
 not ill-matched.
 
 212 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Previous to the prohibition laid on his wife by the 
 King of Prussia, an epistolary intercourse had been 
 privately maintained between the prisoner 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 counsellor 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 intro- 
 duced 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 signif- 
 ication, known only to the donor and the recipient. 
 They probably had less meaning than the presents 
 forwarded to her 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 con- 
 tinued 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
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 213 
 
 she might have been a recognised queen if she would 
 but have confessed that she had failed in obedience 
 toward her husband. It is certain that a renewed, but 
 it may not have been an honest, attempt at reconcilia- 
 tion 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." 
 
 I have already noticed the death of the Electress 
 Sophia, and the causes of that death, in 1714. It 
 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 background, 
 and Secretary Craggs, booted and spurred, was mak- 
 ing 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 resolv- 
 ing 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 ist 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 announc- 
 ing the demise of one sovereign to another, who was
 
 214 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 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 ex- 
 press, 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 encour- 
 age 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.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 215 
 
 On the 3d 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 arms 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 tenth, 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 1 3th, Craggs arrived in town to herald the 
 king's coming ; and on the I4th, the Hanoverian 
 party were delighted to hear that on the Pretender 
 repairing from Louvain 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 Pre- 
 tender had returned dispirited to Louvain. On the 
 24th of the month, the late queen's body was privately 
 buried in Westminster Abbey, by order of her suc- 
 cessor, 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
 
 216 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 them, and chief of these was Bolingbroke. Lon- 
 don 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 Mile, von 
 Schulemberg, 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 alone a week at The Hague ; 
 and on the i6th 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 100,000 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 1 8th 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,
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 217 
 
 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 2Oth 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 Maryle- 
 bone 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. 
 
 Were it not that we know how much more in- 
 tensely the poets love the Muses than they care for 
 truth, we might be puzzled in our endeavours to 
 reconcile the rhyming records of England's welcome 
 to George I. with the narrations given in simple 
 prose by eye-witnesses of the incidents which they 
 narrate. 
 
 No poet deplored that is, no poet affected to de- 
 plore 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
 
 2l8 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a defunct monarch. Accordingly, wiping up his 
 tears, and arraying his face in the blandest of smiles, 
 he thus falls 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' inex- 
 orable 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, 
 We, bending, bless'd the gods and ask'd no more ! 
 What hand but thine should conquer and compose, 
 Join those whom interest joins, and chase our foes, 
 Repel the daring youth's presumptuous aim, 
 And by his rival's greatness give him fame? 
 Now, in some foreign court he may sit down, 
 And quit without a blush the British crown ; 
 Secure his honour, though he lose his store, 
 And take a lucky moment to be poor." 
 
 This sneer at the Pretender is as contemptible as 
 the flattery of George is gross ; and the picture
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 219 
 
 of an entire nation on its knees, blessing Olympus, 
 and bidding the gods to restrain all further gifts, is 
 as magnificent a mixture of bombast and blasphemy 
 as ever was made up by venal poet. But here is 
 more of it : 
 
 " Nor think, great sir, now first at this late hour, 
 In Britain's favour you exert your power. 
 To us, far back in time, I joy to trace 
 The numerous tokens of your princely grace ; 
 Whether you chose to thunder on the Rhine, 
 Inspire grave councils, or in courts to shine, 
 In the more scenes your genius was display'd, 
 The greater debt was on Britannia laid : 
 They all conspir'd this mighty man to raise, 
 And your new subjects proudly share the praise." 
 
 Such is the record of a rhymer : Walpole, in plain 
 and truthful prose, tells a very different story. He 
 informs us, that the London mob no Jacobites, be 
 it remembered, but, to paraphrase Nell Gwynne's 
 celebrated phrase, " a good Protestant mob " were 
 highly diverted at the importation by the king of 
 his uncommon seraglio of ugly women. " They were 
 food," he says, " for all the venom of the Jacobites," 
 and so far from Britain thanking him for coming 
 himself, or for bringing with him these numerous 
 tokens of his princely grace, "nothing could be 
 grosser than the ribaldry vomited out in lampoons, 
 libels, and every channel of abuse, against the sov- 
 ereign and the new court, and chanted even in their 
 hearing about the public streets." 
 
 As for the great balance of debt which Young 
 struck against poor Britannia for the outlay of genius
 
 220 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 on the part of George* the creditor did not fail to 
 exact payment, with a large amount of compound in- 
 terest, both out of the national purse and the national 
 peerage. Mile, von Schulemberg was created Duch- 
 ess of Kendal. "The younger Mile, von Schulem- 
 berg, who came over with her, and was created 
 Countess of Walsingham, passed for her niece, but 
 was so like the king, that it is not very credible that 
 the duchess, who had affected to pass for cruel, had 
 waited for the left-handed marriage." Lady Walsing- 
 ham, as previously said, was afterward married to the 
 celebrated Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. 
 
 To the Duchess of Kendal George (who was so 
 shocked at the infidelity of which his wife was alleged 
 to be guilty) was to the mistress as inconstant as to 
 the wife he had been untrue. He set aside the 
 former, to put in her place Madame Kielmansegge, 
 called, like her mother, Countess von Platen. On 
 the death of her husband in 1721, he raised her to 
 the rank of Countess of Leinster in Ireland, Count- 
 ess of Darlington and Baroness of Brentford in Eng- 
 land. Coxe says of her, that her power over the king 
 was not equal to that of the Duchess of Kendal, but 
 her character for rapacity was not inferior. Horace 
 Walpole has graphically portrayed Lady Darlington 
 in the following passage : 
 
 " Lady Darlington, whom I saw at my mother's in 
 my infancy, and whom I remember by being terrified 
 at her enormous figure, was as corpulent and ample 
 as the duchess was long and emaciated. The fierce 
 black eyes, large, and rolling beneath two lofty arched 
 eyebrows, two acres of cheeks spread with crimson, 
 an ocean of neck that overflowed, and was not distin-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 221 
 
 guished from, the lower part of her body, and no part 
 restrained by stays no wonder that a child dreaded 
 such an ogress." 
 
 But Parnassus itself was far from being unanimous 
 in welcoming the first king of the house of Bruns- 
 wick. The Jacobite lyrists mounted Pegasus, and 
 made him kick rather menacingly against the Hano- 
 verian succession. The Hanover poets, indeed, were 
 the first in the field. Thus, Anne died on the ist 
 of August, 1714, and six days afterward the violent 
 Whig Flying Post suppressed its columns of intel- 
 ligence in order to make room for piles of political 
 poetry. Among the rest was " A Hanover Garland," 
 in which the following flower of poetry was wreathed : 
 
 " Keep out, keep out H(anover)'s line, 
 'Tis only J(ame)s has right divine, 
 So Romish parsons cant and whine, 
 
 And sure we must believe them. 
 But if their prince can't come in peace 
 Their stock will every day decrease, 
 And they will ne'er see Perkin's face, 
 So their false hopes deceive them." 
 
 Against these tilters the first Tory poet who ap- 
 peared in the field was Ned Ward, the publican, who 
 took advantage of the public return of the Duke of 
 Marlborough from his voluntary exile, to ridicule the 
 circumstance, and the parties engaged in the proces- 
 sion, as seditious and republican in character. Ned 
 satirised the " Low-church elders," and added, against 
 the Whig mercantile community : 
 
 " Next these who, like to blazing stars, 
 Portend domestic feuds and wars, 
 Came managers and bank-directors, 
 King-killers, monarchy-electors,
 
 222 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 And votaries for lord-protectors, 
 That, had old subtle Satan spread 
 His net o'er all the cavalcade, 
 He might at one surprising pull 
 Have fill'd his lower dominion full 
 Of atheists, rebels, Whigs, and traitors, 
 Reforming knaves and regulators ; 
 And eased at once this land of more 
 And greater plagues than Egypt bore." 
 
 The mob had a strong Tory leaven at this time, 
 and among the multitude circulated a mass of broad- 
 sides and ballads, of so openly a seditious character, 
 that the power of the law was stringently applied to 
 suppress the evil. Before the year was out, half the 
 provincial towns in England were infected with sedi- 
 tious sentiments against the Whig government, which 
 had brought in a king whose way of life was a scandal 
 to them. This feeling of contempt for both king 
 and government was wide as well as deep, and it was 
 so craftily made use of by the leaders of public opin- 
 ion, that before George had been three months upon 
 the throne, the "High-church rabble," as the Tory 
 party was called, in various country towns, were 
 violent in their proceedings against the government ; 
 and at Axmister, in Devonshire, shouted for the Pre- 
 tender, and drank his health as King of England. 
 The conduct of George to his wife, Sophia Dorothea, 
 was as satirically dealt with, in the way of censure, 
 as any of his delinquencies, and his character as a 
 husband was not forgotten in the yearly tumults of 
 his time, which broke out on every recurring anniver- 
 sary of Queen Anne's birthday (the 23d of April), to 
 the end of his reign. 
 
 If the new king was dissatisfied with his new sub-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 223 
 
 jects, he liked as little the manners of England. 
 "This is a strange country," said his Majesty : "the 
 first morning after my arrival at St. James's, I looked 
 out of the window, and saw a park, with walks, a 
 canal, and so forth, which they told me were mine. 
 The next day, Lord Chetwynd, the ranger of my 
 park, sent me a fine brace of carp out of my canal, 
 and I was told that I must give five guineas to Lord 
 Chetwynd's servant, for bringing me my own carp, 
 out of my own canal, in my own park ! " 
 
 The monarch's mistresses loved as much to receive 
 money as the king himself loved little to part from 
 it. The Duchess of Kendal's rapacity has been men- 
 tioned : one instance of it is mentioned by Coxe, on 
 the authority of Sir Robert Walpole, to the effect 
 that "the restoration of Lord Bolingbroke was the 
 work of the Duchess of Kendal. He gained the 
 duchess by a present of i 1,000, and obtained a 
 promise to use her influence over the king for the 
 purpose of forwarding his complete restoration." 
 Horace Walpole states that the duchess was no 
 friend of Sir Robert, and wished to make Lord Bol- 
 ingbroke minister in his room. The rapacious mis- 
 tress was jealous of Sir Robert's credit with the 
 monarch. Monarch and minister transacted busi- 
 ness through the medium of indifferent Latin ; the 
 king not being able to speak English, and Sir Robert, 
 like a country gentleman of England, knowing noth- 
 ing of either German or French. " It was much talked 
 of," says the lively writer of the reminiscences of the 
 courts of the first two Georges, "that Sir Robert, 
 detecting one of the Hanoverian ministers in some 
 trick or falsehood before the king's face, had the firm-
 
 224 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 ness to say to the German, ' Mentiris impudentis- 
 sime ! ' The good-humoured monarch only laughed, 
 as he often did when Sir Robert complained to him 
 of his Hanoverians selling places, nor would be per- 
 suaded that it was not the practice of the English 
 court." The singularity of this complaint is, that it 
 was made by a minister who was notorious for com- 
 placently saying that " Every man in the House of 
 Commons had his price." 
 
 The king laughed, simply because he loved to lead 
 an untroubled life. The parade of royalty was abhor- 
 rent to him, solely on the same account. To the 
 theatre he went in no state ; " nor did he sit in the 
 stage-box, nor forward, but behind the Duchess of 
 Kendal and Lady Walsingham, in the second box, 
 afterward allotted to the maids of honour." This 
 spectacle must have been edifying to the "house," 
 yet one not likely to induce love or loyalty for the 
 house of Brunswick, as then represented. A king 
 living in open violation of God's commandments, 
 coldly calling on his people to witness the unclean- 
 ness of his sin, and at the same time shutting up his 
 wife in close captivity, for no better reason, appar- 
 ently, than that her temper was incompatible with 
 his, which was likely enough, was surely a sight 
 to perplex those very gods to whom, Young said, all 
 Britain bent in humble thankfulness for such a bless- 
 ing. I can fancy Dan Mercury looking down upon 
 such a sight, and exclaiming, as he saw the jumbling 
 of triumphs for the unrighteous, oppression for the 
 innocent, and praise offered by the vain to the wicked, 
 that in this lower world, as Stephen Blackpool has 
 since remarked, " it was all muddle ! "
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CROWN AND GRAVE 
 
 Arrival of Caroline, Princess of Wales The King Dines at the 
 Guildhall Proclamation of the Pretender Counter-procla- 
 mations Government Prosecutions A Mutiny among the 
 Troops Impeachment of the Duke of Ormondof High Treason 
 Punishment of Political Offenders Failure of Rebellion in 
 Scotland Punishment for Wearing Oak-boughs Riot at the 
 Mug-house in Salisbury Court, and Its Fatal Consequences 
 The Prince of Wales Removed from the Palace Dissensions 
 between the King and the Prince Attempt on the Life of King 
 George Marriage of the King's Illegitimate Daughter The 
 South Sea Bubble Birth of Prince William, the Butcher of 
 Culloden Death of the Duchess of Zell Stricter Imprison- 
 ment of the Captive of Ahlden Her Calm Death A New 
 Royal Favourite, Mrs. Brett Death of the King. 
 
 WHILE Sophia Dorothea continued to linger in her 
 prison, her husband and son, with the mistresses of 
 the former and the wife of the latter, were enjoying 
 the advantages and anxieties which surround a throne. 
 The wife of the Prince of Wales, Caroline, arrived at 
 Margate on the i$th of October. She was accom- 
 panied by her two eldest daughters, Anne and Amelia. 
 Mother and children rested during one day in the 
 town where they had landed, slept one night at 
 Rochester, and arrived at St. James's on the I5th. 
 The royal coronation took place in Westminster 
 Abbey on the 2Oth of the same month. Amid 
 the pomp of the occasion, no one appears to have 
 
 225
 
 226 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 thought of her who should have been queen consort. 
 There was much splendour and some calamity, for as 
 the procession was sweeping by, several people were 
 killed by the fall of scaffolding in the Palace Yard. 
 The new king entered the Abbey amid the cheers 
 and screams of an excited multitude. 
 
 Three days after, the monarch, with the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales, dined with the lord mayor 
 and corporation in the Guildhall, London, and there 
 George performed the first grateful service to his 
 people, by placing a thousand guineas in the hands 
 of the sheriffs, for the relief of the wretched debtors 
 then immured in the neighbouring horrible prisons of 
 Newgate and the Fleet. 
 
 Within a month, the general festivities were a 
 little marred by the proclamation of the Pretender, 
 dated from Lorraine, wherein he laid claim to the 
 throne which George was declared to have usurped. 
 At this period the Duke of Lorraine was a sovereign 
 prince, maintaining an envoy at our court ; but the 
 latter was ordered to withdraw from the country 
 immediately after the arrival of the " Lorraine proc- 
 lamation," by the French mail. Already George I. 
 began to feel that on the throne he was destined to 
 enjoy less quiet than his consort in her prison. 
 
 The counter-proclamations made in this country, 
 chiefly on account of the Jacobite riots at Oxford and 
 some other places, were made up of nonsense and ma- 
 lignity, and were well calculated to make a good 
 cause wear the semblance of a bad one. They 
 decreed, or announced, thanksgiving on the 2Oth of 
 January, for the accession of the house of Hanover ; 
 and, to show what a portion of the people had to be
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 227 
 
 thankful for, they ordered a rigorous execution of 
 the laws against papists, nonjurors, and dissenters 
 generally, who were assumed to be, as a matter of 
 course, disaffected to the reigning house. 
 
 The government was earnest in its intentions. 
 Vine, a comedian, was prosecuted for a libel con- 
 tained in his " Reasons humbly offered to the Parlia- 
 ment for abrogating the observation of the 3<Dth of 
 January." But this was an innocent libel enough, 
 compared with others such as that of Hornby's, in his 
 " Advice to the Freethinkers of England," in which 
 it was affirmed that the Whig government would over- 
 turn the constitution in Church and state, alter the 
 law of limitations in the power of the Crown, establish 
 a standing army, crush public liberty, and " encourage 
 the people to abuse the memory of good Queen 
 Anne." A reward of a thousand pounds was con- 
 ferred on the discoverer of the author of this libel. 
 Some of its assertions appeared, however, to be 
 justified in the king's first proclamation for electing 
 a new Parliament. In this document his Majesty 
 charged the late House of Commons with being 
 Jacobitical, and desired his subjects to elect men of 
 an opposite tendency. His desire was tolerably well 
 obeyed ; but when the king told the new Parliament 
 that the public -debt had increased in peace, and 
 diminished during war, and when the Commons, 
 in their address, encouraged the monarch in his war- 
 like propensities, the freethinkers were more ob- 
 stinate than ever in their opinion that liberty was 
 doomed to die beneath the heels of a standing army. 
 
 Not that much pains could be said to have been 
 taken by the government to conciliate the army.
 
 228 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 On the first anniversary of the king's birthday, the 
 28th of May, the First Regiment of Guards, and 
 divisions of other regiments, broke out into open 
 mutiny, on the ground that they were furnished with 
 clothes and linen not fit to be worn on the royal 
 birthday. The Duke of Marlborough, who had suc- 
 ceeded Ormond as captain-general, sallied from his 
 house in the Mall, and made a speech to the soldiers 
 in the park. But some of the men stripped off their 
 jackets and shirts, and flung them over the wall of 
 the duke's garden and of that behind St. James's 
 Palace, while others, hoisting the linen garments on 
 poles, paraded them about the streets, exclaiming, 
 " Look at our Hanover shirts ! " Reparation was 
 promised, the army agents and tradesmen were 
 blamed, and the men were enjoined to burn clothes 
 and shirts in front of Whitehall, an order which 
 they obeyed with alacrity. Amid it all, the little 
 Princess Caroline, youngest daughter of the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales, who had arrived only two 
 days before in London, took her first drive in public. 
 Her little Highness must have been startled at the 
 contrast between the noisy metropolis and the quiet 
 city of Hanover ; the streets of the latter all tran- 
 quillity, those of the former full of prostrate Whigs, 
 knocked down by strong-armed Tories for refusing to 
 join in the shout of " High Church and the Duke of 
 Ormond." 
 
 The duke gained little by his popularity, for he, in 
 common with Bolingbroke and other lords, was im- 
 peached on the charge of high treason. The far- 
 seeing eye of the king, however, looked beyond such 
 offenders as these ; and while peers and commoners
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 229 
 
 were being committed to prison, or were flying from 
 the country, a poor cobbler was whipped from Hollo- 
 way to Highgate for no more grievous offence than 
 reflecting upon certain measures of the government. 
 The University of Oxford was as free of thought, 
 act, and expression as the cobbler of Holloway. The 
 attainder of Ormond deprived him of his university 
 chancellorship, whereupon King George set up the 
 Prince of Wales as a candidate for the office. Ox- 
 ford, to show its contempt for the new dynasty, 
 rejected the prince, and chose Lord Arran, the Duke 
 of Ormond's brother. The king was so vexed, that 
 he wished himself back again at Hanover, and per- 
 haps it was his vexation which prompted him, at this 
 very time, to order an increase of rigour to be in- 
 flicted upon his poor imprisoned wife at Ahlden. Nor 
 did he spare Oxford ; whither a detachment of drag- 
 oons was sent, under the command of a major, 
 appropriately named Pepper, who suddenly seized 
 upon such members of the university as were sus- 
 pected of being more inclined to "James the Eighth 
 of Scotland," than to " George the First of England." 
 Meanwhile, less noble offenders were punished 
 with more severity, and Tyburn tree creaked with 
 the weight of men who had enlisted soldiers for the 
 Pretender. At this moment the Duke of Somerset 
 gave up his office of master of the horse, and the 
 husband of Sophia Dorothea appointed to the vacant 
 post the German lady Mile, von Schulemberg, mis- 
 tress of the monarch and the mews ! The son of 
 Sophia Dorothea also succeeded in obtaining office, 
 and the rejected of the University of Oxford was 
 elected chancellor by the University of Dublin.
 
 230 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 In the meantime the failure of the rebellion in 
 Scotland had given the king joy, but had not inspired 
 him with mercy. Executions were of daily occur- 
 rence, and when the president of the council, the 
 Earl of Nottingham, ventured to suggest that the 
 royal prerogative of mercy was the brightest gem in 
 a kingly crown, he was turned out of his place, and 
 all his kinsmen who were in office were similarly 
 treated. The king, however, granted their lives to 
 several of the prisoners taken on the Pretender's 
 side, but nearly the whole of them perished in prison, 
 through the severity of the season and the want of 
 the necessaries of life. 
 
 The first year of the accession of George was cer- 
 tainly not untroubled, and he, probably, with all his 
 grandeur, was less happy than the wife whom he 
 held in such rigorous captivity. The very heavens 
 themselves seemed to threaten him, and we are 
 expressly told in the journals of the time, that the 
 year ended with dire phenomena in the sky, columns 
 and pillars of continually flashing light carrying ter- 
 ror into the minds of all beholders, who, lacking 
 simple knowledge, deemed that the heavens were not 
 less out of joint than the earth. 
 
 In the following year the government exhibited 
 little sense in the application of their power. The 
 wearing of oak-boughs on the 29th of May, in mem- 
 ory of the restoration, was deemed an insult to the 
 government ; two soldiers were whipped (almost to 
 death) in Hyde Park, for carrying oak-apples in their 
 caps, and guards were posted in the streets to 
 prevent all persons from carrying white roses, some 
 bearers of which were, on refusal to surrender this
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 231 
 
 badge, very unceremoniously shot by the rude sol- 
 diery. The king complacently told his faithful Com- 
 mons that all his money had been wasted on the 
 Jacobite faction, and had been met by ingratitude 
 and more active treason. The monarch's favours, 
 however, were but inconsiderately scattered ; and 
 if the people could contemplate without regret the 
 nomination of his brother, Ernest Augustus, to be 
 Duke of York and Albany, and Earl of Ulster, they 
 were rather rough of comment when he raised Mile. 
 von Schulemberg to the dignities of Baroness of Dun- 
 dalk, Countess of Dungannon, Duchess of Munster, 
 and, finally, Duchess of Kendal. 
 
 In contrast with these palace incidents, I may 
 notice an incident of the streets. It is recorded by 
 Salmon in the " Chronological Historian," under the 
 date of July 23, 1716, and is to this effect : "The sons 
 of Whiggism, having assembled at a mug-house in 
 Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, after they were a little 
 elevated, ventured to attack some Tories, who were 
 got together in the Swan ale-house, over against 
 them, whereupon the Tories returned their visit, 
 drove them to their headquarters, and demolished the 
 bar, wainscot, etc,, below stairs ; whereupon the mug- 
 house sent for arms and assistance, and one of the 
 Tory men was shot dead upon the spot by the master 
 of the mug-house, which so provoked the other side, 
 that had not the guards come in to the assistance of 
 the mug gentlemen, a severe revenge had probably 
 been taken." Although the Whigs were the original 
 aggressors, the Tories were the most severely pun- 
 ished ; " five of them (two of whom were brothers) 
 were convicted of felony, in not dispersing themselves
 
 232 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 on the reading of the proclamation at the late riot, 
 near the mug-house in Salisbury Court, and were 
 hanged at the end of Salisbury Court, in Fleet 
 Street, the 22d inst." (September.) A further 
 incident worth narrating is, that the bearers at the 
 funeral of one of these executed men, were arrested, 
 and " fined twenty marks apiece," for " wearing their 
 favours " in St. Bride's churchyard. The people 
 were indignant at such oppression ; and when, on the 
 9th of November, the Princess of Wales gave birth 
 to a still-born son, the Tories looked upon the event 
 as a judgment, and even hoped for the entire failure 
 of the royal line. The king was in Hanover at the 
 time, when he invested his brother, the Duke of 
 York, and Prince Frederick, with the Order of the 
 Garter. He even partook of the pleasures of the 
 chase in the woods around Ahlden ; but except 
 ordering a more stringent rule for the safe-keeping 
 of his consort, he took no further notice of Sophia 
 Dorothea. He returned to London on the i8th of 
 January, 1716-17, and on that day week, hearing 
 that the Episcopal clergy of Scotland continued to 
 refuse to pray for him, he issued a decree, which 
 compelled many to fly the country, or otherwise 
 abscond. The English clergy experienced even 
 harsher treatment for less offence. I may mention, 
 as an instance, the case of the Reverend Laurence 
 Howell, who, for writing a pamphlet called "The 
 State of Schism in the Church of England truly 
 stated," was stripped of his gown by the executioner, 
 fined ^500, imprisoned three years, and twice pub- 
 licly whipped by the hangman ! 
 
 On the 2d of November, 1717, the Princess of
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 233 
 
 Wales gave birth to a son, who was christened by 
 the name of George William, at St. James's, by the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, on the 28th of the same 
 month ; the king and the Duke of Newcastle were 
 godfathers, and the Duchess of St. Alban's god- 
 mother. On the following day, the Prince of Wales, 
 by order of his father, removed from St. James's, and 
 went to reside at the house of the princess's cham- 
 berlain, the Earl of Grantham, in Arlington Street. 
 The princess accompanied him, but their children 
 remained at the palace. 
 
 This removal is connected with a palace incident 
 of some interest. The Prince of Wales had wished 
 that his uncle, the Duke of York, Bishop of Osna- 
 burgh, should be, with the king, sponsor to his child. 
 George I. peremptorily named the Duke of Newcastle 
 as co-sponsor, and would hear of no other. The 
 duke, then secretary of state, was hateful to the 
 prince, whom he treated with studied neglect ; and 
 when the ceremony of christening had been brought 
 to a close in the princess's bedchamber, the prince 
 crossed from the foot of the bed where he had been 
 standing with his wife's maids of honour, to the side 
 of the bed where the duke was standing near the 
 king, and there holding up his hand and forefinger 
 menacingly, said, in broken English, " You are a ras- 
 cal ! but I shall find you," meaning, " I shall find 
 a time to be revenged." The king, affecting to un- 
 derstand this as a challenge to fight, placed his son 
 under arrest ; but soon releasing him therefrom, 
 turned him out of the palace, retaining the three 
 eldest daughters, who resided with him till his 
 decease.
 
 234 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 The dissensions between George I. and his son are 
 said to have arisen long previous to the accession of 
 the former. The respect which the prince once enter- 
 tained for his mother Sophia Dorothea may have had 
 much to do with the matter, but politics had also 
 something to do therewith. Before the Act of Set- 
 tlement, the Electress Sophia was a Jacobite in prin- 
 ciple ; "but," says Walpole, "no sooner had King 
 William procured a settlement of the crown, after 
 Queen Anne, on her Electoral Highness, than nobody 
 became a stancher Whig than the Princess Sophia, 
 nor could be more impatient to mount the throne of 
 the exiled Stuarts. It is certain that, during the 
 reign of Anne, the Elector George was inclined to 
 the Tories, though after his mother's death, and his 
 own accession, he gave himself to the opposite party. 
 But if he and his mother espoused different factions, 
 Sophia found a ready partisan in her grandson, the 
 electoral prince ; and it is true that the demand made 
 by the prince of his writ of summons to the House 
 of Lords, as Duke of Cambridge, which no wonder 
 was so offensive to Queen Anne, was made in con- 
 cert with his grandmother, without the privity of the 
 elector his father." 
 
 To these causes of offence may be added the royal 
 sire's jealousy, as is supposed, of his son. On the 
 first absence of the king from England, the Prince 
 of Wales was appointed regent, but he was never 
 entrusted with that high office a second time. " It is 
 probable," says Walpole, "that the son discovered 
 too much fondness for acting the king, as that the 
 father conceived a jealousy of his having done so. 
 Sure it is that, on the king's return, great divisions
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 235 
 
 arose in the court, and the Whigs were divided, 
 some devoting themselves to the wearer of the crown, 
 and others to the expectant." So that, in the second 
 year of his reign, the king not only held his wife in 
 prison, but his son and heir was banished from his 
 presence. He even went so far as to declare to the 
 peers and peeresses of Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 to all privy councillors and their wives, that if any of 
 them should go to the court of the Prince and Prin- 
 cess of Wales, they should forbear to come into his 
 Majesty's presence. At the same time that this 
 example of family division was being given to the 
 kingdom, George I. created Prince Frederick, the 
 eldest son of the Prince of Wales, Duke of Glouces- 
 ter ; and a day or two later, the little Prince George 
 William, at whose christening the scene of violence 
 had occurred, died at the age of three months and 
 three days. The body was privately interred in 
 Westminster Abbey on the I2th of February, the 
 Bishop of Rochester reading the funeral service. 
 
 At this time the Prince of Wales had retired to the 
 house in " Leicester Fields," which he had recently 
 purchased. This house stood in the northeast cor- 
 ner of the square, and was originally built by the 
 Earl of Leicester, father of Waller's " Sacharissa." 
 The earl let it to persons of "condition," after ceas- 
 ing to reside in it himself. There died the mother 
 of the Electress Sophia. It was subsequently, and 
 successively, occupied by the French and German 
 ambassadors, and it was thence (when the Emperor 
 of Germany's envoy resided there) that Beau Fielding 
 procured the priest who married him privately, in 
 Pall Mall, to Mrs. Mary Wadsworth.
 
 236 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 About a month after the Prince of Wales had pur- 
 chased Leicester House, he was nearly called upon 
 to leave it again, for the palace, by the attempt at 
 assassination made by a lad, named Shepherd, upon 
 George I. This was on the 6th of March, 1717. 
 The young assassin was only eighteen years of age, 
 and was apprentice to a coach-painter. He looked 
 upon the act as being so meritorious, that when Lord 
 Chesterfield, just previous to his execution, asked 
 what he would do if the king forgave his attempt to 
 shoot him, the boy replied, " I would do it again." 
 He met his fate at Tyburn without exhibiting the 
 slightest mark of fear ; and Chesterfield said of him, 
 that " Reason declared him to be a Regulus, but that 
 silly prejudice was against it." The most important 
 public affair of the following year was the signing of 
 the quadruple alliance treaty between Great Britain, 
 France, Germany, and Holland, whereby these powers 
 were, among other obligations, bound to support the 
 succession to the British crown as fixed by the present 
 law of the land. 
 
 Passing over the record of public events, the next 
 interesting fact connected with the private life of the 
 faithless husband of Sophia Dorothea, was the mar- 
 riage of his daughter Charlotte, of whom Madame 
 Kielmansegge (his younger mistress) was the mother, 
 with Lord Viscount Howe (of the kingdom of Ire- 
 land). The bride was never publicly acknowledged 
 as the daughter of the king, but the Princess Amelia, 
 daughter of George II., "treated Lady Howe's daugh- 
 ter, Mistress Howe,' as a princess of the blood royal, 
 and presented her with a ring, containing a small 
 portrait of George I., with a crown in diamonds."
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 237 
 
 The best result of this marriage was, that the famous 
 Admiral Howe was a descendant of the contracting 
 parties, and that was the only benefit which the coun- 
 try derived from the vicious conduct of George I. 
 If the marriage of the child of one mistress tended to 
 mortify the vanity of another, as is said to have been 
 the case with the Schulemberg, King George found a 
 way to pacify her. That lady was already Duchess 
 of Munster, in Ireland, and the king, in April, 1719, 
 created her a baroness, countess, and duchess of 
 Great Britain, by the name, style, and title of Baron- 
 ess of Glastonbury, Countess of Feversham, and 
 Duchess of Kendal ; and this done, the king soon 
 after embarked at Gravesend for Hanover. It was 
 during his absence that a Spanish invasion of Scot- 
 land, by a small force, in conjunction with a body of 
 Highlanders, in behalf of the Pretender, was promptly 
 suppressed by General Wightman, to whom the whole 
 of the Spaniards, some three hundred men only, sur- 
 rendered at discretion. 
 
 The year 1720 saw King George more upon the 
 Continent than at home, where indeed universal 
 misery reigned, in consequence of the bursting of the 
 great South Sea bubble, which had promised such 
 golden solidity, which ended in such disappoint- 
 ment and ruin, and for furthering which the Duchess 
 of Kendal and her daughter received bribes of 
 ; 1 0,000 each. In April of the following year, Will- 
 iam Augustus was born at Leicester House. The 
 daughter of Sophia Dorothea was his godmother ; her 
 husband and the Duke of York were the godfathers. 
 This son of George Augustus and Caroline of Ans- 
 pach, Prince and Princess of Wales, was afterward
 
 238 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 famous as the Duke of Cumberland. It was in July 
 of this same year that the king conveyed to the 
 House of Commons the pleasant piece of information 
 that the debts on his civil list amounted to more than 
 half a million. He asked that body to provide for 
 the payment of the same, and the obsequious House 
 did what was asked of it ! No wonder that on 
 the anniversary of the restoration, seditious oak- 
 apples were seen in the citizens' hats ; that on the 
 loth of June, the Pretender's birthday, white roses 
 decorated their buttonholes ; and that on the 2$d of 
 August, Queen Anne's natal day, there was much 
 toasting of the memory of a queen who, throughout 
 her reign, had not cost her country the blood and 
 treasure which that country paid in any single year 
 for her successor. It was scarcely a month after the 
 royal request to the representatives of the people to 
 pay the penalty of the king's extravagance, by advanc- 
 ing above half a million of money, when he quartered 
 his mistress, Sophia Charlotte, Madame Kielmans- 
 egge, on the civil list of Ireland, and dignified the 
 act by creating her Countess of Leinster ! 
 
 On the 1 7th of January, 1721, the royal family 
 went into mourning, and this was the only domestic 
 incident of the reign in which Sophia Dorothea was 
 allowed to participate. With her, the mourning 
 was not a mere formality ; it was not assumed, but 
 was a testimony offered, in sign of her sorrow, for 
 the death of her mother, Eleanora, Duchess of Zell. 
 In an anonymous biography of her daughter, the 
 duchess is said to have died on the 24th of February, 
 1722, but the court of St. James's went into mourn- 
 ing for her on the nth of February of the preceding
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 239 
 
 year. She had seen little of her daughter for some 
 time previous to her death, but she bequeathed to her 
 as much of her private property as she had power to 
 dispose of by will. 
 
 Sophia Dorothea had now a considerable amount 
 of funds placed to her credit in the bank of Amster- 
 dam. Of the incidents of her captivity nothing 
 whatever is known, save that it was most rigidly 
 maintained. She was forgotten by the world, because 
 unseen, and they who kept her in prison were as 
 silent about her as the keepers of the Man in the 
 Iron Mask were about that mysterious object of their 
 solicitude. Where little is known, there is little to 
 be told. The captive bore her restraint with a 
 patience which even her daughter must have ad- 
 mired ; but she was not without hopes of escaping 
 from a thraldom from which it was clear she could 
 never be released by the voluntary act of those who 
 kept her in an undeserved custody. It is believed 
 that her funds at Amsterdam were intended by her 
 to be disposed of in the purchase of aid to secure her 
 escape ; but it is added that her agents betrayed 
 her, embezzled her property, and by. revealing for 
 what purpose they were her agents, brought upon her 
 a closer arrest than any under which she had hitherto 
 suffered. Romance has made some additions to these 
 items of intelligence, items, great portions of which 
 rest only on conjecture. The undoubted fact that 
 much of the property which she inherited was to 
 pass to her children, rendered the death of a mother 
 a consummation to be desired by so indifferent a son 
 and daughter as the Prince of Wales and the Queen 
 of Prussia. The interest held by her husband was of
 
 240 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a similar description, and the fatal consequences that 
 might follow were not unprovided for by the friends 
 of the prisoner. " It is known," says Walpole, " that 
 in Queen Anne's time there was much noise about 
 French 'prophets. A female of that vocation (for we 
 know from Scripture that the gift of prophecy is not 
 limited to one gender) warned George I. to take care 
 of his wife, as he would not survive her a year. That 
 oracle was probably dictated to the French Deborah 
 by the Duke and Duchess of Zell, who might be 
 apprehensive that the Duchess of Kendal might 
 be tempted to remove entirely the obstacle to her 
 conscientious union with their son-in-law. Most Ger- 
 mans are superstitious, even such as have few other 
 impressions of religion. George gave such credit to 
 the denunciation, that, on the eve of his last depar- 
 ture, he took leave of his son and the Princess of 
 Wales with tears, telling them he should never see 
 them more. It was certainly his own approaching 
 end that melted him, not the thought of quitting for 
 ever two persons that he hated." 
 
 But both parties had yet a few years to live, and one 
 of them some honours to bestow. It was almost in 
 the same hour that George wrote directions for the 
 stricter keeping of his wife, and signed the patents 
 for raising his mistress in the peerage. On the same 
 day, " Sophia Charlotte von Platen, Countess of Lein- 
 ster, in Ireland," was raised to the rank of Baroness 
 of Brentford, and Countess of Darlington, in Eng- 
 land; and the king's illegitimate daughter, Melusina 
 de Schulemberg, niece (as the patent lyingly declared) 
 of the Duchess of Kendal, was created Baroness of 
 Aldborough, and Countess of Walsingham. This
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 241 
 
 was on the loth of April, 1722. That day week, the 
 Prince of Wales made a better trial upon the admira- 
 tion of the public, by having his two daughters, 
 Amelia and Caroline, inoculated for the smallpox ; 
 a trial which ended favourably, as it deserved to do. 
 "The quality," say the papers of the day, "would 
 have universally followed this example, but for the 
 death of the infant son of the Earl of Sunderland, 
 who died of smallpox after inoculation." The family 
 of the Prince of Wales was increased, in the year 
 1722, by the birth of a daughter, Mary. 
 
 The last foreign favourite of George I., Sophia 
 Charlotte von Platen, Countess of Darlington, did 
 not long enjoy the new honours conferred upon her 
 by the king : she died in the month of April, 1 724. 
 This death was followed, soon after, by that of the 
 king's brother, Maximilian William, a colonel in the 
 service of the emperor. He was a rigid Roman 
 Catholic, as were others of his family ; and, at the 
 time of his death, which occurred at Vienna, he was 
 in the sixtieth year of his age. On the 2d of 
 November, 1726, a death which should have more 
 nearly touched the king took place in Germany. On 
 the day named, in the castle of Ahlden, calmly, and 
 almost unobservedly, died the poor princess, " Queen 
 of Great Britain," as those who loved her were wont 
 to call her, after a captivity of more than thirty 
 years. She had been long in declining health, born 
 of declining hopes ; and yet she endured all things 
 with patience, contenting herself in her last moments 
 with reasserting her innocence, commending herself to 
 God, naming her children, and pardoning her oppress- 
 ors. Thus much' is generally known ; but there is
 
 242 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 little further reliable information. She was a pris- 
 oner, and she died : and such is the amount of what is 
 really known concerning her, after she was cloistered 
 up within the limits of the castle and estate at Ahlden. 
 Her royal husband simply notified, in the Gazette, 
 that a Duchess of Ahlden had died at her residence, 
 on the date above named ; but he did not add that he 
 had thereby lost a wife, or his children lost a mother. 
 No intimation was given of the relationship she held 
 toward him or them ; but his ire burst forth into an 
 explosion of rage, when he heard that his daughter, 
 with the court of Prussia, had gone into mourning for 
 the death of her mother. The amiable father and 
 king, having thus exhibited the character of his own 
 feeling, proceeded to manifest that of his very bad 
 taste. It was shortly after the demise of his consort, 
 not that he had waited for the event, that he raised 
 to the infamy of being his "favourite" an English 
 woman, named Ann Brett, half-sister of Savage, the 
 poet, their common mother, the repudiated wife of 
 the Earl of Macclesfield, having married that rakish 
 gentleman Colonel Brett, by whom she became the 
 mother of Ann, in whom the foreign sovereign of 
 England paid the nation the compliment, as Walpole 
 satirically says, of taking openly an English mistress. 
 Miss Brett, unlike the other royal concubines, resided 
 in St. James's Palace. "Abishag," says Walpole, 
 " was lodged in the palace under the eyes of Bath- 
 sheba, who seemed to maintain her power, as other 
 favourite sultanas have done, by suffering partners in 
 the sovereign's affections." George intended to have 
 honoured her, and dishonoured the peerage, by rais- 
 ing her to the rank of a countess. Three of the
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 243 
 
 granddaughters of the king also resided in the palace, 
 and " Anne, the eldest, a woman," says Mr. Cunning- 
 ham, "of a most imperious and ambitious nature, 
 soon came to words with the English mistress of her 
 grandfather." After the king repaired, for the last 
 time, to Hanover, Miss Brett ordered a door to be 
 broken in the wall of her apartment, in order that she 
 might have access by it to the royal gardens. In 
 these gardens the Princess Anne was accustomed to 
 walk, and not desiring Miss Brett for a companion, 
 she ordered the door to be bricked up. " Abishag " 
 had the obstruction removed, and the princess again 
 bricked up the concubine ; and thus went on the war 
 between them, until news of the death of the un- 
 worthy grandfather of the one, and the wretched old 
 lover of the other, put an end to the conflict, and to 
 many other matters besides. 
 
 Not long before his Majesty set out on his last 
 Continental journey, his bronze statue, erected in 
 Grosvenor Square, was, on one dark night, treated 
 with great indignity. Its limbs were hacked and 
 mutilated, the neck was hewn into, as if an attempt 
 had been made to decapitate it, and a seditious libel 
 affixed to the breast. With this type of the national 
 feeling impressed upon his mind, the king set out for 
 Hanover on the 3d of June, 1 727. On the night of 
 that day week he died at Osnaburgh, aged sixty-seven 
 years and thirteen days. The king had landed at 
 Vaer, in Holland, on the 7th, and he travelled thence 
 to Utrecht, by land, escorted by the Guards to the 
 frontiers of Holland. On Friday, the Qth, he reached 
 Dalden, at twelve at night, when he was apparently 
 in excellent health. He partook of supper largely,
 
 244 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and with appetite, eating, among other things, part 
 of a melon, a fruit which has killed more than one 
 Emperor of Germany. At three the next morning 
 he resumed his journey; but he had not travelled 
 two hours when he was attacked by violent abdominal 
 pains. He hurried on to Linden, where dinner awaited 
 him ; but being able to eat nothing, he was immedi- 
 ately bled, and other remedies made use of. Anxious 
 to reach Hanover, he ordered the journey to be con- 
 tinued with all speed. He fell into a lethargic doze 
 in the carriage, and so continued, leaning on a gentle- 
 man in waiting, who was with him in the carriage. 
 To this attendant he feebly announced in French, 
 "I am a dead man." He reached . the episcopal 
 palace at Osnaburgh at ten that night ; was again 
 bled in the arm and foot, but ineffectually : his leth- 
 argy increased, and he died about midnight. 
 
 A well-known story is told by Walpole, to the 
 effect that George, "in a tender mood, promised to 
 the Duchess of Kendal, that if she survived him, and 
 it were possible for the departed to return to this 
 world, he would make her a visit. The duchess, on 
 his death, so much expected the accomplishment of 
 that engagement, that a large raven, or some black 
 fowl, flying into the windows of her villa, at Isle- 
 worth " (Twickenham ?), " she was persuaded it was 
 the soul of her departed monarch so accoutred, and 
 received and treated it with all the respect and ten- 
 derness of duty, till this royal bird or she took their 
 last flight."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BERENGARIA AND SOPHIA DOROTHEA, CCEUR DE 
 
 LION, AND GEORGE OF HANOVER 
 
 Fate of Berengaria The Heiress of Cyprus Comparison of 
 Sophia and the Queen of Cceur de Lion Richard the First 
 and the Elector Statue to George the First, but Denied to 
 Cromwell Tyranny and Cruelty of Richard Origin of the 
 Order of the Garter Project to Make Away with the Prince of 
 Wales Character of George I. Anecdotes of Him George 
 the Second as a Young Man Picture of the Court of Prussia 
 Brutality of Frederick to His Wife and Family A Drunkard 
 and Madman. 
 
 I HAVC already remarked, that of all the Queens 
 of England there were two who never landed on the 
 shores of the country of which they were nominally 
 the queens. Those two were Berengaria, the consort 
 of Coeur de Lion, and Sophia Dorothea, wife of 
 George of Hanover. Nor were these the only cir- 
 cumstances in the lives of the two princesses which 
 were similar: there were many other passages be- 
 tween which a parallel may be drawn, and which may 
 be appropriately brought before the notice of, at least, 
 younger readers. 
 
 Berengaria, the Navarrese princess, was not a first 
 love of Richard Coeur de Lion. The latter had'wooed 
 Alice of France before he became struck with the 
 beauty of Berengaria, at a tournament, and made her
 
 246 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 an offer of his hand. In similar manner, George 
 Louis had wooed, but was not engaged to, Anne 
 (as Richard was to Alice) before he sought in mar- 
 riage the youthful Sophia of Zell. 
 
 It was in each case the mother of the lover who 
 made the demand for the lady's hand; and Beren- 
 garia was as eagerly surrendered to Eleanor, the 
 mother of Richard, by her father, Sancho the Wise, 
 as Sophia Dorothea was to Sophia of Hanover, by 
 her sire, the Duke of Zell. It may here be noticed, 
 that however similar the destinies of the ladies, there 
 was nothing alike in the characters of their respective 
 fathers, except only in their love for being surrounded 
 by foreigners, and especially by Frenchmen. In the 
 case of the father of Sophia Dorothea, this inclination 
 was taught him by his Gallic wife. On one occasion, 
 at a court dinner, when the whole of the duke's guests 
 were found to be Frenchmen, one of them, more truly 
 than courteously, remarked that " II n'y a d'&ranger 
 ici que monseigneur" (His Highness is the only for- 
 eigner present) ; a remark which might have been 
 made at the table of the Spanish Sancho of Navarre, 
 who was surrounded by poets and minstrels from 
 other, and sometimes far distant lands. 
 
 Berengaria and Richard were espoused at Li- 
 moussa, in Cyprus, and as much rude pomp was dis- 
 played at the wedding as of cumbrous ceremony at 
 that of Sophia and George Louis. The former so- 
 lemnity followed upon much wandering about by sea 
 and land, before the affianced couple met at Cyprus, 
 where Richard first overthrew the power of Isaac, 
 the sovereign, and took possession of his dominions, 
 before he espoused his "ladye," and crowned her
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 247 
 
 Queen of Cyprus as well as of England. George 
 Louis had no opportunity to accomplish any achieve- 
 ment of a like nature ; but he very much resembled 
 the wild bridegroom in the act which followed. When 
 Richard captured Isaac, there also surrendered to 
 him Isaac's daughter, and the English king placed 
 the fair Cypriote in the train of his newly married 
 wife, where she held an office j milar to that which 
 George Louis bestowed on Mile, von Schulemberg, 
 when he appointed her maid of honour to Sophia 
 Dorothea. 
 
 But Berengaria was more fortunate than Sophia 
 in one thing: she had a faithful friend, and that 
 friend a woman, Joanna, her sister-in-law ; and the 
 two 
 
 " Held each other dear, 
 And lived as doves in cage." 
 
 Sophia had as friend only Prince Philip, the brother 
 of her husband, and he communicated little with her, 
 save through his confidant, the presuming and ill- 
 destined Count Konigsmark. It may be added that 
 Richard was more justly punished for his infidelities 
 than George, seeing that the scandals which con- 
 nected the name of the Cypriote lady with that of 
 the English king, touched the honour of the house 
 of Austria, related to her by the alliance of the Arch- 
 duke Leopold with the family of the Comneni ; and 
 these scandals commenced the feud between Leopold 
 and Richard, for which the latter paid so' dearly by 
 his captivity in Austria. 
 
 In the meantime, throughout the Syrian campaign, 
 the " heiress of Cyprus " remained near the presence
 
 248 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 of Berengaria, who had already nearly outlived the 
 liking of her lord. Sophia Dorothea saw as swift a 
 change in the fidelity of her lord. Richard proceeded 
 on this way, however, at the conclusion of the cam- 
 paign, in a ship belonging to a master of the Temple. 
 How this ship was wrecked, and how its royal 
 passenger was ultimately made a prisoner, need not 
 here be told. The vessel which bore Berengaria, 
 Joanna, and that unwelcome lady of Cyprus, all 
 under the guardianship of a suburban knight, named 
 Sir Stephen of Turnham, arrived safely at Naples, 
 where the ladies landed, and thence proceeded to 
 Rome. After long delays, and much trouble, they 
 travelled to Pisa, Genoa, and again by ship to Mar- 
 seilles. From the latter port they were escorted by 
 the Crusader Raymond de St. Giles, who very natu- 
 rally fell in love with Joanna by the way, and very 
 aptly celebrated the arrival of the party in Poitou by 
 marrying, and making a happy countess of the young 
 and well-endowed friend of Berengaria. 
 
 At Poitou, Berengaria remained during her royal 
 husband's captivity. The Cypriote princess con- 
 tinued to reside with her ; a fact which says much 
 for her Griselda-like patience. When, however, it 
 was intimated that the Archduke of Austria would 
 not consent to the liberation of Richard but on con- 
 dition, among other stipulations, that the daughter of 
 Isaac should be taken from the household of Richard 
 and be delivered to her Austrian relatives at the 
 German congress, the spouse of Richard, no doubt, 
 paid that portion of the ransom with all the eagerness 
 of an unselfish wife. 
 
 The payment never brought the truant husband
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 249 
 
 nearer to his wife than George ever was to Sophia 
 Dorothea, after the intrigues of his and his father's 
 mistresses had made two hearths in one household. 
 Richard hurried to England, and thence to his Ange- 
 vin territories. Here he was in the vicinity of the 
 dwelling-place of his faithful queen, but he never ap- 
 proached her, nor showed more solicitude for her 
 than George Louis did, when hunting in the Ahlden 
 woods, for the guiltless prisoner in the castle there. 
 
 In both cases the husbands were given to low 
 debauchery, profligate company, and riotous living. 
 In both cases the husbands made two overtures of 
 reconciliation, which in both cases were not indeed 
 ineffectual, because in the case of the earlier espoused 
 couple, the wife had not been degraded by an accusa- 
 tion of infidelity made by her husband, an accusation 
 insultingly implied by George Louis in his persecution 
 of Sophia Dorothea. The reconciliation alluded to 
 took place in 1 196, five years after the marriage had 
 taken place in Cyprus ; nearly the whole of which 
 time had been spent in presence of the rivalry of the 
 Cypriote princess, or in estrangement from Richard. 
 The reunion lasted three years ; and had it been fol- 
 lowed by the birth of an heir to England, it would 
 have saved the country from the career of John, 
 John himself from the sin of the murder of Arthur, 
 and the kingdom from being put under interdict be- 
 cause John was dishonest enough to cheat Berengaria 
 out of her dower. 
 
 Berengaria passed a long widowhood at Mans, in 
 extent of time equal to that of the captivity of Sophia 
 Dorothea at Ahlden. But she was a happier, and 
 perhaps something of a more patient, woman than
 
 250 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the latter. Even in her estrangement from her hus- 
 band, she never uttered a word of complaint against 
 him. Not that Sophia Dorothea failed to exhibit 
 either mildness or dignity in her captivity : on the 
 contrary, she manifested both ; and Coxe says of her, 
 in his " Memoirs of Walpole," that, " on receiving the 
 sacrament once every week, she never omitted mak- 
 ing the most solemn asseverations that she was not 
 guilty of the crime laid to her charge." The two 
 wives resembled each other in personal beauty, and 
 in amiability of disposition. There was less similar- 
 ity between the external appearance of their respec- 
 tive husbands. George Louis was small of stature, 
 an ill-dresser in his early days, and an equally bad 
 one in declining years, when Walpole described him 
 as "an elderly man, pale, exactly like his pictures 
 and coins, not tall, of an aspect rather good than 
 august ; with a dark tie, wig, a plain coat, waistcoat 
 and breeches of snuff-coloured cloth, with stockings 
 of the same colour, and a blue riband over all." 
 Quite another figure was Richard in his satin tunic 
 of rose colour, belted round his waist ; his mantle of 
 silver tissue, striped, and brocaded with silver half- 
 moons, his Damascus sword, gold-hilted and silver- 
 sheathed ; and his scarlet bonnet, brocaded in gold 
 with figures of animals. He had yellow, or flaxen, 
 hair, golden locks, indeed, a bright complexion, a 
 soldierly bearing, and a graceful figure; but the 
 hearts of Richard and George were very much alike : 
 neither of them could appreciate the worth of a true 
 woman, pure of mind, refined of taste, and guiltless 
 of wrong, even in thought. 
 
 We have raised statues to George, but have dis-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 251 
 
 erectly hidden them in the shrubberies, dust, and 
 duskiness of our squares. One was raised to him even 
 in his lifetime ; but it is only within a year or two that 
 the question has been agitated of erecting a statue in 
 honour of the husband of Berengaria. This question 
 has been affirmatively maintained by men who oppose 
 the admission of the statue of Cromwell among those 
 of the masters of England in the House of Parlia- 
 ment. Upon the matter of Cromwell's statue I must 
 not dilate, more than to say, that the difficulty lies 
 in a very small compass. If the sovereigns of Eng- 
 land are to be faithfully represented according to 
 their succession, then Cromwell cannot be excluded ; 
 and if his exclusion is determined upon because he 
 was usurper, or regicide, then must there be unoccu- 
 pied pedestals from Rufus to Stephen, both inclusive ; 
 and John, the third Richard, and indeed several 
 others, must also be refused admission, on the ground 
 that they were assassins or usurpers, and sometimes 
 both. 
 
 But if the people mutilated the statue of the hus- 
 band of Sophia Dorothea in his lifetime because of 
 his unworthiness, still more might their successors 
 protest against one being raised in honour of that 
 husband of the other Queen of England who never 
 came among us to claim our homage. 
 
 Richard was even a worse son than George. The 
 two men were faithless as husbands, brutal as lovers, 
 truthless and bloody as princes. There was no re- 
 spect for the honour of any woman in the heart of 
 either of them ; and they further resembled each 
 other in this, that, in their early days, they had more 
 affection for the political system of France, as re-
 
 252 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 garded this country, than for that of England. Of 
 the ten years of the triply accursed reign of the one, 
 scarcely more than half as many months were spent 
 by him among the people confided by Providence to 
 his sway. George ranks next to him as an absentee : 
 he was for ever seeking an opportunity to visit Han- 
 over, and, when there, devising excuses for not 
 returning. Richard sold the highest offices of the 
 crown, and squandered the money on the gratifica- 
 tion of his debasing vices. George was quite as 
 unscrupulous, and gave offices even to his mis- 
 tresses. The husband of Berengaria was more crim- 
 inal in his fraudulent sale of crown lands as well as 
 crown offices, of titles, and of church preferments, 
 in some of which things the husband of Sophia 
 Dorothea, or his government, was by no means par- 
 ticular. 
 
 When Richard was about setting out for Acre, he 
 instituted the Order of the Blue Thong, the insignia 
 of which was a blue band of leather, worn on the left 
 leg, and which appears to me to be the undoubted 
 original of the Order of the Garter. There were 
 twenty-four knights of the order, with the king for 
 master, and the wearers pledged themselves to de- 
 serve increased honours by scaling the walls of Acre 
 in company. On the other hand, if George did not 
 institute, he at least restored the Order of the Bath. 
 It was a measure proposed to him by Sir Robert 
 Walpole, and " was an artful bank of thirty - six 
 ribands to supply a fund of favours in lieu of places." 
 Two of the ribands were offered to Sarah, Dowager 
 Duchess of Marlborough, for her grandson the duke, 
 and for the Duke of Bedford, the husband of her
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 253 
 
 granddaughter. " She haughtily replied," says Wai- 
 pole, "they should take nothing but the Garter. 
 * Madam,' said Sir Robert, coolly, ' they who have the 
 Bath will the sooner have the Garter.' The next year 
 he took the latter himself with the Duke of Rich- 
 mond, both having been previously installed knights 
 of the revived institution." 
 
 Richard sold the trophies of his former victories 
 for a capful of marks ; and his refusal adequately to 
 avenge the slaughter of the Jews at his coronation, 
 with the assertion of assassins who perpetrated the 
 deed that they acted under his sanction, all tends to 
 show how little he really prized honour, and how as 
 little he regarded the spilling of blood. So George, 
 if brave, was not chivalrous ; and when his own Par- 
 liament, on the conviction of the Scottish peers who 
 had taken arms for the Pretender, petitioned him to 
 spare as many as his mercy might be consistently 
 extended to, he haughtily reproved them for med- 
 dling with matters which did not concern them, and 
 took a bloody vengeance for a venial crime. It 
 would have been bloodier, but that several destined 
 victims escaped from their prison previous to the day 
 named for their execution. 
 
 Both these men were, however, brave in the pres- 
 ence of an enemy on the battle-field. Courage was 
 almost their solitary virtue ; and George, unlike Rich- 
 ard, never ran away in affright from the wrath and 
 the cudgel of an infuriated peasant. It may further be 
 put to the credit of the husband of Sophia Dorothea 
 that he was incapable of such a crime as that com- 
 mitted by the husband of Berengaria after the capitu- 
 lation at Acre, when he ordered the throats of
 
 24 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 thousands of the enemy to be cut who had surren- 
 dered upon faith of honourable treatment. If some 
 of the Jacobites were entrapped into a surrender 
 which led them to the gallows, the agents of George, 
 and not that king himself, must be declared respon- 
 sible, despite the apophthegm which says, qui facit 
 per alium facit per se. 
 
 Richard plundered his country in order to carry on 
 a Crusade under the influence of "a red rag and 
 insanity." His deputies plundered it in his absence, 
 and the people were plundered of one-fourth of their 
 property to purchase his return. When that return had 
 taken place, he deprived of their office all those per- 
 sons to whom he had before his departure sold them, 
 on the plea that such sales were illegal. He did not 
 refund the original purchase-money, but he resold 
 the appointments to other buyers. There was as 
 great an unlawful buying and selling in George's 
 time, but the system was more blamable than the 
 individual who presided over it, although he alone is 
 answerable for the application of the people's taxes 
 to support the glittering profligacy of his mistresses. 
 He was at least careful to contract the expenses of 
 his civil list, after he had gone far enough beyond 
 honest limits to have acquired sufficient surplus 
 money to support the expenses of the list during 
 the remainder of his reign, and after he had per- 
 suaded his Parliament to make good the defalcation. 
 Both kings mulcted their subjects heavily to support 
 wars against a foreign power, and neither paid much 
 regard to either remonstrance or complaint. They 
 were both covetous ; Richard more particularly so. 
 Covetousness brought about his death. The Lord
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 255 
 
 of Limoges had discovered a treasure, and, because 
 he would not give the whole of it to Richard, the 
 latter besieged him in his castle, before which he 
 was slain by a bolt driven from a crossbow of his 
 own invention. George, like him, died abroad, but 
 more ingloriously. It was rather gluttony than cov- 
 etousness, in its pecuniary sense, which compassed 
 his death. Had he not eaten indiscreetly of melon, 
 in spite of counsel to the contrary, he might, perhaps, 
 have lived longer. But appetite he could not constrain. 
 Richard had a strong one, but it was "nicer" of 
 character. George, for instance, was fond of oysters 
 not fresh English natives, but tainted things with 
 sickly yawning shells, and these he would swallow 
 with disgusting relish and avidity. 
 
 Richard does not bear the reputation of being a 
 tender father, even to his illegitimate children, and 
 he had no other. George was as little parentally 
 tender to his legitimate son and daughter : to the 
 former he was especially harsh, and more than harsh, 
 if we may credit the story, that he received from the 
 Earl of Berkeley (first lord of the admiralty) a writ- 
 ten proposal to seize the Prince of Wales, and convey 
 him to America, where he should never be heard of 
 more. The proposal was Berkeley's, but the hand- 
 writing in which it was made was that of Charles 
 Stanhope, brother of the first Earl of Harrington. 
 On the death of the king, Queen Caroline found the 
 proposal among other papers in his cabinet. It re- 
 ferred to an atrocious deed, and Walpole thinks that 
 George I. was too humane to listen to it ; a very 
 gratuitous surmise, for the treatment of Sophia 
 Dorothea was only less atrocious in degree, not in
 
 256 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 principle. Besides, the projectors were never pun- 
 ished. " It was not very kind to the conspirators," 
 says Walpole, "to leave such an instrument behind 
 him ; and," he adds, " if virtue and conscience will not 
 check bold, bad men from paying court by detestable 
 offices, the king's carelessness, or indifference, in such 
 an instance ought to warn them of the little gratitude 
 that such machinations can inspire or expect." 
 
 This son's double fault in his father's eyes was his 
 popularity, and, at one time, his love for his mother, 
 whom he loved, we are told, as much as he hated 
 his father. A pleasant household, a sorry hearth; 
 mistresses resting their rouged cheeks on the mon- 
 arch's bosom, a wife in prison, and a son hating her 
 oppressor, and loving but not redressing the oppressed. 
 If Berengaria was unblessed with a child, she was 
 untried by no huge and lengthened wrong as that 
 inflicted on Sophia Dorothea. Had the latter help- 
 less lady survived her consort, her son, it is said, had 
 determined to bring her over to England, and pro- 
 claim her queen dowager. Lady Suffolk, the snubbed 
 mistress of that son, expressed to Horace Walpole 
 her surprise in going (in the morning after the in- 
 telligence of the death of George I. had reached 
 England) to the new queen, the wife of the man of 
 whom Lady Suffolk was the concubine rather than 
 the " mistress," expressed, as I have said, her sur- 
 prise "at seeing hung up in the queen's dressing- 
 room a whole length of a lady in royal robes ; and, in 
 the bedchamber, a half-length of the same person, 
 neither of which Lady Suffolk had ever seen before. 
 The prince had kept them concealed, not daring to 
 produce them during the life of his father. The
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 257 
 
 whole length he probably sent to Hanover. The 
 half-length I have frequently seen in the library of 
 the Princess Amelia, who told me it was the prop- 
 erty of her grandmother. She bequeathed it, with 
 other pictures of her family, to her nephew, the 
 Landgrave of Hesse." 
 
 Smollett describes George I. rather whimsically, 
 as "a wise politician, who perfectly understood, and 
 steadily pursued his own interest." If this be true 
 policy, it is also, at least in part, a selfish one. His 
 character partook of both the grave and gay. He 
 A knew when he might fitly be either, but he was 
 naturally more serious than light of deportment and 
 disposition. Smollett declares him to have been 
 willing to govern the kingdom according to constitu- 
 tional principles, but that he was thwarted by a venal 
 and corrupt ministry. The character of the govern- 
 ment is not overcharged, and the members of it 
 would, as Richard expressed his own willingness 
 to do, have sold London itself, the honour of its men, 
 and the virtue of its women, if they could have found 
 purchasers. 
 
 The character drawn by Chesterfield of the hus- 
 band of Sophia Dorothea is seriously drawn, but it 
 has a solemnly satirical air. " George I.," says my 
 lord, "was an honest, dull, German gentleman, as 
 unfit as unwilling to act the part of a king, which 
 is to shine and oppress ; lazy and inactive even in his 
 pleasures, which were therefore lowly sensual. He 
 was diffident of his own parts, which made him speak 
 little in public, and prefer in his social, which were his 
 favourite, hours the company of wags and buffoons. 
 Even his mistress, the Duchess of Kendal, with
 
 258 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 whom he passed most of his time, and who had 
 all influence over him, was very little above an idiot. 
 
 " Importunity alone could make him act, and then 
 only to get rid of it. His views and affections were 
 singly confined to the narrow compass of his elector- 
 ate. England was too big for him. If he had noth- 
 ing great as a king, he had nothing bad as a man ; 
 and if he does not adorn, at least he will not stain 
 the annals of this country. In private life he would 
 have been loved and esteemed as a good citizen, a 
 good friend, and a good neighbour. Happy were 
 it for Europe, happy for the world, if there were not 
 greater kings in it." 
 
 Chesterfield makes more account of George I., both 
 as king and as man, than he deserved. As king, he 
 does stain the annals of the country over which 
 he was called to rule. As man, Chesterfield holds 
 him to have had that within him which made him 
 worthy of esteem as a citizen, friend, and neighbour, 
 
 and yet he avers of such a man that he was lowly 
 sensual and lazy ; that he loved the company of 
 buffoons, and that he preferred the society of a 
 woman who was almost an idiot, to that of a wife who 
 was accomplished, and whom he could never prove 
 unfaithful. He was unfit for a king, we are told, 
 because he was disinclined to oppression, and yet he 
 kept that wife for more than thirty years a prisoner ; 
 
 but oppression toward a wife was not a vice in the 
 estimation of the courtly Chesterfield. 
 
 George had doubtless many minor provocations 
 during his reign, calculated to affect his temper un- 
 favourably. The pulpit occasionally reechoed against 
 him, as the priests more privately used to denounce
 
 a
 
 F THE QUEENS ' ND 
 
 i he passed most of h had 
 
 him, was very little above an ic 
 ;lone could make him act, and then 
 only to get rid of it. His views and affections w 
 singly confined to the narrow compass of his elector- 
 ate. England was too big for him. If he had noth- 
 ing great as a king, he had nothing bad as a man ; 
 and if he does not adorn, at least he will not stain 
 the annals of this country. In private life he would 
 have been loved and esteemed as a good citizen, a 
 and a good neighbour. Happy were 
 -vorld, if there were not 
 
 d the society of a 
 
 woman who was almost an idiot, to that of a wife who 
 accomplished, and whom he could never prove 
 unfaithful. He was unfit for a king, we are told, 
 because he clined to oppression, and yet he 
 
 kept tha or more than thirty years a prisoner ; 
 
 but oppression toward a wife was not a vice in the 
 estimation of the courtly Chesterfield. 
 
 ss many minor provocations 
 during , - ed to affect his tenv 
 
 George the First 
 
 Photogravure from the fainting by Sir G. Kneller
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 259 
 
 the vices of Richard ; and zealous clergymen, turned 
 authors, took the white horse of Hanover as a symbol, 
 and applied to it the passage from Revelation, in 
 which it is said : " I looked, and beheld a pale horse, 
 and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell 
 followed with him." 
 
 As a sample of the graciousness of the king, we 
 are told that his carriage having broken down on one 
 occasion, when travelling to Hanover, he found tem- 
 porary refuge in the house of a gentleman. In the 
 room to which he was ushered, there hung the full- 
 length of a person unknown to him, yet in royal 
 robes. The owner of the portrait, with some con- 
 fusion, explained that he had known the Chevalier 
 when at Rome, and that this picture was a present 
 from him. The king is supposed to have been very 
 gracious, because, instead of giving way to an explo- 
 sion of wrath, he confined himself to observing, 
 " Upon my word, it is very like the family." 
 
 He received a severer touch from an old officer 
 who had been intimate with him before his accession 
 to the throne, but who did not appear to offer him 
 congratulations upon his succeeding to the title. On 
 inquiry being made as to the cause, the veteran 
 replied, " I will willingly smoke a pipe with him as 
 Elector of Hanover ; but I cannot recognise in him a 
 King of Great Britain ! " Considering that half the 
 Hanoverian family were Jacobites, this speech was 
 not so perilous as it sounds. Besides, the union of 
 England with the electorate of Hanover was not 
 popular in the latter locality, particularly when it was 
 discovered that if Hanover was in any way wronged, 
 England would not interfere to redress it, whereas no
 
 260 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 sooner was England at feud with any Continental 
 power, but Hanover was the first to feel that power's 
 resentment. 
 
 His right to the throne was sometimes questioned, 
 with ingenuity, even in England. Thus, when the 
 flighty Duchess of Buckinghamshire was refused pas- 
 sage in her own carriage through a part of the park 
 reserved for the royal family, she protested to the 
 king, that if royalty only had the right of crossing 
 the privileged line, he had no more claim to go there 
 than she had. He wisely laughed, and gave permission 
 to the mad duchess to drive whithersoever she pleased. 
 He was annoyed, nevertheless, at this and other jests 
 of a like nature ; and if he never named his wife, 
 as George II. never in his later days named his 
 mother, it was because the enemies of the dynasty 
 pretended to trace in the features of the second 
 George a likeness to Count Konigsmark, his mother's 
 gallant cavalier. The Whigs had denied the legiti- 
 macy of the son of James II., and the Tories 
 embraced with eagerness an opportunity to deny 
 that of the heir of Brunswick. 
 
 Although the king could not speak English, he 
 appears to have understood it well enough when it 
 was spoken, to save Sir Robert Walpole the trouble 
 of addressing him in very indifferent Latin. He 
 would hardly otherwise have had the great hall at 
 Hampton Court fitted up, in 1718, for the perform- 
 ance of English plays. The king's company were to 
 have played there throughout the summer, but the 
 hall was not ready for them till the end of Sep- 
 tember, by which time Drury Lane reopened for 
 its usual autumn- winter season, and " His Majesty's
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 261 
 
 Servants " played in his presence only seven times. 
 They were under the direction of Steele, who, in 
 place of being rewarded with a government appoint- 
 ment for his political services, had got nothing more 
 than some theatrical privileges. The plays repre- 
 sented were " Hamlet," on the 23d September ; " Sir 
 Courtly Nice," " The Constant Couple," " Love for 
 Money," "Volpone, or the Fox," and "Rule a Wife 
 and Have a Wife." Shakespeare's " Henry the Eighth " 
 was the king's favourite play. On one night of its 
 representation, he listened attentively to the scene in 
 which Henry commands Wolsey to write letters of 
 indemnity to those counties in which the payment of 
 taxes had been disputed ; and when he heard Wolsey's 
 aside to Cromwell 
 
 " Let it be noised 
 
 That through our intervention, this revokement 
 
 And pardon comes," 
 
 the king turned to the Prince of Wales, and said, 
 " You see, George, what you have one day to expect." 
 His Majesty could not have been so very poor an 
 English scholar, if he could thus enjoy, comprehend, 
 and apply passages from Shakespeare. The other 
 plays are, indeed, quite as difficult for a foreigner 
 to understand'; and George I. must have had a very 
 fair acquaintance with our language, if he were able 
 to follow Gibber in " Sir Courtly," laugh at the jokes 
 of Pinkethman in " Crack," feel the heartiness of 
 Miller in " Hothead," be interested in the " Testi- 
 mony " of Johnson, sympathetic with the " Surly " of 
 Thurmond, enjoy the periods of Booth in " Farewell," 
 or the aristocratic spirit of Mills in " Lord Bellguard."
 
 262 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 The ladies in the play " Leonore," acted before him 
 by Mrs. Porter, and "Violante," played by Mrs. 
 Younger, have also some things to say which might 
 well puzzle one not to the matter born. But George 
 must have comprehended all ; for he so thoroughly 
 enjoyed all, that Steele told Lord Sunderland, on 
 being asked how his Majesty liked the entertainment, 
 " So terribly well, my lord, that I was afraid I 
 should have lost all my actors ; for I was not sure 
 the king would not keep them to fill the places at 
 court, which he saw them so fit for in the play," 
 a remark thoroughly imbued with the trenchant wit 
 of " Sir Richard." 
 
 For the entertainment, the king paid the travelling 
 expenses of the actors down to Hampton, amounting 
 to fifty pounds each night for the entire company, 
 and sent a couple of hundred pounds to Steele and 
 the other managers. That he loved the theatre is 
 not surprising ; the tastes of the stage were as gross 
 as his own ; and the descendant of Wodin could 
 complacently savour the incense offered him in such 
 lines as one which occurs in the "Generous Con- 
 queror, or Timely Discovery," in which the author 
 assured him that 
 
 " The gods and godlike kings can do no wrong ! " 
 
 Compared with which, the line of Cowper, which 
 says, that 
 
 " Great princes have great pleasures," 
 
 is very trite indeed. 
 
 Both George's laureates were indifferent poets. 
 He appointed Rowe soon after his accession, and
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 263 
 
 Eusden's lines to the lord chamberlain (Duke of 
 Newcastle), on his marriage with Lady Henrietta 
 Godolphin, procured for that tipsy poet the battered 
 laurel crown. So Gibber's "Nonjuror," written in 
 favour of the Hanover succession, and against the 
 Non jurors and Jacobites, then abounding in London, 
 got him such persecution from those rebellious per- 
 sons, that it is supposed to have obtained for him, 
 by way of compensation, the wreath of the laureate, 
 presented by George II. 
 
 Toland describes George, when he was elector, 
 and residing near the prison-house of Sophia Doro- 
 thea, as being exceedingly well informed on English 
 questions ; but the truth is, he knew so little of the 
 constitution and customs of the country over which 
 he was to reign, that, on ascending the throne, he 
 told his ministers that, from his want of knowledge 
 on those subjects, he should place himself entirely 
 in their hands, and be governed by them. " Then," 
 added he, "you become completely answerable for 
 everything that I do." He was not even aware of 
 his constitutional exemption from responsibility. 
 
 If this looks like a low sort of cunning, on the 
 other hand it must be allowed that he was not with- 
 out wit, and he could say a graceful thing in a grace- 
 ful way, when an opportunity offered, and his humour 
 wore its brighter side outward. To a German noble- 
 man, who once congratulated him on being sovereign 
 at once of England and Hanover, he happily remarked, 
 " Rather congratulate me on having such a subject 
 as Newton in the one, and Leibnitz in the other." 
 His declaration of principles made to Sir Peter King, 
 recorder of London, at the first levee after the acces-
 
 264 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 sion, and intended, through that officer, for the edifi- 
 cation of the citizens at large, was at least tersely, 
 if not truly, given : " I never forsake a friend," so 
 ran the phrase; "I will endeavour to do justice to 
 everybody ; and I fear nobody." Of the three parts 
 of this sentence, the latter alone was founded on 
 truth. 
 
 Less happy was the expression of an idea, called 
 up by the splendour of his own coronation, when he 
 observed to Lady Cooper that the sight of the place 
 brought to his thoughts the Day of Judgment. The 
 lady replied, in the bad taste of the day, and with 
 little honesty of judgment, " Well may it be so, your 
 Majesty ; for it is truly the resurrection of England 
 and all faithful subjects." 
 
 More happy was his own answer, on being chal- 
 lenged by a masked lady at a court masquerade, to 
 drink to the health of the Pretender. " Very will- 
 ingly," said he, "and to that of all unfortunate 
 princes ! " He thoroughly enjoyed the pleasantry 
 of others ; was delighted with Doctor Savage's merry 
 observation, that he had failed to convert the Pope 
 at Rome, because he had nothing better to offer him ; 
 and very truly observed of a Jacobite, who had been 
 often arrested, and as often discharged for lack of 
 proof, and who, on the breaking out of the rebellion, 
 requested that, as he of course would be again arrested, 
 he begged it might be done at once, as he wanted to 
 go into Devonshire, " Pooh, pooh ! " said the king ; 
 "there can be but little harm in one who writes so 
 pleasantly." Many of his subjects, however, for no 
 more heinous crime, were most oppressively and 
 cruelly used.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 265 
 
 Still, his gaiety well balanced his austerity. This 
 is well instanced in the case of Doctor Lockier, who 
 was a favourite with the king, and whose continued 
 absence from court so perplexed his Majesty, that he 
 sent the Duchess of Lancaster to him, with an invi- 
 tation to an evening party. The doctor declined to 
 accept it, on the ground that he was seeking prefer- 
 ment from the ministers, and that his chance of 
 success would be marred, were they to suspect him 
 of keeping company with their master. George laugh- 
 ingly pronounced the reverend place-hunter to be in 
 the right ; and when the latter, some weeks afterward, 
 kissed hands, upon being appointed Dean of Peter- 
 borough, the king whispered to him, before he arose, 
 "Well, doctor, I hope you will not be afraid now 
 to come and see me again in the evening." 
 
 Lockier' s dread of being suspected to be on friendly 
 terms with the monarch was not unreasonable; for 
 a similar condition of things, the king's personal 
 friend, and clerk of the closet, Doctor Younger, with 
 whom he was wont to converse familiarly in German, 
 was officially dismissed from his post, for no other 
 reason than that he was too close to the willing ear 
 of the sovereign. " Where is Doctor Younger ? " 
 asked the latter, on missing his ever-welcome presence. 
 "Sire," said the minister, "he is dead." "I am 
 truly sorry for it," said George ; " he was a good 
 man, and I intended to do something for him." At 
 a subsequent period, on one of his progresses through 
 the country, he saw the doctor officiating in his 
 cathedral, at Salisbury. " My little dean," said the 
 sovereign, " I am glad to see you alive ; I was told 
 you were dead. Why have you not been to court ? "
 
 266 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 The dean explained that, having received an official 
 letter, informing him that his Majesty no longer 
 required his services, he thought it would be un- 
 becoming to intrude himself on his Majesty's presence. 
 " I see, I see how it is," said the king, with excusable 
 
 warmth ; " but, by , you shall be the first bishop 
 
 I will make." And George would have kept his 
 word, only that the dean died before a bishopric 
 became vacant. 
 
 Where the ministers could lie, the menials of 
 course could steal. A Hanoverian cook at the 
 palace, disgusted at the rapacity of his fellows, who 
 would not allow him to share in their plunder, went 
 and complained to the king in person. He asserted 
 his own honesty, but declared that such a virtue 
 resided in no other person in the household. " Em- 
 bezzlement," said he, "is rife in the kitchen, despite 
 all I can do. When the dishes are brought from 
 your Majesty's table, one steals a fowl, another a pig, 
 a third a joint of meat, another a pie, and so on, till 
 there is nothing left." George, who saw that the 
 sorrow felt was, probably, because there was " noth- 
 ing left " to steal, answered : " I can put up with 
 these things ; and my advice to you is, to go and 
 steal like the rest, and to remember to take enough." 
 The fellow took his master at his word, and became 
 as accomplished in peculiar lightness of hand as the 
 most expert of the impudent cooks immortalised in 
 Athenaeus. 
 
 Before concluding this chapter, I will add a few 
 notices upon the children of Sophia Dorothea, 
 George, and the daughter named after her mother. 
 
 The son of Sophia of Zell was the pupil of her
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 267 
 
 mother-in-law, Sophia of Hanover ; and his boyhood 
 did little credit to the system, or the acknowledged 
 good sense of his instructress. 
 
 When the Earl of Macclesfield was at Hanover, in 
 the year 1700, bearing with him that Act of Suc- 
 cession which secured a throne for the husband and 
 son of Sophia Dorothea, that son George Augustus 
 was not yet out of his " teens." He was of that age 
 at which a prince is considered wise enough to rule 
 kingdoms, but is yet incapable of governing himself. 
 At that time, he was said to " give the greatest hopes 
 of himself that we, or any people on earth, could 
 desire." He was not of proud stature, indeed, and 
 Alexander was not six feet high ; but Toland asserts, 
 what is very hard to believe, that George possessed 
 a winning countenance, and a manly aspect and 
 deportment. In later years, he was rigid of feature, 
 and walked as a man does who is stiff in the joints. 
 He was, in the days of his youth, a graceful and easy 
 speaker; that is, his phrases were well constructed, 
 and he expressed them with facility. His complexion 
 was fair, and his hair a light brown. Like his father, 
 he spoke Latin fluently ; and English much better 
 than his father; but with a decided foreign accent, 
 like William of Orange. As the utmost care was 
 taken, according to Toland, to furnish him with such 
 other accomplishments as are fit for a gentleman and 
 a prince, it is a pity that he made so unprofitable a 
 use of so desirable a provision. He was tolerably 
 well-versed in that history which his minister, Walpole, 
 used to have read to him as a relaxation, because, as 
 he said, it was not true ; but history to him was not 
 philosophy teaching by example ; for though, in his
 
 268 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 earlier years, panegyrists said of him, not only that 
 his inclinations were virtuous, but that he was " wholly 
 free from all vice," his life, subsequently, could not 
 be so characterised, and the later practice marred 
 the fair precedent. But let Toland limn the object 
 of his love. 
 
 " These acquired parts," he says, " with a gener- 
 ous disposition and a virtuous inclination, will de- 
 servedly render him the darling of our people, and 
 probably grace the English throne with a most know- 
 ing prince." In the popular sense of the term, the 
 last words cannot be denied ; and yet he never knew 
 how to obtain, or cared how to merit, his people's 
 love. " He learns English with inexpressible facility, 
 and has not only learned of his grandmother to have 
 a real esteem for Englishmen, but he likewise enter- 
 tains a high notion of the wisdom, goodness, and 
 power of the English government, concerning which 
 I heard him, to my great satisfaction, ask several 
 pertinent questions, and such as betokened no mean 
 or common observation. I was surprised to find he 
 understood so much of our affairs already ; but his 
 great vivacity will not let him be ignorant of any- 
 thing. There is nothing more to be wished," says 
 Toland, "but that he be proof against the tempta- 
 tions which accompany greatness, and defended from 
 the poisonous infection of flatterers, who are the 
 greatest bane of society, and commonly occasion the 
 ruin of princes, if not in their lives, yet, at least, in 
 their fame and reputation." It was under the tempta- 
 tions alluded to that George Augustus made ship- 
 wreck of his fame. His history, however, will 
 be traced more fully hereafter. At present we
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 269 
 
 will only consider the career and character of his 
 sister. 
 
 The daughter of Sophia Dorothea, four years 
 younger than her brother, was fifteen years old when 
 the Act of Succession opened a throne to her father, 
 but not to her mother. She had in her youth sweet- 
 ness of manners, fairness of features, and a soft and 
 winning voice. Her fair brown hair, as in her 
 mother's case, heightened the grace and charms of a 
 fair complexion ; and her blue eyes were the admira- 
 tion of the poets, and the inspiration even of those 
 whom the gods had not made poetical. Her features, 
 taken singly, were not without defect ; but the ex- 
 pression which pervaded them was a good substitute 
 for purely unintellectual beauty. The Electress 
 Sophia was, if not her governess, the superintendent 
 of her governesses ; and the training, rigid and 
 formal, failed in the development that was most to 
 be desired. Had her brother died childless, the suc- 
 cession was fixed in her person, and thus Prussia 
 might have been to England what Hanover has been. 
 "In minding her discourse to others," says Toland, 
 " and by what she was pleased to say to myself, she 
 appears to have a more than ordinary share of good 
 sense and wit. The whole town and court commend 
 the easiness of her manners, and the evenness of her 
 disposition, but, above all her other qualities, they 
 highly extol her good humour, which is the most 
 valuable endowment of either sex, and the foundation 
 of most other virtues. Upon the whole, considering 
 her personal merit, and the dignity of her family, I 
 heartily wish and hope to see her some day Queen of 
 Sweden." This hearty wish was not to be realised.
 
 270 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 The younger Sophia Dorothea became the wife of a 
 brute, and, as I have said, the mother of a hero. 
 
 I have already noticed how the Mark of Branden- 
 burgh became a kingdom. The new kingdom of 
 Prussia grew in strength as the old empire of Ger- 
 many, split into numerous independent governments, 
 increased in weakness. The second monarch of the 
 kingdom just named was Frederick William, to whom 
 the daughter of Sophia of Zell was married on the 
 28th of November, 1706; shortly after which, the 
 newly married couple became King and Queen of 
 Prussia. 
 
 The bridegroom was a man of few virtues, but 
 of many and great vices. He was not destitute of 
 talent, and he was ungovernable of temper. His 
 conduct to his wife was that of an insane savage. 
 He deprived her of the guardianship of her children, 
 and kept her so ill-provided for, that, at last, had it 
 not been for a revenue of ^800 allowed her by her 
 brother, George II., she would have been worse off 
 than the lowest "burgherin" in Berlin. Out of the 
 taxes paid by the people of England, the Queen of 
 Prussia was furnished with clean linen, and some of 
 the other luxuries and necessaries of life. 
 
 Her husband was at the time immensely rich, and 
 parsimonious beyond parallel. A hundred and twenty 
 millions of dollars lay unfructifying in the cellars of 
 the palace ; and he had a cabinet full of gold, which 
 he gave to his wife to take care of. He compelled 
 his nobles to part with their estates at a nominal 
 price, and farmed his lands to tax-gatherers, who 
 hugely plundered the tenants, and were as profoundly 
 fleeced in return by their gracious king. His am-
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 271 
 
 bassador at The Hague cut his throat with the only 
 razor the poor fellow possessed, driven frantic, as he 
 was, by being reduced to poverty, for a very slight 
 offence. He had cut down some wood for fuel in 
 the garden attached to his official residence, which 
 was the property of the Prussian government, or 
 rather king. The latter immediately mulcted him 
 of a whole year's salary ; and this, modest as the 
 amount was, reducing him to most miserable straits, 
 the poor envoy, doubly hurt, by the disgrace and the 
 injury, took up his solitary razor, and, in the spirit of 
 a Japanese noble, resorted to a suicide as a specific 
 for his duplex wrong. 
 
 The worst feature in the character of the royal 
 madman, however, was his terrible hatred of women. 
 In the streets they, and indeed the men also, fled at 
 his approach : the latter he allowed to escape with a 
 curse ; but if a woman came within reach of him, he 
 would kick at her, punch her head with his iron fist, 
 or smite her with his cane. It is not wonderful that 
 the same man attempted the life of his own son ; but 
 it is wonderful that his subjects did not fling the 
 monster into the turbid waters of his own river 
 Spree. 
 
 Of the marriage of this couple, a princess, Fred- 
 erica Sophia Wilhelmina, was the first child. She 
 was born in 1707. Before she was twelve years old, 
 she was " beaten into plaster " by father, servant, and 
 governesses, and was, as well-beaten children generally 
 are, cunning, bold, and mendacious. Of this child, 
 and even at this early age, her mother was unwise 
 enough to make a confidant ; telling her of her own 
 miseries, and employing her as a spy upon her father,
 
 272 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 especially in his drunken and unsuspicious hours. 
 This led to scenes which would seem as farcical as 
 an Adelphi burletta, were it not that they were not 
 farces, but terrible realities ; and in them we see a 
 mother lying to her husband, again lying to her 
 child, teaching the latter to lie to her sire, who, 
 exasperated by discovery or suspicion, pursues the 
 criminals to every conceivable and inconceivable 
 hiding-place, routing them out with his crutched 
 stick, and following them with oaths and menaces, 
 as they flee before him with prayers and screams. 
 The queen even purchased the alliance of her 
 menials, and these took her money, and betrayed 
 her to the king. The menials, however, appear to 
 have been quite as irreproachable as many of the 
 nobler courtiers, among whom it would have been 
 difficult to find one woman virtuous, or one man 
 honest. Not that these lacked beyond the circle 
 of mere courtiers. The queen herself, with all her 
 heavy faults, was blameless in her character of wife 
 and woman ; and there were honest hearts beneath 
 many a blue uniform in Berlin ; but a hideous tin- 
 cleanness of sentiment and spirit stuck like a leprosy 
 to the souls and actions of the very best among them. 
 The marriage of the daughter was a consummation 
 the most devoutly wished for by the mother ; and at 
 one time it had been determined to marry the two 
 grandchildren of George I., Frederick, Duke of 
 Gloucester (afterward Prince of Wales), and his 
 sister Amelia, to the daughter and son of King Fred- 
 erick and Queen Sophia. George I. himself went to 
 Berlin, in 1723, to further this match, but it never 
 came to the much desired conclusion.
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 273 
 
 In the meantime, the Prussian king drank harder 
 than ever ; and when he was sick, but not sorry, 
 after these debauches, he would sing psalms and 
 preach sermons to his family, who, laughing at him 
 in return, generally got well thrashed before the end 
 of the service. In one desponding fit he resolved to 
 abdicate, take a small house in the country, make his 
 daughter wash the linen, employ his son in marketing, 
 and set his consort to the spit. To inure them to 
 their destined change of circumstances, he employed 
 barbarities which have been truly described as dis- 
 graceful to human nature. No brute beast could 
 more have disregarded decency in presence of its 
 offspring. No madman ever ended a more terrific 
 career of outrage before wife and children, by an 
 attempt at hanging, than he did. And few wives 
 would have followed the example of Sophia Dorothea, 
 and have cut down the brute, only to be the victim of 
 his further brutalities. The lives of both wife and 
 children were more than once very nearly sacrificed 
 by his assassin-like cruelties. The detail of them is 
 sickening in the extreme. His most bitter disap- 
 pointment lay in the fact that he could not find 
 proof of treason in his children whereby to be au- 
 thorised to put them both to death, " that rascal 
 Fritz, and that hussy Wilhelmina." 
 
 I need not here repeat that well-known story which 
 tells of the attempt made by the young prince to es- 
 cape from his father's brutalities : how it ended in the 
 violent death of the prince's friend, and how it had 
 well-nigh ended in the murder of the son himself. 
 
 Wilhelmina was ultimately married to the little 
 Prince of Baireuth ; and the marriage and the life
 
 274 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 which followed thereupon have much more, in their 
 narration, the air of a pantomime than of prosaic 
 history. The wedding was comically ceremonious; 
 the bride's sister endeavoured to seduce the bride- 
 groom ; and after the young couple had departed 
 with their suite, they were greeted on their passage 
 by bodies of " notables," who were huge living cari- 
 catures, with the addition of being very dirty. They 
 did not reach their palace before the ponderous car- 
 riage which bore them had broken down and rolled 
 the illustrious travellers into the mud. 
 
 It would lead me too much away from my subject 
 to describe the princess's father-in-law, the mar- 
 grave who had read but two books, had a purse as 
 ill-furnished as his mind, and yet never walked to his 
 cold meat without a flourish from a couple of cracked 
 trumpets to announce that event to the world, and bid 
 lesser potentates sit down. 
 
 The same pantomimic aspect rested on all the other 
 personages, and on all the furniture, appointments, 
 and incidents of the court. Everything was of an 
 exaggerated character, even the vices ; and when the 
 court drank, stupendous inebriety followed, with acci- 
 dents to match - which even pantomimes forbear to 
 bring before the public. We hear, too, of princesses 
 with noses like beet-root, and maids of honour so fat 
 that they cannot sit down, and never stoop to kiss a 
 hand without rolling over on the carpet. 
 
 But to return to the daughter of our Sophia of 
 Zell. The Queen of Prussia had negotiated a mar- 
 riage between her son Frederick (not yet the 
 " Great ") and a princess of Brunswick. She openly 
 spoke of her intended daughter-in-law with ridicule
 
 SOPHIA DOROTHEA 275 
 
 and disgust, and was not more reserved even in the 
 poor lady's presence. The queen survived her brutal 
 husband, whose last act was to bid her get up and 
 see him die. She obeyed, and the king duly per- 
 formed the feat which he had called her to witness. 
 Her after-life was more happy, and the virtues she 
 exhibited during its course tend to prove that the 
 tyranny, cruelty, and filthy insults of which she had 
 been made the victim by her husband, alone rendered 
 the wretched woman not merely a slave, but, as slaves 
 are wont to be, careless in the observation of strict 
 proprieties. As the revered mother of the great Fred- 
 erick, she lived on to the year 1757, when she died at 
 the allotted age of man, threescore years and ten. 
 The present King of Prussia is a lineal descendant 
 of Sophia Dorothea of Zell through this daughter, 
 the second queen that wore the Prussian crown. He 
 presides in Berlin, the mere viceroy of the Tsar. 
 
 But it is time to turn from this record of incidents 
 of the times of Sophia and George Louis, to that of 
 circumstances in the lives of their successors. Of 
 the former pair it may be said, that Sophia atoned 
 for some possible indiscretion by a long captivity, 
 the severity of which tended only to the purifying 
 and perfecting of her character. Her husband has 
 been described truly in a few words by Mr. Macaulay, 
 when speaking of Pitt's lines on the monarch's death : 
 "The Muses are earnestly entreated to weep over 
 the urn of Caesar : for Caesar, says the poet, loved 
 the Muses ; Caesar, who could not read a line of 
 Pope, and who loved nothing but punch and fat 
 women."
 
 Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea 
 
 Wife of George II. 
 
 " Da seufzt sie, da presst sie das Herz es war 
 Ja Lieb und Gliick nur getraumet." 
 
 GEIBEL.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEFORE THE ACCESSION 
 
 Birth of Princess Caroline Her Early Married Life Eulogised 
 by the Poets Gaiety of the Court of the Prince and Princess 
 at Leicester House Beauty of Miss Bellenden Mrs. Howard, 
 the Prince's Favourite Intolerable Crossness of the Court of 
 George the First Lord Chesterfield and the Princess The 
 Mad Duchess Buckingham House Rural Retreat of the 
 Prince at Richmond; the Resort of Wit and Beauty Swift's 
 Pungent Verses The Fortunes of the Young Adventurers, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Howard The Queen at Her Toilet Mrs. 
 Clayton, Her Influence with Queen Caroline The Prince 
 Ruled by His Wife Doctor Arbuthnot and Dean Swift The 
 Princess's Regard for Newton and Halley Lord Macclesfield's 
 Fall His Superstition, and That of the Princess Prince Fred- 
 erick's Vices Not Permitted to Come to England Severe 
 Rebuff to Lord Hardwicke Doctor Mead Courage of the 
 Prince and Princess The Princess's Friendship for Doctor 
 Friend Swift at Leicester House Royal Visit to " Bartlemy 
 Fair." 
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA was the daugh- 
 ter of John Frederick, Marquis of Brandenburgh-An- 
 spach, and of Eleanor Erdmuth Louisa, his second 
 wife, daughter of John George, Duke of Saxe-Eise- 
 nach. She was born in 1683, and married the Elec- 
 toral Prince of Hanover, afterward George II., in the 
 year 1705. Her mother having remarried, after her 
 father's death, when Caroline was very young, the 
 latter left the court of her stepfather, George IV., 
 Elector of Saxony, for that of her guardian, Fred- 
 
 279
 
 280 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 erick, Elector of Brandenburgh, afterward King of 
 Prussia. The Electress of Brandenburgh was the 
 daughter of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and sister 
 of George I. The young Caroline was considered 
 fortunate in being placed under the care of a lady 
 who, it was said at the time, and perhaps with some 
 reason, would assuredly give her a " tincture of her 
 own politeness." 
 
 Notice has already been taken of the suitors who 
 early offered themselves for the hand of the youthful 
 princess ; and for what excellent reason she selected 
 the son of Sophia Dorothea. It was said, when she 
 came to share the throne of England with her hus- 
 band, that Heaven had especially reserved her in 
 order to make Great Britain happy. Her early 
 married life was one of some gaiety, if not of felic- 
 ity ; and Baron Pilnitz says in his memoirs, that 
 when the electoral family of Hanover was called to 
 the throne of this country, she showed more cool 
 carelessness for the additional grandeur, than any of 
 the family, whose outward indifference was a matter 
 of admiration, in the old sense of that word, to all 
 who beheld it. The Princess Caroline, according 
 to the baron, particularly demonstrated that she was 
 thoroughly satisfied in her mind that she could be 
 happy without a crown, and that "both her father- 
 in-law and her husband were already kings in her 
 eyes, because they highly deserved that title." Of 
 her conduct during the period she was Princess of 
 Wales, the same writer says that she favoured 
 neither political party, and was equally esteemed 
 by each. This, however, is somewhat beside the 
 truth.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 281 
 
 The poets were as much concerned with the Prin- 
 cess of Wales as the politicians. Some abused, and 
 some adored her. Addison, in 1714, assured her 
 that the Muse waited on her person, and that she 
 herself was 
 
 " Born to strengthen and to grace our isle." 
 
 The same writer could not contemplate the daugh- 
 ter of Caroline, but that his prophetic eye professed 
 to 
 
 " Already see the illustrious youths complain, 
 And future monarchs doom'd to sigh in vain." 
 
 Frederick (Duke of Gloucester), the elder and less 
 loved son of Caroline, was not yet in England, but 
 her favourite boy, William, was at her side ; and of 
 him Addison said, that he had " the mother's sweet- 
 ness and the father's fire." The poet went on, less 
 to prophesy than to speculate with a "perhaps," on 
 the future destiny of William of ' Cumberland, and 
 it was well he put in the saving word, for nothing 
 could be less like fact than the "fortune" alluded 
 to in the following lines: 
 
 * For thee, perhaps, even now of kingly race, 
 Some dawning beauty blooms in every grace. 
 Some Caroline, to Heaven's dictates true, 
 Who, while the sceptred rivals vainly sue, 
 Thy inborn worth with conscious eyes shall see, 
 And slight th' imperial diadem for thee." 
 
 Of the princess herself, he says more truly, that 
 she 
 
 " with graceful ease 
 And native majesty is form'd to please."
 
 282 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 And he adds, that the stage, growing refined, will 
 draw its finished heroines from her, who was herself 
 known to be " skill'd in the labours of the deathless 
 Muse." 
 
 In short, Parnassus was made to echo with eulo- 
 gies of or epigrams upon this royal lady. Of the 
 quarrel between George I. and his son mention has 
 been already made. For years together, the king 
 never addressed a word to the Prince of Wales, but 
 the princess would compel him, as Count Broglio, 
 the French ambassador, writes, to answer the remarks 
 which she addressed to him when she encountered 
 him "in public." But even then, says the count, 
 "he only speaks to her on these occasions for the 
 sake of decorum." She-devil, was the application 
 commonly employed by the amiable king to desig- 
 nate his high-spirited daughter-in-law. 
 
 The Prince and Princess of Wales, on withdraw- 
 ing from St. James's, established their court in 
 "Leicester Fields." Of this court, Walpole draws 
 a pleasant picture. It must have been a far livelier 
 locality than that of the king, whose ministers were 
 the older Whig politicians. " The most promising," 
 says Walpole, " of the young lords and gentlemen of 
 that party, and the prettiest and liveliest of the young 
 ladies, formed the new court of the Prince and Prin- 
 cess of Wales. The apartment of the bedchamber- 
 women in waiting became the fashionable evening 
 rendezvous of the most distinguished wits and beau- 
 ties : Lord Chesterfield, Lord Stanhope, Lord Scar- 
 borough, Carr (Lord Hervey), elder brother of the 
 more known John, Lord Hervey, and reckoned to 
 have superior parts ; General (at that time only
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 283 
 
 Colonel) Charles Churchill, and others, not neces- 
 sary to mention, were constant attendants ; Miss 
 Lepell, afterward Lady Hervey, my mother, Lady 
 Walpole, Mrs. Selwyn, mother of the famous George, 
 and herself of much vivacity, and pretty ; Mrs. 
 Howard, and, above all, for universal admiration, 
 Miss Bellenden, one of the maids of honour. Her 
 face and person were charming ; lively she was 
 almost to ttourderie ; and so agreeable she was, that 
 I never heard her mentioned afterward by one of her 
 contemporaries who did not prefer her as the most 
 perfect creature they ever knew." 
 
 To this pleasant party in this pleasant resort, the 
 Prince of Wales often came, his chief attraction 
 being, not the wit or worth of the party, but the 
 mere beauty of one of the party forming it. This 
 was Miss Bellenden, who, on the other hand, saw 
 nothing in the fair-haired and little prince that could 
 attract her admiration. The prince was never famous 
 for much delicacy either of expression or sentiment, 
 but he could exhibit a species of wit in its way. 
 He had probably been contemplating the engraving 
 of the visit of Jupiter to the nymph Danae in a 
 shower of gold, when he took to pouring the guineas 
 from his purse, in Miss Bellenden's presence. He 
 seemed to her, if we may judge by the comment 
 she made upon his conduct, much more like a villain- 
 ous little bashaw offering to purchase a Circassian 
 slave, and on one occasion, as he went on count- 
 ing the glittering coin, she exclaimed, " Sir, I cannot 
 bear it ; if you count your money any more I will go 
 out of the room." She did even better, by marrying 
 the man of her heart, Colonel John Campbell, a
 
 284 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 step at which the prince, when it came to his knowl- 
 edge, affected to be extremely indignant ; and never 
 forgave her for an offence, which indeed was no 
 offence, and required no forgiveness. The prince, 
 like that young Duke of Orleans who thought he 
 would suffer in reputation if he had not a "favour- 
 ite " in his train, let his regard stop at Mrs. Howard, 
 another of his wife's bedchamber-women, who was 
 but too happy to receive such regard, and to return 
 it with all required attachment and service. 
 
 The Princess of Wales, during the reign of her 
 father-in-law, maintained a brilliant court, and pre- 
 sided over a gay round of pleasures. In this career 
 she gained that which she sought after, popularity. 
 What she did from policy, her husband, the prince, 
 did from taste ; and the encouragement and promo- 
 tion of pleasure were followed by the one as a means 
 to an end, by the other for the sake of the pleasure 
 itself. Every morning there was a drawing-room at 
 the princess's, and twice a week the same splendid 
 reunion in her apartments, at night. This gave the 
 fashion to a very wide circle ; crowded assemblies, 
 balls, masquerades, and ridottos became the " rage ; " 
 and from the fatigues incident thereto, the votaries 
 of fashion found relaxation in plays and operas. 
 
 Quiet people were struck by the change which 
 had come over court circles since the days of 
 " Queen Anne, who had always been decent, chaste, 
 and formal." The change indeed was great, but 
 diverse of aspect. Thus the court of pleasure at 
 which Caroline reigned supreme, was a court where 
 decency was respected ; respected, at least, as much 
 as it well could be, at a time when no superabun-
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 285 
 
 dance of respect for decency was exhibited in any 
 quarter. Still, there was not the intolerable grossness 
 in the house of the prince which was to be met with 
 in the very presence of his sire. Lord Chesterfield 
 said of that sire that " he had nothing bad in him 
 as a man," and yet he records of him that he had no 
 respect for woman, but some liking, it may be 
 added, for those who had little principle and much 
 fat. "He brought over with him," says Chester- 
 field, " two considerable samples of his bad taste and 
 good stomach, the Duchess of Kendal and the 
 Countess of Darlington ; leaving at Hanover, because 
 she happened to be a Papist, the Countess von 
 Platen, whose weight and circumference was little 
 inferior to theirs. These standards of his Majesty's 
 tastes made all those ladies who aspired to his favour, 
 and who were near the statutable size, strain and 
 swell themselves, like the frogs in the fable, to rival 
 the bulk and dignity of the ox. Some succeeded, 
 and others burst." If the house of the son was not 
 the abode of all the virtues, it at least was not the 
 sty wherein wallowed his sire. Upon the change 
 of fashion, Chesterfield writes to Bubb Dodington, 
 in 1716, the year when Caroline began to be looked 
 up to as the arbitress of fashion : " As for the gay 
 part of the town, you would find it much more flour- 
 ishing than when you left it. Balls, assemblies, and 
 masquerades have taken the place of dull, formal, 
 visiting days, and the women are much more agree- 
 able trifles than they were designed. Puns are 
 extremely in vogue, and the license very great. The 
 variation of three or four letters in a word breaks no 
 squares, insomuch that an indifferent punster may
 
 286 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 make a very good figure in the best companies." 
 The gaiety at the town residence of the prince and 
 princess did not, however, accompany them to Rich- 
 mond Lodge. There Caroline enjoyed the quiet 
 beauties of her pretty retreat, which was, however, 
 shared with her husband's favourite, " Mrs. Howard." 
 
 "Leicester Fields" was, nevertheless, not always 
 such a bower of bliss as Walpole has described it, 
 from hearsay. If the prince and ladies were on very 
 pleasant terms, the princess and the ladies were 
 sometimes at loggerheads, with as little regard for 
 bienseance as if they had been very vulgar people ; 
 indeed, they often were exceedingly vulgar people 
 themselves. 
 
 It was with Lord Chesterfield that Caroline Wil- 
 helmina Dorothea was most frequently at very dis- 
 graceful issue. Lord Chesterfield was one of the 
 prince's court, and he was possessed of an uncon- 
 trollable inclination to turn the princess into ridicule. 
 Of course, she was made acquainted with this pro- 
 pensity of the refined Chesterfield by some amiable 
 friend, who had the regard which friends, with less 
 judgment than what they call amiability, generally 
 have for one's failings. 
 
 Caroline, perhaps half afraid of the peer, whom 
 she held to be a more annoying joker than a genuine 
 wit, took a middle course by way of correcting Ches- 
 terfield. It was not the course which a woman of 
 dignity and refinement would have adopted ; but it 
 must be remembered that, at the period in question, 
 the princess was anxious to keep as many friends 
 around her husband as she could muster. She con- 
 sequently told Lord Chesterfield, half in jest and half
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 287 
 
 in earnest, that he had better not provoke her, for 
 though he had a wittier, he had not so bitter a tongue 
 as she had, and any outlay of his wit, at her cost, 
 she was determined to pay, in her way, with an ex- 
 orbitant addition of interest upon the debt he made 
 her incur. 
 
 The noble lord had, among the other qualifications 
 of the fine gentleman of the period, an alacrity in 
 lying. He would gravely assure the princess that 
 her Royal Highness was in error ; that he could 
 never presume to mimic her ; and thereupon he 
 would only watch for a turn of her head to find 
 an opportunity for repeating the offence which he 
 had protested could not possibly be laid to his charge. 
 
 Caroline was correct in asserting that she had a 
 bitter tongue. It was under control, indeed ; but 
 when she gave it unrestricted freedom, its eloquence 
 was not well savoured. Indeed her mind was far 
 less refined than has been generally imagined. Many 
 circumstances might be cited in proof of this asser- 
 tion ; but, perhaps, none is more satisfactory, or 
 conclusive rather, than the fact that she was the 
 correspondent of the Duchess of Orleans, whose 
 gross epistles can be patiently read only by grossly 
 inclined persons ; but which, nevertheless, tell so 
 much that is really worth knowing that students 
 of history read, blush, and are delighted. Of this 
 correspondence we shall speak in a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 The Prince of Wales, dissatisfied with his resi- 
 dences, entered into negotiations for the purchase 
 of Buckingham House. That mansion, of which 
 more will be said when we come to speak of its
 
 288 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 royal mistress, Queen Charlotte, was then occupied 
 by the Dowager Duchess of Buckingham, she whose 
 mother was Catherine Sedley, and whose father was 
 James II. She was the mad duchess, who always 
 went into mourning, and shut up Buckingham House, 
 on the anniversary of the death of her grandfather, 
 Charles I. The duchess thus writes of the negotia- 
 tion in a letter to Mrs. Howard : 
 
 "If their Royal Highnesses will have everything 
 stand as it is, furniture and pictures, I will have 
 .3,000 per annum. Both run hazard of being 
 spoiled; and the last, to be sure, will be all to be 
 new bought, whenever my son is of age. The quan- 
 tity the rooms take cannot be well furnished under 
 10,000. But if their Highnesses will permit all 
 the pictures to be removed, and buy the furniture 
 as it will be valued by different people, the house 
 shall go at 2,000. If the prince or princess prefer 
 much the buying outright, under 60,000 it will not 
 be parted with as it now stands; and all his Maj- 
 esty's revenue cannot purchase a place so fit for 
 them, nor for less a sum. The princess asked me 
 at the drawing-room if I would not sell my fine 
 house. I answered her, smiling, that I was under 
 no necessity to part with it ; yet, when what I 
 thought was the value of it should be offered, per- 
 haps my prudence might overcome my inclination." 
 Whether the sum was thought too much by the 
 would-be purchasers, or whether the capricious duch- 
 ess obeyed inclination rather than prudence, is not 
 known ; but the negotiation went no further. 
 
 It may be that the princess, who particularly 
 affected to be desirous of furthering the interests
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 289 
 
 of English commerce, had some inclination to pos- 
 sess this place as occupying a portion of the locality 
 on which James I. planted his famous mulberry gar- 
 den, at a time when he was anxious to introduce the 
 mulberry into general cultivation, for the sake of 
 encouraging the manufacture of English silks. At 
 all events, at the period when Caroline expressed 
 some inclination to possess a residence, which did 
 not fall into the hands of royalty until it became 
 the property of Queen Charlotte, there was a mul- 
 berry garden at Chelsea, the owner of which was a 
 Mrs. Gale. In these gardens some very rich and 
 beautiful satin was made, from English silkworms, 
 for the Princess of Wales, who took an extraordinary 
 interest in the success of "the native worm." The 
 experiments, however, patronised as they were by 
 Caroline, did not promise a realisation of sufficient 
 profit to warrant their being pursued any further. 
 
 The town residence of the prince and princess 
 lacked, of course, the real charms, the quieter 
 pleasures, of the lodge at Richmond. The estate 
 on which the latter was built formed part of the 
 forfeited property of the Jacobite Duke of Ormond. 
 
 The prince and princess kept a court at Richmond, 
 which must have been one of the most pleasant 
 resorts at which royalty has ever presided over 
 fashion, wit, and talent. At this court the young 
 (John) Lord Hervey was a frequent visitor, at a time 
 when his mother, Lady Bristol, was in waiting on the 
 princess, and his brother, Lord Carr Hervey, held 
 the post of groom of the bedchamber to the prince. 
 Of the personages at this "young court," the right 
 honourable John Wilson Croker thus speaks :
 
 290 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 "At this period, Pope, and his literary friends, 
 were in great favour at this 'young court,' of which, 
 in addition to the handsome and clever princess her- 
 self, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Selwyn, Miss Howe, Miss 
 Bellenden, and Miss Lepell, with Lords Chesterfield, 
 Bathurst, Scarborough, and Hervey, were the chief 
 ornaments. Above all, for beauty and wit were Miss 
 Bellenden and Miss Lepell, who seem to have 
 treated Pope, and been in return treated by him, 
 with a familiarity that appears strange in our more 
 decorous days. These young ladies probably con- 
 sidered him as no more than what Aaron Hill 
 described him, 
 
 " ' Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side, 
 The ladies' plaything and the Muse's pride.' n 
 
 Mr. Croker notices that Miss Lepell was called 
 Mrs., according to the fashion of the time. It was 
 the custom so to designate every single lady who 
 was old enough to be married. 
 
 Upon Richmond Lodge, Swift showered some of 
 his most pungent verses. He was there more than 
 once, when it was the scene of the "young court." 
 Of these occasions he sang, after the princess had 
 become queen, to the following tune : 
 
 " Here wont the dean, when he's to seek, 
 To sponge a breakfast once a week, 
 To cry the bread was stale, and mutter 
 Complaints against the royal butter. 
 But now I fear it will be said, 
 No butter sticks upon his bread. 
 We soon shall find him full of spleen, 
 For want of tattling to the queen ;
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 291 
 
 Stunning her royal ears with talking ; 
 His rev'rence and her Highness walking. 
 Whilst saucy Charlotte, ' like a stroller, 
 Sits mounted on the garden roller. 
 A goodly sight to see her ride, 
 With ancient Mirmont at her side. 
 In velvet cap his head is warm, 
 His hat, for shame, beneath his arm." 
 
 During a large portion of the married life of 
 George Augustus and Caroline, each was supposed 
 to be under the influence of a woman, whose real 
 influence was, however, overrated, and whose impor- 
 tance, if great, was solely so because of the undue 
 value attached to her imaginary influence. Both 
 those persons were of the " young court," at Leices- 
 ter House and Richmond Lodge. 
 
 The women in question were Mrs. Howard, the 
 prince's "favourite," and Mrs. Clayton, bedchamber- 
 woman, like Mrs. Howard, to Caroline. The first 
 lady was a daughter of a Knight of the Bath, Sir 
 Henry Hobart. Early in life, she married Mr. 
 Howard, "the younger brother of more than one 
 Earl of Suffolk, to which title he at last succeeded 
 himself, and left a son by her, who was the last earl 
 of that branch." The young couple were but slen- 
 derly dowered ; the lady had little and her husband 
 less. The court of Queen Anne did not hold out to 
 them any promise of improving their fortune, and 
 accordingly they looked around for a locality where 
 they might not only discern the promise, but hope 
 for its realisation. Their views rested upon Hanover 
 and " the rising sun " there, and thither, accordingly, 
 
 4 De Roncy.
 
 292 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 they took their way, and there they found a welcome 
 at the hands of the old Electress Sophia, with scanty 
 civility at those of her grandson, the electoral prince. 
 
 At this time, the fortunes of the young adventurers 
 were so low, and their aspirations so high, that they 
 were unable to give a dinner to the Hanoverian min- 
 ister, till Mrs. Howard found the means, by cutting 
 off a very beautiful head of hair, and selling it. If 
 she did this in order that she might not incur a debt, 
 she deserves some degree of praise, for a habit of 
 prompt payment was not a fashion of the time. The 
 sacrifice probably sufficed ; for it was the era of full- 
 bottomed wigs, which cost twenty or thirty guineas, 
 and Mrs. Howard's hair, to be applied to the purpose 
 named, may have brought her a dozen pounds, with 
 which a very recherche 1 dinner might have been given, 
 at the period, to even the most gastronomic of Hun- 
 overian ministers, and half a dozen secretaries of 
 legation to boot. 
 
 The fortune sought for was seized, although it 
 came but in a questionable shape. After the lapse 
 of some little time, the lady had made sufficient im- 
 pression on the hitherto cold Prince George Augustus 
 to induce him, on the accession of his father to the 
 crown of England, to appoint her one of the bed- 
 chamber-women to his wife, Caroline, Princess of 
 Wales. 
 
 When Mrs. Howard had won what was called the 
 "regard" of the prince, she separated from her hus- 
 band. He, it is true, had little regard for, and merited 
 no regard from, his wife ; but he was resolved that 
 she should attain not even a bad eminence, unless 
 he profited by it. He was a wretched, heartless,
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 293 
 
 drunken, gambling profligate; too coarse, even, for 
 the coarse fine gentlemen of the day. When he 
 found himself deserted by his wife, therefore, and 
 discovered that she had established her residence in 
 the household of the prince, he went down to the 
 palace, raised an uproar in the courtyard, before the 
 guards and other persons present, and made vocifer- 
 ous demands for the restoration to him of a wife 
 whom he really did not want. He was thrust out of 
 the quadrangle without much ceremony, but he was 
 not to be silenced. He even appears to have inter- 
 ested the Archbishop of Canterbury in the matter. 
 The prelate affected to look upon the princess as the 
 protectress of her bedchamber-woman, and the cause 
 of the latter living separate from her husband, to 
 whom he recommended, by letter, that she should be 
 restored. Walpole says, further, that the archbishop 
 delivered an epistle from Mr. Howard himself, ad- 
 dressed through the Princess Caroline to his wife, 
 and that the princess "had the malicious pleasure of 
 delivering the letter to her rival." 
 
 Mrs. Howard continued to reside under the roof of 
 this strangely assorted household. There was no 
 scandal excited thereby at the period, and she was 
 safe from conjugal importunity, whether at St. 
 James's Palace or Leicester House. "The case 
 was altered," says Walpole, " when, on the arrival of 
 summer, their Royal Highnesses were to remove to 
 Richmond. Being only woman of the bedchamber, 
 etiquette did not allow Mrs. Howard the entree of 
 the coach, with the princess. She apprehended that 
 Mr. Howard might seize her upon the road. To 
 baffle such an attempt, her friends, John, Duke of
 
 294 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Argyle, and his brother, the Earl of Islay, called for 
 her in the coach of one of them by eight o'clock in 
 the morning of the day by noon of which the prince 
 and princess were to remove, and lodged her safely 
 in their house at Richmond." It would appear, that 
 after this period, the servant of Caroline and the 
 favourite of George Augustus ceased to be molested 
 by her husband ; and, although there be no proof of 
 that gentleman having been " bought off," he was of 
 such character, tastes, and principles, that he cannot 
 be thought to have been of too nice an honour to 
 allow of his agreeing to terms of peace for pecuniary 
 " consideration." 
 
 George thought his show of regard for Mrs. How- 
 ard would stand for proof that he was not "led" by 
 his wife. The regard wore an outwardly Platonic 
 aspect, and daily at the same hour the royal admirer 
 resorted to the apartment of the lady, where an hour 
 or two was spent in " small talk," and conversation of 
 a generally uninteresting character. 
 
 It is very illustrative of the peculiar character of 
 George Augustus, that his periodical visits every even- 
 ing at nine, were regulated with such dull punctu- 
 ality, " that he frequently walked about his chamber 
 for ten minutes, with his watch in his hand, if the 
 stated minute was not arrived." 
 
 Walpole also notices the more positive vexations 
 Mrs. Howard received when Caroline became queen, 
 whose head she used to dress, until she acquired the 
 title of Countess of Suffolk. The queen, it is said, 
 delighted in subjecting her to such servile offices, 
 though always apologising to her good Howard. 
 "Often," says Walpole, "her Majesty had more
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 295 
 
 complete triumph. It happened more than once 
 that the king, coming into the room while the queen 
 was dressing, has snatched off the handkerchief, and, 
 turning rudely to Mrs. Howard, has cried, ' Because 
 you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the 
 queen's.' " 
 
 One other instance may be cited here of Caroline's 
 dislike of her good Howard. " The queen had an 
 obscure window at St. James's that looked into a 
 dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at night, 
 which looked upon Mrs. Howard's apartment. Lord 
 Chesterfield, on Twelfth Night at court, had won so 
 large a sum of money, that he thought it not prudent 
 to carry it home in the dark, and deposited it with 
 the mistress. Thence the queen inferred great inti- 
 macy, and thenceforward Lord Chesterfield could 
 obtain no favour from court ; and, finding himself 
 desperate, went into opposition." But this is antici- 
 pating events. Let us speak of the other bedcham- 
 ber-woman of the Princess of Wales, and subsequently 
 of Queen Caroline, also a woman of considerable note 
 in the quiet and princely circle at Leicester House, 
 and the more brilliant reunions at St. James's and 
 Kensington. She was a woman of fairer reputation, 
 of greater ability, and of worse temper than Mrs. 
 Howard. Her maiden name was Dyves, her condi- 
 tion was of a humble character, but her marriage 
 with Sir Robert Clayton, a clerk in the treasury, 
 gave her importance and position, and opportunity to 
 improve both. Her husband, in addition to his treas- 
 ury clerkship, was one of the managers of the Marl- 
 borough estates in the duke's absence, and this 
 brought his wife to the knowledge and patronage of
 
 296 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the duchess. The only favour ever asked by the 
 latter of the house of Hanover, was a post for her 
 friend Mrs. Clayton, who soon afterward was ap- 
 pointed one of the bedchamber-women of Caroline, 
 Princess of Wales. 
 
 Mrs. Clayton has been as diversely painted by 
 Lord Hervey and Horace Walpole, as Chesterfield 
 himself. It is not to be disputed, however, that she 
 was a woman of many accomplishments, of not so 
 many as her flatterers ascribe to her, but of more 
 than were conceded to her by her enemies. The 
 same may be said of her alleged virtues. Walpole 
 describes her as a corrupt, pompous simpleton, and 
 Lord Hervey as a woman of great intelligence, and 
 rather ill-regulated temper, the latter preventing her 
 from concealing her thoughts, let them be what they 
 might. The noble lord intimates, rather than asserts, 
 that she was more resigned than desirous to live at 
 court, for the dirty company of which she was too 
 good, but whom she had the honesty to hate but not 
 the hypocrisy to tell them they were good. Hervey 
 adds, that she did good, for the mere luxury which 
 the exercise of the virtue had in itself. Others de- 
 scribe her as corrupt as the meanest courtier that 
 ever lived by bribes. She would take jewels with 
 both hands, and wear them without shame, though 
 they were the fees of offices performed to serve others 
 and enrich herself. The Duchess of Marlborough 
 was ashamed of her protegee in this respect, if there 
 be truth in the story of her Grace being indignant at 
 seeing Mrs. Clayton wearing gems which she knew 
 were the price of services rendered by her. Lady 
 Wortley Montagu apologises for her by the smart
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 297 
 
 remark, that people would not know where wine was 
 sold, if the vendor did not hang out a bush. 
 
 Of another fact there is no dispute, the intense 
 hatred with which Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Clayton 
 regarded each other. The former was calm, cool, 
 cutting, and contemptuous but never unladylike, 
 always self-possessed and severe. The latter was hot, 
 eager, and for ever rendering her position untenable 
 for want of temper, and therefore lack of argument 
 to maintain it. Mrs. Clayton, doubtless, possessed 
 more influence with the queen than her opponent 
 with the king, but that influence has been vastly over- 
 rated. Caroline only allowed it in small matters, and 
 exercised in small ways. Mrs. Clayton was, in some 
 respects, only her authorised representative, or the 
 medium between her and the objects whom she de- 
 lighted to relieve or to honour. The lady had some 
 influence in bringing about introductions, in directing 
 the queen's notice to works of merit, or to petitions 
 for relief ; but on subjects of much higher importance 
 Caroline would not submit to influence from the same 
 quarter. On serious questions she had a better judg- 
 ment of her own than she could be supplied with by 
 the women of the bedchamber. The great power 
 held by Mrs. Clayton was that with her rested to 
 decide whether the prayer of a petitioner should or 
 should not reach the eye of Caroline. No wonder, 
 then, that she was flattered, and that her good offices 
 were asked for with showers of praise and compliment 
 to herself, by favour-seekers of every conceivable 
 class. Peers of every degree, and their wives, 
 bishops and poor curates, philosophers well-to-do, 
 and authors in shreds and patches ; sages and scio-
 
 298 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 lists ; inventors, speculators, and a mob of " beg- 
 gars " which cannot be classed, sought to approach 
 Caroline through Mrs. Clayton's office, and humbly 
 waited Mrs. Clayton's leisure, while they profusely 
 flattered her, in order to tempt her to be active in 
 their behalf. 
 
 Mrs. Clayton, despite her more fiery temper, is said 
 to have been a "nicer" woman than Mrs. Howard. 
 It must be remembered, however, that the niceness 
 of the nice people of this period was very like that 
 of Mrs. Mincemode, in Odingsell's comedy of " The 
 Capricious Lovers." The latter is something akin 
 to the delicate lady in the " Precieuses Ridicules," 
 the very sight of a gentleman makes her grow sick, 
 so indelicate is the spectacle ; and she refines upon 
 the significancy of phrases, till she resolves common 
 conversation into rank offence against modesty. 
 
 Caroline not only ruled her husband without his 
 being aware of it, but could laugh at him heartily, 
 without hurting his feelings by allowing him to be 
 conscious of it. Hereafter mention may be made of 
 the sensitiveness of the court to satire ; but before 
 the death of George I., it seems to have been enjoyed, 
 at least by Caroline, Princess of Wales, more than 
 it was subsequently by the same illustrious lady, when 
 Queen of England. Doctor Arbuthnot, at the period 
 alluded to, had occasion to write to Swift. The doc- 
 tor had been publishing, by subscription, his " Tables 
 of Ancient Coins," and was gaining very few modern 
 specimens by his work. The dean, on the other 
 hand, was then reaping a harvest of profit and popu- 
 larity by his " Gulliver's Travels," that book of 
 which the puzzled Bishop of Ferns said, on coming
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 299 
 
 to the last page, that, all things considered, he did 
 not believe a word of it ! 
 
 Arbuthnot, writing to Swift on the subject of the 
 two works, says (8th Nov., 1726) that his book had 
 been out about a month, but that he had not yet got 
 his subscribers' names. " I will make over," he says, 
 " all my profits to you, for the property of ' Gulliver's 
 Travels/ which, I believe, will have as great a run as 
 John Bunyan. Gulliver is a happy man, that, at his 
 age, can write such a book." Arbuthnot subse- 
 quently relates, that when he last saw the Princess 
 of Wales, "she was reading Gulliver, and was just 
 come to the passage of the hobbling prince, which 
 she laughed at." The laugh was at the cost of her 
 husband, whom Swift represented in the satire as 
 walking with one high and low heel, in allusion to the 
 prince's supposed vacillation between the Whigs and 
 Tories. 
 
 The princess, however, had more regard, at all 
 times, for sages than she had for satirists. It was at 
 the request of Caroline that Newton drew up an 
 abstract of a treatise on ancient chronology, first 
 published in France, and subsequently in England. 
 Her regard for Halley dates from an earlier period 
 than Newton's death, or Caroline's accession. She 
 had in 1721 pressed Halley to become the tutor of 
 her favourite son, the Duke of Cumberland ; but the 
 great perfecter of the theory of the moon's motion 
 was then too busy with his syzygies to be troubled 
 with teaching the humanities to little princes. It was 
 for the same reason that Halley resigned his post of 
 secretary to the Royal Society. 
 
 This question of the education of the children of
 
 300 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the Prince, and Princess of Wales was one much dis- 
 cussed, and not without bitterness, by the disputants 
 on both sides. In the same year that the Princess 
 of Wales desired to secure Halley as the instructor 
 of William of Cumberland (1721), George I. made an 
 earl of that Thomas Parker who, from an attorney's 
 office, had steadily risen through the various grades 
 of the law, had been entrusted with high commissions, 
 and finally became lord chancellor. George I. on his 
 accession made him Baron of Macclesfield, and in 
 1721 raised him to the rank of earl. He paid for 
 the honour, by supporting the king against the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales. The latter claimed an exclu- 
 sive right of direction in the education of their chil- 
 dren. Lord Macclesfield declared that, by law, they 
 had no right at all to control the education of their 
 offspring. Neither prince nor princess ever forgave 
 him for this. They waited for the hour of repaying 
 it ; and the time soon came. In two or three years, 
 to Macclesfield might almost have been applied the 
 words of Pope : 
 
 " If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, 
 The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." 
 
 The first " Brunswick chancellor " became notorious 
 for his malpractices selling places, and trafficking 
 with the funds of the suitors. His enemies resolved 
 to impeach him, and this resolution originated at 
 Leicester House, and was carried out with such ef- 
 fect that the chancellor was condemned to pay a fine 
 of .30,000. George I., knowing that the son whom 
 he hated was the cause of so grave, but just, a conse- 
 quence, promised to repay to the ex-chancellor the
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 301 
 
 amount of the fine which Lord Macclesfield had him- 
 self paid, a few days after the sentence, by the mort- 
 gage of a valuable estate. The king, however, was 
 rather slow in acquitting himself of his promise. He 
 forwarded one instalment of ;i,ooo, but he paid no 
 more, death supervening and preventing the further 
 performance of a promise only made to annoy his son 
 and his son's wife. 
 
 In one respect Lord Macclesfield and the Princess 
 of Wales resembled each other, in entertaining a 
 curious feeling of superstition. It will be seen, here- 
 after, how certain Caroline felt that she should die on 
 a Wednesday, and for what reasons. So, like her, but 
 with more accuracy, the fallen Macclesfield pointed 
 out the day for his decease. In his disgrace he had 
 devoted himself to science and religion. He was, 
 however, distracted by a malady which was aggra- 
 vated by grief, if not remorse. Doctor Pearce, his 
 constant friend, called on him one day, and found him 
 very ill. Lord Macclesfield said : " My mother 
 died of the same disorder on the eighth day, and 
 so shall I." On the eighth day his prophecy 
 was fulfilled ; and the Leicester House party were 
 fully avenged. 
 
 The feelings of both prince and princess were for 
 ever in excess. Thus both appeared to have enter- 
 tained a strong sentiment of aversion against their 
 eldest child, Frederick. Caroline did not bring him 
 with her to this country when she herself first came 
 over to take up her residence here. Frederick was 
 born at Hanover, on the 2Oth January, 1707. He 
 was early instructed in the English language ; but 
 he disliked study of every description, and made but
 
 302 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 little progress in this particular branch. As a child, 
 he was remarkable for his spitefulness and cunning. 
 He was yet a youth when he drank like any German 
 baron of old, played as deeply as he drank, and en- 
 tered heart and soul into other vices, which not only 
 corrupted both, but his body also. His tutor was 
 scandalised by his conduct, and complained of it 
 grievously. Caroline was, at that time, given to 
 find excuses for conduct with which she did not care 
 to be so far troubled as to censure it ; and she 
 remarked, that the escapades complained of were 
 mere page's tricks. " Would to Heaven, they were 
 no more!" exclaimed the worthy governor; "but in 
 truth they are tricks of grooms and scoundrels." 
 The prince spared his friends as little as his foes, 
 and his heart was as vicious as his head was 
 weak. 
 
 Caroline had little affection for this child, whom 
 she would have willingly defrauded of his birthright. 
 At one time she appears to have been inclined to 
 secure the electorate of Hanover for William, and 
 to allow Frederick to succeed to the English throne. 
 At another time, she was as desirous, it is believed, 
 of advancing William to the crown of England, and 
 making over the electorate to Frederick. How far 
 these intrigues were carried on is hardly known, but 
 that they existed is matter of notoriety. The law 
 presented a barrier which could not, however, be 
 broken down ; but, nevertheless, Lord Chesterfield, 
 in his character of the princess, intimated that she 
 was busy with this project throughout her life. 
 
 Frederick was not permitted to come to England 
 during any period of the time that his parents were
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 303 
 
 Prince and Princess of Wales. An English title or 
 two may be said to have been flung to him across the 
 water. Thus, in 1717, he was created Duke of 
 Gloucester, and the Garter was sent to him the 
 following year. In 1726 he became Duke of Edin- 
 burgh. He never occupied a place in the hearts of 
 either his father or mother. 
 
 It is but fair to the character of the Princess of 
 Wales to say that, severe as was the feeling enter- 
 tained by herself against Lord Miicclesfield, a feel- 
 ing shared in by her consort, neither of them ever 
 after entertained any ill feeling against Philip Yorke, 
 subsequently Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who de- 
 fended his friend Lord Macclesfield, with great fear- 
 lessness, at the period of his celebrated trial. Only 
 once, in after-life, did George II. visit Lord Ha.rd- 
 wicke with a severe rebuff. The learned lord was 
 avaricious, discouraging to those who sought to rise 
 in their profession, and caring only for the advance- 
 ment of his own relations. He was once seeking for 
 a place for a distant relation, when the husband of 
 Caroline exclaimed, " You are always asking favours, 
 and I observe that it is invariably in behalf of some 
 one of your family or kinsmen." We shall hereafter 
 find Caroline making allusions to "Judge Gripus," as 
 a character in a play, but it was a name given to 
 Lord Hardwicke, on account of his "meanness." 
 This feeling was shared by his wife. The expen- 
 sively embroidered velvet purse in which the great 
 seal is carried was renewed every year during Lord 
 Hardwicke's time. Each year, Lady Hardwicke or- 
 dered that the velvet should be of the length of one 
 of her state rooms at Wimpole. In course of time,
 
 304 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the prudent lady obtained enough to tapestry the 
 room with the legal velvet, and to make curtains 
 and hangings for a state bed, which stood in the 
 apartment. Well might Pope have said of these : 
 
 " Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life ? 
 Look but on Gripus and on Gripus' wife." 
 
 But this is again anticipating the events of history. 
 Let us go back to 1721, when Caroline and her hus- 
 band exercised a courage which caused great admira- 
 tion in the saloons of Leicester House, and a doubtful 
 sort of applause throughout the country. Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu had just reported the successful 
 results of inoculation for the smallpox, which she had 
 witnessed at Constantinople. Doctor Mead was or- 
 dered by the prince to inoculate six criminals who 
 had been condemned to death, but whose lives were 
 spared for this experiment. It succeeded admirably, 
 and the patients were more satisfied by the result of 
 the experiment than any one besides. In the year 
 following, Caroline allowed Doctor Mead to inoculate 
 her two daughters, and the doctor ultimately became 
 physician in ordinary to her husband. 
 
 The medical appointments made by Caroline and 
 her husband certainly had a political motive. Thus, 
 the Princess of Wales persuaded her husband to name 
 Friend his physician in ordinary, just after the latter 
 had been liberated from the Tower, where he had 
 suffered incarceration for daring to defend Atterbury 
 in the House of Commons, when the bishop was 
 accused of being guilty of treason. Caroline always 
 had a high esteem for Friend, independently of his 
 political opinions, and one of her first acts, on ceasing
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 305 
 
 ft 
 
 to be Princess of Wales, was to make Friend physician 
 to the queen. 
 
 It is said by Swift that the Princess of Wales sent 
 for him to Leicester Fields, no less than nine times, 
 before he would obey the reiterated summons. When 
 he did appear before Caroline, he roughly remarked 
 that he understood she liked to see odd persons ; 
 that she had lately inspected a wild boy from Ger- 
 many, and that now she had the opportunity of seeing 
 a wild parson from Ireland. Swift declares that the 
 court in Leicester Fields was very anxious to settle 
 him in England, but it may be doubted whether the 
 anxiety was very sincere. Swift's declaration that 
 he had no anxiety to be patronised by the Princess 
 of Wales was probably as little sincere. The patron- 
 age sometimes exercised there was mercilessly sneered 
 at by Swift. Thus Caroline had expressed a desire 
 to do honour to Gay, but when the post offered was 
 only that of a gentleman usher to the little Princess 
 Caroline, Swift was bitterly satirical on the Princess 
 of Wales supposing that the poet Gay would be will- 
 ing to act as a sort of male nurse to a little girl of 
 two years of age. 
 
 The Prince of Wales was occasionally as cavalierly 
 treated by the ladies as the princess by the men. 
 One of the maids of honour of Caroline, the well- 
 known Miss Bellenden, would boldly stand before 
 him with her arms folded, and when asked why she 
 did so, would toss her pretty head, and laughingly 
 exclaim that she did so, not because she was cold, 
 but that she chose to stand with her arms folded. 
 When her own niece became maid of honour to 
 Queen Caroline, and audacious Miss Bellenden was
 
 306 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a grave married lady, she instructively warned her 
 young relative not to be so imprudent a maid of 
 honour as her aunt had been before her. 
 
 But strange things were done by princes and 
 princesses in those days, as well as by those who 
 waited on them. For instance, in 1725, it is re- 
 ported by Miss Dyves, maid of honour to the Prin- 
 cess Amelia, daughter of the Princess of Wales, that 
 "the prince, and everybody but myself, went last 
 Friday to Bartholomew Fair. It was a fine day, so 
 he went by water ; and I, being afraid, did not go ; 
 after the fair, they supped at the King's Arms, and 
 came home about four o'clock in the morning." An 
 heir apparent, and part of his family and consort, 
 going by water from Richmond to " Bartlemy Fair," 
 supping at a tavern, staying out all night, and return- 
 ing home not long before honest men breakfasted, 
 was not calculated to make royalty respectable.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST YEARS OF A REIGN 
 
 Death of George the First Adroitness of Sir Robert Walpole 
 The First Royal Reception Unceremonious Treatment of the 
 Late King's Will The Coronation Magnificent Dress of 
 Queen Caroline Mrs. Oldfield, in Queen Catherine, in " Henry 
 VIII." The King's Revenue, and the Queen's Jointure, the 
 Result of Walpole's Exertions His Success Management of 
 the King by Queen Caroline Unseemly Dialogue between 
 Walpole and Lord Townshend Gay's " Beggar's Opera," and 
 Satire on Walpole Origin of the Opera Its Great Success 
 Gay's Cause Espoused by the Duchess of Queensberry Her 
 Smart Reply to a Royal Message The Tragedy of " Frederick, 
 Duke of Brunswick " The Queen Appointed Regent Prince 
 Frederick Becomes Chief of the Opposition His Silly Reflec- 
 tions on the King Agitation about the Repeal of the Corpora- 
 tion and Test Acts The Queen's Ineffectual Efforts to Gain 
 over Bishop Hoadly Sir Robert Extricates Himself The 
 Church Made the Scapegoat Queen Caroline Earnest About 
 Trifles Etiquette of the Toilet Fracas between Mr. How- 
 ard and the Queen Modest Request of Mrs. Howard Lord 
 Chesterfield's Description of Her. 
 
 SIR ROBERT WALPOLE was sojourning at Chelsea, 
 and thinking of nothing less than of the demise of a 
 king, when news was brought him, by a messenger 
 from Lord Townshend, at three o'clock in the after- 
 noon of June 14, 1727, that his late Most Sacred 
 Majesty was then lying dead in the Westphalian 
 palace of his Serene Highness the Bishop of Osna- 
 burgh. Sir Robert immediately hurried to Richmond, 
 
 30?
 
 308 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 in order to be the first to do homage to the new 
 sovereigns, George and Caroline. George accepted 
 the homage with much complacency, and on being 
 asked by Sir Robert as to the person whom the 
 king would select to draw up the usual address to 
 the privy council, George II. mentioned the Speaker 
 of the House of Commons, Sir Spenser Compton. 
 
 This was a civil way of telling Sir Robert that his 
 services as prime minister were no longer required. 
 He was not pleased at being supplanted, but neither 
 was he wrathfully little-minded against his successor, 
 a successor so incompetent for his task that he 
 was obliged to have recourse to Sir Robert to assist 
 him in drawing up the address above alluded to. 
 Sir Robert rendered the assistance with much hearti- 
 ness, but was not the less determined, if possible, to 
 retain his office, in spite of the personal dislike of 
 the king, and of that of the queen, whom he had 
 offended, when she was Princess of Wales, by speak- 
 ing of her as " that fat beast, the prince's wife." Sir 
 Robert could easily make poor Sir Spenser commu- 
 nicative with regard to his future intentions. The 
 latter was a stiff, gossiping, soft-hearted creature, 
 and might very well have taken for his motto the 
 words of Parmeno in the play of Terence, " Plenus 
 rimarum sum" He intimated that on first meeting 
 Parliament he should propose an allowance of 60- 
 ooo per annum to be made to the queen. "I will 
 make it ,40,000 more," said Sir Robert, subse- 
 quently, through a second party, to Queen Caroline, 
 "if my office of, minister be secured to me." Caro- 
 line was delighted at the idea, intimated that Sir 
 Robert might be sure "the fat beast" had friendly
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 309 
 
 feelings toward him, and then hastening to the king, 
 over whose weaker intellect her more masculine mind 
 held rule, explained to her royal husband that, as 
 Compton considered Walpole the fittest man to be, 
 what he had so long been with efficiency, prime 
 minister, it would be a foolish act to nominate Comp- 
 ton himself to the office. The king acquiesced, Sir 
 Spenser was made president of the council, and Sir 
 Robert not only persuaded Parliament, without diffi- 
 culty, to settle one hundred thousand a year on the 
 queen, but he also persuaded the august trustees of 
 the people's money to add the entire revenue of the 
 civil list, about .130,000 a year, to the annual sum 
 of ,700,000, which had been settled as the proper 
 revenue for a king. Sir Robert had thus the wit to 
 bribe king and queen, out of the funds of the people, 
 and we cannot be surprised that their Majesties 
 looked upon him and his as true allies. Indeed Caro- 
 line did not wait for the success of the measure in 
 order to show her confidence in Walpole. Their 
 Majesties had removed from Richmond to their tem- 
 porary palace in Leicester Fields, on the very even- 
 ing of their receiving notice of their accession to 
 the crown ; and the next day, all the nobility and 
 gentry in town crowded to kiss their hands. " My 
 mother," says Horace Walpole, "among the rest, 
 who, Sir Spenser Compton's designation and not his 
 evaporation being known, could not make her way 
 between the scornful backs and elbows of her late 
 devotees, nor could approach nearer to the queen 
 than the third or fourth row ; but no sooner was she 
 descried by her Majesty than the queen said aloud : 
 ' There I am sure I see a friend ! ' The torrent divided
 
 310 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and shrank to either side, ' and as I came away,' said 
 my mother, ' I might have walked over their heads, 
 had I pleased.' " 
 
 When Louis XIV., perhaps not without some sur- 
 prise, found that his " grandeur " did not confer upon 
 him the benefit hinted at in the sermon of a court 
 chaplain, to the effect that " all men that is, 
 almost all men must die ! " he at least comforted 
 himself with one consideration, namely, that he had 
 placed his illegitimate children in the line of succes- 
 sion to the throne, and that of course this, his will, 
 made when living, would be respected after he should 
 be dead. But the ass in the fable was not more 
 scornful of the sick lion than the French people were 
 of the dead king. No sooner was he fairly entombed 
 in the vaults of St. Denis, than his will was quashed 
 with as little ceremony as if it had been a fraudulent 
 document, as indeed it was, the fraud of a king 
 who thought he could overturn law as he lay in the 
 grave. Generally speaking, the "wills" of despots 
 are antagonistic to despotism ; but the last testa- 
 ment of Louis would have made of the French people 
 the slaves of a despot dead and disembowelled. 
 
 George I. does not appear to have remembered the 
 instruction which he might have drawn from the cir- 
 cumstance of the quashing of the will of so irrespon- 
 sible a monarch as Louis XIV. He calmly drew up 
 a will which he coolly thought his successor would 
 respect. Perhaps he remembered that his son be- 
 lieved in ghosts and vampires, and would fulfil a dead 
 man's will out of mere terror of a dead man's visita- 
 tion. But George Augustus had no such fear, nor 
 any such respect as that noticed above.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 311 
 
 At the first council held by George II., Doctor 
 Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose hands 
 George I. had deposited his last will and testament, 
 produced that precious instrument, placed it before 
 the king, and composed himself to hear the instruc- 
 tions of the deceased parent recited by his heir. 
 The new king, however, put the paper in his pocket, 
 walked out of the room, never uttered a word more 
 upon the subject, and general rumour subsequently 
 proclaimed that the royal will had been dropped into 
 the fire by the testator's son. 
 
 That testator, however, had been a destroyer of 
 wills himself. He had burnt that of the poor old 
 Duke of Zell, and he had treated in like manner the 
 last will of Sophia Dorothea. The Matter document 
 favoured both his children more than he approved, 
 and the king, who could do no wrong, committed a 
 felonious act, which for a common criminal would 
 have purchased a halter. Being given to this sort 
 of iniquity himself, he naturally thought ill of the 
 heir whom he looked upon as bound to respect the 
 will of his father. To bind him the more securely 
 to such an observance, he left two duplicates of his 
 will ; one of which was deposited with the Duke of 
 Wolfenbiittel, the other with another German prince, 
 whose name has not been revealed, and both were 
 given up by the depositaries for fee and reward 
 duly paid for the service. The copies were des- 
 troyed in the same way as the original. What 
 instruction was set down in this document has never 
 been ascertained. Walpole speaks of a reported leg- 
 acy of ^40,000 to the king's surviving mistress, the 
 Duchess of Kendal, and of a subsequent compromise
 
 312 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 made with the husband of the duchess's " niece " and 
 heiress, Lady Walsingham, a compromise which 
 followed upon a threatened action at law. Some- 
 thing similar is said to have taken place with the 
 King of Prussia, to whose wife, the daughter of 
 George I., the latter monarch was reported to have 
 bequeathed a considerable legacy. 
 
 However this may be, the surprise of the council 
 and the consternation of the primate were excessive. 
 The latter dignitary was the last man, however, who 
 could with propriety have blamed a fellow man for 
 acting contrary to what was expected of him. He 
 himself had been the warmest advocate of religious 
 toleration until he reached the primacy, and had an 
 opportunity for the exercise of a little harshness 
 toward dissenters. The latter were as much aston- 
 ished at their ex-advocate as the latter was astounded 
 by the act of the king. 
 
 We will not further allude to the coronation of 
 George and Caroline than by saying that, on the 
 occasion in question, these sovereigns displayed a 
 gorgeousness of taste of a somewhat barbarous qual- 
 ity. The coronation was the most splendid which 
 had been seen for years. George, despite his low 
 stature and fair hair, which heightened the weakness 
 of his expression at this period, was said to be, on 
 this occasion, "every inch a king." He enjoyed 
 the splendour of the scene and of himself, and 
 thought it cheaply purchased at the cost of much 
 fatigue. 
 
 Caroline was not inferior to her lord. It is true, 
 that of crown jewels she had none save a pearl neck- 
 lace, the solitary spoil left of all the gems, " rich and
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 313 
 
 rare," which had belonged to Queen Anne, and which 
 had, for the most part, been distributed by the late 
 king among his favourites of every degree. Had his 
 daughter, the Queen of Prussia, been among those 
 for whom he affected some attachment, it is possible 
 that a few relics of the crown, or, rather, national 
 property, might yet be found among the treasures of 
 Berlin. However this may be, Caroline wore, on the 
 occasion of her crowning, not only the pearl necklace 
 of Queen Anne, but " she had on her head and shoul- 
 ders all the pearls and necklaces which she could 
 borrow from the ladies of quality at one end of the 
 town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could 
 hire of the Jews and jewellers at the other ; so," adds 
 Lord Hervey, from whom this detail is taken, "the 
 appearance and the truth of her finery was a mixture 
 of magnificence and meanness, not unlike the tclat 
 of royalty in many other particulars, when it comes 
 to be nicely examined, and its sources traced to what 
 money hires and flattery lends." 
 
 The queen dressed for the grand ceremony in a pri- 
 vate room at Westminster. Early in the morning she 
 put on "an undress" at St. James's, of which we 
 are interestingly told that "everything was new." 
 She was carried across St. James's Park privately in 
 a chair, bearing no distinctive mark upon it, and pre- 
 ceded, at a short distance, by the lord chancellor and 
 Mrs. Howard, both of whom were in "hack sedans." 
 She was dressed by that lady. Mrs. Herbert, an- 
 other bedchamber-woman, would fain have shared in 
 the honour, but as she was herself in full dress for 
 the ceremony, she was pronounced incapable of attir- 
 ing her who was to be the heroine of it. At the con-
 
 3 14 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 elusion of the august affair, the queen unrobed in an 
 adjacent apartment, and, as in the morning, was 
 smuggled back to St. James's in a private chair. 
 
 Magnificent as Caroline was in borrowed finery at 
 her coronation, she was excelled, in point of show, 
 by Mrs. Oldfield, on the stage at Drury Lane. The 
 theatre was closed on the night of the real event. 
 The government had no idea then of dividing a 
 multitude, but the management expended a thousand 
 pounds in getting up the pageant of the crowning of 
 Anne Boleyn at the close of " Henry VIII." In this 
 piece Booth made Henry the principal character, and 
 Gibber's Wolsey sank to a second-rate part. The 
 pageant, however, was so attractive, that it was often 
 played, detached from the piece, at the conclusion of 
 a comedy or any other play. Caroline went more 
 than once with her royal consort to witness this 
 representation, an honour which was refused to the 
 more vulgar show, which had but indifferent success, 
 at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Were there "cause and 
 consequence" in these facts, and in the subsequent 
 refusal of Gibber to accept the " Beggar's Opera," and 
 the eager reception by Rich of the same piece, which 
 was afterward represented to the great annoyance of 
 court and cabinet, allegedly satirised therein ? 
 
 The king's revenue, as settled upon him by the 
 Whig Parliament, was larger than any of our kings 
 had before enjoyed. Caroline's jointure, ; 100,000 
 a year, with Somerset House and Richmond Lodge, 
 was double that which had been granted previously 
 to any queen. This success had been so notoriously 
 the result of Walpole's exertions, that the husband 
 of Caroline, who dealt in very strong terms, began to
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 315 
 
 look complacently on the " rogue and rascal," thought 
 his brother Horace bearable, in spite of his being, as 
 George used to call him, " scoundrel," " fool," and 
 "dirty buffoon," and he even felt less averse than 
 usual to the two secretaries of state of Walpole's ad- 
 ministration, the Duke of Newcastle, the " impertinent 
 fool," whom he had threatened at the christening of 
 William, Duke of Cumberland, and Lord Townshend, 
 whom he was wont to designate as a " choleric block- 
 head." The issue of the affair was that, of Walpole's 
 cabinet, no one went out but the minister's son-in- 
 law, Lord Mai pas, roughly ejected from the master- 
 ship of the robes, and " Stinking Yonge," as the king 
 used elegantly to designate Sir William, who was 
 turned out of the commission of treasury, and whose 
 sole little failings were, that he was " pitiful, corrupt, 
 contemptible, and a great liar," though, as Lord Her- 
 vey says, " rather a mean than a vicious one," which 
 <Joes not seem to me to mend the matter, and which 
 is a distinction without a difference. After all, Sir 
 William only dived to come up fresh again. And 
 Lord Malpas performed the same feat. 
 
 Henceforth it was understood by every lady, says 
 Lord Hervey, " that Sir Robert was the queen's min- 
 ister ; that whoever he favoured she distinguished, 
 and whoever she distinguished the king employed." 
 The queen ruled without seeming to rule. She was 
 mistress by power of suggestion. A word from her 
 in public, addressed to the king, generally earned for 
 her a rebuke. Her consort so pertinaciously de- 
 clared that he was independent, and that she never 
 meddled with public business of any kind, that every 
 one, even the early dupes of the assertion, ceased at
 
 316 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 last to put any faith in it. Caroline " not only med- 
 dled with business, but directed everything which 
 came under that name, either at home or abroad." 
 It is too much, perhaps, to say that her power was 
 unrivalled and ^unbounded, but it was, doubtless, 
 great, and purchased at great cost. That she 
 could induce her husband to employ a man whom 
 he had not yet learned to like, was in itself no small 
 proof of her power, considering the peculiarly obsti- 
 nate disposition of the monarch. 
 
 Her recommendation of Walpole was not based, 
 it is believed, upon any very exalted motives. Wal- 
 pole himself, in his official connections with the 
 sovereign, was certainly likely to take every advan- 
 tage of the opportunity to create favourable convic- 
 tions of his ability. Caroline, in praising his ability 
 to the king, suggested that Sir Robert was rich 
 enough to be honest, and had so little private busi- 
 ness of his own, that he had all the more leisure 
 to devote to that of the king. " New leeches would 
 be not the less hungry ; " and with this very indif- 
 ferent sort of testimony to her favourite's worth 
 Caroline secured a servant for the king and a minister 
 for herself. 
 
 The tact of the queen was so admirable, that the 
 husband, who followed her counsel in all things, 
 never even himself suspected but that he was leading 
 her. This was the very triumph of the queen's art, 
 and the crowning proof of the simplicity and silliness 
 of the king. It is said that he sneered at Charles I. 
 for being governed by his wife ; at Charles II. for 
 being governed by his mistresses ; at James led by 
 priests ; at William duped by men ; at Queen Anne
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 317 
 
 deceived by her favourites ; and at his father, who 
 allowed himself to be ruled by any one who could 
 approach him. And he finished his catalogue of 
 scorn by proudly asking, " Who governs now ? " 
 The courtiers probably smiled behind their jaunty 
 hats. The wits, and some of them were courtiers, 
 too, answered the query more roughly, and they 
 remarked, in rugged rhyme and bad grammar : 
 
 " You may strut, dapper George, but 'twill all be in vain ; 
 We know 'tis Queen Caroline, not you that reign 
 You govern no more than Don Philip of Spain. 
 Then if you would have us fall down and adore you, 
 Lock up your fat spouse, as your dad did before you." 
 
 The two were otherwise described by other poetas- 
 ters, as 
 
 " So strutting a king and so prating a queen." 
 
 It is a fact, at which we need not be surprised, 
 that the most cutting satires against the king, as led 
 by his wife, were from the pens of female writers, 
 or said to be so. And this is likely enough ; for in 
 no quarter is there so much contempt for a man who 
 leans upon, rather than supports, his wife. The 
 court certainly offered good opportunity for the sati- 
 rists to make merry with. It is said of the court of 
 Anne of Brittany, the wife of two Kings of France, 
 Charles VIII. and Louis XII., that it was so re- 
 nowned for the perfection of its morality and correct- 
 ness of conduct, that to gain a bride from amongst 
 the young ladies who composed the suite of the queen 
 was the object of ambition with all the nobles of the
 
 318 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 time, and to be permitted to place their daughters 
 under her eye was the most anxious wish of all 
 the mothers who desired to see them respected and 
 admired. The court of Caroline, it must be con- 
 fessed, was far beneath the high standard of that of 
 the lady who brought the duchy of Brittany with her 
 as a dowry to France. There was not much female 
 delicacy in it, and still less manly dignity, even in 
 the presence of the queen herself. Thus we hear, 
 for instance, of Caroline, one evening, at Windsor, 
 asking Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Townshend 
 where they had dined that day ? My lord replied 
 that he had dined with Lord and Lady Trevor, an 
 aged couple, and the lady remarkable for her more 
 than ordinary plainness. Whereupon Sir Robert, 
 with considerable latitude of expression, intimated, 
 jokingly, that his friend was paying political court to 
 the lord, in order to veil a court of another kind 
 addressed to the lady. Lord Townshend, not under- 
 standing raillery on such a topic, grew angry, and in 
 defending himself against the charge of seducing 
 old Lady Trevor, was not content with employing 
 phrases of honest indignation alone, but used illustra- 
 tions that no " lord " would ever think of using before 
 a lady. Caroline grew uneasy, not at the growing 
 indelicacy of phrase, but at the angry feelings of the 
 Peachum and Lockit of the court : and " to prevent 
 Lord Townshend's replying, or the thing being 
 pushed any further, only laughed, and began immedi- 
 ately to talk on some other subject." ' 
 
 The mention of the heroes in Gay's opera serves 
 to remind me that, in 1729, the influence of the 
 
 1 Lord Hervey's Memoirs, etc., of the Court of Queen Caroline.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 319 
 
 queen was again exerted to lead the king to do what 
 he had not himself dreamed of doing. 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole must have been more "thin- 
 skinned " than he is usually believed to have been, if 
 he could really have felt wounded, as it would appear 
 was the case, by the alleged satire of the " Beggar's 
 Opera." The public would seem to have been the 
 authors of such satire rather than Gay, for they 
 made application of many passages, to which the 
 writer of them probably attached no personal 
 meaning. 
 
 The origin of the piece was certainly not political. 
 It was a mere Newgate pastoral put into an operatic 
 form, and intended to ridicule, what it succeeded 
 in overthrowing for a season, the newly introduced 
 Italian opera. The piece had been refused by Cib- 
 ber, and was accepted by Rich, who brought it out 
 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the 29th of January, 1728, 
 with such success, that it was said of it, that it 
 made Gay rich, and Rich gay. Walker was his 
 Macheath, and Miss Fenton, afterward Duchess of 
 Bolton, the Polly, a character in which she was 
 not approached by either of her three immediate suc- 
 cessors, Miss Warren, Miss Cantrell, or sweet Kitty 
 Clive. Some of the passages, seized upon as satires 
 on Walpole, Townshend, and Walpole's daughter, 
 " Molly Skerrett," seem as harmless of satire as 
 Spiller was, who played Mat o' the Mint, and who 
 shortly after died of apoplexy, while acting in the 
 " Rape of Proserpine ; " a catastrophe which might 
 be as reasonably called a satire upon the apoplectic 
 destiny of George I., as that all the passages of the 
 opera were originally intended as caricatures of the
 
 320 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 administration. Johnson says of the piece that it 
 was plainly written only to divert, without any 
 moral purpose, and therefore not likely to do good. 
 This is the truth, no doubt ; and if Gay put in a few 
 strong passages just previous to representation, it was 
 the public application which gave them double force. 
 Perhaps the application would have been stronger if 
 Quin had originally played, as was intended, the part 
 of Macheath. To step from Macbeth to the high- 
 wayman might have had a political signification given 
 to it ; and, indeed, Quin did play and sing the captain 
 one night for his benefit, just as another great 
 tragedian, Young, did, within our own recollection. 
 However, never had piece such success. It was 
 played at every theatre in the kingdom, and every 
 audience was as keenly alive for passages which 
 could be applied against the court and government, 
 as they were for mere ridicule against the Italian 
 opera. 
 
 Caroline herself was probably not opposed to the 
 morale of the piece. Her own chair-men were sus- 
 pected of being in league with highwaymen, and 
 probably were ; but on their being arrested, and dis- 
 missed from her service by the master of her house- 
 hold, who suspected their guilt, she was indignant at 
 the liberty taken, and insisted on their being re- 
 stored. She had no objection to be safely carried by 
 suspected confederates of highwaymen. 
 
 The poverty of " Polly " could not render it exempt 
 from being made the scapegoat for the " Beggar's 
 Opera," in which Walpole, from whom Gay could not 
 obtain a place, was said to be "shown up," night 
 after night, as a thief, and the friend of thieves. The
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 321 
 
 " Beggar's Opera " had a run before its satire was 
 felt by him against whom it was chiefly directed. 
 "Polly" is very stupid, and not satirical, but it was a 
 favourite with the author. The latter, therefore, was 
 especially annoyed at receiving an injunction from 
 the lord chamberlain's office, obtained at the request 
 of Sir Robert, whereby the representation of " Polly " 
 was forbidden in every theatre. The poet determined 
 to shame his enemies by printing the piece with a 
 smart political supplement annexed. 
 
 Gay was the " spoiled child " of the Duke and 
 Duchess of Queensberry. They espoused his cause, 
 and the duchess was especially active, urgent, and 
 successful in procuring subscriptions, compelling 
 them, by gentle violence, even from the most reluc- 
 tant. This zeal for the vexed poet went so far, that 
 the duchess solicited subscriptions even in the queen's 
 apartment, and in the royal drawing-room. There 
 was something pleasant in making even the courtiers 
 subscribe toward the circulating of a piece which 
 royalty, through its official, had prohibited from 
 being acted. The zealous duchess "was thus busy 
 with three or four gentlemen, in one corner of the 
 room, when the king came upon them, and inquired 
 the nature of her business. " It is a matter of 
 humanity and charity," said her Grace, " and I do not 
 despair but that your Majesty will contribute to it." 
 The monarch disappointed Gay's patroness in this 
 respect, but he exhibited no symptom whatever of 
 displeasure, and left her to her levying occupation. 
 Subsequently, however, in the queen's apartment, the 
 subject was talked over between the royal pair, and 
 not till then did George perceive that the conduct of
 
 322 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the duchess was so impertinent that it was necessary 
 to forbid her appearing again, at least for the present, 
 at court. 
 
 The king's vice-chamberlain, Mr. Stanhope, was 
 despatched with a verbal message to this effect. 
 The manner and the matter equally enraged Gay's 
 patroness, and she delivered a note of acknowledg- 
 ment to the vice-chamberlain, in which she stated 
 that she was both surprised and gratified at the royal 
 and agreeable command to stay away from court, 
 seeing that she had never gone there but for her own 
 diversion, and also from a desire of showing some 
 civility to the king and queen ! The lively lady fur- 
 ther intimated, that perhaps it was as well that they 
 who dared to speak, or even think, truth, should be 
 kept away from a court where it was unpalatable ; 
 although she had thought that in supporting truth 
 and innocence in the palace, she was paying the very 
 highest compliment possible to both their Majesties. 
 
 When the note was completed, the writer gave it 
 to Mr. Stanhope to read. The stiff vice-chamberlain 
 felt rather shocked at the tone, and politely advised 
 the duchess to think better of the matter, and write 
 another note. Her Grace consented, but the second 
 edition was so more highly spiced, and so more pungent 
 than the first, that the officer preferred taking the lat- 
 ter, which he must have placed before king and queen 
 with a sort of decent horror, appropriate to a func- 
 tionary of his polite vocation. The duchess lost the 
 royal favour, and the duke, her husband, lost his 
 posts. 
 
 After all, it seems singular that, while so stupid a 
 piece as " Polly " was prohibited, the representation
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 323 
 
 of the " Beggar's Opera " still went on. The alleged 
 offence was thus seemingly permitted, while visitation 
 was made on an unoffending piece ; and subscriptions 
 for the printing of that piece were asked for, as we 
 have seen, by the Duchess of Queensberry, in the 
 very apartments of the sovereign, who is said to have 
 been most offended at the poet's alleged presumption. 
 
 Other poets and the players advanced in the good 
 will of Caroline and her house by producing pieces 
 complimentary to the Brunswick family. Thus Rich, 
 who had offended the royal family by getting up the 
 "Beggar's Opera," in January, 1728, produced Mrs. 
 Haywood's tragedy of " Frederick, Duke of Bruns- 
 wick-Lunebourg," in March, 1729. The authoress 
 dedicated her play to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and 
 her object in writing it was to represent one of the 
 ancestors of his Royal Highness as raised to the impe- 
 rial throne in consequence of his virtues. It may be 
 a question whether Caroline or her husband, or son, 
 could approve of a subject which exhibited the Bruns- 
 wick monarch falling under the dagger of an assassin. 
 However this may be, the public was indifferent to 
 the piece and its object ; and, after being represented 
 three times, it disappeared for ever and left the stage 
 to be again occupied by the " Beggar's Opera," 
 Peachum (Walpole), Lockit (Townshend), and Mat 
 o' the Mint, type of easy financiers, who gaily bid the 
 public " stand and deliver ! " 
 
 On the first occasion on which George I. left Eng- 
 land to visit Hanover, he appointed the Prince of 
 Wales regent of the kingdom during his absence. 
 The prince, in spite of his limited powers, he was 
 unable to act, on the smallest point, without the
 
 324 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 sanction of ministers, contrived to gain consider- 
 able and well-deserved popularity. George never 
 again allowed him to hold the same honourable 
 office ; and the son and father hated each other ever 
 after. In the May of this year, that son, now king, 
 quitted England in order to visit the electorate, but 
 he did not appoint Frederick, Prince of Wales, as 
 regent during his absence. He delegated that office 
 to the queen, and most probably by the queen's 
 advice. Frederick had not been long in London 
 before the opposition party made him, if not their 
 chief, at least their rallying-point. The prince hated 
 his father heartily and openly, and he had as little 
 regard for his mother. When application was made 
 to Parliament to pay some alleged deficiencies in the 
 civil list, Frederick was particularly severe on the 
 extravagance of his sire, and the method adopted to 
 remedy it. He talked loudly of what he would have 
 done in a similar extremity, or rather of how he would 
 never have allowed himself to fall into so extreme a 
 difficulty. He was doubly in the wrong, " in the 
 first place, for saying what he ought only to have 
 thought ; and, in the next, for not thinking what he 
 ought not to have said." It was not likely, even if 
 the king had been so disposed, that the queen would 
 have consented to an arrangement which would have 
 materially diminished her own consequence. She 
 was accordingly invested with the office of regent, 
 and she performed its duties with a grace and an 
 efficiency which caused universal congratulation that 
 the post had not been confided to other, and neces- 
 sarily weaker, hands. She had Sir Robert Walpole 
 at her side to aid her with his counsel, and the pres-
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 325 
 
 ence of the baronet's enemy, Lord Townshend, with 
 the king, had no effect in damaging the power effect- 
 ively administered by Caroline and her great minister. 
 
 It was not merely during the absence of the king 
 in Hanover that Caroline may be said to have ruled 
 in England. The year 1730 affords us an illustration 
 on this point. 
 
 The dissenters, who had originally consented to 
 the Test and Corporation Acts, upon a most unself- 
 ish ground, for they sacrificed their own interest, 
 in order that the Romanists might be prevented from 
 being admitted to places of power and trust, now 
 demanded the repeal of those acts. The request per- 
 plexed the Crown and ministry, especially when an 
 election was pending. To promise the dissenters 
 (and it was more especially the Presbyterians who 
 moved in this matter) relief, would be to deprive the 
 Crown of the votes of churchmen ; and to reject the 
 petition, would be to set every dissenter against 
 the government and its candidates. Sir Robert 
 Walpole, in his perplexity, looked around for a good 
 genius to rescue him from the dilemma in which he 
 was placed. He paused, on considering Hoadly, 
 Bishop of Salisbury. The bishop was the very deus 
 ex machind, most needed, but he had been shabbily 
 treated on matters of preferment ; and Walpole, who 
 had face for most things, had not the face to ask help 
 from a man whom he had ill-treated. The queen 
 stepped in, and levelled the difficulty. 
 
 Caroline sent for Hoadly to come to her at Ken- 
 sington. She received the prelate with affability, and 
 overwhelmed him with flattery, compliments on his 
 ability, and grateful expressions touching his zeal, and
 
 326 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the value of his services, in the king's cause. She 
 had now, she said, a further service to ask at his 
 hands ; and, of course, it was one which demanded 
 of him no sacrifice of opinion or consistency : the 
 queen would have been the last person to ask such a 
 thing of the reverend prelate ! The service was this. 
 The dissenters required the repeal of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts. The government did not dispute 
 their right to have such a concession made to them, but 
 it did feel that the moment was inconvenient ; and, 
 therefore, Bishop Hoadly, for whom the whole body 
 of dissenters entertained the most profound respect, 
 was solicited to make this opinion known to them, 
 and to induce them to defer their petition to a more 
 favourable opportunity. 
 
 The queen supported her request by such close and 
 cogent arguments, flattered the bishop so adroitly, 
 and drew such a picture of the possibly deplorable 
 results of an attempt to force the repeal of the acts 
 alluded to, at the present moment, that Hoadly may 
 be excused if he began to think that the stability of 
 the house of Hanover depended on the course he 
 should take in this conjuncture. He was not, how- 
 ever, to be cajoled out of his opinions, or his in- 
 dependence ; he pronounced the restrictive acts 
 unreasonable, politically and profane, theologically. 
 He added, that, as a friend to religious and civil lib- 
 erty, he would vote for the repeal, whenever, and by 
 whomsoever, proposed. He should stultify himself, 
 if he did otherwise. All that was in his "little 
 power," consistent with his honour and reputation, 
 he would, nevertheless, willingly do. If he could be 
 clearly convinced that the present moment was un-
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 327 
 
 propitious for pressing the demand, and perilous to 
 the stability of the government, he would not fail 
 to urge upon the dissenters to postpone presenting 
 their petition, until the coming of a more favourable 
 opportunity. 
 
 The out-of-door world no sooner heard of this 
 interview between the queen and the prelate, than a 
 report arose that her Majesty had succeeded in con- 
 vincing the right reverend father that the claims of 
 the dissenters were unreasonable, and that the bishop, 
 as a consequence of such conviction, would hence- 
 forth oppose them resolutely. 
 
 Hoadly became alarmed, for such a report damaged 
 all parties ; and he was very anxious to maintain a 
 character for consistency, and at the same time not 
 to lose his little remnant of interest at court. He 
 tried in vain to get a promise from Sir Robert, that, 
 if the dissenters would defer preferring their claims 
 until the meeting of a new Parliament, it should then 
 meet with the government support. Sir Robert was 
 too wary to make such a promise, although he hinted 
 his conviction of the reasonableness of the claim, and 
 that it would be supported when so preferred. But 
 the bishop, in his turn, was too cautious to allow him- 
 self to be caught by so flimsy an encouragement ; 
 and he was admitted to several subsequent consulta- 
 tions with the queen ; but, clever as she was, she 
 could not move the bishop. Hoadly was resolved 
 that the dissenters should know that, if he thought 
 they might with propriety defer their petition, he 
 would uphold its prayer whenever presented. 
 
 In the meantime, Sir Robert extricated himself and 
 the government cleverly. Caroline doubtless enjoyed
 
 328 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 this exercise of his ability, as well as its results. The 
 dissenters, organising an agitation, had established a 
 central committee in London, all the members of 
 which were bound to Sir Robert ; " all monied men, 
 and scriveners, and chosen by his contrivance. They 
 spoke only to be prompted, and acted only as he 
 guided." ' This committee had a solemnly farcical 
 meeting with the administration, to hold a consulta- 
 tion in the matter. Sir Robert and the speakers 
 confined themselves to the unseasonableness, but 
 commended the reasonableness of the petition. " My 
 lord president looked wise, was dull, took snuff, and 
 said nothing. Lord Harrington (the Mr. Stanhope 
 who had waited on the Duchess of Queensberry) took 
 the same silent, passive part. The lord chancellor 
 (King) and the Duke of Newcastle had done better, 
 had they followed that example, too ; but both spoke 
 very plentifully, and were both equally unintelligible ; 
 the one (King) from having lost his understanding, 
 and the other from never having had any." * 
 
 The committee, after this interview, came to the 
 resolution, that if a petition were presented to Par- 
 liament now, in favour of the repeal of the Test and 
 Corporation Acts, " there was no prospect of suc- 
 cess." This resolution saved the administration from 
 the storm threatened by the Presbyterian party. That 
 party considered itself betrayed by its own delegates, 
 the queen and Sir Robert were well satisfied with the 
 result, and the bishop was looked upon by the dis- 
 senters as having supported their cause too little, and 
 by the queen's cabinet as having supported it too much. 
 
 In this case it may, perhaps, be fairly asserted that 
 
 1 Lord Hervey. * Lord Hervey.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 329 
 
 the queen and the minister, while they punished the 
 dissenters, caused the blame to fall upon the Church. 
 Their chief argument was, that the opposition of the 
 clergy would be a source of the greatest embarrass- 
 ment to the administration. It had long been the 
 fashion to make the Church suffer, at least in repu- 
 tation, on every occasion when opportunity offered, 
 and without any thought as to whether the establish- 
 ment deserved it or not. It was in politics precisely 
 as it was in Sir John Vanbrugh's comedy of the 
 "Provoked Wife." It will be remembered that, in 
 that dramatic mirror, which represents nature as 
 objects are seen reflected in flawed glass, when the 
 tailor enters with a bundle, the elegant Lord Rake 
 exclaims, " Let me see what's in that bundle ! " 
 " An't please you," says the tailor, " it is the doctor 
 of the parish's gown." "The doctor's gown ! " cries 
 my lord, and then, turning to Sir John Brute, he 
 exultingly inquires, or requires, " Hark you, knight ; 
 you won't stick at abusing the clergy, will you ? " 
 " No ! " shouts Brute, " I'm drunk, and I'll abuse 
 anything!" "Then," says Lord Rake, "you shall 
 wear this gown whilst you charge the watch ; that 
 though the blows fall upon you, the scandal may light 
 upon the Church ! " "A generous design, by all the 
 gods ! " is the ecstatic consent of the pantheistic 
 Brute and it is one to which Amen ! has been 
 cried by many of the Brute family, since first it was 
 uttered by their illustrious predecessor. 
 
 Meanwhile, Caroline could be as earnest and inter- 
 ested upon trifles as she was upon questions of 
 political importance. She loved both to plague and 
 to talk about Mrs. Howard.
 
 330 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 That the queen was not more courteous to this 
 lady than their respective positions demanded, there 
 is abundant evidence. In a very early period of the 
 reign, she was required, as bedchamber-woman, to 
 present a basin for the queen to wash her hands in, 
 and to perform the service kneeling. The etiquette 
 was, for the basin and ewer to be set on the queen's 
 table by a page of the back stairs : the office of the 
 bedchamber-woman was then to take both, pour out 
 the water, set it before the queen, and remain kneel- 
 ing while her Majesty washed, of which refreshing 
 ceremony the kneeling attendant was the only one 
 who dared be the ocular witness. 
 
 This service of genuflexion remained in courtly 
 fashion till the death of Queen Charlotte. In the 
 meantime, Mrs. Howard was by no means disposed 
 to render it to Queen Caroline. The scene which 
 ensued was highly amusing. On the service being 
 demanded, said Caroline to Lord Hervey, "Mrs. 
 Howard proceeded to tell me, with her little fierce 
 eyes, and cheeks as red as your coat, that, positively, 
 she would not do it ; to which I made her no answer 
 then in anger, but calmly, as I would have said to a 
 naughty child : ' Yes, my dear Howard, I am sure 
 you will. I know you will. Go, go ; fie for shame ! 
 Go, my good Howard ; we will talk of this another 
 time.' Mrs. Howard did come round ; and I told 
 her," said Caroline, "I knew we should be good 
 friends again ; but could not help adding, in a little 
 more serious voice, that I owned, of all my servants, 
 I had least expected, as I had least deserved it, such 
 treatment from her ; when she knew I had held her 
 up at a time when it was in my power, if I had
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 331 
 
 pleased, any hour of the day, to let her drop through 
 my ringers, thus " 
 
 With what a lumbering process this royal dressing 
 must have been got through. Imperious masters 
 and mistresses, however, sometimes meet with ser- 
 vants who, while doing their office, could render the 
 object of it supremely ridiculous. Witness Turenne 
 passing Louis the Fourteenth's shirt, which that 
 royal gentleman changed but every other day, 
 passing it so rapidly over the head of that Lord's 
 anointed, that the warrior-valet set the long tassels 
 appended to his gloves in violent swing, and there- 
 with most irreverently filliped the august nose of 
 "LEtat c'est moil" But Turenne paid with exile 
 for his joke. 
 
 Caroline's own account of the fracas between Mrs. 
 Howard and her husband, is too characteristic to be 
 passed over. The curious in such matters will find 
 it in full detail in "Lord Hervey's Memoirs." In 
 this place it will suffice to say, that, according to 
 Lord Hervey, Mr. Howard had a personal interview 
 with the queen. Caroline described the circumstances 
 of it with great graphic power. At this interview he 
 had said, that he would take his wife out of her 
 Majesty's coach if he met her in it. Caroline told 
 him to " Do it, if he dare ; though," she added, " I 
 was horribly afraid of him (for we were tlte-d-tSte) 
 all the time I was thus playing the bully. What 
 added to my fear on this occasion," said the queen, 
 " was, that as I knew him to be so brutal, as well as 
 a little mad, and seldom quite sober, so that I did not 
 think it impossible but that he might throw me out 
 of window (for it was in this very room our interview
 
 332 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 was, and that sash then open, as it is now) ; but as 
 soon as I got near the door, and thought myself safe 
 from being thrown out of the window, I resumed my 
 grand tone of queen, and said I would be glad to see 
 who would dare to open my coach door, and take out 
 one of my servants; knowing all the time that he 
 might do so if he would, and that he could have his 
 wife, and I the affront. Then I told him that my 
 resolution was, positively, neither to force his wife to 
 go to him, if she had no mind to it, nor to keep her 
 if she had. He then said he would complain to the 
 king ; upon which I again assumed my high tone, 
 and said, the king had nothing to do with my ser- 
 vants ; and, for that reason, he might save himself 
 the trouble, as I was sure the king would give him no 
 answer but that it was none of his business to con- 
 cern himself with my family ; and after a good deal 
 more conversation of this sort (I standing close to 
 the door all the while to give me courage), Mr. 
 Howard and I bade one another good morning, and 
 he withdrew." 
 
 Caroline proceeded to call Lord Trevor "an old 
 fool," for coming to her with thanks from Mrs. How- 
 ard, and suggestions that the queen should give 
 1,200 a year to the husband for the consent of the 
 latter to his wife's being retained in the queen's 
 household. Caroline replied to this suggestion with 
 as high a tone as she could have used when address- 
 ing herself to Mr. Howard ; but with a coarseness of 
 spirit and sentiment which hardly became a queen, 
 although they do not appear to have been considered 
 unbecoming in a queen at that time. " I thought," 
 said Caroline, " I had done full enough, and that it
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 333 
 
 was a little too much, not only to keep the king's 
 * guenipes ' (trollops) under my roof, but to pay them, 
 too. I pleaded poverty to my good Lord Trevor, and 
 said I would do anything to keep so good a servant 
 as Mrs. Howard about me; but that for the .1,200 
 a year, I really could not afford it." The king used 
 to make presents to the queen of fine Hanoverian 
 horses, not that she might be gratified, but that he 
 might, when he wanted them, have horses maintained 
 out of her purse. So he gave her a bedchamber- 
 woman in Mrs. Howard ; but Caroline would not 
 have her on the same terms as the horses, and the 
 1,200 a year were probably paid not by the king, 
 after all, but by the people. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield describes the figure of Mrs. 
 Howard as being above the middle size, and well- 
 shaped, with a face more pleasing than beautiful. 1 
 She was remarkable for the extreme fairness and 
 fineness of her hair. " Her arms were square and 
 lean, that is, ugly. Her countenance was an un- 
 decided one, and announced neither good nor ill 
 nature, neither sense nor the want of it, neither vivac- 
 ity nor dulness." It is difficult to understand how 
 such a face could be "pleasing ; " and the following is 
 the characteristic of a commonplace person. "She 
 had good natural sense, not without art, but in her 
 conversation dwelt tediously upon details and minu- 
 ties. Of the man whom she had, when very young, 
 hastily married for love, and heartily hated at leisure, 
 Chesterfield says, ' he was sour, dull, and sullen.' " 
 The same writer sets it down as equally unaccount- 
 able that the lady should have loved such a man, or 
 1 Chesterfield's Life and Letters ; edited by Lord Mahon.
 
 334 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 that the man should ever have loved anybody. The 
 noble lord is also of opinion that only a Platonic 
 friendship reigned between the king and the favour- 
 ite ; and that it was as innocent as that which was 
 said to have existed between himself and Miss Bel- 
 lenden. 
 
 Very early during the intercourse, " the busy and 
 speculative politicians of the antechambers, who knew 
 everything, but knew everything wrong," imagined 
 that the lady's influence must be all-powerful, seeing 
 that her admirer paid to her the homage of devoting 
 to her the best hours of his day. She did not reject 
 solicitations, we are told, because she was unwilling 
 to have it supposed that she was without power. 
 She neither rejected solicitations, nor bound herself 
 by promises, but hinted at difficulties ; and, in short, 
 as Chesterfield well expresses it, she used " all that 
 trite cant of those who with power will not, and of 
 those who without power cannot, grant the requested 
 favours." So far from being able to make peers, she 
 was not even successful in a well-meant attempt to 
 procure a place of ^200 a year "for John Gay, a 
 very poor and honest man, and no bad poet, only be- 
 cause he was a poet, which the king considered as a 
 mechanic." Mrs. Howard had little influence, either 
 in the house of the prince, or, when she became 
 Countess of Suffolk, in that of the king. Caroline, 
 we are told, "had taken good care that Lady Suf- 
 folk's apartment should not lead to power and favour ; 
 and from time to time made her feel her inferiority 
 by hindering the king from going to her room for 
 three or four days, representing it as the seat of a 
 political faction."
 
 Hi,) A >ir>l>:>i i :iu,ill. I 
 
 (.III
 
 VGLAND 
 
 have loved anybody. The 
 rd is also of opinion that only a Platonic 
 igned between the king and the favour- 
 ite; and that it was as innocent as that which was 
 said to have existed between himself and Miss Bel- 
 lenden. 
 
 Very early during the intercourse, *' the busy and 
 speculative politicians of the antechambers, who knew 
 everything, but knew everything wrong," imagined 
 that the lady's influence must be all-powerful, seeing 
 that her admirer paid to her the homage of devoting 
 er the best hours of his day. She did not reject 
 
 by promises, but hinted at 
 
 l C' J mull 
 
 a place of 200 a year " for John Gay, a 
 poor and honest man, and no bad poet, only be- 
 
 ;e he was a poet, which the king considered as a 
 mechanic." Mrs. Howard had little influence, either 
 in the house of the prince, or, when she became 
 Countess of Suffolk, in that of the king. Caroline, 
 we are told, "had taken good care that Lady Suf- 
 folk's apartment should not lead to power and favour ; 
 and from time to time made her feel her inferiority 
 
 hinderin. rom going to her roon. 
 
 e or four d. esenting it as the seat of a 
 
 ;-: :.' 
 
 George William Frederick (afterwards George 
 III.) 
 
 Photogravure from the painting by Gainsborough
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ANNE 
 
 Violent Opposition to the King by Prince Frederick Readings at 
 Windsor Castle The Queen's Patronage of Stephen Duck 
 His Melancholy End Glance at Passing Events Precipitate 
 Flight of Doctor Nichols Princess Anne's Determination to 
 Get a Husband Louis XV. Proposed as a Suitor ; Negotiation 
 Broken Off The Prince of Orange's Offer Accepted Ugly 
 and Deformed The King and Queen Averse to the Union 
 Dowry Settled on the Princess Anecdote of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough Illness of the Bridegroom Ceremonies Attend- 
 ant on the Marriage Mortification of the Queen The Public 
 Nuptial Chamber Offence Given to the Irish Peers The 
 Queen and Lady Suffolk Homage Paid by the Princess to Her 
 Deformed Husband Discontent of Prince Frederick His Anx- 
 iety Not Unnatural Congratulatory Addresses by the Lords 
 and Commons Spirited Conduct of the Queen Lord Ches- 
 terfield Agitations on Walpole's Celebrated Excise Scheme 
 Lord Stair Delegated to Remonstrate with the Queen Awk- 
 ward Performance of His Mission Sharply Rebuked by the 
 Queen Details of the Interview The Queen's Success in 
 Overcoming the King's Antipathy to Walpole Comments of 
 the Populace Royal Interview with a Bishop. 
 
 THE social happiness of Caroline began now to be 
 affected by the conduct of her son Frederick, Prince 
 of Wales. Since his arrival in England, in 1728, he 
 had been but coolly entertained by his parents, who 
 refused to pay the debts he had accumulated in Han- 
 over, previous to his leaving the electorate. He was 
 soon in the arms of the opposition ; and the court had 
 
 335
 
 33 6 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 no more violent an enemy, political or personal, than 
 this prince. 
 
 His conduct, however, and some portion of it 
 was far from being unprovoked, did not prevent 
 the court from entering into some social enjoyments 
 of a harmless and not overamusing nature. Among 
 these may be reckoned the " readings " at Windsor 
 Castle. These readings consisted of the poetry, or 
 verses rather, of that Stephen Duck the thresher, 
 whose rhymes Swift has ridiculed in lines as weak as 
 any which ever fell from the pen of Duck. The lat- 
 ter was a Wiltshire labourer, who supported, or tried 
 to support a family upon the modest wages of four 
 and sixpence a week. In his leisure hours, whenever 
 those could have occurred, he cultivated poetry ; and 
 two of his pieces, "The Shunammite," and "The 
 Thresher's Labour," were publicly read in the draw- 
 ing-room at Windsor Castle, in 1730, by Lord Mac- 
 clesfield. Caroline procured for the poet the office 
 of yeoman of the guard, and afterward made him 
 keeper of her grotto, Merlin's Cave, at Richmond. 
 This last act, and the patronage and pounds which 
 Caroline wasted upon the wayward and worthless 
 Savage, show that Swift's epigram upon the busts in 
 the hermitage at Richmond was not based upon 
 truth: 
 
 " Louis the living learned fed, 
 And raised the scientific head. 
 Our frugal queen, to save her meat, 
 Exalts the heads that cannot eat" 
 
 Swift's anger against the queen, who once promised 
 him some medals, but who never kept her word, and
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 337 
 
 from whom he had hoped, perhaps, for a patronage 
 which he failed to acquire, was further illustrated 
 about this time in a fiercely satirical poem, in which 
 he says : 
 
 " May Caroline continue long 
 For ever fair and young in song. 
 What though the royal carcass must, 
 Squeez'd in a coffin, turn to dust? 
 Those elements her name compose, 
 Like atoms, are exempt from blows." 
 
 And, in allusion to the princesses and their pros- 
 pects, he adds, that Caroline "hath graces of her 
 own: " 
 
 " Three Graces by Lucina brought her, 
 Just three, and ev'ry Grace a daughter. 
 Here many a king his heart and crown 
 Shall at their snowy feet lay down ; 
 In royal robes they come by dozens 
 To court their English-German cousins : 
 Besides a pair of princely babies 
 That, five years hence, will both be Hebes." 
 
 The royal patronage of Duck ultimately raised 
 him to the Church, and made of him Vicar of Kew. 
 But it failed to bring to the thresher substantial hap- 
 piness. He had little enjoyment in the station to 
 which he was elevated ; and weary of the restraints 
 it imposed on him, he ultimately escaped from them 
 by drowning himself. 
 
 Of the Graces who were the daughters of Caroline, 
 the marriage of one began now to be canvassed. 
 Meanwhile, there was much food for mere talk in 
 common passing events at home. The courtiers had
 
 338 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 to express sympathy at their Majesties' being upset 
 in their carriage, when travelling only from Kew to 
 London. Then the son of a Stuart had just died 
 in London. He was that Duke of Cleveland who 
 was the eldest son of Charles II. and Barbara Villiers. 
 In the year 1731 died two far more remarkable peo- 
 ple. On the 8th of April, "Mrs. Elizabeth Crom- 
 well, daughter of Richard Cromwell, the Protector, 
 and granddaughter of Oliver Cromwell, died at her 
 house in Bedford Row, in the eighty-second year of 
 her age." In the same month passed away a man 
 whose writings as much amused Caroline as they 
 have done commoner people, Defoe. He had a 
 not much superior intellectual training to that of 
 Stephen Duck, but he was " one of the best English 
 writers that ever had so mean an education." The 
 deaths in the same year of the eccentric and profli- 
 gate Duke of Wharton, and of the relict of that Duke 
 of Monmouth who lost his head for rebellion against 
 James II., gave further subject of conversation in the 
 court circle ; where, if it was understood that death 
 was inevitable and necessary, no one could under- 
 stand what had induced Doctor Nichols, of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, to steal books from the libraries 
 in that university town. The court was highly merry 
 at the precipitate flight of the doctor, after he was 
 found out ; but there was double the mirth the next 
 year at the awkwardness of the Emperor of Germany, 
 who, happening to fire at a stag, chanced to shoot 
 Prince Schwartzenberg, his master of the horse. 
 But we turn from these matters to those of wooing 
 and marriage. 
 
 In the year 1733, the proud and eldest daughter
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 339 
 
 of Caroline, she who had expressed her vexation at 
 having brothers, who stood between her and the 
 succession to the crown a crown, to wear which 
 for a day, she averred she would willingly die when 
 the day was over in the year above named, the 
 Princess Anne had reached the mature age of twenty- 
 four, and her hand yet remained disengaged. Neither 
 crown nor suitor had yet been placed at her disposal. 
 A suitor with a crown was once, however, very nearly 
 on the point of fulfilling the great object of her 
 ambition, and that when she was not more than six- 
 teen years of age. The lover proposed was no less 
 a potentate than Louis XV., and he would have 
 offered her a seat on a throne which, proud as she 
 was, she might have accepted without much con- 
 descension. She would have accepted the pleasant 
 destiny which appeared framed for her, with more 
 alacrity than the last English princess who had been 
 wooed by Gallic king with more readiness than 
 Mary of England displayed when she reluctantly left 
 the court of her brother, Henry VIII., and the Duke 
 of Brandon there, to espouse all that survived of the 
 once gay and gallant Louis XII. 
 
 It is said that the proposal to unite Louis XV. and 
 the Princess Anne originated with the French minis- 
 ter, the Duke de Bourbon, and that the project was 
 entertained with much favour and complacency, until 
 it suddenly occurred to some one that if the princess 
 became queen in France, she would be expected to 
 conform to the religion of France. This, it was 
 urged, could not be thought of by a family which 
 was a reigning family only by virtue of its preeminent 
 Protestantism. It does not seem to have occurred
 
 340 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 to any one that when Maria Henrietta espoused 
 Charles I., she had not been even asked to become 
 a professed member of the Church of England, and 
 that we might have asked for the same toleration in 
 France for the daughter of Caroline, as had been 
 given in England to the daughter of the "Grand 
 Henri." However this may be, the affair was not 
 pursued to its end, and Caroline could not say to her 
 daughter, what we have recorded that Stanislas said 
 to his on the morning he received an offer for her 
 from the young King Louis : " Bon jour I ma fille : 
 vous Ites Reine de France ! " 
 
 Anne was unlucky. She was deprived of her suc- 
 cession to the crown of England by the birth of her 
 brothers, and she was kept back from that of France 
 by a question of religion. She lived moodily on for 
 some half-dozen years, and, nothing more advantage- 
 ous offering, she looked good-naturedly on one of the 
 ugliest princes in Europe. But then he happened 
 to be a sovereign prince in his way. This was the 
 Prince of Orange, who resembled Alexander the 
 Great only in having a wry neck and a halt in his 
 gait. But he also had other deformities from which 
 the Macedonian was free. 
 
 George and Caroline were equally indisposed to 
 accept the prince for a son-in-law, and the parental 
 disinclination was expressed in words to the effect 
 that neither king nor queen would force the feelings 
 of their daughter, whom they left free to accept or 
 reject the misshapen suitor who aspired to the plump 
 hand and proud person of the Princess Anne. 
 
 The lady thought of her increasing years ; that 
 lovers were not to be found on every bush, especially
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 341 
 
 sovereign lovers ; and, remembering that there were 
 princesses of England before her who had contrived 
 to live in much state and a certain degree of happi- 
 ness as Princesses of Orange, she declared her inten- 
 tion of following the same course, and compelling 
 her ambition to stoop to the same modest fortune. 
 
 The queen was well aware that her daughter knew 
 nothing more of the prince than what she could 
 collect from his counterfeit presentments limned by 
 flattering artists ; and Caroline suggested that she 
 should not be too ready to accept a lover whom she 
 had not seen. The princess was resolute in her 
 determination to take him at once, " for better, for 
 worse." Her royal father was somewhat impatient 
 and chafed by such pertinacity, and exclaimed that 
 the prince was the ugliest man in Holland, and he 
 could not more terribly describe him. " I do not 
 care," said she, " how ugly he may be. If he were a 
 Dutch baboon I would marry him." " Nay, then, have 
 your way," said George, in his strong Westphalian 
 accent, which was always rougher and stronger when 
 he was vexed, " have your way : you will find baboon 
 enough, I promise you ! " 
 
 It would hardly be safe, seldom flattering, at the 
 best of times, for candidates for the office of " son-in- 
 law " to hear their merits, persons, and prospects 
 discussed by the family circle into which they are 
 seeking to make entrance. Could the aspiring Prince 
 of Orange only have heard how amiably he was 
 spoken of enfamille by his future relations, he would 
 perhaps have been less ambitious of completing the 
 alliance. Happily these family secrets were not 
 revealed until long after he could be conscious of
 
 342 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 them, and accordingly his honest proposals were 
 accepted with ostentatious respect and ill-covered 
 ridicule. 
 
 Caroline spoke of the bridegroom as "the animal." 
 His intended wife, when she heard of his arrival, was 
 in no hurry to meet him, but went on at her harpsi- 
 chord, surrounded by a number of opera people. 
 When the poor " groom " fell sick, not one of the 
 royal family condescended to visit him, and though he 
 himself maintained a dignified silence on this insulting 
 conduct, his suite, who could not imitate their master's 
 indifference, made comment thereupon loud and fre- 
 quent enough. They got nothing by it, save being 
 called Dutch boobies. The princess royal exhibited 
 no outward manifestation either of consciousness or 
 sympathy. She appeared precisely the same under 
 all contingencies ; and whether the lover were in or 
 out of England, in life or out of it, seemed to this 
 strong-minded lady to be one and the same thing. 
 
 The marriage of the princess royal could not be 
 concluded without an application to Parliament. To 
 both houses a civil intimation was made of the pro- 
 posed union of the Princess Anne and the Prince of 
 Orange. In this intimation the king graciously men- 
 tioned that he promised himself the concurrence and 
 assistance of the Commons to enable him to give such 
 a portion with his eldest daughter as should be suit- 
 able to the occasion. The Commons' committee 
 promised to do all that the king and queen could 
 expect from them, and they therefore came to the 
 resolution to sell lands in the island of St. Christopher 
 to the amount of ^80,000, and to make over that 
 sum to the king, as the dowry of his eldest daughter.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 343 
 
 The resolution made part of a bill of which it was 
 only one of the items, and the members in the House 
 affected to be scandalised that the dowry of a princess 
 of England should be "lumped in " among a mass of 
 miscellaneous items, charities to individuals, grants 
 to old churches, and sums awarded for even less dig- 
 nified purposes. But the bill passed as it stood, and 
 Caroline, who only a few days before had sent a 
 thousand pounds to the provost of Queen's College, 
 Oxford, for the rebuilding and adorning of that 
 college, was especially glad to find a dowry for her 
 daughter, in whatever company it might come, pro- 
 vided only it was not out of her own purse. 
 
 The news of the securing of the dowry hastened 
 the coming of the bridegroom. On the 7th of No- 
 vember, 1732, he arrived at Greenwich, and thence 
 proceeded to Somerset House. The nuptials were to 
 have been speedily solemnised, but the lover fell 
 grievously sick. No philtre could restore him suf- 
 ficiently to appear at the altar on the day originally 
 appointed, and the marriage was deferred amid a 
 world of sighs. There was no one whom the post- 
 ponement of the marriage more annoyed than it did 
 the Duchess of Marlborough. She was then residing 
 in Marlborough House, which had been built some 
 five and twenty years previously by Wren. That 
 architect was employed, not because he was preferred, 
 but that Vanbrugh might be vexed. The ground, in 
 which had formerly been kept the birds and fowls 
 ultimately destined to pass through the kitchen to 
 the royal table, had been leased to the duchess by 
 Queen Anne, and the expenses of building amounted 
 to nearly .50,000. The duchess both experienced
 
 344 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and caused considerable mortifications here. She 
 used to speak of the king in the adjacent palace as 
 her " neighbour George." The entrance to the house, 
 from Pall Mall, was, as it still is, a crooked and in- 
 convenient one. To remedy this defect, she intended 
 to purchase some houses "in the Priory," as the 
 locality was called, for the purpose of pulling them 
 down and constructing a more commodious entry to 
 the mansion ; but Sir Robert Walpole, with no more 
 dignified motive than mere spite, secured the houses 
 and ground, and erected buildings on the latter, which, 
 as now, completely blocked in the front of the duch- 
 ess's mansion. She was subjected to a more tem- 
 porary, but as inconvenient, blockade, when the 
 preparations for the wedding of the imperious Anne 
 and her ugly husband were going on. Among other 
 preparations a boarded gallery, through which the 
 nuptial procession was to pass, was built up close 
 against the duchess's windows, completely darkening 
 her rooms. As the boards remained there during 
 the postponement of the ceremony, the duchess used 
 to look at them with the remark, " I wish the prin- 
 cess would oblige me by taking away her orange 
 chest ! " 
 
 But the sick bridegroom took long to mend ; and 
 it was not till the following January that he was even 
 sufficiently convalescent to journey by easy stages to 
 Bath, and there drink in health at the fashionable 
 pump. A month's attendance there restored him to 
 something like health ; and in February his Serene 
 Highness was gravely disporting himself at Oxford, 
 exchanging compliments and eating dinners with the 
 sages and scholars at that seat of learning. Another
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 34$ 
 
 month was allowed to pass, and then, on the 24th 
 March, 1783, the royal marriage was solemnised "in 
 the French Chapel," St. James's, by the Bishop of 
 London. 
 
 The ceremony was as theatrical and coarse as such 
 things used to be in those days. The prince must 
 have looked very much as M. Potier used to look in 
 Riquet a la Houppe, before his transformation from 
 deformity to perfection. He was attired in a " cloth 
 of gold suit ; " and George and Caroline may be par- 
 doned if they smiled at the " baboon " whom they 
 were about to accept for their son-in-law. The bride 
 was "in virgin robes of silver tissue, having a train 
 six yards long, which was supported by ten dukes' 
 and earls' daughters, all of whom were attired in 
 robes of silver tissue." The ceremony took place 
 in the evening, and at midnight the royal family 
 supped in public. It was a joyous festival, and not 
 before two in the morning did the jaded married 
 couple retire to the bower prepared for them, where 
 they had to endure the further nuisance of sitting up 
 in bed, in rich undresses, while the court and nobility, 
 " fresh " from an exhilarating supper and strong 
 wines, defiled before them, making pleasant remarks 
 the while, as " fine gentlemen " used to make, who 
 had been born in our Augustan age. 
 
 The married couple were assuredly a strangely 
 assorted pair. The bride, indeed, was not without 
 commonplace charms. In common with the dairy- 
 maid, the princess had a lively clear look and a very 
 fair complexion. Like many a dairymaid, too, of the 
 time, she was very much marked with the smallpox. 
 She was also ill-made, and inclined to become as obese
 
 346 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 as her royal mother. But then the bridegroom ! All 
 writers dealing with the subject agree that his ugli- 
 ness was something extraordinary. No one doubts 
 that he was deformed ; but Hervey adds some traits 
 that are revolting. His Serene Highness did not, 
 like the gods, distil a celestial ichor.' He appears, 
 however, not to have been void of sense or good feel- 
 ing ; for when, at the period of his arrival, he was 
 received with very scanty honours and cold ceremony, 
 was made to feel that he was nothing in himself, and 
 could only become anything here by marrying an Eng- 
 lish princess ; when George, if not Caroline, " snubbed " 
 the courtiers who crowded his apartments at Somerset 
 House; and when, in short, the prince of ; 12,000 a 
 year was made to feel that but little value was set 
 upon him, he bore it all in silence, or as if he did 
 not perceive it. Let us hope that gallantry for the 
 lady induced the princely Quasimodo thus to act. 
 It was almost more than she deserved ; for while the 
 people were ready to believe that the alliance was 
 entered into the better to strengthen the Protestant 
 succession, Anne herself was immediately moved 
 thereto by fear, if she were left single, of ultimately 
 depending for a provision upon her brother Frederick. 
 Nature will assert its claims in spite of pride or 
 expediency; and accordingly it was observed that, 
 after the bridegroom had arrived, and the marriage 
 procession began to move through the temporarily 
 constructed gallery, blazing with light, and glittering 
 with bright gems and brighter eyes, the bride herself 
 seemed slightly touched, and Caroline especially grave 
 and anxious in her deportment. She appeared, for 
 the first time, to feel that her daughter was about to
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 347 
 
 make a great sacrifice, and her consequent anxiety 
 was probably increased by the conviction that it was 
 too late to save her daughter from impending fate. 
 The king himself, who had never been in the eager 
 condition of the seigneur in the song, who so per- 
 emptorily exclaims : 
 
 " De ma fille Isabella 
 Sois te'poux a Pinstant, " 
 
 manifested more impassibility than ever. Finally, 
 the knot was tied under a salvo of artillery and a 
 world of sighs. 
 
 The sublime and the ridiculous stood in close 
 familiarity in the public nuptial chamber in the even- 
 ing. According to custom, as before stated, all the 
 court met in this apartment to congratulate the 
 newly married pair, who were attired in fancy night- 
 dresses of little taste and great splendour. 
 
 Caroline felt compassion for her daughter, but she 
 restrained her feelings until her eye fell upon the 
 bridegroom. In his silver tissue nightdress, his light 
 peruque, his ugliness and his deformity, he struck her 
 as the impersonation of a monster. His ill figure 
 was so ill dressed, that, looked at from behind, he 
 appeared to have no head, and seen from before, he 
 appeared as if he had neither neck nor legs. 1 The 
 queen was wonderfully moved at the sight ; moved 
 with pity for her daughter, and with indignation at 
 her husband. The portion of the ceremony which 
 used to be the merriest was by far the most mourn- 
 ful, at least so far as the queen's participation therein 
 was concerned. She fairly cried with mingled vexa- 
 
 1 Lord Hervey.
 
 348 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 tion, disappointment, and disgust. She could not 
 even revert to the subject, for days after, without 
 crying, and yet laughing too, as the oddity of the 
 bridegroom's ugliness came across her mind. And 
 indeed that happy man, although he could not have 
 said of his bride, except by comparison, 
 
 " Grands dieux, combien elle est jolie ! " 
 he might with good reason have sung of himself : 
 " Et moi, je suis, je suis si laid." 
 
 It may be asserted, without much fear of contra- 
 diction, that a wedding of any pretension at all is 
 seldom got through without offence to somebody. 
 The wedding of the Princess Anne was one of more 
 than mere pretensions, and the ceremonial arrange- 
 ments gave rise to many ill feelings. The Irish 
 peers, above all others, felt themselves insulted, and 
 were warmly resentful, as was only natural under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 Lord Hervey was the master of the ceremonies on 
 this serio-comic occasion. According to his table of 
 precedence, the Irish peers were to walk in the pro- 
 cession after the entire body of the peerage of Great 
 Britain. This was putting the highest Irish peer 
 beneath the lowest baron in Britain. The Hibernian 
 lords claimed to walk immediately after the English 
 and Scotch peers of their own degree. It was the 
 most modest claim ever made by that august body ; 
 but modest as it was, the arrogant peers of Great 
 Britain threatened, if the claim were allowed, to 
 absent themselves from the ceremony altogether!
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 349 
 
 The case was represented to Caroline, and she took 
 the side of right and common sense ; but when she 
 was told that to allow the Irish claim would be to 
 banish every British peer from the solemn ceremony, 
 she was weak enough to give way. Lord Hervey, 
 in his programme for the occasion, omitted to make 
 any mention of the peers of Ireland at all thus 
 leaving them to walk where they could. On being 
 remonstrated with, he said that if the Irish lords 
 were not satisfied, he would keep all the finery stand- 
 ing, and they might walk through it in any order of 
 precedency they liked, on the day after the wedding. 
 One lord grievously complained of the omission of 
 the illustrious Hibernian body from the programme. 
 Lord Hervey excused himself by remarking, that as 
 the Irish House of Peers was then sitting in Dublin, 
 he never thought, being an Englishman, of the 
 august members of that assembly being in two places 
 at once. 
 
 The claim was probably disallowed because Ire- 
 land was not then in union with England, as Scotland 
 was. On no other ground could the claim have been 
 refused ; and Caroline saw that even that ground was 
 not a very good one whereon to rest a denial. As it 
 was, the Irish peers felt like poor relations, neither 
 invited to nor prohibited from the joyous doings, but 
 with a thorough conviction that, to use a popular 
 phrase, their room was deemed preferable to their 
 company. 
 
 During the week following the marriage, Frederick, 
 Prince of Wales, was employed, after a fashion which 
 suited his tastes extremely well, in escorting his 
 brother-in-law to witness the sights of London. It
 
 350 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 then appears to have suddenly struck the govern- 
 ment that it would be as well to make an English- 
 man of the bridegroom, and that that consummation 
 could not be too quickly arrived at. Accordingly, a 
 bill for naturalising the prince was brought in and 
 read three times on the same day. It, of course, 
 passed unanimously, and the prince received the in- 
 telligence of his having been converted into a Briton 
 with a phlegm which showed that he had not alto- 
 gether ceased to be a Dutchman. 
 
 He was much more pleasurably excited in the 
 April of the following year, when he heard that the 
 king had sent a written message to the Commons, 
 intimating that he had settled five thousand a year 
 on the princess royal, and desiring that they would 
 enable him to make the grant for the life of the prin- 
 cess, as it would otherwise determine on his Majesty's 
 death. The Commons complied with this message, 
 and the Prince of Orange was infinitely more delighted 
 with this act than with that which bestowed on him 
 the legal rights of an Englishman. 
 
 This pleasant little arrangement having been con- 
 cluded, the prince and princess set out for Holland, 
 from St. James's, on the loth of April, 1734; and 
 in July of the same year the princess was again in 
 England, not at all to the satisfaction of her sire, 
 and but very scantily to the delight of her mother. 
 The young lady, however, was determined to remain ; 
 and it was not till November that she once more 
 returned to her home behind the dykes. The queen 
 was not sorry to part with her, for just then she was 
 deep in the fracas connected with the dismissal of 
 her husband's "favourite," Lady Suffolk, from her
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 351 
 
 office of mistress of the robes to her Majesty, an 
 office in which she was succeeded by the more worthy 
 Countess of Tankerville. The king had the less time 
 to be troubled with thought about "that old deaf 
 woman," as he very ungallantly used to call his 
 ancient "favourite," as he too was deeply engaged 
 in protesting against the Elector Palatine, who had 
 been very vigorously protesting against the right of 
 the king, as Elector of Hanover, to bear the title of 
 arch-treasurer of the empire. 
 
 But if Caroline began to forget her daughter, 
 Anne was borne in remembrance by her sister, 
 Amelia. 
 
 The commiseration which the queen had felt for her 
 daughter was shared by the sister of the latter, the 
 Princess Amelia, who declared that nothing on earth 
 could have induced her to wed with such a man as 
 the Prince of Orange. Her declaration was accepted 
 for as much as it was worth. The gentle Princess 
 Caroline, on the other hand, thought that her sister, 
 under the circumstances, had acted wisely, and that, 
 had she been so placed, she would have acted in like 
 manner. Nor did the conduct of the bride give the 
 world any reason to think that she stood in need of 
 pity. She appeared to adore the " monster," who, it 
 must be confessed, exhibited no particular regard for 
 his spouse. The homage she paid him was perfect. 
 " She made prodigious court to him," says Lord 
 Hervey, " addressed everything she said to him, and 
 applauded everything he said to anybody else." 
 
 Perhaps the pride of the princess would not per- 
 mit a doubt to be thrown upon her supreme happi- 
 ness. Her brother Frederick strove to mar it by
 
 352 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 raising a quarrel, on a slight, but immensely absurd, 
 foundation. He reproached her for the double fault 
 of presuming to be married before him, and of accept- 
 ing a settlement from her father, when he had none. 
 He was ingenious in finding fault, but there may 
 have been a touch of satire in this, for Anne was 
 known to have been as groundlessly angry with her 
 brother for a circumstance which he could not very 
 well help, namely, his own birth, whereby the prin- 
 cess royal ceased to be next heir to the crown. 
 
 The prince, however, was not much addicted to 
 showing respect to anybody, least of all to his 
 mother. It was because of this miserable want of 
 respect for the queen that the king, in an inter- 
 view forced on him by his son, refused to settle 
 a fixed annuity upon him, at least till he had 
 manifested a more praiseworthy conduct toward the 
 queen. 
 
 The anxiety of Frederick on this occasion was not 
 unnatural, for he was deeply in debt, and of the 
 1 00,000 granted to the prince by Parliament out of 
 the civil list, the king allowed him only ,36,000. 
 The remainder was appropriated by the king, who 
 doubtless made his son's conduct the rule of his 
 liberality, measuring his supplies to the prince, 
 according as the latter was well or ill behaved. It 
 was a degrading position enough, and the degrada- 
 tion was heightened by the silent contempt with 
 which the king passed over his son's application to 
 be permitted to join in active service. Throughout 
 these first family quarrels, the queen preserved a 
 great impartiality, with some leaning, perhaps, to- 
 ward serving her son. Nothing, however, came
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 353 
 
 of it ; and, for the moment, Frederick was fain to be 
 content with doing the honours of the metropolis 
 to his ungraceful brother-in-law. 
 
 The congratulatory addresses which were pre- 
 sented on the occasion of the marriage, had a mor- 
 dantly satirical tone about them. It is wonderful 
 how George and Caroline, whose unpopularity was 
 increasing at this time, continued to preserve their 
 equanimity at hearing praises rung on the name and 
 services of '"Orange," the name of a prince who 
 had become King of England, by rendering the 
 questionable service to his father-in-law of turning 
 him off the throne. 
 
 The address of the lords to the queen, especially 
 congratulating the mother on the marriage of her 
 daughter, was rendered painful instead of pleasant, 
 by its being presented, that is, spoken, to her by 
 Lord Chesterfield. Caroline had never seen this 
 peer since the time he was dismissed from her hus- 
 band's household, when she was Princess of Wales. 
 He had not been presented at court since the acces- 
 sion of the present sovereign, and the queen was 
 therefore resolved to treat as an utter stranger the 
 man who had been impertinent enough to declare he 
 designed that the step he took should be considered 
 as a compliment to the queen. The latter abhorred 
 him, nevertheless, for his present attempt to turn the 
 compliment, addressed to her by the lords, into a 
 joke. Before he appeared, Caroline intimated her 
 determination not to let the peer's cool impertinence 
 awe or disconcert her. He really did find what she 
 declared he should, that " it was as little in his power 
 for his presence to embarrass her, as for his raillery
 
 354 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 behind her back to pique her, or his consummate 
 skill in politics to distress the king or his min- 
 isters." ' 
 
 The queen acted up to this resolution. She 
 received Lords Chesterfield, Scarborough, and Hard- 
 wicke, the bearers of the address, in her bedchamber, 
 no one else being present but her children and Lord 
 Hervey, who stood behind her chair. The last-named 
 nobleman, in describing the scene, says : " Lord 
 Chesterfield's speech was well written and well got 
 by heart, and yet delivered with a faltering voice, 
 a face as white as a sheet, and every limb trembling 
 with concern. The queen's answer was quiet and 
 natural, and delivered with the same ease that she 
 would have spoken to the most indifferent person 
 in her circle." 
 
 Caroline, however, had more serious matters to 
 attend to during this year than affairs of marriage. 
 Of these we will now briefly speak. 
 
 Sir Robert Walpole's celebrated excise scheme 
 was prolific in raising political agitations, and exciting 
 both political and personal passions. The peers 
 were, strangely enough, even more resolute against 
 the measure than the Commons ; or perhaps it would 
 be more correct to say, that a portion of them took 
 advantage of the popular feeling to further thereby 
 their own particular interests and especial objects. 
 
 It is again illustrative of the power and influence 
 of Caroline, and of the esteem in which she was held, 
 that a body of the peers delegated Lord Stair to 
 proceed to the queen, at Kensington, and remon- 
 strate with her upon the unconstitutional and des- 
 
 1 Lord Hervey.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 355 
 
 tructive measure, as they designated the excise 
 project. 
 
 Lord Stair was a bold man, and was accustomed 
 to meet and contend with sovereigns. He had not 
 only on many an occasion foiled the King and the 
 Regent of France, but he had defeated the Polish 
 monarch in a way he loved to boast of. That poten- 
 tate, when Lord Stair was residing at Warsaw, once 
 very much astonished the Scotch nobleman, by ex- 
 hibiting a feat which he accomplished with singular 
 strength and dexterity. It was this : grasping a 
 sword, and giving it a peculiar swing, or twist in the 
 air, ending with a sudden jerk, he would cause 
 the blade to break off close at the handle. He 
 boasted that he could produce the same effect with 
 any sword. Lord Stair defied him to the trial, and 
 brought him a stout Scottish broadsword, which 
 successfully resisted all the attempts, strength, and 
 skill of the iron-wristed monarch, to fracture it. He 
 acknowledged his defeat, and struck a medal to com- 
 memorate that rare occurrence. On one side was 
 the emblazoned shield of Poland, on the other a 
 naked arm brandishing a sword, with the motto 
 beneath, Vis tandem inaqualis. Lord Stair, so 
 accustomed to foil sovereigns, had no doubt of being 
 able to turn Caroline to his purpose. But the queen 
 twisted him as Augustus had the weapons of Conti- 
 nental manufacture. She shivered the Scottish blade 
 to boot ; and the noble lord himself might have 
 retired from the interview muttering, Vis tandem 
 incequalis, My strength has at length been unequal 
 to what it was tried upon. 
 And no wonder; for never did delegate perform
 
 356 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 his mission so awkwardly. He thought to awaken 
 the queen's indignation against Walpole, by impart- 
 ing to her the valuable admonitory knowledge that 
 she was ruled by that subtle statesman. He fancied 
 he improved his position by informing her that Wal- 
 pole was universally hated, that he was no gentle- 
 man, and that he was as ill-looking as he was 
 ill-inclined. He even forgot his mission, save when 
 he spoke of fidelity to his constituents, by going into 
 purely personal matters, railing at the minister whose 
 very shoe-buckles he had kissed, in order to be 
 appointed vice-admiral of Scotland, when the Duke 
 of Queensberry was ejected from that post, and 
 accusing Walpole of being manifestly untrue to the 
 trust which he held, seeing that whenever there 
 was an office to dispose of, he invariably preferred 
 giving it to the Campbells rather than to him, 
 Stair. To the Campbells ! he reiterated, as if the 
 very name were enough to rouse Caroline against 
 Walpole. To the Campbells! who tried to rule 
 England by means of the king's mistress ; opposed 
 to governing it by means of the king's wife. 
 
 Caroline heard him with decent and civil patience 
 until he had gone through his list of private griev- 
 ances, and began to meddle with matters personal 
 to herself and the royal hearth, if I may use such 
 a term. She then burst forth, and was superb in 
 her rebuke, superb in its matter and manner, 
 superb in her dignity and in the severity with which 
 she crushed Lord Stair beneath her fiery sarcasms 
 and her withering contempt. She ridiculed his asser- 
 tions of fidelity, and told him he had become traitor 
 to his own country, and the betrayer of his own
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 357 
 
 constituents. She mocked his complacent assur- 
 ances that his object was not personal, but patriotic. 
 She professed her intense abhorrence of having the 
 private dissensions of noblemen ripped open in her 
 presence, and bade him learn better manners than 
 to speak, as he had done, of " the king's servants to 
 the king's wife." 
 
 "My conscience," said Lord Stair. 
 
 "Don't talk to me of your conscience, my lord," 
 said Caroline, "or I shall faint." The conversation 
 was in French, and the queen's precise words were, 
 " Ne me parlez point de conscience, milord ; vous me 
 faites eVanouir." 
 
 The Scottish lord was sadly beaten down, and 
 confessed his disgraceful defeat, by requesting her 
 Majesty to be good enough to keep what had passed 
 at the interview, as a secret. He added, in French, 
 " Madame, le roi est tromp6, et vous etes trahie," 
 The king is deceived, and you are betrayed. He 
 had previously alluded to Lords Bolingbroke and 
 Carteret, as men worthy indeed to be trusted, 
 and who had the honour and glory of the kingdom 
 at heart. These names, with such testimonial 
 attached to them, especially excited the royal indig- 
 nation. "Bolingbroke and Carteret!" exclaimed 
 Caroline. " You may tell them from me, if you will, 
 that they are men of no parts ; that they are said to 
 be two of the greatest liars in any country ; and that 
 my observation and experience confirm what is said 
 of them." ' 
 
 It will be seen from this, that the period was one 
 when even very great people indulged in very strong 
 
 1 Lord Hervey.
 
 358 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 terms, and that Caroline was not behind her husband 
 in the power of flinging violent epithets, when she 
 was in the humour, and opportunity offered. 
 
 Stair reiterated his request that the incidents of 
 the private interview should not be further spoken 
 of. Caroline consented, and she must have felt some 
 contempt for him as he also promisedUhat he would 
 keep them secret, giving knowledge thereof to no 
 man. . 
 
 " Well ? " said Carteret inquiringly, as he met with 
 Lord Stair, after this notable interview with Caroline. 
 
 " Well ! " exclaimed Lord Stair, " I have staggered 
 her ! " A pigmy might as well have boasted of having 
 staggered Thalestris and Hippolyte. 
 
 A short time subsequently, Lord Hervey was with 
 the queen in her apartment, purveying to her, as he 
 was wont to do, the floating news of the day. Among 
 other things, he told her of an incident in a debate in 
 Parliament upon the army supplies. In the course 
 of the discussion, Carteret had observed that, at 
 the period when Cardinal Mazarin was ruining 
 France by his oppressive measures, a great man 
 sought an audience of the queen (Anne of Austria, 
 mother of the young King Louis XIV.), and after 
 explaining to her the perils of the times, ended 
 with the remark that she was maintaining a man 
 at the helm, who deserved to be rowing in the 
 galleys. 
 
 Caroline immediately knew that Lord Stair had 
 revealed what he had petitioned her to keep secret ; 
 and feeling that she was thereby exonerated from 
 observing further silence, her Majesty took the op- 
 portunity to " out with it all," as she said in not less
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 359 
 
 choice French : " J'ai pris la premiere occasion d'6go- 
 siller tout." 
 
 Reverting to Carteret's illustration, she observed 
 that the " great man " noticed by him was Cond6, a 
 man who never had a word to say against Mazarin, as 
 long as the cardinal fed a rapacity which could never 
 be satisfied. This was, in some degree, Stair's posi- 
 tion with regard to Walpole. " Cond, in his inter- 
 view with the Queen of France," observed the well 
 read Queen of England, " had for his object to 
 impose upon her and France, by endeavouring to per- 
 suade her that his private resentments were only a 
 consequence of his zeal for the public service." 
 
 Lord Hervey, very gallantly and courtier-like, 
 expressed his wish that her Majesty could have 
 been in the House to let the senate know her wis- 
 dom ; or that she could have been concealed there, 
 to have had the opportunity of saying with Agrip- 
 pine : 
 
 " Derriere une voile, invisible, et prdsente, 
 Je fus de ce grand corps 1'ame toute puissante." 
 
 The quotation, perhaps, could not have been alto- 
 gether applicable, but as Lord Hervey quoted it, and 
 " my lord " was a man of wit, it is doubtless as well 
 placed as wit could make it. The queen, at all events, 
 took it as a compliment, laughed, and declared, that 
 often when she was with these impatient fellows, ever 
 ready with their unreasonable remonstrances, she was 
 tempted herself to say, with Agrippine, that she 
 was 
 
 " Fille, femme, et mere de vos maitres,"
 
 360 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a quotation less applicable, even, than the former, but 
 in which Lord Hervey detected such abundance of 
 wit that he went into a sort of ecstasy of delight 
 at the queen's judgment, humour, knowledge, and 
 ability. 
 
 When the Excise Bill was for the first time brought 
 before the House, the debate lasted till one in the 
 morning. Lord Hervey, during the evening, wrote 
 an account of its progress to the king and queen ; 
 and when he repaired to the palace at the conclusion 
 of the discussion, the king kept him in the queen's 
 bedchamber, talking over the scene, till three o'clock 
 in the morning, and never for a moment remembered 
 that the hungry intelligencer had not dined since the 
 yesterday. 
 
 When the clamour against the bill rose to such a 
 pitch that all England, the army included, seemed 
 ready to rise against it, Walpole offered himself as a 
 personal sacrifice, if the service and interests of the 
 king would be promoted by his surrender of office 
 and power. It is again illustrative of the influence of 
 Caroline that this offer was made to her, and not to 
 the king. He was, in truth, the queen's minister ; 
 and nobly she stood by him. When Walpole made 
 the offer in question, Caroline declared that she 
 would not be so mean, so cowardly, or so ungrateful 
 as to abandon him ; and she infused the same spirit 
 into the king. The latter had intended, from the 
 first, to reign and govern, and be effectively his own 
 minister ; but Caroline so wrought upon him, that he 
 thought he had of himself reached the conviction 
 that it was necessary for him to trust in a minister, 
 and that Walpole was the fittest man for such an
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 361 
 
 office. And so he grew to love the very man whom 
 he had been wont to hold in his heart's extremest 
 hate. He would even occasionally speak of him as a 
 "noble fellow," and, with tears in his eyes, would 
 listen to an account of some courageous stand Wai- 
 pole had made in the House against the enemies of 
 the government, and he would add the while a run 
 ning commentary of sobs. 
 
 The queen's greatest triumph was this overcoming 
 of her husband's personal hatred for Walpole. It 
 could not have been an achievement easy to be 
 accomplished. But her art in effecting such achieve- 
 ments was supreme, and she alone could turn to her 
 own purpose the caprices of a hot-headed man, of 
 whom it has been said, that he was of iron obstinacy, 
 but that he was unlike iron in this, that the hotter he 
 became, the more impossible it was to bend him. 
 Caroline found him pliant when she found him cool. 
 But then, too, he was most wary, and it was necessary 
 so to act as to cause every turn which she compelled 
 him to make, appear to himself as if it were the 
 result of his own unbiassed volition. 
 
 Supremely able as Caroline was, she could not, 
 however, always conceal her emotion. Thus, at this 
 very period of the agitation of the Excise Bill, on 
 being told, at one of her evening drawing-rooms, of 
 the difficulties and dangers which beset the path of 
 the government, she burst into tears, became unusu- 
 ally excited, and finally affecting, and perhaps feeling, 
 headache and vapours, she broke up her quadrille 
 party, and betrayed in her outward manner an appar- 
 ent conviction of impending calamity. She evinced 
 the same weakness on being told, on a subsequent
 
 362 LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND 
 
 evening, that Walpole was in a majority of only 
 seventeen. Such a small majority she felt was a 
 defeat ; and, on this occasion, she again burst into 
 tears, and for the first time expressed a fear that the 
 court must give way ! The sovereign was, at the 
 same time, as strong within her as the woman ; and 
 when she heard of the subordinate holders of govern- 
 ment posts voting against the minister, or declining 
 to vote with him, she bitterly denounced them, 
 exclaiming that they who refused to march with 
 their leader were as guilty as they who openly de- 
 serted, and that both merited condign punishment. 1 
 
 The king on this occasion was as excited as his 
 consort, but he manifested his feelings in a different 
 way. He made Lord Hervey repeat the names of 
 those who thwarted the views of the Crown, and he 
 grunted forth an angry commentary at each name. 
 " Lord John Cavendish," began Hervey. "A fool ! " 
 snorted the king. "Lord Charles Cavendish." "Half 
 mad ! " " Sir William Lowther." " A whimsical fel- 
 low !" "Sir Thomas Prendergast." "An Irish 
 blockhead ! " " Lord Tyrconnel." "A puppy," said 
 George, " who never votes twice on the same side ! " 
 
 On the other hand, the populace made their com- 
 ment on the proceedings of the court. It was ren- 
 dered in a highly popular way, and with much 
 significancy. In the city of London, for instance, 
 the mob hung in effigy Sir Robert Walpole and a fat 
 woman. The male figure was duly ticketed. The 
 female effigy was well understood to mean the queen. 
 
 Her power, would, after all, not have followed, in 
 its fall, that of Walpole. Lord Hervey remarks that, 
 
 1 Lord Hervey.
 
 CAROLINE WILHELMINA DOROTHEA 363 
 
 had he retired, Caroline would have placed before the 
 king the names of a new ministry, and that the 
 administration would not have hung together a 
 moment after it had outlived her liking. 
 
 In the meantime her indefatigability was great. 
 At the suggestion, it is supposed, of Walpole, she 
 sent for the Bishop of Salisbury, Doctor Hoadly, who 
 repaired to the interview with his weak person and 
 stately independence, if one may so speak, upheld by 
 his "crutched stick." His power must have been 
 considered very great, and so must his caprice; for 
 he was frequently sent for by Caroline, remonstrated 
 with for supposed rebellion, or urged to exert all his 
 good offices in support of the Crown. It is difficult 
 to believe that the lengthy speeches reported by 
 Hervey were actually delivered by queen and bishop. 
 There is nothing longer in Livy, and we are not told 
 that any one took them down. Substantially, how- 
 ever, they may be true. The queen was insinuating, 
 complimentary, suggestive, and audacious ; the bishop 
 all duty, submission, and promise, as far as his con- 
 sistency and principles could be engaged. But, after 
 all, the immense mountain of anxiety and stratagem 
 was reared in vain, for Walpole withdrew his bill, 
 and Caroline felt that England was but nominally 
 a monarchy. 
 
 END OF VOLUME I.
 
 DA 
 
 Date OUP 
 
 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000911 534 6