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Title: The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian succession
Author: Sir Adolphus William Ward
Release date: November 15, 2025 [eBook #77237]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1903
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Transcriber’s Note:
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. In the
idiosyncratic French text, a ‘t’ with a cicumflex is emploted, this will
appear as, for instance, ‘d’aut̂re’. Some passages in French were
underlined, and appear here in _italics_
Footnotes have been moved to follow the paragraphs in which they are
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Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
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THE
ELECTRESS SOPHIA
AND THE
HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
THE
ELECTRESS SOPHIA
AND THE
HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
BY
ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD
LITT.D., HON. LL.D., F.B.A., MASTER OF PETERHOUSE
_SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1909
All rights reserved
_BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE_
----------
_First published with numerous illustrations by
Messrs. Goupil & Co. in October 1903_
_Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, cr. 8vo.
published by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.
in October 1909_
PREFACE
TO
SECOND EDITION
The long and eventful life of the Electress Sophia admits of being
treated from various points of view, each of which possesses an interest
of its own. A Stewart by descent and breeding, and naturally enough in a
large measure by sentiment also, she likewise, by reason of her birth
and through the traditions and experiences of her youth, had an
immediate part in the declining fortunes of the Palatine House. The
title acquired by her, for herself and her descendants, to the
succession to the throne of her maternal ancestors, was a Parliamentary
title; but it rested ultimately on the relation of herself and the House
of Brunswick-Lüneburg to the political and religious conflicts—the
struggle against France and the resistance to Rome—on whose issue the
future of Europe, and that of England in particular, mainly depended.
Personally, thanks to the unflagging vivacity and unfailing candour of
her mind, fostered by an education carried on by her through life, she
became one of the foremost feminine representatives of the intellectual
liberalism of her age.
In the succeeding pages, the aspect of the Electress Sophia’s career to
which prominence has been designedly given, is the part played by her,
on her own behalf and on that of her descendants, in the history of the
question of the British Succession. To this one aspect it has been
necessary to subordinate the rest, without, it is hoped, unduly
neglecting any one of them. It has not been easy to refrain from
dwelling at some length on the story, often but never yet quite
adequately told, of the Queen of Bohemia, with its alternations of light
and shadow. And it would have been an interesting task to seek to put
into shape all that we know as to the extraordinarily varied
experiences, in Court and camp, and in the contiguous spheres of
religious and intellectual activity, of Sophia’s brothers and sisters.
But, with her marriage, there opens the period of her life at the close
of which, as the ancestress and the source of the Hanoverian dynasty of
British sovereigns, she stands forth by herself as an important
historical figure; and it was her connexion with the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg that moulded her own future and rendered it
propitious for the destinies of Great Britain. In the present narrative,
there has accordingly been included an account of so much of the history
of that House in the period preceding Sophia’s marriage as might suffice
to indicate, not only its main dynastic purposes and principles of
policy, but also the share which it had come to take in the general
progress of European affairs. On this there follows a more special
consideration of the attitude consistently maintained by the Hanoverian
family, as the representative branch of the whole House, towards the
question of the British Succession, which gradually became one of the
chief questions of European politics at large. In these transactions the
chief responsibility, on the Hanoverian side, necessarily devolved upon
the Electress Sophia, though her eldest son pursued his own course, in
general but not in invariable conformity with her own. And thus, both
the House of Hanover and Sophia herself contributed directly to a result
of high historical significance.
In describing the ambitions, the achievements, and the experiences, good
or evil, of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, in the period more
immediately preceding its accession to the British throne, I have not
thought it right to draw a veil over episodes which have often been
intentionally slurred over or misrepresented. On one of these episodes,
the most vexed and the most painful among them, fresh light, but not
such as to disturb conclusions already to all intents and purposes
established, is thrown, in an Appendix to the present volume, by a
supplementary series of documents now (with two exceptions) for the
first time made public. Such episodes a truthful narrator cannot pass
by; but they should not be allowed to affect his judgment on questions
connected with his story which possess a far higher historical interest.
In my opinion, the debt of the British nation to the House of Hanover,
from the times of the Electress Sophia to those of Queen Victoria, is
one to which no conscientious student of the history of the dynasty, in
both the one and the other period, ought to refuse to bear witness.
The materials for a history of the Electress Sophia, in its connexion
with the Hanoverian Succession, are so abundant that they could only be
satisfactorily enumerated in an elaborate bibliography, for which room
could hardly be found in the present volume. A succinct bibliography of
the history of the Succession, so far as it enters into the general
course of European history, will be found in Vols. v. and vi. of the
_Cambridge Modern History_, in connexion with the chapter on _Party
Government under Queen Anne_ and the section on the _Hanoverian
Succession_, by Mr. H. W. V. Temperley and by the author of the present
work respectively. The materials in question may be summarised as
follows. They consist primarily of Sophia’s own _Memoirs_ (which,
however, only reach the beginning of the year 1681) and of her
voluminous correspondence, preserved in the State Archives at Hanover.
Among her letters, the collections of those addressed to her mother, to
the Elector Palatine Charles Lewis, to her nephews and nieces, the
Raugraves and Raugravines, and to her Mistress of the Robes, Frau von
Harling, have been admirably edited by Dr. E. Bodemann, and that of her
letters to her son-in-law, King Frederick I. of Prussia, by Professor E.
Berner; and to these has recently been added a very interesting
collection of her (and her daughter’s) letters to Hanoverian diplomats
(more especially the younger Schütz and Bothmer). None of these
collections, however, equals in general interest the correspondence of
the Electress Sophia with Leibniz, published several years ago by the
late Onno Klopp, the author of the monumental _Fall of the House of
Stuart_. Besides her own letters, we have many from the hand of her
mother, the Queen of Bohemia. So much of her correspondence as was in
her hands at her death, went to her son Prince Rupert, and was
published, in whole or in part, by Sir George Bromley, Bart., the
great-grandson of Prince Rupert’s illegitimate daughter Ruperta, under
the title of _A Collection of Original Letters_ (1787). Some of her
letters to Sir Edward Nicholas in 1654-5 were printed by Mr. J. Evans
for the Society of Antiquaries, and another set appeared with the
private correspondence of Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas appended to
Wheatley’s edition of Bray’s _Diary and Correspondence_. Many of the
Queen’s letters are, of course, to be found in the late Mrs. Everett
Green’s _Life of Elizabeth_, a work which has long held its own and is
on the point of being republished in a new edition, carefully revised by
the expert hand of Mrs. Lomas, of the Record Office, and provided by her
with an admirable Introduction. In this Mrs. Lomas refers to a very
interesting set of Elizabeth’s letters, addressed by the Queen to her
son, the Elector Charles Lewis, accompanied by a few drafts of his
replies, which was a few years ago edited by Miss Anna Wendland for the
Stuttgart Literary Society.[1] The letters of Charles Lewis himself and
his family have been edited by Dr. W. L. Holland for the Stuttgart
Literary Society; and there is, in addition, the inimitable and endless
series of letters by Charles Lewis’ daughter, Sophia’s beloved niece and
second self, Elizabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans, among which mention
need only be made of the selection of letters to her aunt, edited in two
volumes by Dr. Bodemann. The letters addressed by Sophia’s youngest son,
Prince Ernest Augustus (afterwards Bishop of Osnabrück and Duke of
York), to his friend J. F. D. von Wendt, edited by Count Erich
Kielmannsegg, together with the editor’s notes, throw much light on
certain passages and personages of Hanoverian history; unfortunately,
their continuous sequence breaks off in November, 1713. To these may be
added the letters and memoranda of Ilten, Schulenburg and other
Hanoverian politicians and courtiers, including Bernstorff’s
correspondence and autobiographical fragment; the numerous contributions
of Leibniz, in the historical section of Pertz’s edition of his
_Collected Works_, to the politics and later history of the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg; and Toland’s account of his visit to Hanover, told
well if not too wisely. Of the despatches of our envoys and residents
preserved in the Record Office and elsewhere, part only have been given
to the world by J. M. Kemble and others; while a vast amount of matter
of this kind, especially from the despatches of the Imperial envoys and
residents in London, preserved in the Vienna Archives, is embedded in
Onno Klopp’s _magnum opus_. A very useful guide to the _personnel_ of
the diplomatic representation of England and the North German
Governments at the respective courts is furnished by the _List of
Diplomatic Representatives and Agents, England and North Germany,
1689-1727_, contributed by Mr. J. F. Chance to Professor Firth’s _Notes
on the Diplomatic Relations of England and Germany_. The _Memoirs_ of de
Gourville have not been lost sight of; and the records of the court of
Hanover, selected for publication by the experienced hand of C. E. von
Malortie, and illustrated by him with much additional matter, have been
of occasional use.
-----
Footnote 1:
The reader may like to be referred to certain contributions to the
biography of the Queen of Bohemia, besides Häusser and Söltl’s
well-known _Elizabeth Stuart_; viz. J. O. Opel, _Elizabeth Stuart von
der Pfalz_ (_Histor. Zeitschrift_, Vol. xxiii.); K. Hauck, _Elizabeth,
Königin von Böhmen, Kurfürstin von der Pfalz, in ihren letzten
Lebensjahren_ (_Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte der Pfalz I_); A.
Wendland, _Hannoverische Erinnerungen an die Winterkönigin_ (, Jahrg.
1903). The last named contains some notes on portraits.
-----
There seems no necessity for referring in this place to the secondary
authorities to which, as a matter of course, I have made more or less
frequent reference—from Spittler to Havemann and O. von Heinemann and to
the late Professor Adolf Köcher’s standard _History of Hanover and
Brunswick, from 1648 to 1674_, beyond which date the author
unfortunately did not live to carry his invaluable work. Häusser’s
_History of the Rhenish Palatinate_, a work which satisfied the
requirements of its day, and is most readable into the bargain, has been
in constant use. Among earlier biographical sketches of the Electress
Sophia I may mention, besides J. G. H. Feder’s and W. Nöldeke’s
monographs, Dr. E. Bodemann’s account of her in the _Historische
Taschenbuch_ for 1888; H. Forst’s article on _Sophie Herzogin von
Braunschweig Lüneburg, Frau von Osnabrück, 1661-1679_, in the 1889
_Jahrgang_ of the _Mittheilungen of the Osnabrück Historical Society_
(kindly made accessible to me by Mr. S. Jaffé of Sandfort), in which,
however, there is little as to her life at Osnabrück and Iburg, of which
one would gladly know more, besides what is to be found in her
correspondence; and R. Fester’s and H. Schmidt’s biographical essays, to
the latter of which is appended a contribution by Professor A. Haupt on
_Art (plastic and pictorial) at Hanover in the times of the Electress
Sophia_. The masterly chapters in the late Kuno Fischer’s great book on
Leibniz which deal with his political and religious activity, and with
his relations to the Electress Sophia and her family, are certain to be
consulted by serious students; nor will the late M. Foucher de Careil’s
_Leibniz et les deux Sophies_ be overlooked. Of Sophia’s brothers,
Charles Lewis has found a careful as well as sympathetic biographer in
Dr. K. Hauck, who has printed a large number of the Palatine family
letters in the _Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher_; and Miss Eva Scott has
recently published a useful _Life of Prince Rupert_. The Princess
Palatine Elizabeth would no doubt have preferred to live in her
correspondence with her great friend Descartes, which will be found in
Victor Cousin’s edition, and in Vols, iii., iv., and v. of the
definitive edition of the philosopher’s works by C. Adam and P. Tannery.
Several attempts have, however, been made to put the materials for the
biography of this fair sage—and saint—into form. Among these are G. E.
Guhrauer’s exhaustive essay in the _Historische Taschenbuch_ for 1850
and 1851; the admirable monograph by Foucher de Careil, _Descartes et la
Princesse Palatine_, and M. V. de Swarte’s _Descartes Directeur
Spirituel_, which contains a commentary on his correspondence with both
the Princess Elizabeth and Queen Christina. The reader should not fail
to consult Miss E. S. Haldane’s _Descartes, His Life and Times_. I may
also mention M. J. Bertrand’s paper _Une Amie de Descartes_ in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Vol. cii., and another contributed by the
present writer to _Owens College Historical Essays_ (1901). I have not
seen an essay on the Princess by Dr. J. Witte in the _Neue Heidelberger
Jahrbücher_ (1901), which is described as very attractive. A biography
of the Princess has quite recently been published by Miss Elizabeth
Godfrey, under the title of _A Sister of Prince Rupert_. I am not aware
of any attempt to put together in more than outline the curious life’s
story of another member of the family—the Princess Louisa Hollandina;
the source of most of what I have been able to add to details generally
accessible on the subject is acknowledged below. I have, of course, used
Guhrauer, Varnhagen, and the later memoir writers for various kinds of
collateral information; and on the Succession question I have, besides
the works mentioned above, consulted divers essays as to special points
by A. Schaumann, O. Meinardus, Reinhold Pauli, and others. It has not
been part of my design to trace the way in which the progress of the
Succession question was affected by the course of English party history
on the one hand, or on the other by the action of the exiled Stewarts,
and of the Jacobite interest at home and abroad. But I have endeavoured
to keep both influences in view, noticing any Parliamentary transactions
of importance, and attempting to utilise such information as is afforded
by the Reports of the Royal Historical MSS. Commission, including those
on the Stuart Papers at Windsor, and on the Harley MSS. Among recent
secondary works on the subject, I am greatly indebted to Dr. F.
Salomon’s extremely valuable research relating to the history of the
last four years of Queen Anne; I have also referred to Mr. W. Sichel’s
_Bolingbroke_, Mr. E. S. Roscoe’s _Oxford_, and Mr. Percy M. Thornton’s
useful _Brunswick Succession_. I may take this opportunity of noting the
fairness of tone which characterises Mr. Lewis Melville’s now completed
book, _The First George in Hanover and England_. Finally, I have sought
to keep abreast of the learning which, I am glad to say, continues to
stream into the exemplary _Journal of the Historical Society for Lower
Saxony_. I have to thank Mr. John Murray and Messrs. Longmans, Green &
Co., as well as the Editors of the _Quarterly, Edinburgh_, and _English
Historical Reviews_, and of the _Owens College Historical Essays_, for
allowing me to make use of various articles by me which have appeared in
these quarters on subjects treated in this volume. For a remarkably full
account of the Abbey of Maubuisson and of the connexion with it of the
Princess Louise Hollandina, its twenty-sixth Abbess—many details of
which I have reproduced—I am indebted to the excerpts made by M. L.
Toyant from the _History and Cartulary of the Abbey_, edited from
original documents by MM. A. Dutilleux and J. Depoin for the Societé
Historique du Vexin Français (1882). M. Toyant rendered me this service
at the request of Mr. H. Tinson (late of Messrs. Goupil & Co.), without
whose skilled assistance, most readily and courteously given, the first
(illustrated) edition of the present work could not have been produced.
In revising the last chapter of the present edition, I had the advantage
of utilising some notes kindly made by Mr. J. F. Chance on the section
entitled _The Hanoverian Succession_ contributed by me to Vol. vi. of
the _Cambridge Modern History_, which volume also contains a most
valuable section by Mr. Chance on the earlier foreign policy of George
I—a subject closely connected with that of his European policy before
his accession to the English throne, which is discussed in the present
volume. Mr. R. W. Goulding, Librarian to the Duke of Portland, was so
kind as to communicate to me in 1903 extracts from three letters from
the Electress Sophia to the Earl of Portland, dating from the years
1703-4, preserved, together with eight others, at Welbeck Abbey. Of
these extracts I have in my last chapter taken the liberty of
translating that which has reference to the death of King William III. I
desire also to thank Miss A. D. Greenwood (who has just published a
work, based on careful research, dealing with parts of the subject
treated in this volume), and Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, M.A., of Peterhouse,
and the Cambridge University Library, for aid given in the preparation
of one of the Appendices to the present edition.
In this Appendix will, as already indicated, be found, a series of
letters between the Electoral Princess Sophia Dorothea and Count Philip
Christopher in Königsmarck. This correspondence, which supplements the
much longer series deposited in the University of Lund, is preserved in
the Royal Secret Archives of State at Berlin, and is now (with the
exception of two letters forming part of it) printed for the first time.
I have to offer special thanks to the authorities of these Archives for
allowing this correspondence to be transcribed for me. I request the
eminent historian, Geh. Oberregierungsrath Dr. Koser, who holds the
office of Director of the Archives, to accept the expression of my
sincere obligations; and I desire very particularly to thank the Second
Director, Geh. Archivrath Dr. Bailleu, to whose historical works I owe a
debt which the present is not the occasion for recording at length, for
his courtesy in arranging for the transcription of these letters and
thereby facilitating the execution of my task. For the translation of
the letters I am myself responsible, as well as for some elucidatory
remarks concerning these documents. The Appendix on the Religious
Situation in Scotland, as it affected the Hanoverian Succession, I owe
to Mr. R. S. Rait, of New College, Oxford, whose command of Scottish
history is well known.
The present edition of this book necessarily appears without the
illustrations which adorned the first. In the Preface to that edition I
expressed my own gratitude and that of my publishers (Messrs. Goupil &
Co.) for services rendered in many quarters both at home and abroad,
towards the collection and reproduction of the illustrations in
question. More especially, I asked leave to offer the respectful thanks
of publishers and author to the present Head of the House of Hanover,
His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, K.G.,who had,
through Privy Councillor and Chamberlain von der Weise, kindly granted
permission for the reproduction of a series of family portraits
preserved at Herrenhausen and in the Fideicommiss. Gallery in the
Provinzial-Museum at Hanover. I expressed at the same time our gratitude
to the Right Hon. the Earl of Craven for allowing the reproduction of
several of the pictures forming the unique collection at Combe Abbey,
which contains so many of the portraits of the Queen of Bohemia.[2] Next
to the collection of Palatine portraits at Combe Abbey, the most
interesting is that at Blair Castle, of the existence of which Miss
Haldane, the translator of Descartes, was so good as to apprise me. His
Grace the Duke of Athol, whom the Marchioness of Tullibardine had, at
the instance of Miss Haldane, informed of my interest in the pictures,
kindly wrote to me that there are at present in Blair Castle original
portraits in panel by Gerard Honthorst of the Princess Palatine
Elizabeth, Louisa Hollandina and Henrietta Maria (married to Prince
Sigismund of Transylvania). These portraits, together with two of the
Queen of Bohemia and Prince Rupert, likewise by Honthorst, and ‘head and
shoulders’ portraits on panel, belonged to John, first Duke of Athol,
who probably inherited them from his mother, daughter of James, seventh
Earl of Derby. At the Duke’s death in 1724 he left the furniture of
Huntingtower to his widow (who had been his second wife); and the
last-named two pictures being there, were after her death removed to
England by her eldest son, Lord John Murray, from whom they descended to
W. H. G. Bagshawe, Esq., of Ford Hall, Chapel-in-the-Frith, Derbyshire;
but the portraits of the three Princesses, being at Dunkeld, went to the
Duke’s heir and successor. Mr. Bagshawe (who informs me that the
portrait of the Queen is extremely like that of her in the National
Portrait Gallery) in 1886 allowed copies of these two portraits to be
made for the Duke of Athol, which are now with the three originals of
the three Princesses at Blair Castle. I recollect seeing a charming
portrait of at least one of the Palatine Princes at Ford Castle,
Northumberland.
-----
Footnote 2:
I may perhaps take this opportunity of observing that the many
portraits of the Queen of Bohemia which I have seen at Combe Abbey, at
Herrenhausen, in the National Portrait Gallery, in Corpus Christi
College Lodge, Cambridge, and elsewhere, do not all agree in details
of feature, or, of course, of costume, though in most of them the
Queen wears one of those mighty farthingales which her father (poor
man!) in vain attempted to moderate. In most of her portraits her eyes
are dark, in one at least they are slate-grey. In a contemporary
account of her wedding special mention is made of the long flow of her
amber-coloured hair, which descended to her waist; and I notice that
Miss Wendland speaks of her children as ‘fair’ (_blond_) ‘like their
beautiful mother.’ But of her appearance in later life we have a
different account from the trustworthy hand of the Duchess of Orleans,
who says that she remembered her grandmother as if she had been in her
presence on the day of writing, and who notes her black hair, long
face, and powerful nose. Elizabeth Charlotte adds that there was a
great likeness between the Queen and her eldest son, of whom, as of
her second, she was in his early days fond of speaking to the King,
his father, as her ‘petit black babie.’ Altogether there can be no
doubt that she was one of the ‘dark ladies’ to whom Shakespeare and
others have attributed so peculiar a fascination, and for whom Goethe
had so marked a preference. The other feature noted by the Duchess of
Orleans was inherited by all of Elizabeth’s children whose portraits
are accessible—notably by Prince Rupert and the Princesses Elizabeth
and Sophia and her family, including numerous Honthorsts and some
works ascribed, I suppose traditionally, to Louisa Hollandina’s active
brush. More than a quarter of a century has passed since I had the
privilege of paying a visit to Combe Abbey; but the memory of it has
never left me.
-----
M. Toyant’s researches, communicated to me by Mr. Tinson, showed that,
besides the portraits of the Princess Louise Hollandina at Combe Abbey,
Hanover, and Herrenhausen (to which has to be added that at Blair
Castle), there exists one at Wilton House, the Earl of Pembroke’s seat
near Salisbury.
Of the Electress Sophia herself, one of the two portraits by Gerard
Honthorst at Combe Abbey served as the frontispiece to the first edition
of this book. The other, and a third of her and her daughter, Sophia
Charlotte, said to be the work of the Princess Louisa Hollandina, were
reproduced at later points in the volume; in which also appeared
engravings of Engelhard’s statue of the Electress, in a sitting
position, in the gardens at Herrenhausen, and of a gold medal in her
honour designed by Lambelet, of which a plaster cast is in the British
Museum. Other medals struck in her honour are depicted in Rehtmeier’s
_Hannöverische Chronik_. On the occasion of the serious illness, in
October, 1701, of an old and confidential friend, the Electress Sophia
wrote that ‘if she was to have her medal made of her portrait, she ought
to do it now; for, should Frau von Harling recover, she would not allow
me to spend so much on _ma vieille trogne_.’ Personal vanity, or
personal self-consciousness of any kind, was not among the shortcomings
traceable in the character of the brave and high-minded Princess of
whose life I have attempted to trace the unblemished record.
A. W. WARD.
PETERHOUSE LODGE, CAMBRIDGE.
_April, 1909._
CONTENTS
CHAP PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTORY 1
I. DESCENT AND PARENTAGE; CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD 11
II. EARLY WOMANHOOD AND MARRIAGE 87
III. THE DUCHESS SOPHIA 143
IV. THE ELECTORAL HOUSE OF HANOVER 209
V. THE HEIRESS OF GREAT BRITAIN 327
APPENDICES
A. GENEALOGICAL TABLES 445
B. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PRINCESS SOPHIA DOROTHEA AND COUNT 447
KÖNIGSMARCK. FROM THE BERLIN SECRET ARCHIVES OF STATE.
WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTE AND TRANSLATION
C. NOTE ON THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN SCOTLAND, AS IT 550
AFFECTED THE HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION. BY R. S. RAIT
INDEX 553
_Corrigenda._
_Page_ 21, _line_ 7 from bottom: _for_ Henry Frederick _read_
Frederick Henry.
” 71 ” 15: _for_ his _read_ her.
” 97 ” 10: _for_ Tarento _read_ Taranto.
” 141, note, _line_ 12: _for_ Scroope Emmanuel _read_ Emmanuel Scroope.
” 151, _line_ 15: _for_ Charles _read_ Christian.
” 164, note, _line_ 4 from bottom: _for_ Court _read_ Coat.
” 195, _line_ 23: _for_ 1685 _read_ 1687.
” 224 ” 7 _et al_: _for_ Cressett _read_ Cresset.
” 224 ” 6 from bottom: _for_ 1696 _read_ 1694.
” 292 ” 4 from bottom: _for_ his _read_ this.
” 333 ” 11: _dele_ better.
” 371 ” 8 from bottom: _for_ 1694 _read_ 1704.
” 371, note, _line_ 2 from bottom: _for_ 1902 _read_ 1702.
” 392 ” ” 4 from bottom: _after_ Howes _read_ (or Hughes).
” 393, _line_ 5: _after_ clause _read_ as.
THE
ELECTRESS SOPHIA
AND THE
HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
INTRODUCTORY
In the burial-vault of the Guelfs, at Hanover, stands a coffin enclosing
the remains of the Electress Sophia, and bearing the inscription: _Magnæ
Britanniæ Hæres_. These words sum up her story as that of a great hope,
long cherished but never fulfilled. Yet a biography of this Princess,
who died, though herself uncrowned, the ‘mother of our Kings to be,’
will, if truthful, be found to treat a nobler theme than a personal
ambition born of chance upon chance, vexed by prolonged delays, and
doomed to final disappointment. The Electress Sophia was in herself
worthy to be the source of a dynasty whose last and most august member
left to her successor a throne far securer than that which was mounted
by Sophia’s eldest son. But the nation, of whose institutions a limited
monarchy has long formed an integral part, also owes a debt to the very
fact of the accession of the House of Hanover, and therefore to the
insight and self-control exhibited by that House, and conspicuously by
the Electress Sophia, during the entire preceding period of uncertainty.
At a highly critical date in the course of those years, when the
Electress and her family were most anxious to avoid any rash or false
step on their own part, she told a correspondent that, at the English
Court, it was held indispensable to pretend to wish for the succession
of the Electoral line—_because of the people_. Although there were, in
those days, Jacobites enough and to spare in London and other parts of
the kingdom, and although the stolidity of our first Hanoverian King,
and the self-conceit of his successor, retarded the growth of personal
sympathy between monarch and subjects, yet the perception, in both
dynasty and nation, of a definite community of interests formed a
sufficient beginning for the growth of a close mutual attachment. To
this the Electress Sophia contributed, it is not too much to say, both
by the circumstances of her birth and by the conduct of her life. She
was the daughter of a Stewart Princess, on whose Protestant marriage the
nation had set its hopes, and whom it had seen condemned, because of her
husband’s youthful venture in the cause of militant Protestantism, to
long years of exile and privation. In her own conduct Sophia displayed a
prudence, a dignity, and a sincerity, which have rarely, under
conditions so trying, been so consistently combined. The legend, indeed,
of her having often declared that she would die content if those other
words, ‘Sophia, Queen of Great Britain,’ could be inscribed on her tomb,
is irreconcileable with the whole tenor of her known private thoughts,
as well as of her public acts. She was far from indifferent to the
greatness that might be in store for her, or to the necessity, in the
interests of her House, of constant vigilance, promptitude, and tact.
But she deemed it enough to be found, at no stage of her career, either
unequal to her present fortunes or unready for those responsibilities of
a greater future which cast their shadow before them. Thus it is largely
due to her, and, as it is but just to acknowledge, with her and after
her, to the next heir to her expectations, that, so far as the House of
Hanover is concerned, the history of its succession to the British
throne may be reviewed without the feelings of humiliation too often
aroused by narratives of disputed inheritances. At the same time, the
essential significance of that history would, in any case, have to be
sought deeper than in the vicissitudes of personal ambitions or the
machinations of families or factions. The Hanoverian Succession was, in
fact, only another name for the Protestant Succession in flesh and
blood, and, as such, represented the principal gain which most
Englishmen and Scotchmen were intent upon bringing home out of the long
struggle against the Stewart monarchy. Not that the disputes and efforts
connected with the Hanoverian Succession throughout, or, at times,
mainly addressed themselves to the religious issue; but it would be
futile to ignore, or to seek to obscure, the origin and basis of the
great political transaction in which the Electress Sophia was called
upon to play so prominent a part. She was fitted to play it, alike by
the circumstances of her descent and marriage, and by the qualities of
her character and intellect, and above all by a perfect self-control,
joined to a freedom of spirit in which, during the efforts and trials of
her life, she found encouragement and consolation.
From the relation in which the Electress Sophia stood to the question of
the British Succession, that loomed so large on the political horizon
during her later years, the story of her life derives its paramount
interest. Even on the experiences of her earlier years, whose memories
carry us back to the time of the Thirty Years’ War and of the great
Civil Conflict in this island, it is impossible to dwell without
thinking of the great destiny reserved for her line, and of the many
helps and hindrances which were to facilitate or to impede its
accomplishment. But in the semi-obscurity of her youth, as under the
gaze of inquisitive eyes to which her maturity was exposed, she remains
true to herself; and few biographical records could prove more
fascinating than one covering her fourscore years, were it but possible
to depict her from first to last in the same life-like colours in which
she has portrayed herself in her _Memoirs_, and in which she reappears
on almost every page of her correspondence. Unfortunately, it is
difficult to convey by extracts, and impossible to preserve in
translation, the constant alertness of thought, and refreshing vivacity
of expression, frequently touched by real humour, and, at all times,
free from any tinge of affectation, which are not less characteristic of
her letters than they must have been of her conversation. As for her
autobiography, it breaks off as early as 1681, and thus fails to cover
that longer half of her life in which she was to become a figure of
importance in European affairs. For it was the ‘abdication’ by flight of
King James II and the subsequent passing of the Bill of Rights which
brought about and established the restriction of the English Succession
to Protestants, and which first placed Sophia and her line, though not
as yet by name, in direct relation to that Succession as a question of
practical politics.
It is accordingly proposed, in the following pages, to speak, in the
first instance, of Sophia’s descent and parentage; of her mother, who,
while remaining, even throughout the woful sequel of her Bohemian
Queenship, conscious of her position as a Stewart Princess, never
faltered in her adherence to the Protestantism for whose sake her
husband had cast a long blight upon the fortunes of the Palatine House;
and of her brothers and sisters, Princes and Princesses of that House,
not one of whom, in spite of their many distinctions and qualities,
brilliant or solid, succeeded altogether in rising above the depression
which had fastened upon the family, as Sophia herself rose in the eyes
both of her contemporaries and of posterity. The task will thus become
easier of describing, in turn, the three stages of that part of her life
which preceded the acquisition by her and her House of a definite
expectation of the succession to the British throne. During her
childhood and girlhood she was virtually confined to the refugee Court
of her parents, afterwards that of her widowed mother, in the
Netherlands. She next passed some years at Heidelberg, in the land of
her forefathers, then restored in part to the Palatine rule. The earlier
years of her married life, divided between Osnabrück and Hanover,
introduced her to new personal relations and to new political interests;
but, though these at times conflicted with each other, she learnt how to
identify herself more and more with the dynastic policy of the House, to
the fortunes of whose future head she had united her own. A second
period of her life may be said to open when the question of the British
Succession unexpectedly comes into the foreground of European political
life; and in this period, again, two stages are very clearly
distinguishable. The earlier of these extends from the passing of the
Bill of Rights (1689), with its strict limitation of the Crown to
Protestants, up to the Act of Settlement (1701). Within these years the
House of Hanover, while actually or in prospect consolidating the
various territorial interests of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, firmly
established its position as an electorate in the Empire, and began to be
taken into account by the ambition of France, the chronic disturber of
the peace of Europe. Incidentally, the skilful management and the stern
resolution by which this advance of the House was effected, led to
unhappy consequences; and no narration of its history in this period can
pass by the catastrophe of one of Sophia’s sons, or pretend to ignore
the tragic story of her daughter-in-law, Sophia Dorothea. In the second
stage of this period we recognise, in the Electress Sophia, a personage
of importance in the great theatre of general European history, but
calmly standing back herself from the glare of the footlights. By the
Act of Settlement the Succession was settled upon her and the heirs of
her body, being Protestants. She thus obtained a Parliamentary title for
herself and for her descendants.
Before this point is reached in our narrative, it will have shown how
largely fortune had contributed to the genesis of this title. Of James
I’s two sons, the elder, Henry, had died in the early flower of his
youth. Charles I left three sons, of whom the third, another Henry, also
died young and unmarried. Since Charles II left no lawful issue, the
Crown fell to James II, and, having been transferred from him to his
son-in-law, William of Orange, and to his elder Protestant daughter,
Mary, passed in turn to his second Protestant daughter, Anne. Mary had
left no issue, and her widowed husband, on whose issue by another wife
the Crown had been eventually settled, should Anne die childless,
declined to marry again. Of Anne’s numerous progeny, none survived their
infancy except the Duke of Gloucester, and he died in 1700. Nor could
there be any question of the conversion to Protestantism of any child of
James II by his second, Catholic, wife except the Prince afterwards
known as the Old Pretender; for all the others died in their infancy,
with the exception of Marie Louise, who survived into her twelfth year.
The chance passed away of finding a Protestant successor to the Crown
among the grandchildren of Charles I’s youngest daughter, Henrietta,
Duchess of Orleans, in the House of Savoy and it was therefore necessary
to turn to the offspring of James I’s only daughter, Elizabeth, the
Protestant consort of a Protestant prince. But of the sons born from
this union who survived to maturity, the eldest, Charles Lewis, died in
1680; his only legitimate son, Charles, died without issue in 1685; his
only daughter, Elizabeth Charlotte, became a Catholic on her marriage to
the Duke of Orleans. Of the others who remained Protestants, Rupert
persistently refused to marry, and died in 1682; Maurice and Philip,
both of them homeless wanderers, had perished in 1654 and 1650
respectively. Edward, alone among the younger brothers, married and
became the father of a family; but he had been carried away from the
traditions of his House by the wave of Catholic propaganda, of which
this biography will repeatedly have to take note; and his three
daughters all became the wives of Catholic husbands. Of Sophia’s elder
sisters, one, Louisa Hollandina, fell under the same religious
influence, and became the Abbess of a Catholic convent; another, the
eldest of the sisterhood, who came to hold the same position in a
Protestantised foundation, likewise elected to remain the votaress of an
unmarried life; a third, Henrietta Maria, died in 1652, soon after she
had been wedded to a Transylvanian prince. No other personage possessed
a claim of birth equal to Sophia’s, yet even of pretensions palpably
inferior to her own on this score, fortune, which seemed in this
question always on her side, disposed in her favour.
The Electress Sophia’s later years were chiefly spent in the
tranquillity of Herrenhausen, more especially after she had become a
widow in 1698; and here she held intellectual intercourse with Leibniz,
her own and her daughter’s friend, and with other fit companions of her
solitude, while keeping up her voluminous correspondence with her
favourites of heart and mind, among them her inimitable niece, the
Duchess of Orleans. She lived to see the territorial power of the House
of Hanover fully established at home, and its foreign policy completely
merged into that of the Grand Alliance against France; and there
remained now nothing but the consummation of the British Succession.
This she was not destined to see accomplished in her own person; but
less than two months after her death, on June 8th, 1714, her eldest son,
the Elector George Lewis of Hanover, was proclaimed King George I of
Great Britain and Ireland.
I
DESCENT AND PARENTAGE; CHILDHOOD AND GIRLHOOD
(LEYDEN, THE HAGUE, AND RHEENEN, 1630-1650)
Sophia, the youngest daughter and the youngest but one of the thirteen
children of Frederick, sometime Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia,
and of his wife Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of King James I of
England, was born at the Hague on October 14th, 1640 (N.S.). She was
thus, by only a few months, the junior of her first cousin Charles,
afterwards King Charles II, whose ‘star’ was so long to remain under a
cloud in the period of her youth, and who was himself in those dubious
days to play a transient part in her personal history; while the date of
her birth was preceded, at a not much longer interval, by that of the
landing of Gustavus Adolphus in Pomerania, the turning-point of the
Thirty Years’ War, although not, as her family had hoped, also that of
their fortunes. Her baptismal name of Sophia she doubtless owed to the
remembrance of her mother’s youngest sister, buried in Westminster Abbey
in 1607, the ephemeral flight of whose earthly existence strangely
contrasts with the long life in store for the younger Sophia.
It was by her marriage to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, on St.
Valentine’s Day, 1613, that James I’s only surviving daughter Elizabeth
was first brought into contact with the political problems that were
agitating Europe. The bridegroom, it is true, was only a boy of sixteen,
who would not till August, 1614, be entitled to assume the government of
his paternal inheritance. Elizabeth was only a year older than he, and
her previous life had been marked by but one personal experience of
general interest. As early as 1603 she was consigned to the care of Lord
and Lady Harington, and with them she soon took up her residence at
Combe Abbey, near Coventry, in Warwickshire—the lordly castellated
mansion which, whether or not she re-visited its moated solitude towards
the close of her life, still remains as it were consecrated to her royal
memory.[3] King James, in the early years of his English reign, had good
reason for dreading the designs of some of his Roman Catholic subjects,
and Elizabeth’s mother, Queen Anne, the sister of Christian IV of
Denmark, had not yet given way to the influences which (as is now
ascertained beyond all doubt) afterwards caused her to become a secret
convert to the Church of Rome. The sound Protestantism, of the
Puritanising type, but probably intermingled on both sides with strains
of literary sentiment, that had marked out Lord and Lady Harington for
this charge, was unmistakably the primary source of those feelings of
attachment to the Reformed religion from which in times both fierce and
fickle Elizabeth never swerved a hair’s breadth. In her childhood the
country round Combe Abbey was full of more or less open adherents of the
Church of Rome; and by some of these a conspiracy was hatched, which was
to co-operate with, and supplement, the Gunpowder Plot. On the day at
last fixed for the demonstration in chief at Westminster, the
eight-year-old Princess at Combe Abbey was to be seized by a body of
gentlemen who had agreed to assemble for the purpose on the pretext of a
meet of hounds, and so soon as the throne became vacant she was to be
proclaimed Queen, professing herself at the same time a member of the
unreformed Church. But _non tali auxilio_ was this future ancestress of
our sovereigns herself to ascend a throne. Combe Abbey was warned, the
moat was drawn up, and the towers were manned, and the Princess was
conveyed in safety to the loyal town of Coventry, where the townsmen
armed in her defence. As fate would have it, John Digby, the young
Warwickshire gentleman who bore to King James I the tidings of his
daughter’s peril and preservation, was afterwards to be the most
prominent agent of the royal policy which, with admirable intentions,
only served to thwart the English nation’s hope of helping to restore,
at least in part, the fortunes of Elizabeth and her children.
-----
Footnote 3:
Lord and Lady Harington, as will be seen, accompanied Elizabeth after
her marriage to Heidelberg. From them Combe Abbey descended to their
daughter Lucia, Countess of Bedford, Drayton’s ‘sweet nymph of Ankor’
(on whose banks the Abbey is situated) and earlier ‘Idea,’ and the
recipient of other poetic tributes from Ben Jonson and Donne. (See
Courthope’s _History of English Poetry_, Vol. iii. pp. 29 _sqq._) It
was her prodigal tastes which made it necessary to sell Combe Abbey,
which was finally purchased by the Earl of Craven. (See the notes to
_Combe Abbey_, a historical tale of the reign of James I, by Selina
Bunbury (Dublin, 1843)—the first work of the authoress, written in an
ardently Protestant spirit. In this novel are cited the stanzas, ‘This
is a joye, This is true pleasure,’ said to have been composed by the
Princess Elizabeth in her childhood.)
-----
The political significance of the marriage, which in 1613 brought the
Princess Palatine Elizabeth’s girlhood to a close, was perfectly patent
alike to James I’s subjects and to those Powers which more or less
benevolently interested themselves in his foreign policy. In 1612, when
the marriage was arranged, that policy had not yet fully revealed its
visionary purpose and its shifty methods; while at home his quarrels
with his Parliaments had scarcely more than begun. Three years earlier
the affairs of Europe had, with the death of Henry IV of France, assumed
a wholly new aspect, and it had become evident that the struggle between
the House of Habsburg and its adversaries, in which James I had long
hoped to play the august part of a pacificator, must take place under
quite new conditions. This aspiration, together with a pride of descent
natural to a Stewart and a Scot, had led him to scheme marriages for his
children with half the chief reigning houses in Europe, including those
of France, Spain, and Sweden (whose youthful King, Gustavus II Adolphus,
was, however, soon put aside as unequal to a match with a daughter of
the House of Stewart). But when, in 1610, friendly relations, soon to be
sealed by a double marriage, had set in between the French and Spanish
Courts, James I was not slow in perceiving how this turn of affairs must
affect the political prospects of his own kingdom. On the outbreak of
the European conflict which was expected on all sides, it would go hard
with the Protestant interest, unless it contrived to consolidate itself
into an alliance capable of confronting the great Catholic Powers. When,
in March, 1611, the Count of Cartignano arrived in England as a special
ambassador from Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy to negotiate a double
marriage between the Houses of Savoy and England, James, though he
refused to enter into this scheme, seemed willing to approve of the
marriage of his daughter to the Prince of Piedmont. In November,
Cartignano reappeared with fresh instructions, and at the audience in
which he asked Elizabeth’s hand for the Prince Sir Henry Wotton, who had
had a hand in the negotiations, was present. But the King had
practically already decided how to dispose of his daughter’s hand, and
the Savoyard returned home in dudgeon. The step which was now taken by
James I, and by means of which a Protestant Succession was ultimately to
be secured to the English throne, was in full accordance with the
identification of England with militant Protestantism, which had been
accomplished as a matter of fact rather than of deliberate purpose in
the great age of Queen Elizabeth. After, in March, 1612, concluding an
alliance with the Union of German Protestant Princes, of which the
Palatine House had from the first assumed the leadership, James, to the
delight of the large majority of his subjects, resolved upon the
marriage of his only surviving daughter to the young ‘Palsgrave,’ as he
was called in England, Frederick V.
The line of the Electors Palatine boasted a high antiquity and dignity;
and though it would take us too far to account for the claims maintained
by them to the first place among the temporal Electors, the familiar
fact may be recalled that early in the fourteenth century the Elector
Rupert III, of the older Electoral line of the Wittelsbach House to
which the Simmern line had since succeeded, had worthily held the high
dignity of German King.[4] It is after him that Elizabeth is supposed to
have named her third son, whose name of Prince Rupert is so familiar to
our ears; but she may also have been aware that an earlier English
Princess who had become Electress Palatine—Blanche, daughter of King
Henry IV and wife of the Elector Palatine Louis II—had named her son
Rupert, and that during his short life he bore the cognomen ‘England.’
Though portions of the Palatine territory had from time to time been
split off in accordance with the German tendency to subdivision which no
systematic effort was made to repress till after the times of the Thirty
Years’ War, the electorate about the time of the opening of that war
extended far on both banks of the Rhine, being on one side contiguous
with the kingdom of Bohemia. If not equal in size to any of the other
temporal electorates, it was not far inferior to Saxony, and hardly at
all to Brandenburg, in territorial importance, being largely composed of
districts peerless among the German lands in beauty and
productivity—amidst whose orchards and vineyards throve a busy and
light-hearted population. The religious sympathies of the electorate
were in so far divided, that the Upper Palatinate (on the left bank of
the Rhine) adhered to Lutheranism, while the inhabitants of the Lower or
Rhenish were, like the dynasty, Calvinists. The electoral residence was
Heidelberg, whose castle and its treasures were reckoned among the
wonders of the Western world. To its graceful earlier buildings, the
florid taste of the Elector Frederick IV had added the splendid but
pretentious structure, in the artificial style of the latest Renascence,
of which a characteristic remnant is the inner side, decorated,
something after the manner of Alnwick, with statues of defunct
Palsgraves. The outside commands the wondrous view over the valley of
the Neckar, to which nothing but the genius of a Turner could have
imparted an additional charm. The choicest possession of the castle was
the electoral Library, the finest collection of books in Germany and far
beyond, thrown open with rare liberality to the use of all qualified
comers. And the pride of both court and town was the University, now
again, as it had been under the single-minded rule of the Elector
Frederick III, the foremost Calvinist seminary of higher learning in
Europe.
But though the Electoral Palatine House honoured learning, and, as both
the bringing-up of Frederick V and that bestowed by him on his own
children showed, set a high value upon a many-sided intellectual as well
as upon a careful religious and moral education, its interests had in
the early years of the seventeenth century become engrossed by public
affairs, and it had acquired a political importance out of proportion to
its territorial power. Partly by force of circumstances and because of
the situation of the Palatinate, on the confines of France and on the
water-way to the Netherlands, but still more by their own zeal and
ambition, its Princes and certain of their statesmen stood in the front
of that active party in the Empire which might be termed the advanced,
or militant, Protestant Opposition. This party, among whose other
members Landgrave Maurice of Hesse and Count Christian of Anhalt are
pre-eminent, derived its impulse entirely from Calvinist sources.
Palatine blood had been shed and treasure spent under the Elector
Frederick III and the Administrator John Casimir on behalf of the Revolt
of the Netherlands and the cause of the French Huguenots; and under his
successor, Frederick IV, these designs had taken a wider range. He was a
man of great intellectual force; and, more especially in connexion with
the later history of his dynasty, it is interesting to note that in the
later years of his life he was much occupied with the scheme of a union,
on a broad basis, between all Protestant confessions.[5] But the young
Elector Frederick V had probably been more especially influenced by the
pure Calvinism of his mother the Electress Dowager Louisa Juliana, the
daughter of William the Silent and of Charlotte de Montpensier, who had
taken refuge at the Palatine Court for the sake of the Religion. Louisa
Juliana, though at the crisis of the Palatine fortunes her judgment was
not obscured by her sympathies, was one of those women the fervour of
whose religious convictions communicates itself as a legacy of faith and
love to the minds of their descendants for generation upon
generation.[6] Maurice of Hesse-Cassel also had a Nassau Juliana to
wife, so that the three Houses at the head of the Calvinistic movement
were closely linked together by intermarriage. In his father’s lifetime,
the young Frederick had been placed at the Court of the Calvinist Henry
Duke of Bouillon, whose second wife was likewise a daughter of the great
William of Orange, and to Sedan he afterwards returned, with fit
diplomatic and theological counsellors by his side, for a second sojourn
till the year before his marriage. To these multiplied influences the
Princess Elizabeth’s husband may in part have owed the fortitude of
spirit which, although not naturally a man of strong character, he
exhibited under a long and heavy pressure of trouble; while to the
liberality of his education may fairly be ascribed something of the
refined and lovable gentleness which he preserved to the last.
-----
Footnote 4:
In the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries respectively, two
Palatine Electors, Frederick II and Frederick III, aspired to the
German Kingship.
Footnote 5:
See Häusser, _Geschichte der Rhein-Pfalz_, Vol. ii. pp. 243-4.
Footnote 6:
A memoir of her was published in 1645 by the scholar and diplomatist
Ezechiel Spanheim, of whom Sophia frequently makes respectful mention
in her correspondence with her brother Charles Lewis.
-----
Under the Elector Frederick IV, the first head of the Union, vast
designs had been set on foot against the Catholicising policy of the
House of Habsburg, and for a dismemberment of its dominions. In 1612,
the hopes of the Palatine House and its counsellors were already
directed towards the attainment of the Bohemian Crown; moreover, as the
Spanish ambassador, Don Alonso de Velasca, informed the Spanish Council
early in 1613, James I was then of opinion that in a few years Frederick
V would be King of Bohemia. Thus, the expectation of the Bohemian Crown
unmistakably contributed to bring about the marriage which determined
the course of Elizabeth’s life.[7] To the English public, of course,
‘the Palsgrave’ was a handsome and courtly Prince, the nephew of Maurice
of Orange, heroic father’s heroic son,[8] and in their eyes his union
with the Princess Elizabeth promised to connect the royal family not
only with the great Protestant Houses already mentioned, but with the
Protestant interest at large.[9] As a matter of fact, English royalty
was thus to become connected with the dynasties of Brandenburg, Sweden,
and Transylvania.
-----
Footnote 7:
See Gindely, _Geschichte des dreissigjähr. Krieges_, Vol. i. p. 186,
and note. It may perhaps be added, by way of a _curiosum_, that at
this time there survived in England the lineal descendant of a
declared heir to the Bohemian Crown in the person of Humphrey Tyndall,
Dean of Ely, who died in 1614 and whose brass still remains in Ely
Cathedral. See Bentham’s _History and Antiquities of the Conventual
and Cathedral Church of Ely_.
Footnote 8:
On his visit to England in 1612 Frederick was accompanied by Count
Henry of Nassau (who in 1625 became Henry Frederick Prince of Orange).
His companion duly fell in love with a daughter of the Duke of
Northumberland. (_Letters of George Lord Carew._)
Footnote 9:
A Count Palatine Frederick (Frederick II of the old line) had visited
England early in the sixteenth century; but he had come in the service
of the House of Habsburg.
-----
The young Elector Frederick V had hardly presented himself at the
English Court, when a deep shadow passed over the sunny prospect
seemingly opening before Elizabeth, and she and her possible descendants
were suddenly brought nearer to a Succession undreamt of by her for
them. In November, 1612, Henry Prince of Wales, whose heart was entirely
with his sister’s in her Protestant preferences as in other matters,
died suddenly of typhoid fever, though, in accordance with the evil
fashion of the age, credulous or clamorous Protestants, perhaps not
quite inexcusably, attributed his death to poison. At the Court of James
and Anne, or in its vicinity, for which the Princess had since 1608
exchanged the retirement of Combe Abbey, she had continued to carry on
her studies, which were specially directed to the French and Italian
tongues and to the art of music, while the general guidance of Lord and
Lady Harington still continued to sustain the serious impulses that
contended with the frivolous in her receptive and responsive nature. As
a matter of course, the brother and sister, who dearly loved one
another, were companions in the elaborate entertainments that absorbed
so large a share of their royal parents’ attention, and in the
field-sports by which the masques and tilts were diversified, and in
which Elizabeth long retained an eager interest. There is some evidence
that she also shared the higher aspirations discernible in the
many-sided and ambitious activity of the brother who was taken so
suddenly from her side.[10] But youth and the exigencies of her position
exercised their effacing powers; and thus, within little more than three
months, the brother’s funeral was followed by the sister’s wedding.
Indeed, while the echoes of both events are loud in the literature of
the time, the same poetic voices occasionally attune themselves in turn
to condolence and to congratulation. But, though the show was great that
carnival week, and though besides so much of the powder as would go off
for the fireworks, plenty of incense was burnt on the occasion by
Chapman, Beaumont, Thomas Heywood, Campion,[11] Francis Bacon, Taylor
the Water-poet, and the rest, an undertone of doubt or apprehension was
audible among the rejoicings. The bride laughed too much at the wedding,
and her father yawned too soon in the course of the ensuing festivities,
which he finally felt obliged to cut short in fear of the bill and of
the House of Commons. And most ill-omened of all was the fact that among
the representatives of foreign Powers bidden to the solemnity the
Spanish ambassador remained away. Count Gondomar ‘was, or would be,
sick.’
-----
Footnote 10:
The theatrical company (formerly the Lord Admiral’s) which had been
under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, sought and, on January
4th, obtained that of the Palsgrave, the Fortune continuing to be
their playhouse. After 1625, they appear to have ceased to be under
the Elector’s ‘patronage.’ (_Henslowe’s Diary_, ed. Greg, Part ii. pp.
98-9.)
Footnote 11:
Part of a stanza in a song in _The Lords’ Masque_, accompanying a
dance of stars, may be quoted, if only to suggest the contemporary
pronunciation of the King’s name:
‘So bravely crown it [the night] with your beams,
That it may live in fame
As long as Rhenus or the Thames
Are known by either name.’
-----
It was not till after Easter that the young Electress and her husband
were allowed to take their departure from London, nor till the beginning
of June that, after a semi-royal progress from Holland up the Rhine,
they at last set foot in Heidelberg. The greater part of the Electress’
English suite, which included Francis Quarles and Nicolas Ferrar, soon
afterwards left her—Lord Harington, by a pathetic fate, dying on the way
at Worms, so that his wife returned home a widow. Elizabeth’s life in
her new home was for many a day much what it had latterly been in her
old—a round of Court festivities, banquets, and hunting-expeditions. Nor
does she, after the protracted honeymoon was over, seem to have ceased
to be preoccupied with the trivialities of her daily life. We may
discount the report of a divine who visited her husband’s Court, that
‘she is not often heard to speak of God ... she is fond of grandeur and
the precedence of rank.’ And we may excuse her for not allowing the
ascendancy of the Court-preacher, Abraham Scultetus, to dominate her
thoughts and conduct, in spite of the potent authority exercised by this
divine, afterwards one of the most vigorous of the anti-Remonstrants at
Dort (where he had the satisfaction of seeing that Heidelberg Catechism,
which Sophia was so ruefully to remember as the religious _pabulum_ of
her youth, adopted as the symbol of the Dutch Church). At Heidelberg she
had her own English Chaplain.[12] For the rest, it seems to have been
the use of her horse and gun which, on the occasion of the death of her
firstborn child, assuaged the first sharp sorrow of her married life.
While the high state kept by King James’ daughter—with her army of
ladies-in-waiting, chamberlains, chaplains, and the rest—could not fail
to heighten the splendour and swell the outlay of the Palatine Court,
her influence must have helped to soften and refine its tone, though in
neither respect was the ground unprepared. It may safely be ascribed to
Elizabeth and to her bringing-up that the place of German was taken by
French as the Court tongue at Heidelberg. Her husband, whose favourite
extravagance was that of building, was much engaged at this time in
perfecting the Castle gardens in the most approved French style, and in
adding a new ‘English wing’ to the Electoral residence itself. On
January 1st, 1617, she gave birth to her eldest son, and half the
Protestant Powers of Europe were represented round the baptismal font.
The fortunes of the family had sunk low, when, fifteen years later, this
Prince—Henry Frederick—was, in his unhappy father’s sight, drowned off
Haarlem. On December 22nd, 1617, another son was born to the Electoral
couple, Charles Lewis, afterwards Elector Palatine; and on December
26th, 1618, followed the birth of their eldest daughter, Elizabeth.
-----
Footnote 12:
Alexander Chapman, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, D.D.
1610, and Archdeacon of Stow and Prebendary of Lincoln in the same
year. In 1618 he was appointed Prebendary of Canterbury, where, on his
death in 1629, ‘an elegant Monument of blue and white Marble, with a
demy Effigie of him thereon, was erected to his memory by his
Brother.’ See R. Masters’ _History of C.C.C._, pp. 264-5. He was
possibly the donor of the speaking likeness of Elizabeth which hangs
in the Master’s Lodge at Corpus.
-----
There were, however, certain drawbacks to the perfect contentment of
Elizabeth in the ‘merry’ Heidelberg days, which readily revealed
themselves to the eye of the sympathising observer. Even at a distance
she dwelt as it were in the shadow of the paternal throne; and the pride
of her father, to which her own seems to have very readily responded,
obliged her to assert extravagant claims in matters of precedence. As to
these pretensions full information is furnished by the communicative pen
of Sir Henry Wotton, who in April, 1616, when on his way to Turin and
Venice, spent six days in the Electoral Court at Heidelberg. He had some
public business of moment to transact with the Elector, to whom he
submitted a plan for a league with Savoy, which Frederick approved and
promised to lay before the Princes of the Union. But it was his chief
duty to give some account to the King of the Court of Heidelberg, and of
the treatment there extended to the King’s daughter in those matters
which her father had so much at heart. Sir Henry Wotton, whose deep
admiration for Elizabeth, expressed in undying verse, has indissolubly
linked his name with her own, addressed himself to his task with even
more than his usual diligence. He describes the Electoral Court as one
‘of great sobriety,’ and very well attended. The Elector he found ‘_par
boutades_ merry, but for the most part cogitative, or, as they here call
it, melancolique; his chiefest object was money, and his principal
delight architecture.’ The Electress, although already at that time ‘the
mother of one of the sweetest children,’ still retained ‘her former
virginal verdure in her complexion and features.’ Very manifestly,
though the ambassador approaches the subject with many courtly
involutions, things had not at first, and did not even now, run quite
smoothly between the Elector and his consort. At first, some trouble was
caused by the ‘emulation’ of servants—in other words, rubs between the
English and the German members of the Court; and now there remained the
cardinal difficulty about ‘placing her Highness.’ The claim which James
I had set up before his daughter’s departure from England, and which
Frederick had then promised to allow, that she should have precedence in
her husband’s and other non-royal Courts, had proved one which Frederick
found it impossible in practice to reconcile with self-respect; and
Wotton hardly bettered the situation by trying to prove too much.[13]
The problem was ultimately settled in no very satisfactory fashion; the
Electoral pair decided to pay no further visits to other Courts; and
Louisa Juliana, the Electress Dowager, whom Elizabeth had expected to
give her the _pas_, withdrew for some time from her son’s Court.
-----
Footnote 13:
‘My Lady,’ he argued, ‘was not to be considered only as the daughter
of a King, like the daughters of France, but did carry in her person
the possibility of succession to three Crowns.’
-----
Wotton had judiciously recommended the Elector to state his case to the
King through a nobleman particularly valued by the Electress—Hans
Meinhard von Schönberg (Schombergh), Marshal of the Palatinate.
Schönberg had, in March, 1615, married Anne Sutton, daughter of Lord
Dudley, a favourite lady-in-waiting of Elizabeth, with whom she had
remained after Lady Harington’s departure; but she had been taken from
him by death in the following December. Schönberg’s advice, the
Electress informed Wotton, had been of the utmost value to her, ‘though
by divers provocations and offences, of the greatest part for her sake,
he had been moved and had himself resolved to be gone.’ (He was now
serving as a colonel under Maurice of Nassau.) She also spoke with
gratitude of the attentions of Frau von Pless (who had been her
husband’s governess), though she desiderated the company of another
English lady of Anne Sutton’s age. With the services of the English
secretary, Albertus Morton (Wotton’s nephew), whom her father had sent
to her, Elizabeth was well content.
We must conclude from this report that the English-born Electress had to
bear at Heidelberg some of the unpopularity incurred by her countrymen
who, in search of amusement or employment, swelled her Court without
being attached to it; and that she had also to suffer from the
consequences of a self-consciousness fostered by her father. It is
further clear that, in one way or another, she came at this early period
of her career to be oppressed by a burden of debt which it was not easy,
with or without good advice, to shake off. Perhaps these features of her
life as Electress Palatine should be called to mind, before the
customary version of her conduct at the crisis of her consort’s
destinies and her own is unhesitatingly followed. In 1619, the great
opportunity for which the Palatine diplomatists had been so long
scheming arrived at last. It has been seen that the idea of the Bohemian
Crown had been present to them for some time; probably, the first
suggestion of it arose in the course of the negotiations carried on by
the Palatine Government in 1605-7, the chief advocate of the notion
being Lösenius, while it was actively supported by Christian of
Anhalt.[14] But, though the chance of carrying it into execution was now
before the Palatines, it found them and their allies, great and small,
unprepared. They had not succeeded in turning to account the strong
feeling which prevailed in many quarters against the choice as Emperor
of the Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, the destined head of the House of
Austria, and the formally acknowledged successor to the Bohemian and
Hungarian thrones. They had dallied with idle thoughts of the King of
France and the Duke of Lorraine, and had then concentrated their efforts
upon the paradoxical device of securing as a candidate the head of the
Catholic branch of the House of Wittelsbach, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria,
who was also the head of the Catholic League. But Maximilian, though by
the tradition of his House jealous of Habsburg, better knew his own mind
and his own interests. Thus, when (in March, 1619) the Emperor Matthias
passed away, the Elector Palatine wasted the little time remaining in
protests; and, when the day of election arrived (August 28), after some
empty words accepted the predetermined vote in favour of Ferdinand of
Styria. The pupil of the Jesuits was seated on the Imperial throne; but,
on the very evening when this defeat of the Palatine policy was
proclaimed at Frankfort, the news arrived that it had scored a victory
at Prague. Here, only a year previously (1618), the troubles between the
government and the Utraquists had come to an outbreak, and on the
Hradschin had been perpetrated the _defenestration_ (ejection through
the window) of certain Ministers of the Crown, which it is usual to
regard as the opening of the Thirty Years’ War. Quite unable to
establish his authority in Bohemia, Ferdinand had been actually menaced
in his palace at Vienna by the Utraquist chiefs, with an army at their
back. And now it was announced that, after deposing Ferdinand, the
Bohemian Estates had elected Frederick V Elector Palatine King of
Bohemia in his stead.
-----
Footnote 14:
See M. Ritter, _Deutsche Geschichte in der Zeit d. dreissigjähr.
Krieges_, Vol. ii. p. 201.
-----
‘Thou hast it now.’ After a few diplomatic operations by Achatius von
Dohna, the Elector Palatine had only to stretch his hand from Amberg
across the Bohemian frontier, and a great historic throne was his,[15]
with its large territorial dependencies, and with a second electoral
vote ensuring the majority in the College to the Protestant interest. He
was Calvinist enough in his habits of mind to be able afterwards to
declare conscientiously that, in accepting this Crown, he obeyed an
inner voice, which he thought spoke the will of God. And, certainly,
there was no pressure of advice to urge him in this direction. His
Council, setting forth the _pros_ and _cons_ in the argumentative
fashion of the day, could only find six reasons in favour of acceptance
to balance fourteen against; and the gist of their opinion was after all
that everything depended on the support the Elector would receive in a
forward policy. But at most of the friendly Courts opinion was found to
be adverse; and while Maurice of Orange and others eagerly advised
acceptance, Maximilian of Bavaria with honourable candour raised a clear
voice of warning. As for Frederick’s father-in-law King James, he was
not at present prepared to depart from his masterly attitude of
declining to pronounce against acceptance, while desiring not to be
supposed to have advised in favour of it. Whether or not a strong
protest from James before Frederick’s formal acceptance of the Crown
might have arrested that final step, no such protest was made.
-----
Footnote 15:
‘Then County Palatine, and now a King.’ (_Tamburlaine_, Part II, Act
i, Sc. i. l. 103.)
-----
Frederick’s mother, Louisa Juliana, though a woman cast in no ignoble
mould, is said to have burst into tears and fallen ill on hearing of her
son’s election to the Bohemian throne. On the other hand, it has again
and again been asserted, or at least represented as highly probable,
that it was the urgent representations of the Electress Elizabeth which
determined her consort to cast the die; and everybody has heard the
anecdote of her taunting him with the avowal that she would rather
partake of sour-krout with a King, than of a joint of roast meat with an
Elector. Elizabeth is unlikely either to have forgotten herself so far,
or to have sought for any analogy between her own position and that of
the Bohemian Princess who shortly after Wyclif’s death had mounted the
English throne. Moreover, we have the statement of her grand-daughter,
the free-spoken Duchess of Orleans, that at the time of the Bohemian
offer the Electress knew nothing at all about the matter, her thoughts
being in those days entirely absorbed by plays, masquerades, and the
reading of romances. No doubt the Duchess, though deeply attached to her
father’s house, is not to be absolutely trusted in her statements as to
all the members of her father’s family; but her account of the condition
of Elizabeth’s mind at the time when she was first brought face to face
with the chief problem of her life, harmonises with all we know as to
its previous current. After all, however, the point is not very
material. Even before her husband had actually decided to become a King,
she stood forth every inch a Queen; nor was it with a light heart, or in
a spirit inflated with vanity or ambition, that at the last she left the
decision in his hands. She was, in her own words, prepared to bow to the
will of God, and, if need were, to suffer what He should see fit to
ordain. Of her worldly goods she at the same time declared herself ready
to make any reasonable sacrifice, by pledging her jewels, or whatever
else of value she possessed. Early in October (1619) the last bridge had
been burnt.
From this time forward, Elizabeth’s troubles came thick upon her; and
indeed, but for a very imperfect return of prosperity towards the close
of her life, they may be said never to have ceased again on earth. When,
with Frederick, she quitted the Palatinate for Bohemia towards the end
of October, they left behind them at Heidelberg, in the care of the
Electress Dowager Louisa Juliana, their two children Charles Lewis and
Elizabeth; but, though the former was long his mother’s favourite, it
was hardly in her way to be deeply affected by a separation from her
babes. The part which the new King and Queen were called upon to play
during the twelve-month of their residence at Prague was from the outset
the reverse of easy. The self-conscious and stiff-necked Bohemian
Estates had not the least intention of being ruled in fact as well as in
name by the sovereign of their making; while part at least of the
population was steeped in ignorance like the peasants who welcomed his
entry with shouts of ‘Vivat rex _Ferdinandus_!’[16] In Frederick’s
mistake of importing and maintaining among Utraquist (i.e. Lutheran)
surroundings, a rigid and aggressive Calvinism, incarnate in the
iconoclastic Scultetus, Elizabeth probably had no share; for, as is
worth remembering in connexion with the rather complicated religious
history of her children, she never became a Calvinist herself or
displayed any liking for Calvinistic ways. She did her best to gain
popularity for herself and her consort, checking the insolence provoked
among her courtiers by the uncouth manners and customs of her new
subjects, and delighting all and sundry by pleasant English
‘hand-shakes.’ Now and then, offence was given by such innovations as
the holding of Court balls on great Church holidays, and by the fashions
of the attire worn on these occasions by the Queen and her ladies; and
more serious umbrage was taken at the King’s conclusion of an alliance
with the Calvinist Transylvanian, and at the project of another with the
Sultan himself. Finally, there was the eternal difficulty as to ways and
means, alike in Silesia (where the royal pair had been received with
great rejoicing) and in Bohemia itself. Among all these agitations
Elizabeth’s spirits from time to time flagged, both before and after the
birth of her third son; for the changeful story of Prince Rupert’s life
began at Prague in December, 1619.
-----
Footnote 16:
The entry of Frederick into Prague, and his handsome reception by the
three Estates ‘after the manner of our ancient Kings,’ was witnessed
by Jacob Böhme.
-----
Within less than a year from this date the brief glories of her Bohemian
royalty had ‘turned to coal.’ In July King James, while sending Sir
Edward Conway and Sir Richard Weston to Prague, ordered Sir Henry Wotton
to repair to Vienna, where, if the King of Bohemia consented, he was to
propose the settlement of the difficulty by means of an Imperial Diet;
while to all Princes visited by him on the way he was to protest his
master’s abstinence from any participation in the election to the
Bohemian Crown. The choice of Wotton for this singularly futile mission
was in itself extraordinarily infelicitous; very naturally, however, his
task impressed itself at once upon the chosen ambassador’s vivid
imagination. For it was on the eve of his departure for Vienna that
Wotton, ‘being in Greenwitche Parke, made a sonnet to the Queen of
Bohemia,’ of which he sent copies to Lady Wotton and Lord Zouche, and as
to which Wotton’s latest biographer remarks, with perfect truth, that
‘such is the magic of art, these verses have done more than anything
else, perhaps, to make both’ Ambassador and Queen ‘remembered.’[17]
Neither the Prague nor the Vienna mission had any effect whatever;
indeed, before Conway and Weston’s reply reached Wotton, all was over.
Early in September the Leaguers under Maximilian of Bavaria, the head of
the rival Wittelsbach line, had joined their forces against him, while
Spinola’s Spaniards were approaching the Palatinate. Soon the enemies of
the new Bohemian monarchy had closed in upon it. The battle of the White
Hill was waged and lost in an hour (November 8th); and, though Frederick
can hardly be blamed for the actual loss of the battle, in his
accidental absence from which there was nothing disgraceful,[18] he had
entirely failed to take precautions for the event of such a catastrophe,
and lacked the self-confidence which alone could have made possible
further resistance on the spot. Thus, though he did not at first quite
understand the full significance of his overthrow, Bohemia had passed
for ever out of the weak hands of the Winter—or Twelfth Night—King.
When, on the evening of the rout, the long stream of vehicles, headed by
Queen Elizabeth’s coach, ebbed out of Prague, bearing with it whatsoever
was portable of the Protestant interest, no hopes remained except such
as were wholly illusory. But Elizabeth intended that, even though
Bohemia was lost and the Palatinate, which, as Louisa Juliana had
formerly lamented, had ‘gone into Bohemia,’ might prove to be lost with
it, the drama so swiftly played out should have no ignoble epilogue. She
had resolved—in her own words—‘not to desert her husband, and, if he was
to perish, to perish by his side.’ Fate dealt with her after no such
sudden fashion; but she was true to the spirit of her vow.
-----
Footnote 17:
See L. Pearsall Smith, _Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton_, Vol. i.
p. 171.
Footnote 18:
The _Mercure Français_ stated that he took part in the battle, and
lost his ribbon of the Garter on the occasion! (Charvériat, _Histoire
de la Guerre de Trente Ans_, Vol. i. p. 235, note.)
-----
From Prague Frederick and Elizabeth first made their way into Silesia,
then still a dependency of Bohemia; but soon Frederick, though, owing to
Wotton’s protest against the invasion of the Palatinate, the ban of the
Empire did not descend on him till the following January, had to realise
the position to which he was reduced. He sent on his wife before him, to
seek shelter in the dominions of his brother-in-law, the Elector George
William of Brandenburg. This Prince, a Calvinist and one of those who
had advised the acceptance of the Bohemian Crown, was afraid at the same
time of the Swedes and of the Emperor, to whose policy he had not yet
rallied; and in after days the great Elector’s sister, the brave Duchess
Louisa Charlotte of Courland, recognising in the experiences of her own
married life some analogy to those of her Aunt Elizabeth’s, recalled as
memorable the impunity with which her father had afforded a passing
refuge to his unfortunate relatives.[19] The intimacy between the two
Calvinist Electoral Houses was to survive backslidings on the part of
Brandenburg in the course of the great War, and was at a later date to
be very notably renewed, in spite of the perennial jealousy between the
two dynasties and governments, by the marriage of Elizabeth’s
grand-daughter Sophia Charlotte with the future first Prussian King.
But, in these early days, the welcome extended by the Elector George
William to his fugitive kinsfolk was limited to the coldest courtesies.
At Küstrin, where on Christmas Day, 1620, Elizabeth gave birth to her
fifth child, the Prince Maurice to be known in later life as Rupert’s
_fidus Achates_, the royal mother and her attendants are said to have
hardly had enough to eat, and, when in January, 1621, they were joined
by her husband from Breslau, he brought no good tidings with him. The
Union was on the eve of dissolution; an offer of aid from the Sultan, so
at least it was rumoured, had been refused by Frederick; and the
vacillations of King James were more hopeless than ever. At Berlin,
where the fugitives were received by Frederick’s sister, the Electress
Elizabeth Charlotte, they were glad to leave behind them the infant
Maurice in the faithful charge of his grandmother Louisa Juliana, who,
with his elder brother and sister in her care, had taken her departure
from Heidelberg even before the battle of Prague. Her own estates,
together with those of her second son Lewis Philip, long remained
sequestrated; though neither of them had taken any part in the Bohemian
business. The boys were afterwards removed to Holland; but the young
Princess Elizabeth continued under her grandmother’s care till her ninth
year, chiefly at Krossen in Silesia. This early training and the closer
connexion into which it brought her with the Brandenburg Electoral
family, were to exercise a notable influence upon her character and upon
her later personal history.
-----
Footnote 19:
See A. Seraphim, _Eine Schwester des grossen Kurfürsten_, &c.
(_Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Gesch. d. Hauses Hohenzollern II._).
Berlin, 1901.
-----
From Berlin her parents, luckless emigrants, had still been obliged to
move on, Queen Elizabeth journeying to Wolfenbüttel, the residence of
the elder branch of the House of Brunswick, Frederick roaming about the
Lower Saxon Circle in quest of military or other aid. Finally, they
entered the Netherlands together by way of the Rhine. Everywhere in the
Low Countries they were warmly welcomed, not only as kinsfolk of the
House of Orange, but also as fellow-martyrs of those Protestant refugees
to whom, in the Elector Frederick III’s days, the Palatinate had
accorded so hospitable a reception. On April 14th, 1621, they were
received with the utmost cordiality by the great Stadholder, Maurice of
Orange, in the midst of a large assemblage of princes, nobles, and
foreign ambassadors; and soon the States-General of the United
Provinces, and the States of Holland and Friesland in particular, gave
substantial expression to the universal warmth of the public welcome.
But the arm of the young Dutch Republic, though strenuous, was not long
enough to reach effectively into the heart of the Empire. In the
previous autumn, Frederick Henry of Nassau, the Stadholder’s brother,
had made a show of protecting the Palatinate with a couple of thousand
men, among whom there was an English contingent; but the effort had come
to nothing. Already in 1620 the greater part of the Lower Palatinate had
been occupied by the Spaniards; and in 1621, after Frederick had been
placed under the ban of the Empire and the execution of the sentence had
been entrusted to the expectant Duke of Bavaria, the inhabitants of the
Upper Palatinate were called upon to forswear their allegiance.
Frederick’s cause was upheld only by the English volunteers under Sir
Horace Vere and by Mansfeld’s mercenaries. The Union had dissolved
itself in the spring, and after midsummer James, while still cherishing
the hope of bringing to pass a friendly intervention by Spain, was
attempting through his ambassador Digby to obtain favourable terms at
Vienna. Before the year was out, Maximilian of Bavaria had, with the aid
of Rome, obtained an imperial promise of the reversion of the forfeited
Electorate; and the future, as well as the present, seemed wholly dark
for the Electoral couple and their children. Near or far, no ally seemed
prepared to strike a blow in their interests, except that already, in
1621, the Queen of Hearts—as she came to be called in the days when she
exercised no other sovereignty[20]—had found a true knight neither
anxious, like King James, about probabilities of failure, nor, like the
great _condottiere_ Mansfeld, solely intent upon the main chance. This
was Duke Christian of Brunswick, the administrator or (as an English
letter of the time aptly calls him) the ‘temporal bishop’ of the see of
Halberstadt.[21] There is no evidence of his having ever met, or so much
as corresponded with, the Queen; but Sir Thomas Roe distinctly states
that it was only for her sake that he had engaged in the war, and he
made much the same confession himself to his mother; while the story of
his having worn in his helmet a glove belonging to the Queen, which he
had vowed to restore to her in reconquered Prague, can be traced back as
far as 1646. After losing an arm, he rode forth in 1624 with a
substitute made of iron. Though a poet’s son, he was as rough a
campaigner as any of the captains of the age; and in 1625 a flagrant act
of violence placed him under a cloud. In the following year a fever
ended the excesses of his military career, his wild defiances of Spain
and the League, and his romantic passion, which, as we know from a
letter written by his sister, Sophia of Nassau-Dietz, pined almost to
the last for some mark of recognition by its object.[22] Elizabeth’s
power of attracting the sympathy of soldiers, which had been so
conspicuously exhibited in the case of Christian of Halberstadt, and to
which afterwards Lord Craven’s life-long devotion was to testify, was
further exemplified by the goodwill shown to her in these times of
distress by her martial kinsmen of the House of Orange. The readiness of
the great captain Maurice of Nassau to further her interests so far as
in him lay was shared by his younger brother, Prince Frederick Henry,
who, in 1625, succeeded him in the stadholdership, and between whom and
one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, attached to her person since her
Heidelberg days, Maurice a few weeks before his death arranged a
marriage. But the new Princess of Orange proved to be as proud as the
beautiful Countess Amalia von Solms had been poor; and, before long, her
desire of furthering the interests of the House into which she had been
admitted made her hostile to those of the family of her former mistress.
-----
Footnote 20:
The origin of the application of this title seems unknown. It had been
formerly connected in a peculiar fashion with Elizabeth’s august
godmother. (See the weird story in H. Clifford’s _Life of Jane
Dormer_, how not long before Queen Elizabeth’s death a playing-card,
the Queen of Hearts, with an iron nail knocked through the head, was
found at the bottom of her chair. Soon afterwards all hopes of her
recovery were abandoned.)
Footnote 21:
Halberstadt was one of those sees which had by special treaties with
the Chapters been made hereditary in particular Protestant princely
families. (Opel, _Niedersächs. Krieg_, Vol. i. p. 193.)
Footnote 22:
It must at the same time be allowed that the epithets applied to James
I by Christian after the breakdown of the scheme of 1623 could hardly
under any circumstances have been condoned by the King’s daughter.
(See Ritter, _Deutsche Geschichte_, &c., Vol. iii. p. 253.)
-----
The charm of Elizabeth’s beauty, and the stimulus of her high spirit,
also inspired with a warm personal concern in her affairs, those of her
father’s numerous diplomatists who were or became known to her. Sir
Henry Wotton seems never to have seen her again after their ‘merry hour’
of meeting at Heidelberg; but he remained stedfast in his admiration for
his ‘Royal Mistress,’ and among the intimate letters of the days of his
retirement at Eton are those which he addressed to her, then a
half-forgotten exile at the Hague. In his will he left to the Prince of
Wales her picture, with an inscription[23] which reappears, with slight
modifications, in two of his published pieces. Wotton’s successor at
Venice, Sir Dudley Carleton (afterwards Viscount Dorchester), who had
likewise been received by the Electoral pair at Heidelberg, and who was
English ambassador at the Hague when the fugitives arrived there,
cheerfully gave up his house for their use; besides judiciously exerting
himself in their interest both in this and in his second embassy to the
United Provinces. Lord Herbert of Cherbury was warmly thanked by
Elizabeth for his exertions at Paris; and Lord Conway did his best for
her cause with the Emperor at Prague. Lord Doncaster (afterwards Earl of
Carlisle) had, during his futile mission before the Bohemian crisis,
gained her goodwill in such a degree as to be honoured by her with the
intimate nickname of ‘camel-face’; and it was through him that his
eloquent chaplain Donne was privileged to ‘deliver mesages’ to the Queen
when in sore straits. More to the purpose were the active services of
Sir Thomas Roe, the ‘honest fatt Thom’ of her correspondence; but,
although these had begun before this diplomatist’s return from Eastern
Europe, he does not seem to have come into much personal contact with
her before 1628.
-----
Footnote 23:
‘_Inter Fortunæ sortem, extra Imperium._’ (See L. Pearsall Smith,
_u.s._, Vol. i. p. 297, note.)
-----
Only a few brief indications can be given here of the general course of
the exiled family’s fortunes during the quarter of a century which
elapsed, before a definitive settlement of the Palatinate problem was at
last reached in the Peace of Westphalia. Negotiations were at first
carried on in Sweden, through Ludwig Camerarius, who from 1623 directed
the diplomacy of the Palatine House, with the purpose of engaging King
Gustavus Adolphus in offensive operations, in the course of which the
latter intended that Frederick should appear in the Palatinate at the
head of an army; but the perennial Danish jealousy of Sweden put a stop
to the plan. About the same time (1623-4) the faithful Rusdorf sought,
by negotiations in London, to obtain fair terms for his master at
Vienna, Frederick signifying his willingness to allow his eldest son
(Frederick Henry) to be educated at Vienna, with a view to his marriage
with an Imperial Princess; but the overtures came to nothing, as did the
specious offers of the disguised Capuchin della Rota. These latter
proved, in truth, to be mere pretences on the part of Maximilian of
Bavaria, who, in 1624, was received into the College of Electors in
Frederick’s place. Towards the close of 1623, King James I, who earlier
in the year had broken off negotiations with Mansfeld and Christian of
Halberstadt and concluded a truce with the Infanta at Brussels, which
Frederick was obliged to ratify, had at last been undeceived as to the
intentions of Spain. He saw at last how during the Spanish marriage
negotiations he had been tricked into the false hope that good terms
would be obtained by Spanish mediation for the Palatines; and, during
the last year of his reign, when war with Spain was becoming more and
more imminent, a treaty promising an English army for the recovery of
the Palatinate was concluded with Mansfeld, who was for the moment the
lion of London, whither he was soon followed on a similar errand by
Christian of Halberstadt. Thus, when in March, 1625, James I was
succeeded on the English throne by Charles I, Elizabeth’s hopes rallied
with pathetic buoyancy, and she cherished the hope that her brother’s
approaching French marriage would further advance the interests of her
family. There can be no doubt of Charles I’s intention to serve his
sister and her children; and his wishes on this head were shared by
Buckingham. The Duke is even said, when visiting the Palatine family at
Leyden, not long before his assassination in January, 1629, to have had
in his head a scheme—which, if fate had so willed it, might have had
strange consequences for the British Succession—of a marriage between
his daughter Lady Mary Villiers and Elizabeth’s eldest son, Prince
Frederick Henry. But, as is well known, the history of Charles I’s
foreign policy during the first part of his reign, in which the question
of the recovery of the Palatinate could not possibly hold the central
place as it had in his father’s, had, as Eliot summed it up in his
scathing speech, been one of constant and utter failure. Afterwards, of
course, the King was so hopelessly at issue with his Parliament, that
all chance of effective intervention had come to an end. Mansfeld’s army
at first remained inactive in the Low Countries, where it was not
increased, except by fragments of the levies of Christian of
Halberstadt, which a tempest had scattered at sea. Instead of
reinforcing the mercenary troops, the English expedition which sailed
under Lord Wimbledon in October, 1625, had orders for Cadiz. When, in
1625, Elizabeth’s uncle, Christian IV of Denmark, at last took the field
as chief of the Lower Saxon Circle, the death of his namesake soon
deprived him of his best commander; and, in 1626, Mansfeld, after being
defeated by Wallenstein at Dessau, was ‘chased’ by him into Hungary,
whence, after making over his army to Bethlen Gabor, he took his
departure only to die. In August of the same year, Tilly entirely
overcame Christian IV at Lutter, and the ‘Danish War’ was virtually at
an end. Henceforth, no further intention was entertained either at
Vienna or at Munich of granting any terms to Frederick, although, on
Cardinal Khlesl’s principle of never either dropping negotiations or
concluding them, conditions were still offered him. In return for the
restoration of part of his paternal dominions, he was, while renouncing
both the Bohemian Crown and the Electoral dignity, to pay the costs of
the war, and to consent to bring up his children as Catholics; but the
former condition he could not, and the latter he would not, accept. It
is said that, at this very time (1627), the unhappy ex-Elector paid a
secret visit to the Palatinate, whose fate seemed sealed for ever by the
Austro-Bavarian treaty of the following year. The Spaniards held the
left bank of the Rhine and the Bavarians the right; conversion was
forced upon the inhabitants, who began to emigrate rather than submit to
it; and, when, in June, 1630, Rusdorf presented a letter from his master
at Ratisbon, where the Bavarian policy was conspicuously to the front,
the Emperor had no answer to return except a demand of unconditional
submission. Had the Palatine family yielded to this demand, and accepted
the further condition of conversion to the Church of Rome, they might
perhaps have been allowed some sort of domicile in the Empire. But they
were of a different metal, and held out, though their prospects had
never been gloomier; for, in the same year, peace was concluded between
England and Spain, and whatever hopes had been placed upon King Charles’
anti-Spanish policy were thus brought to nought.
Yet, soon after these events—in July, 1630—Gustavus Adolphus landed on
the Pomeranian coast, and in him the Palatine family hoped to find both
an avenger and a deliverer. The Electress Dowager Louisa Juliana met him
at Berlin, and after his great victory at Breitenfeld he approached the
Palatinate. Before the end of 1631 most of it had been recaptured and
re-Protestantised; and early in the following year Frederick was on his
way to meet the conquering hero. Frederick’s Dutch hosts had furnished
him forth with great liberality, and the number of state coaches with
which he arrived at Frankfort, in February, 1632, had been increased to
two score by Gustavus Adolphus himself, who treated him with great
courtesy as King of Bohemia. But the future of the Palatinate was left
undiscussed between the two Kings; nor was it till after Gustavus had
continued his victorious progress through Bavaria, that he proposed a
settlement. It showed unmistakably that the treatment of the Palatinate
formed but a subsidiary part of his great design, and filled Frederick,
who was looking for restoration to his patrimony, with alarm. For,
besides other onerous conditions, there were imposed on him the
admission of Swedish garrisons to some of his chief towns, the
concession of the supreme military command to Gustavus, and the grant of
equal rights to the Lutherans in the Calvinistic half of the Palatinate.
Hard as these terms seemed to Frederick, amicable negotiations were
still in progress between him and the great Swedish King, when the awful
news arrived of the death of Gustavus on the field of Lützen. Frederick
had a little before this fallen ill of a fever; but, as if driven by his
doom, he once more began to wander from town to town, till, on November
29th, 1632, thirteen days after the death of Gustavus, he breathed his
last at Mainz. The homeless wanderer’s heart was buried in the church at
Oppenheim, in his own Palatinate; his corpse was hurriedly borne hither
and thither—being carried off from Frankenthal by Bernhard of Weimar on
his retreat in 1635, to preserve it from desecration—till it was at last
composed in peace within the walls of Metz.[24]
-----
Footnote 24:
Elizabeth bore no love to the Swedish royal family, partly because of
these memories, partly perhaps because of the Danish blood in her.
(‘The States,’ she writes on one occasion, ‘are justly punished for
assisting the Queen of Sweden against my uncle’ (Christian IV). She
detested Gustavus’ daughter Christina. On the death of the Queen
Dowager Maria Eleonora, she writes: ‘Queen Mother is dead, which makes
her rap out with many an oth.’ (_Unpublished Letters of the Queen of
Bohemia to Sir Edward Nicholas_, _Antiq. Soc. Publ._ 1857 (xvi).)
-----
After Frederick’s death, the regency of the Palatinate was assumed by
his brother Louis Philip, who was married to a Brandenburg Princess
(Maria Eleonora); but though under his rule Heidelberg was recovered,
and with the aid of foreign (especially Scottish) beneficence the
prosperity of the Palatinate began to revive, the fatal day of
Nördlingen (September 6th, 1634) undid all the work of the previous two
years, and the sufferings of the Palatinate from both ‘friends’ and
foes—from Swedes and Bavarians—began afresh. After the Peace of Prague,
in 1635, the Swedes fell back upon the Main, and after Heidelberg had
been once more occupied by the Imperialists, the Palatinate remained for
some five years under the government of the Emperor, which banished all
Calvinist and Lutheran preachers with their families and households, and
in every way promoted the decay of University and schools. It cannot be
said that the general condition of the population, whose sufferings were
of the most heartrending description, and productive of that awful
brutalisation which is so characteristic of the later period of the
Thirty Years’ War, was much affected by changes in the occupation of the
country.[25] The renewal of warfare in these parts, in 1640 and again in
1644, brought in the French and their German allies and the Bavarians to
augment these troubles. It will be noted below how the dispossessed heir
of the Palatinate bore himself in these evil years, and what he finally
saved for his House out of so pitiful a wreck. The Bohemian Crown was,
of course, a thing of the past, though to the end Elizabeth retained the
royal title.[26]
-----
Footnote 25:
The project of despatching a Scottish army in 1639 to occupy the
Palatinate broke down because of a disagreement between Leslie and the
Covenanters.
Footnote 26:
It would seem as if after her husband’s death she had for a time
approved the style of ‘the King’s only sister.’ (See Wotton’s letter
_ap._ L. P. Smith, _u.s._, Vol. ii. p. 342.) When, on the marriage of
her daughter Princess Henrietta in 1651, her son Charles Lewis took
exception to the title ‘Queen of Bohemia,’ Elizabeth wrote to him
indignantly that ‘leauing it you doe me so much wrong as to the
memorie of your dead father, as if you disapproved his actions’; and
declared that whatever public instrument she might at any time have to
sign, she would never sign it without the royal style. _Letters_, &c.,
ed. by A. Wendland, p. 16.
-----
The birth at the Hague, on October 14th, 1630, of Sophia, the youngest
of the children of Frederick and Elizabeth, had preceded the death of
her father by very little more than two years. Her mother, it must be
remembered, was then still in the full flower of her womanhood—in the
thirty-fifth year of her age—an eager horsewoman and fond of the
pleasures of the chase; and in mind she remained not less vigorous than
in body, venting her wrath freely on both enemies and neutrals—on that
‘devil’ the Emperor and that ‘beast’ the Elector of Saxony, just as at a
later date she had to search in the Book of _Revelation_ for analogues
fitly expressing her sentiments concerning Oliver Cromwell. Yet private
as well as public griefs had helped to sadden her heart as well as to
sober her spirit even before the death of her husband, whose affection
towards her had remained unchanged, showing itself in little expressions
of care and tenderness such as abound in his letters almost to the day
of his death. In 1624, they had lost an infant son, Lewis; and, in
January, 1629, their first-born, Frederick Henry, a boy of fifteen, was
(as already noted) drowned off Haarlem as he was travelling back in the
common passengers’ boat with his father from Amsterdam, whither
Frederick had gone to collect the share of the profits from a captured
Spanish treasure-fleet assigned to him by Maurice of Nassau. The infant
Princess Charlotte was laid in the grave by her brother’s side only
three days before the christening of Sophia. But, as there survived five
brothers (to whom a sixth, significantly named Gustavus, was added two
years after Sophia’s birth), the statement may perhaps be credited with
which her _Memoirs_ open, that her arrival in this world caused no
excess of joy to her parents. She relates that her name—the name which
narrowly missed marking the beginning of a new English dynasty, and
which, in token of its popularity in this country, was bestowed upon his
heroine by the author of one of the masterpieces of our literature—was
drawn by lot out of several written for the purpose on slips of paper,
because of the small choice of godmothers remaining in the case of so
large a family. Sophia’s destinies were not encumbered by a second name
like that which her sister Louisa Hollandina bore in honour of her
godfathers; although the States of Friesland, who undertook the same
responsibility for the infant Sophia, presented her with a pension of
forty pounds for life and handsome supplementary gifts. So soon as it
was possible to transport her, she was sent to Leyden by her mother, who
preferred that her children should be brought up at a distance from
herself, ‘since,’ says Sophia, ‘the sight of her monkeys and dogs was
more pleasing to her than that of ourselves.’ At Leyden, therefore,
Sophia spent her early childhood, chiefly in the company of her youngest
brother Gustavus, who died nine years after his birth. Her graphic
reminiscences of her tender years chiefly turn on the cumbrous etiquette
(_tout à fait à l’allemande_) by which she was environed, and on the
lessons in the Heidelberg Catechism (which she ‘knew by heart without
understanding it’) imparted by her venerable governess, Frau von Pless,
with the assistance of her two daughters, ladies of ‘awe-inspiring’
presence, whose age seemed to the child almost equal to her own. ‘Their
ways were straight in the eyes of Heaven as before men.’ The good
ex-Elector had been consistently careful as to providing sound
Calvinistic instruction for his children, and Frau von Pless had been
his own instructress in his infancy; but his English wife, at least
during part of her residence in the Netherlands, continued to employ the
services of a Church of England chaplain. In general, it is clear that
at Leyden, and afterwards at the Hague, Sophia, while her wits quickly
opened to the demands of life, passed, like the rest of her brothers and
sisters, through a training which equipped them more or less efficiently
for the struggle before them. In her case, it must also have helped to
regulate the remarkable intellectual curiosity with which she was
naturally endowed, and which, though it cannot be shown to have carried
her to great heights or depths of study or thought, at least enabled her
in later life to rise serene above the troubles and trials of the hour.
The usual training of the Palatine Princes and Princesses, while
including some mathematics, history, and law, appears to have been based
in the main upon the study of languages, of which most of them came to
have several at command. Their mother they always addressed in English,
but among themselves they used French, as had been the custom of their
father in his letters to his wife, and as continued to be the practice
of Sophia’s son and grandson in domestic conversation, even when they
had become British sovereigns.
On Prince Gustavus’ death, in 1641, Sophia, who was herself suffering
from illness, quitted Leyden for the Hague, bidding farewell to her
_bonnes vieilles_, whom she said she had loved from gratitude and habit,
‘for sympathy rarely exists between old age and youth’—a maxim to be
flatly contradicted by the experience of her own later years. At the
Hague, where, during the rule of Frederick Henry, his consort Amalia
strained every nerve to prove the authority of the House of Orange equal
to that of a royal dynasty, the Queen of Bohemia was beginning to find
some of the conditions of her life oppressive, and, worst of all, the
continuous pressure of debt unbearable. Already in her husband’s time,
the generosity of Maurice had furnished them with a pleasant summer
retreat at Rheenen, in the wooded country on the Rhine, not far below
Arnhem, described by Evelyn as ‘a neate palace or country house, built
after the Italian manner, as I remember.’[27] But Sophia, on first
arriving at the Hague, found the change so delightful as to make her
think that she was ‘enjoying the pleasures of Paradise.’ This early
glamour must, however, have soon passed off; for, though blessed with
good spirits even in her later years, Sophia was without that
gift—sometimes enviable, sometimes dangerous—of seeing things rather as
one wishes them to be than as they are, which her brother Charles Lewis
described himself as having inherited from their mother. And it was this
mother herself to the flaws in whose brilliant and in many respects
noble personality Sophia seems to have been from the first unable to
shut her eyes. It cannot have been only her love of horses and dogs, or
her _penchant_ for what may be called the pleasures of the toilet which
affected both Sophia and her eldest sister Elizabeth unsympathetically;
there seems to have been in the Queen a vein of frivolity, inherited
perhaps from her own mother, which estranged from her these and perhaps
some other of her children, though they could not fail to recognise that
her life was devoted to the interests of her family as a whole. It must,
however, have been to his sister Elizabeth, and not to Sophia, that
their brother Charles Lewis refers in expressing a hope that their
mother may not find reason ‘to use her with the former coolness.’
-----
Footnote 27:
As to Rheenen, the best account appears to be contained in J.
Kretzschmar, _Mittheilungen zur Geschichte des Heidelberger
Schlosses_, pp. 96-132, which I have not seen. There seems at one time
to have been a notion of making it over to Prince Rupert; but it
afterwards became the property of Sophia, who says that it had cost
40,000 crowns to build (_Briefe an Hannov. Diplomaten_, p. 229). The
Electress Sophia, not being able to sell the property at its estimated
value, made it over to her son Ernest Augustus.
-----
Of her eldest brother, Charles Lewis himself, Sophia can have seen but
little in the days of the family life at the Hague and Rheenen, although
she afterwards grew warmly attached to him and came to regard him, as
she says, in the light of a father rather than of an elder brother. He
was a prince of remarkable intellectual gifts, which, till on his
father’s death he by his mother’s wish took service under William II,
Prince of Orange, he had cultivated to so much purpose at the University
of Leyden, that he was afterwards credited with a share in the writings
of Pufendorf, the chief glory of the restored University of Heidelberg.
His disposition resembled his youngest sister’s in not a few points, as
their correspondence shows. His nature, like hers, was at bottom both
kindly and humorous, and, while both had a turn for sarcastic wit, there
was, one must confess, a coarse fibre in both for which the habits and
traditions of Palatinate life are not to be held altogether responsible.
It must have been because of this natural wit, rather than because of
the avarice born of necessity which Charles Lewis displayed in later
passages of his career, that he was called _Timon_ by his brothers and
sisters, to whom Shakespeare, with whose plays Charles Lewis was not
unacquainted, is quite as likely as Lucian to have suggested the
nickname. He was through life a friend of English literature, and, so
late as 1674, John Philpot’s edition of Camden’s _Remains_ was dedicated
to him. There is evidence of his having had other literary tastes—among
the nicknames which he gave to his eldest son by Louisa von Degenfeld
were those of ‘Pantagruel’ and ‘Lancelot du Lac.’ But his favourite book
was the Bible (‘_meinliebotes Evangelium_’). At the same time he was,
like his sister Sophia, free-spoken on all subjects; though, on
occasion, as is not wonderful when his experiences are remembered, a
pathos welled up in him which she, not so much from cynicism as from
habitual self-control, steadily repressed.[28] Nor was he free-spoken
only; he might be called a free-thinker but for that aforesaid love of
the Bible which, together with a double share of his intellectual
alertness, he bequeathed to his daughter Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of
Orleans.
-----
Footnote 28:
See his extraordinary outburst of passionate woe on receiving the news
of the death of a daughter (in 1674) in _Briefe des Kurfürsten Karl
Ludwig an die Seinen_, pp. 234-5: ‘I do not know, why the Lord God
seeks to try me so—when I have but a few years more to live, and after
all did not create myself, and have no conscious desire of committing
any sin,’ &c.
-----
After his father’s death, Charles Lewis had been acknowledged as Elector
Palatine by King Charles I and some of the German Protestant Princes;
and his mother, though he was and always remained the darling of her
heart, would have urged him to assume his place in the Palatinate, had
not the battle of Nördlingen placed any such attempt out of the
question. Charles Lewis and his brother Rupert were accordingly sent to
England (1635). Here for two or three years they led a life of gaiety
and dissipation; but they could hardly, in any case, have effected
anything to the purpose, even had the young ‘Elector’ devised some more
practical scheme than that of asking the hand of the young Queen
Christina of Sweden. After their return to Holland, however, the two
Princes were, in 1638, stirred to a more vigorous activity on their own
account. They began badly by the loss of all their stores at Meppen in
Frisia; but they, notwithstanding, resolved to make an armed attempt
upon the Palatinate, of which the cost was defrayed by Lord Craven, who
himself held a command in it. They were supported by a Swedish force
under Major-General King (the Lord Eythin of Marston Moor); but, after
siege had been laid to Lemgo, the gallant raid came to an unfortunate
end at Vlotho on the Weser, both Rupert and Craven remaining behind in
captivity. Hereupon, Charles Lewis, in 1639, once more set forth from
Holland with the design of placing himself at the head of the army left
without a leader by the death of Duke Bernhard of Weimar; but Cardinal
Richelieu, whose schemes the success of the adventure would have
thwarted, gave it an unexpected turn by causing Charles Lewis to be
arrested and detaining him, for the most part in prison, during several
months. In 1640, he used the freedom which he had regained for new
efforts, first in Denmark, and then at the Diet of Ratisbon, upon whose
walls Swedish guns were playing. Once more, there was much excitement in
the ‘Palsgrave’s’ favour in both England and Scotland—it was in fact the
last occasion on which King and Parliament might have united in a policy
approved by the nation at large; and when, in 1642, the Emperor
Ferdinand III propounded a settlement which would, on stringent terms,
have restored a portion of the Palatinate, the English ambassador (Sir
Thomas Roe) joined the agents of Charles Lewis in protesting against its
inadequacy. The horrors of war were renewed in the exhausted Palatinate,
and Charles Lewis once more betook himself to England (1644), where he
presented a memorandum to Parliament, which allowed him £30 a day for
his stay in London, but limited it in the first instance to a fortnight.
Early in this year, Louisa Juliana had died, and it almost seemed as if
the hopes of her descendants were to be buried with her; for, though a
dim prospect of a general peace was opening, there seemed little hope
that, in the conflict between the great Crowns, thought would be taken
of the Palatinate. In England, the Civil War had been for nearly two
years in progress; both Rupert and Maurice had, to their brother’s
actual or pretended displeasure, taken service under the King; and it is
hardly possible that, at such a time, Charles Lewis could have reckoned
on obtaining military or pecuniary support for his schemes for the
recovery of his patrimony. He has, accordingly, been supposed to have
harboured deeper designs, and these have been connected with Sir Harry
Vane’s proposal, rather earlier in the year, of dethroning King Charles
I. But whether or not the idea of supplanting his uncle had entered into
Charles Lewis’ mind—and Sophia’s mention in her _Memoirs_ of Vane’s
previous visit to the Hague lends some colour to the conjecture (she
calls him Vain and speaks of him and his large chin without
seriousness)—it is certain that the Prince was well received by the
Parliamentary leaders.[29] In return for his supposed goodwill to their
cause, to which he is stated to have testified even by taking the
Covenant and sitting in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, he was
granted an annual allowance of £8,000 and assigned the Deanery at
Windsor as a residence, where he thought it most prudent for the time to
give himself up to his scientific studies.[30]
-----
Footnote 29:
As to the possibility of an offer of the Crown to Charles Lewis by the
Parliamentary leaders, see W. Michael, _Englische Geschichte_, &c.,
Vol. i. p. 282.
Footnote 30:
It should be remembered that in this morigeration Charles Lewis had
the support, up to a certain point, of his mother, who in the days of
the Civil War blamed Queen Henrietta Maria for opposing the attempts
of Charles Lewis to bring about a reconciliation between his uncle and
the Parliament. Gradually, however, all that the King did seemed right
to his sister, and she blamed Charles Lewis for remaining on good
terms with the Parliament. See K. Hauck, _Elizabeth, Königin von
Böhmen_ (Heidelberg, 1905).
-----
The career of Prince Rupert, whose personal attractions had eclipsed
those of his elder brother during their former joint visit to England,
was widely to diverge from Charles Lewis’, now that they both found
themselves once more in the land of their maternal ancestry. In those
earlier days, Sir Thomas Roe had informed Elizabeth how the King took
pleasure in the sprightliness of her second son, from whom, in her
fondness for his senior, she had expected so little; and Charles Lewis
himself reported to his mother his dismay that _Rupert le Diable_ was
always in the company of Queen Henrietta Maria, her ladies, and the
Papists. At the same time, Prince Rupert was understood to be engaged in
discussing with his uncle the King wild schemes for the foundation of a
colony in Madagascar. The Princes were recalled home; the Madagascar
scheme collapsed; and Rupert’s Protestantism henceforth stood firm. It
has been already seen how he was taken prisoner in the fight at Vlotho
(1638). The offer of Lord Craven, who had paid £20,000 for his own
ransom, to increase this sum, were he allowed to share Prince Rupert’s
captivity, was refused, and the Prince was lodged in captivity at Linz
under the care of Count Kufstein. He came forth from it, having resisted
all attempts to lure him from his religious belief and into the
Emperor’s service; neither, however, was he inclined to avail himself of
the prospects of a wealthy Huguenot marriage held out to him in Paris.
With his faithful brother Maurice, he hereupon betook himself to
England, where they devoted themselves to the cause of the King in his
struggle against Parliament, and became the very types and exemplars of
the Cavaliers. Across the seas, in New England, the good old Puritan
minister Nathaniel Ward, who had held Rupert in his arms as a child,
‘when, if I mistake not, he promised to be a good Prince,’ prayed that
even now he might be turned into ‘a right Roundhead, a wise-hearted
Palatine, a thankful man to the English,’ and that his soul might be
saved, ‘notwithstanding all his God-damn-me’s.’ But the ordinary picture
of Prince Rupert as general of the horse, impetuous even to
foolhardiness, and as a passionate partisan who could not restrain his
vehemence even in the presence of the King himself, conveys no complete
view either of his services in the Civil War, or of his character. As to
the former, neither the calamity of Marston Moor, for which he was not
responsible, as he certainly was for that of Naseby, nor perhaps even
the surrender of Bristol, should have been allowed to obscure their
lustre. As to his character, he was not less humane than resolute, and
self-reliance was combined in him with the nobler kind of self-respect.
His intellectual curiosity was a genuine family characteristic, though
it happened in him to take a peculiar turn towards applied science and
the technicalities of art.[31] After the fall of Oxford, in 1646, the
Princes Rupert and Maurice left England, the former to hold a command in
France; but, in the year before the execution of King Charles, he once
more came forward to serve the sinking cause of the English monarchy,
and took charge of the royal fleet. Maurice was, of course, once more
found by his side, and, after the King’s death, they engaged in those
remote maritime adventures in the course of which the younger brother
met his death. Rupert’s earlier naval—or buccaneering—career continued
till 1653, when he returned to France, creating a considerable sensation
by his entry into Paris ‘like an old Spanish _conquistador_, with
Indians, apes and parrots.’[32]
-----
Footnote 31:
The honour of having discovered the art of engraving in mezzotint,
frequently claimed for Prince Rupert, seems due to a Hessian officer
named Ludwig von Siegen, who, meeting the Prince at Brussels about
1654, taught him the new process. See Cyril Davenport, _Mezzotints_
(‘The Connoisseur’s Library,’) pp. 52-65.
Footnote 32:
See K. Hauck, _Karl Ludwig, Kurfürst von der Pfalz_ (Leipzig, 1903),
p. 252.
-----
Sophia’s third brother Maurice was, as has been seen, an all but
inseparable follower of his elder Rupert, whose equal he can have been
neither in military genius nor in general intellectual ability and
personal charm—‘he never,’ says Clarendon, who resented the pride of the
Palatines, ‘sacrificed to the Graces, nor conversed amongst men of
quality, but had most used the company of ordinary and inferior men,
with whom he loved to be very familiar.’ Sophia writes to him as to one
little interested in intrigues of State, and his preference through life
seems to have been for the camp rather than the Court.[33] But, whatever
other abatement should be made from the censures with which, like the
brother of his heart, he was visited by both Puritan animosity and
Royalist spite, he most certainly possessed in a rare degree the
soldier’s cardinal virtue of fidelity. Thus we may fain hope that, in
accordance with the most trustworthy account, his fate overtook him,
whelmed beneath the deep gulf of the Atlantic, and that he was not, as a
different tradition would have it, carried off by corsairs to Algiers,
there to linger out a forgotten existence.
-----
Footnote 33:
His mother’s coolness towards him is curious. She communicated the
news of his disappearance to Charles Lewis without a word of sympathy,
and advised that, should he really be at Algiers, no ‘great inquierie’
should be made, lest his ransom should be fixed at a quite inordinate
height, or Cromwell should purchase him from the corsairs. _Letters_,
&c., ed. A. Wendland, p. 43.
-----
The sixth and seventh brothers, Edward and Philip, had been brought up
in common; but in their later lives they were much divided. About 1637,
they had, with their brother Maurice, been sent to school in Paris,
whither, as has been seen, the Palatine family long looked for political
succour; and here they remained after Maurice had taken his departure,
with a view to beginning his military career. In 1645 the elder of the
pair took a step which estranged him not only from his brother Philip,
but from the whole of the Palatine family, and which, together with a
similar proceeding at a later date on the part of Princess Louisa
Hollandina, stands in direct contrast to the general tenour of the
family history. Anne of Gonzaga, second daughter of the Duke Charles of
Gonzaga-Nevers, afterwards Duke of Mantua, was already a celebrity in
French society, when, her amour with Henry of Guise having come to an
end which wounded her self-esteem, she in 1645 secretly gave her hand to
the Prince Palatine Edward, and henceforth became the ‘_Princesse
Palatine_,’ under which name she plays a conspicuous part in the
literature of contemporary French memoirs. We have, however, no concern
here with her share in public affairs at a rather later time, when (in
1650) she effected a union between the two branches of the Fronde and
thus drove Mazarin into temporary exile, and when, after being herself
persuaded by the Cardinal to ‘rally’ to Anne of Austria, she (in 1651-2)
succeeded in bringing over to the same side the Duke of Bouillon and the
great general Turenne.[34] Mazarin, when indicating the price (a great
Court office) at which her support might be gained, described her as a
_femme intéressée_; but, as M. Chéruel observes, it was not this aspect
of her character which was in the mind of Bossuet when, in a funeral
discourse, he dwelt on her great qualities of head and heart. In an age
of confessional propaganda she was a great proselytiser in high places;
and it was a signal instance of her activity in this direction, that she
should have exacted Prince Edward’s conversion to the Church of Rome as
the condition of her acceptance of his hand. For she thus secured to
herself a claim for direct interference in the affairs of the Palatine
House, which still possessed a certain importance and might again
acquire a greater. Her foresight was justified; for, in course of time,
there can be no doubt that she contrived to have a hand in the
conversion of Princess Louisa Hollandina, as well as in yet another
conversion, which made it possible for Charles Lewis’ daughter Elizabeth
Charlotte to become the wife of Louis XIV’s brother, Philip Duke of
Orleans. Although the new Princess Palatine had retained her share of
the wealth of the Gonzaga, notwithstanding the efforts of her father to
accumulate the whole for bestowal on his eldest daughter Marie, who in
this same year 1645 became Queen of Poland, the agitation of Edward’s
mother at the news of his change of religion was extreme, and was shared
by most of her children. Charles Lewis besought his mother ‘with her
blessings to lay her curse’ upon Prince Philip, who was about to quit
Paris for the Netherlands, should he too ‘change the religion he had
been bred in.’ As for Prince Edward, his fortunes were henceforth more
or less severed from those of the family, though we find him, in 1651,
at the Hague, as he passed the ambassadors of the English Commonwealth
in the streets, calling them ‘rogues’ to their faces, and thus doing his
best to embroil the United Provinces with the enemies of the House of
Stewart.[35] With Edward’s daughter, Benedicta Henrietta, born in 1652,
we shall meet again as the wife of John Frederick, Duke of Hanover,
Sophia’s brother-in-law. In her the Palatine type, of which Sophia
herself and her niece Elizabeth Charlotte were such striking examples,
was well-nigh effaced; but it will not be overlooked that by descent she
stood nearer to the English Succession than her father’s youngest
sister.
-----
Footnote 34:
See A. Chéruel, _Le rôle politique de la Princesse Palatine pendant la
Fronde en 1651_. (_Séances de L’Acad. des Sc. Mor. et Pol._,
January-February, 1888.)
Footnote 35:
His mother seems to have been pleased with this outburst, and to have
testified to her gratification by presenting to Edward certain family
articles of value—more in number than was agreeable to Charles Lewis.
Edward, who certainly seems to have had in most things an eye to the
main chance, had a cynical vein in him, like some of his brothers and
sisters. When he came to Heidelberg in 1658, accompanied by a
facetious M. de Jambonneau, Charles Lewis writes to his ‘second’ wife:
‘He turns everything into a joke, so that I cannot bring him on with
me.’
-----
Of Prince Philip’s fateful conduct at the Hague immediately. While,
before his return to her mother’s little Court, Sophia had necessarily
seen little of him or of her brothers there or at Rheenen, she was, as a
matter of course, much thrown into the society of her three sisters. At
first, as she tells us, she was by no means troubled to find them
handsomer and more accomplished than herself, and admired by everybody;
and she was perfectly contented that her juvenile gaiety and
_railleries_ should help to amuse them. ‘Even the Queen took pleasure in
my fun’; for she was gratified to see the child tormented, so that her
wits might be sharpened by the process of being put on her defence. It
became the established practice for her to ‘rally’ any and everybody;
the clever people were delighted by it, and the others were made afraid
of her. Gradually, however, Sophia’s quick ears heard the ‘milords’ at
her mother’s Court say to one another that, when she had finished
growing, she would surpass all her sisters. And the remark inspired her
with an affection for the whole English nation; ‘so greatly is one
pleased, when young, to be thought good-looking.’
Elizabeth, the eldest of the Palatine Princesses, though by no means
indifferent to the family interests, or without sympathy at any time of
her life with the troubles either of her father’s or her mother’s House,
was of an introspective turn of mind, grave and thoughtful, and little
inclined by nature to the levity inborn in most of her brothers and
sisters. Both as imbued with the Calvinism in which she had been so
carefully nurtured by her grandmother amidst the congenial Brandenburg
surroundings, and perhaps also because, though an accomplished linguist,
she alone of the sisterhood had no occasion to learn to speak Dutch, she
already as a girl fell into a way of leading much of her life to
herself. At the same time, she was always interested in public affairs,
and more especially in marriage projects, which in those times formed an
important part in politics; and it is noticeable that she continued fond
of match-making even after she had herself settled down to a single
life. Among the suitors for her hand was the young King Wladislaw IV of
Poland, a tolerant and liberal-minded Prince.[36] But the marriage fell
through, because the Diet would not hear of their King marrying an
‘English’ Protestant; and Elizabeth, of whose noble character perfect
veracity formed one of the noblest traits, refused in her turn to listen
to a diplomatic suggestion that she should become a convert to Rome. In
January, 1639, there was a notion of making a match between her and
Bernhard of Weimar. We are not told that the Electoral Prince Frederick
William of Brandenburg—afterwards known as the Great Elector—between
whom and Princess Louisa Hollandina a marriage was at one time
projected, had ever thought of asking the hand of her elder sister. But
he may have met Elizabeth in 1638 at Königsberg, when, after the Peace
of Prague, George William was induced by troubles in his Margravate to
send his whole family into Prussia, whither some of their Palatine
kinsfolk also came; and he was in these years much at Rheenen, where he
cannot but have been attracted by the Princess Elizabeth, whose
unflinching Protestant sentiment resembled his own, which formed a
constant factor in his shifting system of policy. She was afterwards a
visitor to Berlin, where, in 1646, Princess Louisa Henrietta of Orange,
whose spirit was akin to hers, held her entry as Electress, and at
Krossen, where the Dowager Electress (Frederick V’s sister) kept a Court
of her own, and where Elizabeth is said to have specially interested
herself in the instruction of the Elector Frederick William’s sister
Hedwig Sophia, afterwards Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel. We shall see in
what fashion the Great Elector ultimately succeeded in providing for the
peace and comfort of his kinswoman. Before this time, owing chiefly to
her friendship with Descartes, by which she is probably now chiefly
remembered, Elizabeth’s mental horizon had unmistakably widened; and,
though she retained to the last a sincere piety and (a trace or so of
pride of birth apart) a touching modesty of spirit, her growing
familiarity with broader philosophical principles gradually freed her
from some of the narrowing influences of Calvinism. Descartes’ intimacy
with the Princess Palatine, against whose family he had, curiously
enough, in former days borne arms in Bohemia, was during her absence
from the Hague maintained by an exchange of letters between them, of
which the artless Sophia contrived the conveyance.[37] Although the
relations between the great thinker and his matchless pupil were not in
the least of a kind to suggest clandestine methods, Elizabeth was not,
like Queen Christina, independent of control; and Sophia’s services in
screening the correspondence from her mother’s unsympathetic notice,
while they earned her the gratitude of the first philosopher with whom
she was brought into personal relations, show that, notwithstanding her
raillery and ridicule of her eldest sister’s moments of distraction,
kindly feelings prevailed between them. Elizabeth’s refined beauty,
though it was hardly in reference to this that her sisters nicknamed her
_la Grecque_, is described by Sophia in her _Memoirs_ very vividly, but
not without an admixture of spite.
-----
Footnote 36:
This was at the time (1636) when Charles I was very active in his
negotiations on behalf of the Palatine House, sending Lord Arundel on
a special mission to Vienna, projecting an alliance with the
States-General and France, and scheming the Polish match mentioned in
the text. Everything failed.
Footnote 37:
The correspondence of the Princess Elizabeth and Descartes extends
over the years 1643 to 1649. Comte Foucher de Careil, after publishing
his _Descartes et la Princesse Palatine_ in 1862, was enabled to
supplement the letters of Descartes by those of the Princess in a
second volume, published in 1879. A most interesting summary is
furnished by V. de Swarte’s attractive _Descartes Directeur Spirituel:
Correspondance avec la Princesse Palatine et la Reine Cristine de
Suède_ (Paris, 1904).
-----
The second of the sisterhood, Louisa Hollandina, is stated by Sophia not
to have been so beautiful in the days of the Hague and Rheenen as
Elizabeth, but, as it seemed to the young critic, of a more pleasing
disposition. ‘She applied herself entirely to painting, and her love of
this art was so strong, that she made likenesses of people without
having ever cast her eyes upon them.’ This master-passion possessed her
to the last, although, perhaps, it was only when Honthorst touched up
her pictures that they did full justice to his teaching. Some of her
handiwork is to be found in the galleries containing portraits of her
family; an Annunciation was painted by her at the age of seventy-three,
and several other pictures from her hands were bestowed by her upon the
parish churches in the vicinity of Maubuisson during the period of her
rule there as an Abbess. In her younger days, as we learn from the
observant Sophia, Louisa Hollandina, while intent upon painting the
portraits of her friends and acquaintances, was too neglectful of her
own personal appearance. On the other hand, it seems wholly unjust to
infer from the ripple of unaffected gaiety which overspread the calm of
her maturer years, that her nature was essentially frivolous. While her
life, as we shall see, was one of piety and unselfishness, we may
conclude her to have possessed in her youth what she preserved in her
old age—much of her youngest sister’s intellectual alertness and
vivacity, and perhaps also something of her humorous turn of mind,
without attaining to the depth of thought, any more than she had passed
through the intellectual training, that distinguished their elder,
Elizabeth.
Of Sophia’s third sister, the Princess Henrietta Maria (so named after
Charles I’s charming but ill-starred Queen), a portrait is drawn in the
_Memoirs_ hardly less attractive than that which pictures her on canvas.
But of the younger Henrietta Maria’s disposition and character nothing
is recorded, except that she cared only for needlework and preserves, by
which latter taste of her sister’s Sophia declares herself to have been
the principal gainer. She must, however, have had her share of the
delightful vivacity which marked her sisters Louisa Hollandina and
Sophia—for the Queen of Bohemia was afterwards vividly reminded of her
ways by the irresistible _espièglerie_ of the little Elizabeth
Charlotte. Largely through the match-making activity and Protestant
sympathies of her sister Elizabeth, a marriage was, in 1651, brought
about between Henrietta Maria and Prince Sigismund, a younger son of
Prince George I of Transylvania, who had died in 1648, after carrying
his throne and country safe through eighteen years of peril, first as
the ally of Sweden and France, and then under Turkish pressure in
friendly relations with Austria. But she died a few months after her
outlandish marriage, and was soon followed to the grave by her husband,
who did not live to witness the troubles which in the end overwhelmed
his brother, the reigning Prince George II.
Such were the brothers and sisters who were the objects of Sophia’s
unstinted affection in the youthful years of which she has drawn so
pleasant a picture and which to her were beyond all doubt the happiest
of her life. Nor has she refrained from drawing her own portrait as a
young girl, with light-brown hair naturally falling into curls, of gay
and unembarrassed manners, of a well-shaped but not very tall figure,
and with the bearing of a princess. Like most of her family, and
especially like her favourite brother Charles Lewis, whom their mother
the Queen had been wont to call her ‘little black baby,’ she had the
complexion of a _brunette_. Even more than by their royal mien and
handsome features, these Palatines were distinguished among other men
and women by the _vis vivida_ with which they were hereditarily endowed.
Although, however, to their mother display was second nature, and
although during her residence in the United Provinces she was in the
long run most fortunate in the bounty, interested or other, of her
hosts, yet the time came when she could not keep more than the ghost of
a Court, and as a matter of fact frequently found herself in sore
straits. In 1645 one of her sons describes her Court as worried by rats
and mice, but most of all by creditors. And Sophia, who was still young
enough to find even financial difficulties good fun, writes that her
mother’s banquets were more sumptuous than Cleopatra’s, since in order
to provide them she had sacrificed not only pearls but diamonds. Yet
even the poorest of royal exiles are rarely left without hangers-on,
moved by the remembrance of past kindness or by the expectation of
favours to come; and such Court followers as ‘Tom Killigrew,’[38] ‘the
elder,’ as he is usually called, and the ‘reverent Dick Harding,’ of
whom she often makes humorous mention in her letters, appear to have
clung to the Queen’s skirts till the end of her exile was at hand. But
she and her family had other friends, or at least one other friend, Lord
Craven, whose attachment and devotion were of the sort that gives rather
than takes, so much so that one can hardly imagine how but for him she
would have tided over her troubles. Of little body, but with a soul full
of generosity, he had gone forth in 1631 to serve under the Swedish
deliverer; and very soon he had begun to identify himself with the cause
of Elizabeth, and to lay at her feet what he had saved of the great
fortune bequeathed to him by his father, the Lord Mayor of London.[39]
It has been seen how his sword had been drawn and his treasure spent in
the futile raid upon the Palatinate; and now he was back at the Hague
paying the homage of his service to the unfortunate Queen. But Lord
Craven, though at the time little more than forty years of age and
destined to outlive by some thirty-five the loved Queen of whom an
unauthenticated tradition persists in asserting him to have finally
become the clandestine husband, seemed to Sophia’s disrespectful young
eyes merely a kind old gentleman with a purse full of money, and with a
quantity of little trinkets to bestow upon the young folk. She appears
not to have thought him quite so brilliant a member of society as it was
his wish to be, although among other things which she heard him say
purely for the sake of effect was the assertion that, when he chose, it
was in his power to think of nothing at all. Perhaps she shrewdly
suspected the _vieux milord_, as she calls him, of a tender sentiment
for her mother; perhaps she could not help looking down upon him as,
with all his munificence, a new man; for the Palatines were as proud as
they were poor.
-----
Footnote 38:
‘Tom Killigrew is here, who makes a rare relation of the Queen of
Sweden.’ (Elizabeth to Sir Edward Nicholas, in Evelyn’s _Diary and
Correspondence_, Vol. iv. p. 216.) Not long afterwards, in January,
1655, moved perhaps by the remembrance of the sport made by him of
Christina, she makes a humble suit on his behalf to her royal nephew.
As late as 1705 Sophia (then Electress Dowager) is found speaking with
scant respect of this ancient and faithful, but somewhat volatile,
Cornish family, the remembrance of whom still survives at Falmouth.
‘Tom Killigrew’s’ son Robert was anxious to commend himself to the
favour of the Electress; but she left it to her ‘posterity’ to attend
to his claims. (_Briefe an Hannoverische Diplomaten_, p. 195.)
Footnote 39:
The Earl of Craven took his title from the deanery of that name in
Yorkshire, of which his father (Sir William Craven) was a native. See
D. Whitaker, _History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven_, 3rd
edn., by A. W. Mount, Leeds and London, 1878.
-----
Of their pride—or at least of that of some of the members of the
family—a lurid illustration is to be found in an episode of the year
1646 which, tragical in its results, went far towards creating a
permanent breach between the Queen of Bohemia and some of her children.
Colonel de L’Épinay, formerly a favourite of the Duke of Orleans, had
brought with him from France to the Hague the reputation of an _homme à
bonnes fortunes_ or lady-killer, something in the style of the
Königsmarck to be mentioned on a later page of this biography. He had
gained a footing at the Queen of Bohemia’s Court, where probably no very
rigorous rules were observed as to affairs of gallantry; and here rumour
was once more busy with his supposed triumphs. The Queen of Bohemia
herself was said—it does not appear on what authority, but the laws of
evidence are not much studied in schools for scandal—to have looked on
him with favour. Her daughter Louisa Hollandina was, so far as we know,
only connected with de L’Épinay through the malicious pen of Madame de
Longueville, who, on her return from a visit to Holland, declared that,
after casting eyes on the Princess, she no longer thought that anyone
would envy him his crown of martyrdom. In any case, the pride of Prince
Philip, who may have known something in France about the earlier
adventures of this squire of dames, had taken umbrage at his actual or
rumoured proceedings at the Hague. A quarrel ensued between the Prince
and de L’Épinay; of which the end was that one evening in June, Prince
Philip, returning home late with a single companion, was assaulted by
two Frenchmen, and that, while defending himself against them, he
recognised de L’Épinay as one of his assailants, and called out his
name. De L’Épinay took to flight; but meeting him on the following day
in the market-place, Philip rushed upon him and engaged him in a
hand-to-hand struggle. In this de L’Épinay lost his life. The deed,
possibly for more reasons than one, roused the anger of the Queen of
Bohemia against her son Philip; he fled from Holland, and, though
Charles Lewis pleaded for him with his mother, she never seems to have
been reconciled to him. He was one of the most luckless of the
brotherhood. On his leaving Paris, his eldest brother had sought to
obtain employment for him under the English Parliament; but the attempt,
doubtless made with the view of strengthening Charles Lewis’ own
interest in that quarter, proved futile, and the unfortunate Philip was
left to his own devices. In 1649, we find him in the company of Charles
Lewis (who seems to have had a special kindness for him), on the
occasion of the entry of the Elector into the capital town of his
diminished patrimony. Philip met with his death in the battle of Rethel
in 1650, fighting among the French royalists against Turenne and the
Spaniards. On the occasion of the killing of de L’Épinay the Princess
Elizabeth appears to have taken her brother Philip’s side; indeed,
according to one version of the matter, it was she who had instigated
him to commit the fatal deed. In any case, she in 1646 absented herself
from her mother’s Court and the Low Countries for more than a year; and,
though she seems afterwards to have returned thither for a time and
certainly to have been again on good terms with the Queen, her life was
henceforth generally led apart from her mother. No deeper sympathy can
at any time have existed between them. Princess Louisa Hollandina
remained at her mother’s Court for eleven years after the de L’Épinay
affair, leading, it is stated, an exemplary life, and gradually falling
more and more under the dominion of religious ideas very far removed
from the sphere of those which came home to her sister Elizabeth.
Not very long after Sophia’s introduction to her mother’s Court a
succession of English visitors were attracted to it, whom the troubles
that had broken out on this side of the sea had driven across.[40] In
1642 came Queen Henrietta Maria, to ask assistance from the
States-General for King Charles I, and bringing with her the Princess
Royal, Mary, the youthful wife of the heir of the House of Orange, upon
whom was afterwards to be thrust so important a part in the affairs of
her adopted country. By discovering in Sophia a slight resemblance to
her own daughter, Madame, Henrietta Maria gratified the authoress of the
_Memoirs_ so sincerely as to induce her to revise her first criticism of
the little Queen of England’s charms. More direct compliments were
before long paid to Sophia by some of the English lords and gentlemen;
and, as time went on, the English residents at the Hague began to
speculate very eagerly upon her chances of securing the hand of no less
a personage than her cousin the Prince of Wales, who at the time of his
father’s confinement in the Isle of Wight (which she spells _Weit_) was
about to seek a refuge in Holland. But this scheme, or rumour of a
scheme, was strongly resented by the Princess of Orange (Amalia von
Solms), whose soaring ambition was intent upon gaining the valuable but
not very easily negotiable prize for one of her own daughters. While to
Mary, the future Princess of Orange, the Queen of Bohemia’s heart seems
to have opened with a warmth of feeling which she was not in the habit
of manifesting towards her own daughters, a very different sentiment had
come to animate her towards Prince Frederick Henry’s consort. Upon the
favour of her former dependant, who aspired to be in everything but name
a Queen, Elizabeth now herself in a sense depended. We cannot,
therefore, place implicit trust in the account of the intrigue the
_Memoirs_ state to have been set on foot by Amalia. If the back-stairs
information received by Sophia was correct, the Princess of Orange
sought to ruin her young kinswoman’s reputation by causing an unmarried
son of her own to compromise her by his advances. Though this trick fell
through, yet, when the Prince of Wales had reached the Hague in 1648, it
soon became evident to the Queen of Bohemia and her daughter that there
would not and could not for the present be on his part any question of
marriage.
-----
Footnote 40:
One of the members of the Queen of Bohemia’s Court in Holland was
James Harrington, the author of _Oceana_, a relative of her former
guardian, Lord Harington. He had just left Oxford, and afterwards took
service under Lord Craven.
-----
Charles remained in Holland after to him, in his turn, a barren royal
title had accrued. When the terrible news of the execution of King
Charles I arrived in Holland, it came home with the utmost poignancy to
his sister and her family. The younger Elizabeth in particular was
almost overwhelmed, physically and mentally, by the catastrophe; and for
once the philosophical reflexions of Descartes, which certainly fell
short of the occasion, afforded her little or no comfort. The time had
of course long passed when any service could be rendered to the Palatine
family by the King to whose good offices it had of old looked forward so
hopefully; and, in this very year 1648, after two years of weary
negotiations, which had almost taken the heart out of the efforts of
Charles Lewis and his agents, the Peace of Westphalia had at last
restored to him part of his patrimony, with the dignity of Elector. The
Lower Palatinate with the fair town of Heidelberg was his once more; but
the Upper remained with Bavaria, whose Duke retained the first temporal
Electorate, while to the Elector Palatine fell only a newly created
eighth. Alike for the Palatine House, and for the Electorate recovered
by it, the conditions of the Peace were full of disappointment and
humiliation; but the worst, at all events, had not happened, when there
was some danger of its happening; and Descartes could impress upon his
friend and pupil the expediency of her brother’s accepting the half-loaf
which Fate had bestowed upon him.
In the meantime, the thoughts of Sophia—and perhaps not hers alone in
the family—were still turned chiefly in a different direction. When the
most enterprising of the followers of ‘King Charles II,’ the gallant
Montrose, early in 1650 started for Scotland with a royal commission, he
had, Sophia tells us, resolved on demanding from the King, should the
enterprise prove successful, the hand of her sister Louisa Hollandina.
Sophia’s own chances of securing her royal cousin’s hand still formed a
subject of speculation; and, on his return from France in 1650, the
Princess of Orange still thought it worth while to influence the
Presbyterian leaders among the King’s suite (Hamilton and Lauderdale)
against Sophia, on the ground that she was a bad Presbyterian and in the
habit of accompanying his Majesty to Common Prayer. Sophia was with her
mother at Breda, when Charles agreed to take the Covenant. This, she
writes, was not the only weakness she observed in him. From the first he
had shown her pleasant cousinly attentions; but of a sudden, at the
instigation of certain of his followers who had designs upon Lord
Craven’s purse and took this roundabout way of seeking to open its
strings, these attentions developed rather alarmingly. After some
extravagant compliments to her charms, which he pronounced superior to
those of ‘Mistress Berlo’ (a misspelt _alias_ of Lucy Waters), he
informed Sophia that he hoped to see her in England. But, with the same
circumspection in dangerous situations which she displayed in later
years, she preserved her name free from taint on the occasion of this
trying adventure. She had, as she says, wit enough to perceive that this
was not the way in which the marriages of great princes are made, more
especially as at Breda she noticed that ‘the King,’ who had previously
sought opportunities of conversing with her, avoided them in the
presence of the Scottish Commissioners. Thus she in her turn sagaciously
contrived to keep out of his way; and this first brief vision of an
English throne, which had probably excited those around her more than it
had moved herself, came to an end. ‘King Charles II’ passed out of the
horizon of Sophia’s hopes and calculations; and, when afterwards he
returned to Holland, his prospects were much darker, and she was no
longer resident at her mother’s court.
It could hardly be but that this episode, although it had touched
neither her honour nor her heart, should have made Sophia all the more
ready to quit her mother’s court, in which of late years new troubles
had begun to add themselves to old sorrows, and which was now no longer
the centre of the life of the Palatine family. In 1650 she was evidently
rather tired and out of harmony with a sphere of existence in which at
the outset she had taken so much pleasure; and this not so much for any
special reason as because it was gradually borne in upon her that ‘her
joy could not endure there.’ Thus it was settled between her and two
ladies in her particular confidence, whom she calls the Ladies Carray
(Carr?) and Withypol (the latter is mentioned under the name of ‘fraw
Wittepole’ as residing in Heidelberg Castle in 1658), and the good Lord
Craven, that she should try a change of scene and life by starting in
their company to pay a visit to her brother, the restored Elector
Palatine, at Heidelberg. At first her mother the Queen objected, still
clinging to the fancy of a match between her youngest daughter and the
head of the House of Stewart. At last, however, she acquiesced on being
assured that this consummation would not be prevented by the proposed
journey; and so, borrowing a vessel from the friendly States of Holland,
Sophia, who was now in her twentieth year, and whose travels had
hitherto not extended beyond an occasional jaunt to Leyden, Delft, or
Rheenen, in the summer of 1650 set forth on her voyage up the Rhine
towards Heidelberg and the unknown.
II
EARLY WOMANHOOD AND MARRIAGE
(HEIDELBERG, 1650-1658)
A home, to which Elizabeth of Bohemia was fated never to return, was
opened to her daughter Sophia. For eight years—from 1650 to 1658—she was
the guest of her beloved brother Charles Lewis in that part of the
Palatinate which had been at last restored to the family in his person.
To these congenial surroundings she easily acclimatised herself; nor did
she ever afterwards forget how, before her destiny at last bore her away
from Heidelberg and its familiar neighbourhood, the interests of her
maiden life had long centred in the affairs of her brother, in his
troubles both public and private, and in his children, for whom her
large heart never ceased to cherish a peculiar tenderness, even after
the welfare of her own numerous family had become the chief anxiety of
her existence. She was not at first aware that her departure from
Holland had been against her mother’s wish—a fact which she discreetly
passes over in her _Memoirs_.[41] After telling of her leisurely journey
along the route formerly followed by her parents on their wedding
journey home, she graphically describes the forlorn poverty which stared
her in the face, when she first entered her brother’s shrunken
dominions. He and his Electress met her at Mannheim and took her on with
them to Heidelberg, where the castle still lay in ruins, and they had to
lodge in the town.
-----
Footnote 41:
Charles Lewis wrote to his mother in much trouble on the subject, only
eliciting the reply that ‘as for Sophia’s journey, I will never keep
anie that has a minde to leave me, for I shall never care for anie
bodies companie that does not care for mine.’ _Letters_, &c., ed. A.
Wendland, p. 9.
-----
In truth, the Lower Palatinate had barely begun to recover from the
tribulations which it had undergone both in the earlier and in the later
periods of the Thirty Years’ War; and the population was literally the
merest fragment of what it had been before the outbreak of the
conflict—one-fiftieth part of it, according to a calculation which it
seems almost impossible to accept. Moreover, Charles Lewis only
gradually recovered possession even of the moiety of his patrimony
allotted to him, nor was it till 1652 that the last Spaniard quitted the
land. It is all the more to the honour of this Prince, and in a measure
atones for the grievous aberrations of his private life, that after his
restoration he should have held his head high in the Electoral College,
to which, as his father’s son, he had been so grudgingly readmitted; and
still more, that during the whole of his rule—which lasted till 1680—he
should have spared neither thought nor effort for the welfare of his
sorely tried subjects.
It was not his fault that, while engaged in these beneficent labours, he
had again and again to turn the pruning-hook back into a sword.[42] In
1666, he maintained a brave heart through his weary campaigning against
French and Lorrainers, although he met with little luck under arms and
suffered severely in health. Five years later, he sacrificed the
happiness of his daughter Elizabeth Charlotte by yielding to the French
demand for her hand, and went near to sacrificing his honour by allowing
her, against her own wish or disposition, to be converted to the Church
of Rome. When, in 1674, the first of the wars between the Empire and
France broke out, Charles Lewis may have indulged in some passing dreams
of an Austrasian kingdom under French supremacy; as a matter of fact, he
found that neither the Orleans marriage nor his exertions to remain
neutral protected his unhappy lands from invasion and its attendant
horrors. Things went better when, in 1675, he had thrown in his lot with
the Empire; for there can have been no truth in the rumours which made
themselves heard in the city of gossip, Venice, that his father’s son
was aiming at the Bohemian Crown. The troubles of the Palatinate
recommenced when, in 1679-80, the French added to pretended reprisals
the monstrous mockery of the so-called _réunions_; but of these Charles
Lewis only survived to see the beginnings, and he was spared the
bitterness of witnessing the devastation of his beloved Palatinate in
the so-called Orleans War, of which his own daughter’s supposed claims
were, to her unspeakable anguish, made the pretext. For the rest, the
Elector Charles Lewis was a genuine son of the Palatinate, to which he
devoted so much care and labour; he loved its good things, including the
Bacharach wine, whose praises he sang in homely dithyrambs, and the
wealth of choice fruit, mindful of which he denounced the sour pears and
bullet grapes outside his own promised land. Like his daughter after
him, he was nowhere so happy as in the midst of it, and his very diction
is coloured with a proverbial phraseology of native Palatinate growth.
As late as 1665, he is found declaring that if ten years more of life
were granted him, and no war or pestilence came in the way, he would,
_en despit de l’envie_, turn Mannheim into a second Rome. Nor were his
thoughts only set upon material things; whether justly or not, he was
regarded as one of the most learned princes of his age; he was
consistently anxious to revive the prosperity of the University of
Heidelberg, and had nearly crowned his efforts on its behalf by securing
Spinoza as one of its teachers. The education of his own children was to
him a subject of anxious and minute care.[43] In his youth, the evil
times on which Charles Lewis had fallen had (it is not uncharitable to
assume) taught him to dissimulate; but in his later years he had
retained little of the Puritan associations of his earlier manhood
except a love of the Bible and a hatred of Rome, and of priests and
priestcraft in general. He was, in short, a most liberal-minded and
tolerant Prince, who found satisfaction in the _Imitatio Christi_ as
well as in the New Testament, who would gladly have made his Palatinate
a refuge for persecuted adherents of any religious creed, and whose
dedication, not long before his death, of a church (at Mannheim) to
_Sancta Concordia_ was far from being an empty pretence. He had,
moreover, inherited his mother’s taste for poetry, and during his
sojourn in England had acquired considerable familiarity with its
literature, and its drama in particular. In a way it brings Sophia
herself nearer to us that her favourite brother freely quoted
Shakespeare, that a version by him of Ben Jonson’s _Sejanus_ was acted
at Heidelberg, and that he was so sturdy a critic as to pronounce the
Spanish drama superior to the French, but the English best of all.
-----
Footnote 42:
The celebrated _Wildfangsstreit_, which was carried on by Charles
Lewis in the years 1665 and 1666, is passed by in the text, where few
readers would probably care to find it discussed. This strange dispute
turned on the rights of the Electors Palatine over bastards and aliens
(_Wilden_) in their own and _adjoining_ territories, and troubles
which had thence arisen between Charles Lewis and his neighbours, in
which the Great Elector of Brandenburg was involved through his
alliance of May, 1661, with the Elector Palatine. The Great Elector’s
efforts brought about a settlement on the whole favourable to his
ally. (See _Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur Gesch. d. Grossen Kurfürsten
Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg_, Vol. xi. (_Polit. Verhandl._ Vol.
vii.). Ed. F. Hirsch, Berlin, 1887).
Footnote 43:
He drew up elaborate instructions for the tutors and governesses of
the Electoral Prince Charles and Princess Elizabeth Charlotte. One of
the former was Ezechiel Spanheim, who had accompanied his father, a
rigid Calvinist, when the latter had been summoned to Leyden by
Elizabeth and the States-General. Ezechiel was himself called from
Geneva in 1656 to Heidelberg, where he afterwards passed from theology
to diplomacy. It was in the Brandenburg service, which he had entered
in 1680, that he was accredited to the English Court, of which he
wrote an _Account_ (1706). He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
-----
But, heavy as were the burdens laid upon the head of the Palatine House
after Charles Lewis’ partial restoration, the troubles that came nearest
home to him, and that in the end infected the whole atmosphere of his
court, were of his own making. He cannot be held accountable for the
financial difficulties which obliged him to discourage his mother’s
desire to return to the Palatinate; and, even before the troubles in
question broke out, more general considerations may have rendered him
the reverse of eager for her presence. His policy was to bury the past,
which she in a sense typified; and he may have feared her extravagant
ways, and thus preferred to lighten her expenditure by inviting his
sisters Elizabeth and Sophia to his capital. His offer of some rooms in
the _Ottheinrichsbau_ of Heidelberg Castle, which he could not afford to
furnish, failed to attract, and the hope which she had cherished, that
she might end her days in her own good dowry town of Frankenthal, it was
not in his power to fulfil. Meanwhile, the compensation for the
temporary occupation of the place by the Spaniards, which had been
promised in the Nürnberg settlement of 1651, supplementary to the Peace
of Westphalia, remained unpaid by the Emperor. Charles Lewis, who had in
the first instance to think of his Electorate and its defences, was
without resources enabling him to respond to his mother’s requirements;
and the recriminations which followed on her part left the situation
unaltered. Even before mother and son had been at odds on this subject,
there was a dispute between them as to various heirlooms at the Hague
and at Rheenen, which she refused to give up to him as he demanded. In
short, their correspondence had reached a most painful stage, and it is
pitiful to read the description of the sore straits to which she found
herself reduced, just when the cloud seemed to be at last lifting from
the fortunes of their House. She was, she wrote, entirely dependent upon
the monthly allowance of the States-General; it amounted only to a
thousand florins, and was not made for more than a single year, and she
had only accepted it as a _pis aller_ when she found it out of the
question that her claims on payments from England should be made part of
the Anglo-Dutch treaty concluded in 1654. As a matter of fact, her case
was a very hard one; for her creditors had never been so pressing as
now, when there seemed a chance of payment; the very heirs of the
faithful Ludwig Camerarius demanded the redemption of a favourite jewel
which she had pawned to them; all her children were in debt like
herself, from the high-minded Elizabeth to the volatile Edward; and it
is touching to find her entreating a loan of a thousand pounds for the
purpose, because the jewel ‘was my brother Prince Henry’s.’ At an
earlier date, Charles Lewis had suggested to an agent that it would be
desirable for her to approach Cromwell as to the relief of her
creditors, but was told in reply that she would certainly never do this,
‘but only break into passion against those that should give such
advice.’ So matters went on till other reasons came to a head which made
the Elector undesirous of receiving her at his Court; and his seeming
ingratitude infused another drop of bitterness in her cup.
The quarrel between Charles Lewis and his brother Rupert, which became
mixed up with the cardinal trouble of the elder brother’s later years,
and caused great sorrow to their mother, had its origin in the financial
difficulties which beset them all. In 1653, the Elector had settled a
modest allowance on his brother Edward, and in 1654 he made a similar
arrangement with Rupert, who on his arrival in Paris had entered into
negotiations on the subject through the Palatine envoy, Pawel von
Rammingen. Rupert was to be allowed 2,500 dollars _per annum_, to rise
after five years to 4,000, while the Emperor agreed to pay him a
substantial sum under the Nürnberg settlement. But Rupert could not sit
down contented with this compact, and, quite in the spirit still
prevailing in many of the princely Houses of Germany, demanded a share
of the Palatinate territory as his younger brother’s portion. Charles
Lewis at first dallied with the proposal, which, however, could not be
to his mind, more especially as he had no wish for introducing into his
Electorate the permanent influence of so martial and combative a spirit
as his brother’s. Rupert, however, insisted on his demand, and in 1656,
after refusing to receive any further payments of his allowance, asked
for an immediate interview. The Elector having declined to receive him
at Heidelberg, but offered to meet him at Neustadt, and in the meantime
to increase his allowance, the fiery Prince repaired uninvited to the
capital, and, having been refused admittance to the castle by the
colonel in command, swore an angry oath that he would never return to
the Palatinate, and passed on to Mainz. Here he proceeded to lay his
grievances before the Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, and then offered
his sword to the Emperor. But, though he seems to have actually entered
into the Imperial service, he found its atmosphere uncongenial, and,
when in 1661 he made another attempt to obtain a high command (in the
Turkish War) and at the same time to obtain payment of the sums promised
him under the Nürnberg settlement, he was unsuccessful. This failure he
ascribed to the intrigues of his brother the Elector, and he now settled
down after a fashion in England, whither he had betaken himself on the
Restoration. Though it was not till later that the brothers were again
on good terms, the dispute between them was settled in 1670, when the
arrangement of 1654 was put into force again, Rupert’s allowance being,
however, raised from 4,000 to 6,000 dollars, the balance of the Nürnberg
compensation paid over, and the Rheenen property being given up to
him—an old notion of his mother’s, which he had formerly rejected.[44]
-----
Footnote 44:
In 1655 she writes to Charles Lewis that she had sent him all that she
could spare in the house there, and entreats him at the same time to
dismiss the concierge, ‘for he is the veriest beast in the world and
knave besides.’ See _Letters_, &c., ed. A. Wendland, p. 67.—I have
revised my account of the dispute between Charles Lewis and Rupert
with the aid of K. Hauck, _Karl Ludwig, Kurfürst von der Pfalz_, pp.
251 _sqq._
-----
At the time when Charles Lewis’ quarrel with Rupert broke out, the elder
brother was in the midst of a difficulty which, unlike those just
described, was essentially of his own making. Of this trouble Sophia’s
quick wit had, already on arrival at Mannheim, and first meeting with
her brother the Elector and his bride, detected the germs. She had
perceived at once that all was not well between the pair. While her
brother met her with his usual geniality of manner, the Electress, whose
mien was _fort dolente_, said very little. When the party proceeded to
Heidelberg, where Sophia had the satisfaction of seating herself in the
best-appointed carriage on which she had cast eyes since her departure
from the Hague, she found that her praise of this vehicle gave offence
to her sister-in-law, to whom it had been presented as her
wedding-coach, and in whose opinion it was vastly inferior to one
presented to her sister for her marriage with the Prince of Tarento.
This afflicting comparison was, however, only the first and slightest
clause in her long litany of grievances.
Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of Landgrave William V of Hesse-Cassel,
and his wife, Amalia Elizabeth, seemed marked out by descent as a most
fitting consort for the restored Elector Palatine. Her grandfather,
Landgrave Maurice, had in his day been one of the foremost
representatives of militant Calvinism, and at once the boldest and the
most steadfast of all the Princes of the Union. Her mother, the
Landgravine Amalia, deserves lasting remembrance as one of the most
remarkable Princesses of her age, by whose exertions Hesse-Cassel was
preserved from ruin in the Thirty Years’ War, and to whom more than to
anyone German Calvinism owed the rights of parity at last secured to it
in the Peace of Westphalia. But her married life with the Elector
Charles Lewis, which began in February, 1650, proved a singularly
unhappy one; nor can there be any pretence but that she was made to
suffer grievous and intolerable wrong. It is at the same time undeniable
that the aggravating elements in her character—to Sophia’s critical eye
there seemed to be such even in her beauty—contributed to the beginning
of the end. Sophia rapidly arrived at her own conclusions as to the
intellectual capacity of her sister-in-law—what with her love of dress
and her stories of Duke Frederick of Würtemberg-Neustadt, not to mention
the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes, George William and Ernest Augustus, and
several other admirers, to whom she had been forced by her mother to
prefer her present jealous ‘old’ husband. In his turn, Charles Lewis,
although he far too demonstratively adored his handsome wife, confessed
that there were defects in her education, which he entreated his shrewd
youngest sister to correct. Very soon, however, Sophia perceived that
the comedy was taking a serious turn. The quarrel between the pair began
with an outburst of jealousy on the part of the Elector, followed, in
more violent fashion, by another from the Electress. Charles Lewis
hereupon became violently estranged from his consort; and his aversion
was deepened by a passion which he conceived for one of his wife’s
maids-of-honour, Baroness Louisa von Degenfeld. Perhaps this more
decorous Anne Boleyn was rendered all the more attractive in his eyes by
her literary turn of mind, if we may judge from their initial
correspondence under names borrowed from an Italian novel,[45] and from
the liking which she afterwards showed for such classics as Lucian,
Corneille, and Molière. For some years or so, however, the husband and
wife rubbed on together, two children being born to them. The elder,
born 1651, was Charles, afterwards Elector Palatine, the last of the
Simmern line, who died less than five years after his father (1685); had
he survived, he must of course have stood before Sophia in the English
Succession. In most respects he had little character of his own, perhaps
partly because he had been over-educated; but he was a devout Calvinist,
and would probably have remained such had it been his fate to mount the
throne to which, in earlier times, some of the English Parliamentary
politicians may have thought of raising his father. The younger of the
two children, born 1652, was Elizabeth Charlotte, the _Liselotte_ of her
father’s affections and of those of her aunt Sophia, by whom she was
partly brought up, and a darling of whose later years she became.
-----
Footnote 45:
This was quite in the style of the age, which loved the mystifications
of pseudonyms, and of ciphers without much concealment. Elizabeth
mentions that her daughter Sophia writes to her about Berenice’s
business (Sophia’s own), and that they are discussing it with
Tiribazus (Charles Lewis). _Letters_, &c., p. 91.
-----
For a time the Elector contrived to conceal his amour from his wife;
but, in 1657, a letter addressed by Prince Rupert to the Elector’s
mistress, by whose beauty and wit he seems to have been attracted on a
previous visit, having fallen into the hands of the Electress, and the
quarrel between the brothers having probably contributed to exacerbate
matters, there was an end of the secret. Put on the track of her
husband’s infidelity, the Electress ruthlessly ran him and his mistress
to earth; and the result was a public scandal without an equal in the
domestic annals of this anything but shamefaced age. The Elector having
at last withdrawn from Heidelberg with Louisa von Degenfeld, whom he in
the first instance settled with many precautions at Schwetzingen, there
ensued a long and disgraceful series of proceedings which, to the
unfortunate Electress, must have recalled a notorious episode of her
native Hessian history in the days of Landgrave Philip the
‘Magnanimous.’ Salving his conscience as best he might with the
obsequious assistance of his court divines, Charles Lewis, early in
1658, married Louisa von Degenfeld as his second wife. He had previously
conferred upon her the ancient title of Raugravine Palatine, with a
provision that a corresponding titulature was to be transmitted to their
issue. From this abnormal union, which lasted till Louisa’s decease,
twenty years afterwards, there sprang not less than fourteen children,
of whom eight survived their mother. The marriage—if marriage it may be
called[46]—supplied him with the felicities of a tranquil home, though
for some time he had to keep watch over it with an anxious care, of
which the humorous aspect escaped him, against the evil designs imputed
by him to ‘X,’ his repudiated wife, and though her Hessian relations
long endeavoured to assert her rights. Latterly the ‘second wife’ seems
chiefly to have resided with her children at Frankenthal, where the
proud Queen of Bohemia had hoped to find repose for her last years. The
correspondence between Charles Lewis and Louisa shows him to have been
entirely faithful to her, and to have passionately loved his children.
But, though his fidelity to his chosen companion was unswerving, the
relations between them were disturbed by occasional dissensions. On her
death he put forth, together with an account of her Christian ending
drawn up by the divine whom he had originally consulted as to his
‘second marriage’ (Hiskias Eleazar Heiland), an elaborate analytical
statement of her virtues and shortcomings during their union, for which,
with a conscientiousness showing that there was still a drop of
Calvinistic blood in his veins, he had himself contributed the most
important materials. For his children, the surviving Raugraves and
Raugravines, he had intended to make ample provision, but had perplexed
himself so much about its conditions, that his legitimate son and
successor, the Elector Charles, declared all his father’s arrangements
on the subject invalid. Several of the sons afterwards distinguished
themselves in the field. Charles Maurice, who was till his death in 1702
a familiar figure at Hanover, and who is the Trimalchio of the banquet
‘after the manner of the ancients’ described in Leibniz’s correspondence
with Sophia, drank away his remarkable intellectual powers. But the
children of Louisa von Degenfeld were treated kindly by the Dowager
Electress Charlotte, and Sophia took them one and all to her heart, more
especially the two sisters Louisa and Amalia, ‘_les deux sibylles de
Francfort_.’ Louisa was in later years at Hanover appointed Mistress of
the Robes; and it is said that there was at one time some intention of
entrusting her with a confidential mission to England in connexion with
the Succession question.
-----
Footnote 46:
It is, Elizabeth plainly told her son, ‘both against God’s law and
man’s law.’ _Letters_, &c., p. 92.
-----
After the death, in 1677, of Louisa von Degenfeld, Charles Lewis, having
in the first instance (with Sophia’s approval) taken to himself a
mistress, was desirous of inducing the Electress to consent to a
divorce, which would have enabled him by a ‘third’ marriage to seek to
secure the Succession of his (the Simmern) line, resting as it did on
the life of his legitimate son Charles only.[47] But Charlotte Elizabeth
was not found ready to oblige her erratic husband thus far. Prince
Rupert, with whom Charles Lewis had gradually come to be on better
terms, had already, in 1675, declined to come to the rescue. The
match-making Princess Elizabeth had in vain desired a match between her
brother Rupert and her young kinswoman Princess Charlotte Sophia of
Courland.[48] That young lady’s aunt, Landgravine Hedwig Sophia of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, opined that nothing would come of the match,
especially as Prince Rupert was on the look-out ‘not only for beauty,
but for means.’ As a matter of fact, the ardour of Rupert’s aspiring
youth had by this time settled down into a sober though still singularly
active maturity; moreover, he had formed a connexion so close that it
has been suspected to have amounted to a secret marriage, with Francesca
Bard, an Irish Roman Catholic lady of good birth, with whom and their
child, called ‘Dodley’ (Dudley) by Sophia, the indulgent Palatine family
were on friendly terms. But neither this boy nor, of course, Ruperta,
Prince Rupert’s daughter by the actress Margaret Hughes, was ever
formally acknowledged by him; and thus this brother, too, left no
descendant who when the time came, might have forestalled the claims of
Sophia and her progeny to the English Succession.
-----
Footnote 47:
The Queen of Bohemia was very anxious about her grandson, in whose
early days she had recorded with satisfaction that the little Prince
of Orange (William III) was a year older, but considerably smaller in
size.
Footnote 48:
She died at an advanced age as Abbess of Herford.
-----
Sophia’s own life at Heidelberg, though much clouded by her brother’s
domestic troubles, of which more than enough has now been said, and
towards which, in its initial stages, she appears to have borne herself
with a discretion already habitual to her, was by no means without its
agreeable aspects. It had at first been made uncomfortable by the ways
of the Electress Charlotte, whose favourite amusements, field sports and
the card-table, were not much to Sophia’s personal taste. Still, the
life of the Palatine court, though an economy little dreamt of in former
days now prevailed there, was not without diversions in which she took
pleasure—among them those _Wirthschaften_, a fashionable amusement
half-way between a fancy fair and a _bal costumé_, of which the Queen of
Bohemia had shared the vogue in Holland. Mention has already been made
of Charles Lewis’ familiarity with the literature of the English stage;
and the English comedians whom he saw at Frankfort possibly also found
their way to Heidelberg. But his sisters had more direct opportunities
for keeping up their interest in England and things English, since
Charles Lewis seems to have entertained a good many English gentlemen at
his capital, where some of them settled down as they have done in later
days. Among his English guests was the former Parliamentary General, Sir
William Waller, though with the Restoration Charles Lewis became a good
Royalist again, and contrived to put himself on good terms with Lord
Chancellor Clarendon. We have already seen how Prince Rupert himself was
an occasional visitor at Heidelberg, as was his younger brother
Edward—though the latter proved so full of ‘_ralierie_’ that Charles
Lewis refused to take him to visit the lady whom he wished to be
regarded as his wedded wife. Before this, Princess Elizabeth had, in
1648 and again in 1651, arrived as a visitor at the Electoral Court—much
changed, as on the latter occasion Sophia and Edward thought, both in
outward appearance and in tone of mind, which Sophia expressly
attributes to her recent sojourn at Berlin, at the Court of the pious
Electress Louisa Henrietta. Perhaps, too, she was saddened by the death
of Descartes (1650), and perhaps by a growing estrangement from her
mother; in any case, her whole nature was more and more tending towards
that contemplative life whose attractiveness for some minds seems so
incomprehensible to others. Unfortunately, as Sophia confesses, she was
weak enough to join her brother and sister-in-law in rebelling against a
certain air of superiority which in their eyes Elizabeth seemed to
assume. She warmly interested herself in the Elector’s efforts to give a
new life to the University of Heidelberg, where she is said to have
acquired a personal reputation by her exposition of the Cartesian
philosophy. Sophia’s day for listening to the conversation of
philosophers had hardly yet arrived, and she at no time aspired to place
herself on what may be called the professorial level. There is no
appearance of the two sisters having been permanently alienated from one
another; but mutual sympathy could not otherwise than dwindle between
one who was preparing to bid farewell to the world, and one who was
intent upon establishing her position in it.
The real reason of Sophia’s quitting Holland had been her sense of the
uncertainty of her own position there; yet, even had the prospect been
wholly agreeable, she could not now look forward to a permanent
residence at the strangely distracted Court of her eldest brother. As
the solitude of a religious, or of a quasi-religious, life would not
have been to her mind (though it was about this time that she sat for
her portrait in the costume of a Vestal Virgin), a suitable marriage
engagement had, in a word, become a necessity for her. So attractive and
high-spirited a princess might fairly expect to find an acceptable
husband without having, like her sister Henrietta Maria, to espouse a
Transylvanian prince. Unluckily, in the latter part of 1651 or beginning
of 1652, Sophia underwent an attack of small-pox, which, as she
confesses, seriously impaired her beauty. But she had no mind to take
whoever might be the first comer; and not long after her recovery she
declined overtures made to her on behalf of the Portuguese Duke of
Aveiro; ‘having had thoughts of marrying a King she could not stoop to a
subject.’ In much the same mood she about this time broke off an
innocent correspondence (on the subject of compositions for the guitar)
into which she had entered with a prince with whom she had in her
childhood made acquaintance in Holland, and who, when recently passing
through Heidelberg on his way to Venice, had seemed to her more charming
than ever. This prince, who ‘pleased everybody,’ was no other than her
future husband, Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Since,
however, he was the youngest of four brothers and (as will be seen
immediately) without any present prospect whatever of enjoying any
territorial dominion of his own, he was clearly not _bon à marier_; and
it was best to avoid a kind of gossip of which Sophia had only too vivid
an experience.
There appears to have been some talk of other matches for Sophia, and
above all of a design of marrying her to a more important personage than
the disinherited King of England—the young King of the Romans, who, as
such, during the last year of his life bore the designation of Ferdinand
IV.[49] It is true that, in 1652, the Elector Charles Lewis had, on the
occasion of his being received by the Emperor Ferdinand III within the
unconscious walls of Prague, established excellent relations between the
Imperial House and himself. But it is difficult to suppose that anything
could have come of this scheme, which would have involved as a
preliminary transaction the conversion of Sophia to the Church of Rome;
and the statement that the young King of the Romans had fallen in love
with Sophia, and intended to marry her, rests only on the authority of
the Duchess of Orleans. Charles Lewis might, in the interests of the
Palatinate, have assented to the match; but Sophia would assuredly have
refused it with more determination than was afterwards shown by her
niece when the Orleans marriage proposal was pressed upon her. The
earlier project, however, came to a speedy end with the death of the
young Roman King in 1654.
-----
Footnote 49:
A match between his grandfather, afterwards Emperor Ferdinand II, and
Sophia’s great-aunt on the mother’s side, Princess Hedwig of Denmark,
had been suggested in 1617.
-----
Thus the first suitor proper of Sophia during her stay at her brother’s
Court was Prince Adolphus John, brother of the newly crowned King of
Sweden, Charles X Gustavus, and like him a scion of the Zweibrücken line
of the Palatine House. Though he had no prospects of the throne, he was,
as his subsequent conduct at a critical moment after his great brother’s
death showed, an ambitious prince, and his suit was favoured by the
Electress Charlotte, who would have been pleased to be rid of her
sister-in-law. But Sophia looked very coolly on the negotiations that
ensued; for she had conceived an aversion to this suitor, which she
declares could only have been conquered by a virtuous effort. He was a
widower, and was said to have ill-treated his first wife. Fortunately
for Sophia, the difficulty of marrying a princess who had been trained
as a Calvinist into a rigidly Lutheran land, stood in the way of the
proposal; and, though the match was announced with much satisfaction to
Secretary Nicholas by the Queen of Bohemia for the information of King
Charles II, the negotiations were still incomplete, and the King of
Sweden’s approval of his brother’s offer in doubt, when the likelihood
of another proposal intervened. The House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, this
time in the person of George William, the second of the brothers between
whom its territorial inheritance was divided, now appeared upon the
scene. It will be more convenient to review at a rather later point the
general position and prospects of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg at the
time when Sophia definitively threw in her lot with its destinies, and
when the first step was thus taken towards its acquiring an interest in
the question of the English Succession. At the time of his visit to
Heidelberg, in 1656, George William, afterwards the ruler of the
Lüneburg-Celle portion of the paternal inheritance, held the
Calenberg-Göttingen portion, and resided at Hanover. He had recently
been urged to marry by his Estates, who were anxious to avert any
likelihood of blending the several divisions of the family inheritance;
and, though he had always felt the strongest repugnance to any such
step, much preferring to a married life the Venetian pleasures of
bachelorhood, he now thought of giving way to the Estates, if they would
in return vote an increase in his revenue. George William and his
brother Ernest Augustus were united by an intimacy and affection as
close as that which in the next generation tied the namesake of the
latter to his eldest brother George Lewis (George I); and there is every
probability that it was the report of Ernest Augustus after his earlier
visit which induced George William to make preliminary enquiries through
an agent, George Christopher von Hammerstein, who was much in the
confidence of the dynasty. Hereupon he paid a visit to Heidelberg in
person, but accompanied by his favourite youngest brother. George
William’s attentions to Sophia were well received; and though (for the
painful reasons to be indicated below) she could never have been brought
to confess it in her _Memoirs_, her heart seems to have been really
touched; and it may be added that, through all the vicissitudes which
ensued, she retained a kindly feeling towards him. As for the present,
she allows that when at last he requested her permission to ask her hand
from her brother, she failed to answer like a heroine in romance, ‘for I
did not hesitate to say Yes.’ Probably what attracted her in George
William, whose political principles must at the time have been a matter
of indifference to her, while she could not, like King William III in
later days, have much sympathised with his love of hunting and of a good
glass of wine, was the comparative refinement of manners which
distinguished both him and his younger brothers among the German princes
of the day. Though two of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes afterwards came
to be known as resolute opponents of the political designs of France,
yet George William and Ernest Augustus, as well as their brother John
Frederick, belonged to the new school of German princes, who loved the
society and cultivated the fashion and manners of Frenchmen, and who
with more or less of success sought to model their Courts on Versailles.
This fact should not be overlooked; for patriotic Englishmen (especially
when in Opposition) afterwards made a constant point of deriding the
unrefined Teutonism of the Hanoverian Court. At the same time, George
William’s frequent visits to Italy, and especially to Venice, cost a
great deal of money to the Estates of his principality; and they were
accordingly anxious that he should arrive at a settlement, while he,
with a view to the bargain proving to his advantage, kept the engagement
to which the Elector Palatine had assented as secret as possible. Of a
sudden there came from Venice, whither the brothers had proceeded after
their visit to Heidelberg, the unexpected and mortifying news that
George William, who had been leading a loose life at Venice, had found
it necessary to break off his engagement. Sophia, though ‘too proud to
be touched,’ thus found herself placed in a most cruel position. Who can
say what in these circumstances might have been the result of an offer
made to her on behalf of Ranuccio II, Duke of Parma (dependent, of
course, upon her previous conversion), had not her Hanoverian suitor
shown himself most anxious to do what in him lay to remedy the wrong
which he had inflicted on her? He now proposed that his youngest brother
Ernest Augustus should marry her in his stead, taking over with her the
principalities at present held by George William, and in return only
promising to pay to the latter a comfortable pension. But to this
arrangement the third of the four brothers, John Frederick, a prince of
much ambition as well as obstinacy of character, very naturally objected
as unfair to his own interests, and a serious illness which had befallen
Ernest Augustus further delayed proceedings. Thus it was not till 1658
that the transaction was actually carried out, though on lines somewhat
different from those first contemplated. Sophia’s hand was transferred
from Duke George William to Duke Ernest Augustus, the former undertaking
to remain unmarried during the lifetime of his brother and his consort,
and in that of any male heirs whom they might leave behind them. This
renunciation, for which there were several precedents in the annals of
the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg and doubtless in that of other German
princely houses also,[50] is set forth at length in the original German
in Sophia’s _Memoirs_, though even she could not when copying it out be
aware of the full significance which it possessed for the future of the
family. She knew, however, that of her husband’s three brothers the
eldest was childless and the third still unmarried, while the second had
renounced the prospect of lawful issue. The possibilities of future
importance which her marriage now open to her husband and herself were,
therefore, wholly due to the arrangement by which this marriage was
accompanied. The renunciation of George William contained in it the germ
of the greatness which awaited the line founded in his stead by his
brother; while the consequences of the fact that his promise was half
broken, half kept, clouded the initial stage of that greatness with the
shame of a terrible family catastrophe. Sophia dwells on the weakness
and inconstancy of George William in yielding to the demands of his
councillors that he should reduce the handsome yearly allowance promised
by him to his brother; unhappily, as she hints, the same defects were to
be exhibited by him in matters of far greater gravity.
-----
Footnote 50:
According to Spittler, not less than six of the uncles of George
William (brothers of Duke George) promised to remain unmarried.
-----
Sophia’s engagement to Ernest Augustus was for a time kept secret from
her mother; but she seems to have borne the pair no malice, and to have
sent her blessing in due course, with congratulatory letters from King
Charles, in English to the bride, and in Latin to the bridegroom.[51]
-----
Footnote 51:
_Letters_, &c., ed. A. Wendland, p. 100.
-----
The Elector Charles Lewis, however, who acted in the place of a father
to his sister, found the expenses of her marriage weigh heavily upon his
reduced finances. ‘Besides her due,’ he wrote to the Queen, his mother,
by way of excusing himself for being ‘uncapable of what her Majesty was
pleased to require of him,’ ‘I am bound to an extraordinary, more
especially for the friendship she always shewed me, and because nobody
else hath done anything for her.’ Sophia tells us that on Ernest
Augustus’ arrival for the wedding she found him lovable, because she had
made up her mind to love him; and something of this resolute spirit of
attachment may, in the face of many provocations to the contrary, be
said to have characterised her relations to him throughout their married
life. According to Leibniz, the wedding took place towards the end of
September, 1658; but, according to a contemporary authority cited by
Sophia’s biographer, Feder, the date was October 17th of that year. She
describes the wedding solemnities, which, if not so magnificent or
appealing so persuasively to the imagination as those of her mother on
the banks of the Thames, showed the Palatine House to be equal to itself
in the maintenance of a stately etiquette. A few days afterwards he
posted back to Hanover, and she soon followed, attended by an ample
escort which he had provided for her. The indispensable Hammerstein
conducted the journey, on which her brother, the Elector, accompanied
her as far as Weinheim. She held her entry into Hanover on November
19th, being received by the whole family, her mother-in-law, the Duchess
Anna Eleonora (widow of Duke George), at its head. On her wedding-day
Sophia had, like her niece Charlotte Elizabeth on her subsequent
marriage with the Duke of Orleans, renounced any future claims to the
Succession in the Palatinate, unconscious of the remoter claims which
she was to owe indirectly to her Palatine, as well as directly to her
English, blood. But, though she dearly loved her brother, and shed a few
tears on parting from him, they would, as she declares, have flowed more
abundantly had her heart not been with her husband, and, as we may add,
had not her hopes rested on the future which she went forth to meet by
his side.
While to Sophia, at an age of life neither late nor very early—for she
was near concluding her twenty-eighth year—married life thus opened with
its duties, cares, and consolations, it was otherwise with the two
sisters of whom she has told us most, and whose life was likewise to be
prolonged beyond the period of early womanhood. (Her third sister,
Henrietta Maria, had died already in 1661.) Both of them, by a singular
dispensation of fate, at a time not far removed from that of her
marriage, embraced a religious life, though in two different communions;
each was to end her days as the abbess of a conventual establishment,
revered and beloved in no ordinary measure by those around her. Since
Sophia’s marriage, though it cannot be said to have estranged her from
either of these sisters, concentrated her interests upon spheres of
activity from which theirs were in the main or altogether removed, the
present may be the most appropriate place for recalling the twofold
picture of their later lives, whose tranquillity contrasts so strangely
with the agitations with which hers was necessarily filled.
The Princess Elizabeth, whom we have seen more or less absorbed in her
own high thoughts and ennobling pursuits while still a resident at her
mother’s Court in Holland, and again actively interested in the learned
studies for which the rule of her brother, the Elector, had once more
provided a home at Heidelberg, remained behind in the Palatinate for
some three or four years after Sophia’s marriage. They cannot have been
happy years, for the scandal of the Elector’s second union was now at
its height, and the Electress, on whose side, whatever Charlotte’s
faults of temper, her sister-in-law’s high sense of moral rectitude
could not fail to range her, still held out, perhaps chiefly for the
sake of the Electoral children.[52] When, in 1662, the Electress, her
own efforts and those of her kinsfolk having proved vain, at last left
Heidelberg for Cassel, Elizabeth followed her thither. In the preceding
year her attached cousin, the Elector Frederick William, had named her
Coadjutress of the Abbess of Herford, and her ultimate destiny was thus
assured. The six years (or the greater part of them) which intervened
before she succeeded the Countess Palatine Elizabeth Louisa as Abbess of
the Westphalian convent were peacefully spent by her at Cassel, in the
society of the Landgravine Hedwig Sophia, a daughter of her aunt, the
Electress of Brandenburg, and herself a lady of strong religious feeling
and, as her administration of her dower-estate of Schmalkalden showed, a
determined Calvinist. Elizabeth’s own Calvinism, it is interesting to
note, had, already before she settled for the remainder of her days at
Herford, assumed a peculiar hue. She seems about this time to have been
much impressed by the Dutch divine, Johannes Cocceius, professor at
Leyden, whose personal acquaintance she had made on a visit to her aunt
at Krossen. Cocceius, who played an important part in the religious
movement known as Pietism, in so far as it affected the Reformed or
Calvinistic Church, recalls to us other eminent religious teachers in
whom the evangelical and the latitudinarian have been blended. The gist
of this teaching was a direct appeal to Scripture and a deprecation of
any insistence on the _formulæ_ of dogma. Elizabeth, whose mind had
expanded, and whose religious conceptions had deepened under influences
very different from the rigid Calvinism of an earlier type, welcomed the
simple and profound enthusiasm of Cocceius and of the so-called
‘Lodensteyners,’ whom the endeavour to bring home religion to the
individual mind and conscience had all but led into secession or
sectarianism. Thus it came to pass that, after Princess Elizabeth had,
in 1667, become Abbess of Herford in her own right, her rule was
signalised by her sympathetic relations with sectarian movements.
-----
Footnote 52:
In 1660 and the following year there is a good deal of talk and solemn
banter between Dr. Worthington and his correspondent S. Hartlib as to
the expected arrival in England of the Princess Elizabeth with her
mother. Dr. (Henry) More is repeatedly referred to as specially
interested in the hoped-for event. On May 28th, 1661, however, Hartlib
reports a profane piece of gossip: ‘I hear a secret of the Princess
Elizabeth that Lord Craven is like to marry her. I wish she were in
England, that she might marry Dr. More’s Cartesian notions, which
would beget a noble offspring of many excellent and fruitful truths.’
(See _Diary and Correspondence of Dr. Worthington_, edited by J. R.
Crossley for the Chetham Society, Vols. i. and ii.; and cf. Crossley’s
note on the Princess in Vol. i. _s. d._ October 15, 1660. The Princess
Elizabeth never came to England.
-----
In the middle of the seventeenth century the prosperous Westphalian
Hanse town of Herford which had always been Lutheran, had lost its
position as a free imperial city, and had been finally annexed by the
Elector of Brandenburg, as representing the former Protectors of the
Abbey. This foundation had been Lutheranised rather less than a century
before; but since the time of the Thirty Years’ War the Abbess might be
either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, and the Brandenburg influence of
course favoured the second alternative. Though she had lost her
sovereign rights, she was still regarded as an Estate of the Empire, and
as such represented at the Diet; she had a Court of her own, with
regular (even hereditary) officers, and a limited jurisdiction; and with
her and her Chapter was connected a foundation, which indeed outlasted
them, for the education of young ladies of family. The position was thus
one of considerable traditional dignity and actual influence; and
nothing of either was lost in the tenure of Elizabeth, a true princess
as well as a genuine student. She was at the same time well aware that,
as a matter of fact, the authority of the Abbess of Herford was
dependent upon the stronger arm of the Elector of Brandenburg—in her
case a dependence ungrateful neither to the protector nor to the
protected.
Thus, when in 1670 she was asked to extend the hospitable shelter of
Herford to Jean Labadie and his following of women and men, which from
some fifty gradually rose to seven or eight times that number, her first
step was to assure herself of the consent of the Great Elector. With
him, as with her, religious tolerance was a constant principle; nor is
there any reason for assuming that the goodwill shown by her towards
both Labadists and Quakers had any other root than Christian humility,
wherein for such as she lies the beginning of wisdom It is of course
easy to trace the more immediate influences by which she was drawn to
the founder of the now half-forgotten sect of Labadists. He had begun
his career as a Jesuit, and, after seeking to set up a new congregation
within the Church of Rome, had become a convert to Calvinism, and in
this new sphere tried the experiment over again with a freer hand, and
with greater success. At Geneva he was assisted in his endeavours by the
brother of Anna Maria von Schurmann, whose learning had made her the
‘wonder of her age,’ but whose thoughts were now set on other things.
Soon afterwards, she permanently associated herself with Labadie’s
attempt to realise without delay his scheme of the true Church. After
ministering to a small Walloon congregation at Middelburg in Zeeland, he
was duly excommunicated; whereupon he carried on his work at Amsterdam,
in a small community with peculiar institutions, as a declared
schismatic. It was from the tyranny of the Amsterdam mob that, at her
friend Anna Maria von Schurmann’s request, the Abbess of Herford
summoned, them to take refuge in the ‘liberties’ of her abbey. Very
soon, notwithstanding the Elector’s approval of her reception of the
fugitives, the Lutheran burghers of Herford raised a loud clamour
against the practices of the strangers, and then tried to starve them
out, till a commission of enquiry, appointed by the Elector, arrived in
the town. During the respite thus obtained another visitor, attracted by
motives of curiosity, arrived at Herford in the person of the Abbess’
sister Sophia. She brought with her no faith in supernatural gifts and a
mocking tongue; and the account of her visit admirably illustrates the
innate difference between the two sisters. The report of the commission
was on the whole favourable to the liberties of the strangers; and,
after Elizabeth had with much spirit refused to obey a mandate of the
Imperial Aulic Tribunal at Speyer ordering their removal, and had
journeyed in person to Berlin to bring about a decisive intervention on
the part of the Elector, the question was solved in 1672 by the
imminence of the French invasion of the Low Countries. This danger
obliged Labadie and the majority of his followers to fly t`o Holstein,
while the rest remained behind under the protection of the Abbess. Thus
closed a noteworthy episode, in the course of which a high-minded and
enlightened princess had, on behalf of a band of sectaries with whom her
own sympathy can hardly have been other than imperfect, successfully
upheld the cause of tolerance against both official and civic
bigotry.[53]
-----
Footnote 53:
The Labadists seem to have ultimately taken refuge in Maryland, where
the sect was gradually absorbed and is now almost forgotten. (See
Bartlett B. James, _The Labadist Colony in Maryland_, John Hopkins
Press, 1899.)
-----
The last of the Labadists had not yet left Herford, when Elizabeth began
to hold intercourse with a sect of greater significance than theirs in
modern religious history—the English Quakers, or, as we find her brother
Charles Lewis disguising their name, ‘quaquors.’[54] Three years later,
in 1667, she received two visits from William Penn and Robert Barclay
during their missionary journey in Holland and Germany, including the
Palatinate. From Penn’s account of these interviews, and the letters
exchanged between him and the Abbess, it is clear that the latter, who
was on both occasions attended by her intimate friend, Countess Anna
Maria van Hoorn, a canoness of the Abbey, was deeply moved by Penn’s
appeals to her heart and conscience. But it is equally clear that the
humility which bade her listen prevented her from accepting the
conclusion that she, too, was divinely called to teach. Her mind was
equipped; her soul alert; but she still waited. Five years later, when
she had passed away from the religion of doubts and difficulties, Penn
inserted in a new edition of his treatise, _No Cross no Crown_, among
the testimonies to the significance of _Serious Dying as well as
Living_, the following reminiscence of ‘the late Princess Elizabeth of
the Rhine’:—
She chose a single life, as freest of care, and best suited to the
study and meditation she always inclined to; and the chiefest
diversion she took, next the air, was in some such plain and
housewifely entertainment as knitting, &c. She had a small territory,
which she has governed so well, that she shewed herself fit for a
greater. She would constantly, every Last-day in the week, sit in
judgment, and hear and determine cases herself; where her patience,
justice, and mercy were admirable; frequently remitting her
forfeitures, where the party was poor, or otherwise meritorious. And,
which was excellent, she would temper her discourse with Religion, and
strongly draw concerned parties to submission and agreement;
exercising not so much the vigour of her power, as the power of her
persuasion. Her meekness and humility appeared to me extraordinary.
She never considered the quality, but the merits of the people she
entertained.... Thus, though she kept no sumptuous table in her own
Court, she spread the tables of the poor in their solitary cells....
Abstemious in herself, and in apparent void of all vain ornaments.
I must say her mind had a noble prospect. Her eye was to a better and
more lasting inheritance than can be found below, which made her often
to despise the greatness of Courts, and the learning of the Schools,
of which she was an extraordinary judge.
-----
Footnote 54:
The passage (in _Schreiben das Kurfürsten Carl Ludwig_, &c. must be
quoted: ‘To-day we have had in our presence an English _quaquor_ or
trembler; I repeatedly silenced him, for his mind works very slowly
indeed; he never takes off his hat and always calls me “thou”; but he
loses his temper if he is contradicted.’
-----
Then he gives instances, very simply put, of her way of deprecating too
narrow an interpretation of the duty of paying respect to our betters;
of her distrust of her power to walk in the straight way she had chosen;
of her humility towards the humblest; and he concludes:
I cannot forget her Last Words, when I took leave of her, ‘Let me
desire you to remember me, though I live at this distance, and that
you should never see me more—I thank you for this good time; and know
and be assured, though my condition subject me to divers temptations,
yet my soul hath strong desires after the best things.’
In view of this record of the eternal longings with which this beautiful
soul was filled at the last, it seems vain to make any reference to the
earthly cares which still from time to time occupied her, in connexion
no doubt chiefly with the family history, or even to the intellectual
occupations which continued to engage her interest to the last. She was
a diligent collector of books and manuscripts, and the last great
writers with whom she corresponded were Leibniz and Malebranche, the
mystical and Christian follower of her former teacher, Descartes.
Shortly before her death, Elizabeth sent for her sister Sophia to pay
her a long visit, and received her, Sophia relates in her _Memoirs_,
with a joyfulness as if an angel from Heaven had descended to heal her.
She then notes that the Abbess had been surrounded by people whose
melancholy notions of a religious life had made hers a martyrdom. Wasted
away in body, she was, however, calm in spirit and prepared for death,
though full of sympathy with her sister and with the troubles which
might await Sophia out in the turbulent world. Elizabeth died in peace
at Herford Abbey in February, 1680; a letter addressed by her to her
sister Louisa Hollandina, Abbess of Maubuisson, shows that more than
three months before she was already making herself ready for death.[55]
-----
Footnote 55:
I must take leave to insert here the inscription on her tomb in the
Abbey Church, Herford, kindly copied for me by Miss A. D. Greenwood,
who mentions that the name of the Princess Palatine is commemorated in
that of the Elizabethstrasse, a curly old street near the Minster:
D. O. M.
H. S. E.
Serenissima Princeps et Antistita Herfordiensis
ELISABETH
Electoribus Palatinis et Magnæ Britaniæ Regibus orta
Regii prorsus animi Virgo
Invicta in rebus gerendis prudentia ac dexteritate
Admirabili eruditione atque doctrinâ
Supra sexus et ævi conditionem celeberrima
Regum studiis Principum amicitiis
Doctorum vivorum Literis ac monumentis
Omnium Christianorum gentium linguis ac plausibus
Sed maxime propriâ virtute
Sui nominis immortalitatem adepta.
Nata anno 1618, die 26 Decembris
Denata anno 1680, die 8 Februarii
Vixit annos 61 mensem 1 et dies 16
Rexit annos 12 menses 10 et dies 2.
-----
Not much is known as to the life of the Princess Louisa Hollandina
herself during the years which followed on the occurrence of the de
L’Épinay scandal, and which she quietly spent at her mother’s Court in
Holland. Nothing seems to have been bruited abroad concerning her except
that she was leading an exemplary life, and that she was very intimate
with a lady whose name is given as Madame d’Oxsordre, and had frequent
conversations with her on the subject of ‘the bases of the Protestant
religion.’ In other words, a propagandist influence was steadily at work
upon her, and in the end she made up her mind to become a convert to
Rome. Conversions to Roman Catholicism were common during the whole of
this period, and there can be little doubt but that in this particular
transaction her brother Edward and his wife, the Princess Palatine Anne
(of Gonzaga), had an important share. In December, 1657, Louisa
Hollandina, who had reason enough to fear the maternal wrath should her
intention become known, secretly left the Hague at night-time in the
habiliments of a maid-servant, and made her way to Antwerp, where, in
January, 1658, she abjured Protestantism for the Church of Rome. Her
change of confession was not the result of any sudden resolution, but it
could not fail to incense as well as grieve her mother, whose wrath,
however, fell upon Princess Maria Elizabeth of Hohenzollern-Hechingen,
hitherto an intimate of her court. Whether or not a letter from this
lady to Princess Louisa Hollandina had finally determined her flight,
further letters from the same hand, which appear to have been
accompanied, or preceded, by the whisperings of verbal scandal,
reflected in no measured terms on the Palatine _ménage_. Elizabeth
hereupon insisted on the expulsion of the slanderer from her place of
residence, Bergen-op-Zoom, pending further enquiry. The ‘Princess of
Zollern’ hereupon entered into a series of further charges, culminating
in the suggestion that Louisa had been obliged to fly in order to
conceal her shame. The Queen behaved with prudence as well as dignity,
counselling her son the Elector to contradict this calumny, but to do so
quietly and civilly, without demanding proofs as if he had any doubts on
the subject. In December, 1658, or thereabouts, Louisa Hollandina
addressed a not undignified letter to her mother, in which she announced
her admission into the Church of Rome, which the occasion of the
Christmas Communion had made necessary to her conscience, and begged her
mother’s pardon for the trouble thus caused to her. About the same time
the Princess made her way to Havre, having ascertained that she would be
received with open arms by the French Court, which had formerly remained
deaf to her mother’s solicitations for support. Immediately after
Louisa’s arrival on French soil, she was welcomed by her brother, the
Prince Palatine Edward, and conducted by him to the Abbey of Maubuisson,
near the river Oise, and almost immediately facing Pontoise, the ancient
capital of the Vexin. Edward’s own daughters, Maria Anne and Benedicta,
were being educated here, each receiving at the same time a handsome
pension out of the Abbey funds. This ancient Benedictine nunnery
(originally planted in a wooded part of the country infested by
brigands; whence the name _le buisson maudit_) dated from the middle of
the thirteenth century, and the favour accorded to it by Queen Blanche,
who was buried in the convent after assuming its habit on her deathbed,
attracted to it the frequent presence of her son, St. Louis. His example
was followed by other sovereigns of France, and the later history of the
Abbey is full of interest. But here it must suffice to say that, in the
second half of the sixteenth century, the prevalent decay of conventual
life in France particularly affected Maubuisson, which had so long been
connected with the Court, and lay so near to Paris, and that this
corruption became complete under the reckless _régime_ of Angélique
d’Estrées, the sister of Henry IV’s Fair Gabrielle, who was herself
buried with one of her infants in the Abbey. After her death Henry IV
came there no more; but this period of worldly misrule was not ended,
till in the next reign Mère Angélique came from Port Royal to reform
Maubuisson under the supervision of St. François de Sales, and after a
hard struggle effected her purpose. Once more there was a terrible
backsliding; but better times returned in 1627 with the choice as Abbess
of the worthy Mère des Anges (Marie Suireau) who was really a nominee of
Mère Angélique’s, and who brought with her a fresh infusion of religious
zeal from Port Royal. Her twenty-three years of conscientious
administration once more restored the convent to a well-ordered and
pious life. On her return to Port Royal, the worthy abbess of Lieu Dieu
became Abbess of Maubuisson, where in the course of her short rule she
received Louis XIV; and after her Louisa Hollandina’s immediate
predecessor, Catharine d’Orléans, an illegitimate daughter of the Duke
de Longueville, against whom nothing remains on record except a series
of unfortunate ‘architectural improvements’ in the Abbey church. But
these changes have long been obliterated, together with the church
itself, which, after at the Revolution the Abbey had been taken over by
the nation and sold, was in 1790 blown up by powder. At the present
moment the traces of this notable historic monument are described as
hardly discernible.
There can be little doubt that, probably owing to the efforts of Louisa
Hollandina’s powerful sister-in-law, the French ‘_Princesse Palatine_,’
it had been from the first determined to provide for this interesting
princely convert at Maubuisson. No sooner had her foot touched the soil
of France than the royal favour of Louis XIV, whose magnanimous
hospitality never did things by halves, shone upon her. After her first
visit to Maubuisson she was taken to see her aunt, Queen Henrietta
Maria, who was at the time residing with the Visitandines at Paris, and
who, after vain attempts to convert her sons Charles and James to the
Church of Rome, was engaged in a project for obtaining the hand of the
young French King for her daughter Henrietta, brought up as a Roman
Catholic. Hereupon, Louisa was received at Court, and assigned a liberal
pension by the King; and thus she was enabled, on terms befitting her
position, to form a definite connexion with the Maubuisson convent.
After a noviciate of eighteen months, she took the vows on September
19th, 1660, in the presence of a distinguished assembly, before whom the
Bishop of Amiens preached ‘divinely.’ Happily for her peace of mind, the
kindness shown her by the French Court had impressed itself upon her
mother, for whose forgiveness Queen Henrietta Maria persistently sued.
In October, 1659, Elizabeth informed her son Charles Lewis that this
intercession had prevailed with her, and that, in obedience to the King
and Queen’s commands, she had forgiven ‘Louyse,’ and prayed God also to
forgive her, ‘which is all my letter in a few lines.’[56] But Louisa
Hollandina was the only one of her mother’s surviving children left
without mention in her will.
-----
Footnote 56:
See _Letters_, &c., ed. A. Wendland, p. 118. These letters at last
throw a full light on this episode of the Palatine family history.
-----
The long evening—if it should be so called—of Louisa Hollandina’s life,
which lasted till 1709, was a peaceful one; but it would be unjust to
her, more especially in view of some misconceptions which have arisen on
the subject, not to say a word as to the spirit in which she both
entered upon this period of her existence, and to which she throughout
remained true. Just before she took the vows, she is said to have been
warned by one of the Maubuisson sisters, who belonged to a reactionary
clique in the convent, desirous of obtaining a mitigation of the severer
rule introduced from Port Royal, not to engage herself to observe any
standard of discipline in excess of the proposed reduction, for which it
was probably hoped to secure the requisite sanction with the aid of an
Abbess in so much favour at Court. But she refused point-blank, and,
during the few years which she spent at the convent as a simple
religious, would not consent to be relieved from any one of the duties
incumbent on her. When, in August, 1664, she was, on the death of the
Abbess, named as her successor, her first act after accepting the office
was to sell part of the silver plate which had been presented to her by
the Queen of France in order to defray part of the debt pressing upon
the convent. She abolished the practice of former abbesses of keeping up
a retinue and footmen of her own, saying that she had abandoned the
world on purpose to see no more Courts; and her niece, the Duchess of
Orleans, in her humorous manner, describes her as going about the
convent and garden all alone and with her skirts tucked up, and giving
her orders in an authoritative tone that nobody ventured to disobey. She
even—no insignificant sacrifice for a Palatine—ceased to use the arms of
her House. This simplicity was partly natural to her, for even before
her retirement it had been noted how careless she was as to matters of
dress and outward appearance. Partly it was due to a resolute humility
of spirit, and a determination to avoid any assumption of superiority on
her own part over the sisters of the convent, to which Saint-Simon bears
express testimony. She would not seat herself on the throne hitherto
occupied by the Abbess in the convent church, and as a fitter object of
reverence placed a statue of the Virgin there. On the other hand, she
opposed a steadfast resistance to the tendency manifested by some of the
nuns towards a relaxation of the conventual discipline; she observed the
entire seven months’ fast imposed by the Cistercian rule, until at last
she became as thin as a lath; according to the account of her niece she
never ate flesh except when ill, and slept on a mattress as hard as
stone, with no other furniture in her chamber but a straw-chair; and she
rose every midnight for prayer. Beneath her dress she wore an
undergarment of hair-cloth. She was careful to obey the rule which,
except in special circumstances, prohibited the religious of Maubuisson
from leaving the convent, and absented herself from it only thrice in
the forty-nine years of her residence. According to the Duchess of
Orleans, who spoke on this subject with sympathetic insight, the good
Abbess’ tongue was her temptation; and she always chose a deaf sister to
live with her in her chamber, so as not to be seduced into conversation.
On the charitable activity of the good Abbess there is less necessity
for dwelling, since it accorded with the habits that were natural to
her, as well as with her Palatine warmth of heart. In her indefatigable
activity she resembled her brother Charles Lewis, to whom in her later
years she bore so striking an outward likeness. Idleness of any kind was
impossible to her; ‘never,’ writes a contemporary, ‘was she without some
virtuous and religious occupation; either she was plying her brush or
her needle, or reading or praying.’ To her love of painting, an art
which she is said to have practised from her eighth year to past her
eightieth, reference has already been made. Though it would not appear
that her artistic powers increased in her later years, she utilised them
for the decoration not only of the Abbey, but of several churches of the
neighbourhood, and even found time to paint pictures for other
recipients. Sacred subjects seem to have chiefly occupied her in these
days; to the _Cour des Comptes_ at Paris, which had rendered an
efficient service to her Abbey, she presented an elaborate pictorial
allegory of Justice.[57] During her administration the structural
accommodation of the Abbey was considerably enlarged, and, in the centre
of it, a handsome fountain was for the first time erected.
-----
Footnote 57:
In 1871, this picture was consumed in the flames.
-----
Beneath all the other qualities of Louisa Hollandina and, one is tempted
to say, at the root of them, lay that cheerfulness of soul which is a
blessing to all who are brought into contact with its happy possessor.
The Duchess of Orleans, who had all her aunt’s vivacity of mind, but
little of her tranquillity of spirit, refers again and again to the
delightfulness of her periodical visits to the dear old lady; and we may
well believe that in their intercourse the seasoning of _malice_ (in the
French sense of the word) was not wanting. But Saint-Simon, an observer
not less keen, though the satirical vein in him took a different turn,
informs us that the Abbess of Maubuisson was adored by all the sisters
of the convent, of which she had made herself the very life and soul,
because of her charity, her sweetness, and her loving-kindness. From a
character so pure—or perhaps it should be said so purified—the shafts of
ill report glance off harmlessly; nor is it impossible that they had
their origin in traditions with which the Palatine Princess had no
concern, and which her rule as Abbess ought to have been allowed to
extinguish. While she held sway at Maubuisson, it became a chosen place
as a religious retreat by ladies of rank; among these was Madame de
Brisson, _l’âme de Saint-Cyr_, as Madame de Sévigné calls her, soon
after her dismissal from that seminary. In 1679, the good Abbess had the
pleasure of a visit from the Duchess Sophia, who was delighted with the
happy regularity of her sister’s life, ‘which would suit me quite well,
had I no husband and children.’ The Duchess of Orleans herself, though
she would hardly have come in the character of a penitent, in one of the
crises of her life at the French Court begged the King to allow her to
finish her days at Maubuisson.
Some two years before her death, Louisa Hollandina, who had hitherto
only been subject to the _migraine_—for the statement that she had died
in 1704 to save herself the trouble of periodically reminding the
States-General of the annuity granted to her at her baptism was only a
friendly jest—had a paralytic stroke, and the remainder of her life was
full of suffering. She took it all easily, saying that people would not
desire life so much if they knew to what it amounted near the end. She
died in February, 1709, eighty-six years of age; the good Princess,
wrote her heart-broken niece to Louisa Hollandina’s sister Sophia, ‘is
now where she long was wished to be’; Sophia herself, in her very direct
way, observed that, as there was so little besides life left in her
sister, there was the less to deplore in her loss. She was buried by the
nuns, who had loved her dearly and nursed her tenderly, in her
abbey-church at Maubuisson, as her sister Elizabeth had been buried in
hers at Herford twenty-nine years earlier; and both the Catholic and the
Protestant Abbess deserve each, in her own way, to be remembered among
the good women in whom their age, with all its shortcomings, was so
rich.
And here we must take leave of the Palatinate family, except in so far
as Sophia herself and those younger members of it with whom in her
married life she came into personal contact are concerned. Late in 1659,
Queen Elizabeth had the pleasure of a visit from Sophia at the Hague,
having had to solicit from Charles Lewis ‘a little money in
extraordinaire’ for the purposes of the meeting. They seem to have been
happy together, and the Queen wrote that she would be ill-natured had
she failed to show ‘kindness to Sophie, because she shows so much love
to me,’ The real success of the visit was, however, Sophia’s little
Palatine niece Liselotte, of whom more hereafter, who captured her
grandmother’s heart, although ‘you know I care not much for
children.’[58] Sophia remained in Holland till March, 1660, when her
mother was so much hindered by people coming in to tell the English news
about Monck that she could hardly find time for writing.[59] Mother and
daughter, however, met again in the following year; and Sophia’s last
farewell to ‘_cette bonne princesse_,’ her mother, took place on board
the vessel on which, in May, 1661, Queen Elizabeth was about to sail
from Rotterdam for England. For the high-souled royal exile was not, at
the last, denied an honourable refuge in her native land, though she
arrived there without the special invitation which she had been led to
expect, and an attempt was even made to delay her on the way. What could
surpass in pathos the picture of her arriving in London in the darkness,
with hardly a friend but the faithful Earl of Craven to guide her home
from the riverside? At Craven House she resided till she moved to the
house in Leicester Fields successively occupied by her great namesake’s
two favourites, the Earls of Leicester and Essex. She had no intention,
as she told Prince Rupert, of playing the poor relation. The King, her
nephew, showed much cordiality to her as well as to her sons; but his
courtesies were for the most part inexpensive, and she confessed that he
owed her nothing, though the Parliament owed her much.[60] He promised,
accordingly, to see if her debts could not be paid by Parliament, and it
actually granted her certain sums, which she applied as fast as they
came in to the redemption of her jewels, though she still had to appeal
to Charles Lewis for assistance in the process. A series of unpleasant
demands and counter-demands ensued between the King and the Elector,
each calling upon the other to pay to the Queen the outstanding moneys
lawfully due to her. In the end, King Charles II granted her a pension
of a thousand pounds a month, of which she did not live to enjoy the
first year’s total, and offered her a residence (Exeter House), into
which she had not time to move.[61]
-----
Footnote 58:
_Letters_, &c., ed. A. Wendland, p. 122.
Footnote 59:
_Ib._, p. 136. It was about this time that Elizabeth was also enjoying
the company of the young Baron von Selz, an illegitimate son of her
son Charles Lewis from his London days. She was warmly interested in
him, and in 1660 induced King Charles II to take the youth to London
in the suite of Henry Duke of Gloucester. But Selz died in London,
much to Elizabeth’s grief, before his friend the Duke. (Hauck,
_Elizabeth_, p. 53.)
Footnote 60:
On another occasion she writes with generous frankness: ‘The King is
not bounde to doe for me but what he pleases, for being maried out of
the house he might justly pretend not to be bound to give me anything,
but he is kinder than many nephews would be, his income besides is not
settled as you believe it is.’ (_Letters_, &c., p. 207).
Footnote 61:
She told her son that she would have to order ‘states,’ chairs,
stools, and carpets all new for Exeter House, as ‘that beast, your
Castelin,’ had allowed what ‘stuff’ there was at Rheenen to go to
ruin. (_Ib._, p. 211.)
-----
The Queen of Bohemia, as she called herself to the last, was seen at
times in public—at the theatres and elsewhere—with the court; and much
attention was shown to her by her son Prince Rupert, who (as has been
seen) had returned to England a few months after the King. Pepys, whose
mention of Rupert’s return is the first notice of this Prince in the
_Diary_, observes that he was ‘welcome to nobody.’ Perhaps the diarist
had a presentiment of the friction which, sooner or later, could hardly
fail to occur between a budding official like himself and a man of the
sword with a popular reputation, whom he appears to have throughout
regarded as passionate and self-willed. But Prince Rupert was well
received in England both by the Royal Family and by the public at large,
though it proved before long that he, like others who had served the
throne in the days of stress, was out of touch with the younger
generation of courtiers and politicians. He had not found congenial
employment abroad; but his readiness for active work had not yet passed.
The proposed expedition under his command to the Guinea Coast was
abandoned (1664), partly because of an illness which had befallen him;
but he was placed at the head of one of the squadrons in the First Dutch
War, and in the Second superseded the Roman Catholic Duke of York as
commander-in-chief of the English fleet. The breakdown of his plan of
action by his want of success in the last battle of this war (1673) was
attributed by him to the misconduct of the French and the intrigues of
the friends of the Duke of York; and thus it rather heightened than hurt
his popularity. For a time he seemed to be cultivating relations of
intimacy with Shaftesbury and the Opposition; but he never harboured any
disloyal intentions, though his sympathy with the Protestant feeling in
the country is of a piece with the traditions of his family and with the
whole of his own career. He now withdrew more and more into a retirement
which suited both his scientific pursuits and his growing aversion from
the hopeless frivolity and viciousness of the Court. Although he still
continued to take an occasional part in public affairs, his time was
chiefly spent among his chemical apparatus and his pictures and
curiosities in the Round Tower at Windsor Castle, of which he had been
named Constable in 1668. He died in 1682, and was buried in Westminster
Abbey, the faithful Lord Craven acting as chief mourner on the occasion.
His mother, to whom he had been a good son to the last, had long before
this passed to her rest. Her correspondence with her son Charles Lewis
had in the last period of her life assumed a more painful tone than
ever, turning as it did upon a past that could not be set right,
whatever might happen in the future. In the contention as to whose fault
it had been that she had not temporarily taken up her residence at
Heidelberg he seems to have been more in the right than she; and it is
satisfactory to observe that, though in the very last letter preserved
from her hand, while she expresses a hope that his anger will be now
over, she begs that he will add to what he is paying to her of the
jointure which is her due, his last letter to her, and the draft of one
dated in the month of her death, end on a dutiful and even affectionate
note.[62] After her death, Charles Lewis, as her eldest—he had once been
her favourite—son, made a claim for her jewels as heirlooms; and once
more a bitter dispute ensued between the brothers.[63] The proposal that
her eldest daughter should cross the water to see her had met with no
response. Of Sophia’s seeming content with her lot the Queen had,
shortly before coming to England, heard with pleasure; but she could not
shut her eyes to the changes that fate brings; ‘for it is easier said
then done to care for nothing.’ Still, wherever she might find herself,
the lonely woman kept a stout heart and an unclouded front; though,
whether at Whitehall or at Combe Abbey (if she visited it again), she
must have seemed to herself like a _revenante_—a ghost of the past come
back. She died, at Leicester House, on February 13th, 1662—a few hours
before the dawn of what, had her husband still been by her side, would
have been her golden wedding day; and, on a night as full of storms as
her life had been, she was buried in the Abbey where so many of her
descendants were to be crowned with a crown less rapidly evanescent than
hers.
-----
Footnote 62:
_Letters_, &c., pp. 212-3.
Footnote 63:
The Queen’s last will and testament shows that she declared Charles
Lewis her heir, but left special legacies to Rupert—jewels, plate, and
furniture, with the papers of which the _Original Royal Letters_,
published by Sir George Bromley in 1787, passed into the hands of his
lineal ancestress Ruperta, daughter of Prince Rupert and wife of
Scroope Emmanuel Howe. To Edward the Queen left a large diamond; to
Elizabeth emerald ear-rings; and to Sophia the string of pearls which
her mother had ordinarily worn. Probably the medallion with the lock
of King Charles I’s hair, which was found on her breast after her
death, was buried with her. Many years later, when the death of the
Abbess of Herford was apprehended, Sophia wrote to Charles Lewis that
he would not find so much reason for discontent on this occasion as on
that of their mother’s death—‘for she seems to bear no malice against
you.’ It is distressing that Sophia’s want of sympathy towards her
mother, which may have been explicable enough in earlier days, should
have lasted beyond the grave.
-----
III
THE DUCHESS SOPHIA
(HANOVER, OSNABRÜCK, AND HANOVER, 1658-1688)
Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg was the youngest son of his House,
as Sophia was the youngest daughter of the Palatine family; nor was the
scion of the Guelfs, as such, unfitted to mate with one who could boast
an ancestry illustrious like hers. Previously to the marriage conferring
upon Sophia a right of partnership, of which time only could reveal the
significance, in the fortunes of the German branch of the Guelfs, more
than one great historic opportunity had occurred to that ancient House.
Five centuries had passed since Henry the Lion had held sway over
territories reaching from the shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic
to those of the Adriatic. He had been the husband of an English
princess—Matilda, daughter of King Henry II; nor was Sophia unmindful of
this ancestral connexion. We cannot follow here the repeated dynastic
changes, or the numberless partitions and transfers that succeeded each
other in the hereditary lands between Elbe and Weser, saved out of the
shipwreck of the great Guelfic dominion, and granted to Henry’s
grandson, Otto the Child, as an imperial fief under the designation of
the Duchy of Brunswick.
The severance declared by Otto’s eldest two sons, between the
territories of which Brunswick and Lüneburg were respectively the
original centres, was—the numerous shiftings of ownership between the
representatives of the Old, Middle, and New Brunswick and Lüneburg lines
notwithstanding—never undone, and continues in a sense to the present
day. Thus, it was only within the limits of each main division that it
proved possible in the course of time to assert those two principles
upon which, repugnant though they were to the traditions of Germanic
life, the political future of the princely Houses of the Empire
depended—namely, that of indivisibility of tenure, and, more tardily,
that of primogeniture. Nor was there any consistent endeavour to supply
the want of a single dominant authority in the Brunswick and Lüneburg
Houses (as they were generally called, their various subdivisions being
further distinguished for the most part according to the names of their
chief ‘residences’) by an identity, or at least by an agreement, of
policy. Thus the German Guelfs missed the great dynastic opportunity of
the Reformation, although the populations over which they ruled were at
one in their ready acceptance of Lutheranism, and although a series of
wealthy ecclesiastical foundations fell into the laps of the princes.
Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel opposed the Reformation with so
much vehemence as to be denounced by Luther in the character of
bugbear-in-chief of the supporters of the national movement. Still, with
their augmented territorial strength, the Guelfs might have played an
important part in the critical period which preceded the long-expected
outbreak of the great religious conflict, and perhaps, during its
earlier stages, might have done much to resist the inroads of the
Reaction. Instead of this, after the ‘evil Harry’s’ accomplished
grandson, Duke Henry Julius, had applied his ability as a statesman
wholly to the furtherance of the imperial interest, his timorous
successor, Frederick Ulric, had failed to avert from the Lower Saxon
Circle the fury of war, drawn down upon it by the passionate Protestant
partisanship of his brother, Christian of Halberstadt, the champion of
Elizabeth of Bohemia. A change of dynasty occurred at a highly critical
epoch of the Thirty Years’ War, when nearly all the Protestant estates
adhered to the compromise of the Peace of Prague (1634); and the ‘New’
House of Brunswick entered into possession at Wolfenbüttel in the person
of Duke Augustus, a cautious ruler and a man of kindly disposition and
of bookish tastes. At the Peace of Westphalia the rich see of Hildesheim
had to be given up by the elder (Brunswick) branch; and for a time
adversity seemed to have impressed upon it the expediency of uniting its
policy with that of the younger, which had issued forth in a more
advantageous position from the Great War. During this temporary accord
between the two branches, the ambitious Duke Rudolf Augustus of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was assisted by his Brunswick-Lüneburg kinsmen in
the important achievement, which the resolute Dukes of the Middle House
of Brunswick had essayed in vain, of permanently subjecting to their
territorial authority the proud Hanseatic city of Brunswick. And, alike
in the war provoked by Louis XIV’s invasion of the United Provinces (in
1672), in the march against the Swedes which was crowned by the victory
of Fehrbellin (1675), and in the campaign against the Turks which ended
with the recapture of Neuhäusel (1685), the armed forces of the two
Guelfic lines fought side by side. But, while the New Lüneburg line was,
by consolidation, preparing its future greatness, the advancement of the
New Brunswick line, the repartitions of whose territories cannot occupy
us here, again came to a standstill. Duke Rudolf Augustus survived till
1704, a prince whose virtues were of the passive kind, and with whom his
ambitious younger brother, Antony Ulric, was associated in the
government from 1685 onwards. In order to ensure the Succession to the
offspring of his brother, the good Duke Rudolf Augustus, after the death
of his first wife, contracted a _mésalliance_ with the daughter of a
Brunswick barber-surgeon, who, as Madame Rudolfine, led a life of happy
obscurity by his side at Brunswick. His brother, Duke Antony Ulric, held
his Court at Wolfenbüttel, where he cherished the literary studies in
which he had engaged in the University of Helmstedt, and successfully
essayed his own powers as an author, both in the favourite contemporary
species of historical romances _de longue haleine_ and in psalmody. But
the mental activity of Antony Ulric, who in 1704 succeeded to sole ducal
authority at Brunswick, was far from being absorbed by his literary
pursuits; or rather, as we shall see, he contrived to make them
subservient to the influences of dynastic ambition. He kept a jealous
watch, now self-interested, now malevolent and revengeful, over the
advance of the Lüneburg dynasty, so nearly akin to his own. And, in
whatever measure the same jealousy may have been a factor in his own
ultimate conversion to the Church of Rome, it certainly contributed to
make him press on those splendid marriages of his grand-daughters with
Emperor and Tsarevich, whereby he sought to redeem his own political
insignificance.
Very different results attended the progress, in and after the latter
part of the Thirty Years’ War, of the New House of Lüneburg, as it was
called. Duke George was the sixth of seven brothers, of whom it fell in
turn to the eldest four to conduct the government of the Lüneburg-Celle
dominions. Here the principle of indivisibility had been established in
1592 and confirmed in 1610; but it did not apply to acquisitions by the
line accruing after that date. In order to maintain this principle
intact, all the brothers, with the exception of Duke George, remained
unmarried, and, by a singularly orderly disposition of fate, the second,
third, and fourth succeeded in due course, each on the demise of his
next elder brother. The fifth and seventh died before the arrival of
their respective turns, and thus it was to the progeny of Duke George
that the lands and their government descended. He was accounted one of
the most capable commanders of the latter part of the war, and an ardent
supporter of the Protestant cause, with whose great champion Gustavus
Adolphus he had been one of the earliest among the German Princes to
enter into an understanding. But he was so unwilling to imperil the
immediate interests of the dynasty, that, in 1634, he gave in his
adhesion to the Peace of Prague. In 1635 he assumed the government of
the principality of Calenberg, which, by the repartition made at that
date, was transferred to the Lüneburg line; and in the following year he
laid the foundations, in the fortified town of Hanover, of the castle
which was to be expanded, in after ages, into the palace of Electors and
Kings. He died in 1641; but his principality was preserved to his
dynasty in the settlement of the Peace of Westphalia, and they further
secured a ‘satisfaction,’ though by no means an adequate one, for the
losses or disappointments undergone by them, in the shape of the right
of appointing a prince of their family to the see of Osnabrück on every
alternate vacancy. Thus, with a territory whose resources seemed to have
been hopelessly exhausted by the devastations of the War and by the
exactions of both war and peace, whose social system had been
dislocated, and whose life had been in various respects demoralised, the
sons of Duke George of Lüneburg entered upon a period in the history of
their dynasty which was to conduct it from petty beginnings to
unforeseen greatness.
The family consisted of four brothers and three sisters, of which latter
two died in infancy. The surviving sister, Sophia Amalia, had in 1643
married the future King Frederick III of Denmark, and took a notable
part in the defence of Copenhagen against the Swedes (1658), as well as
in the few despotic excesses to be charged against the absolute rule
with which, at a time when the Danish power had been laid low, her
consort had been suddenly entrusted. The Duchess Sophia, who by her
marriage had become sister-in-law to Queen Sophia Amalia, met her at
Altona in 1671, and paid her a visit at her dower-palace at Nykjöping in
1680. Sophia saw this redoubtable sovereign on her amiable side, and
relates how, on the occasion of a _battue_ of hares, the Queen
encouraged her to fire the first shot that she, her mother’s degenerate
daughter, had ever discharged. Of the four brothers, the eldest, Duke
Christian Lewis, had in 1641 succeeded to his father’s principality of
Calenberg; but in 1648, when he assumed the government of the
Lüneburg-Celle dominions proper and took up his abode at Celle,
Calenberg, with its residential town of Hanover, passed to the second
brother, Duke George William. The third and fourth, Dukes John Frederick
and Ernest Augustus, in accordance with their father’s will, remained
without territorial possessions (the reversion of the Osnabrück
bishopric had not yet fallen in); and it was arranged that, in the first
instance, John Frederick should reside at the Court of Celle, and Ernest
Augustus at that of Hanover. The young Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes were
left without paternal control in the very period in their lives when it
was most needed by them; for, at the time of his father’s death in 1641,
the eldest, Christian Lewis, was only nineteen, and the youngest, Ernest
Augustus, eleven years of age. The brothers had been brought into little
contact with the old-fashioned academical training, of which the
influence is recognisable in the Dukes of the elder branch; and
Christian Lewis, whose years of rule at Hanover left behind them the
memory of a prince of the Mohocks, was incapable of introducing the
refinements of the modern era at Celle. At the same time he, in this
larger sphere, did his duty, as he understood it, in both Church and
State; staunchly adhering to the Lutheranism of his line, asserting his
ducal authority against the recalcitrance of the good town of Lüneburg,
and providing himself with the beginnings of a standing army in defiance
of his Estates. His best friend and ally was the Great Elector of
Brandenburg, who afterwards married, as his second wife, Charles Lewis’
widow, the Dowager Duchess Dorothea. This princess, who by birth
belonged to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Glucksburg, played an
important part in the last years of her second husband, and, according
to the irreverent expression of his descendant, Frederick the Great,
‘ruled the hero’; but her interference in the interest of her children
cannot be proved to have gone the length, or to have produced the
effects, frequently attributed to it.[64] The second brother, George
William, who was to occupy so prominent a place in the history of his
House and in that of the personal life of Sophia, was deficient neither
in courage nor in insight, and the constant habit of foreign travel
added the charm of agreeable manners to the attractiveness of an open
and amiable nature. But, after, in his youth, he had seen some service
under Frederick Henry of Orange, he had cast to the winds military
ambition and serious purpose of any kind, and, leaving his ministers, as
best they might, to carry on his government and manage his Estates, had
with his ‘flying Court’ (as Sophia calls it) frittered away his time in
a series of visits to Holland and, more especially, to Venice. During
the intervals which he spent at home in Hanover, he pursued the same
round of frivolous pleasures, intent upon nothing but ‘going a-hunting
and making love.’ Announcing a visit from him at Heidelberg to the
Elector Palatine Charles Lewis, Sophia bids her brother ‘retail the
wicked doings of his own youth in England for the entertainment of his
guest, but not touch on matters of State; for, though George William has
plenty of wit and judgment, he wastes them on his jests and trifling
amusements.’ As he grew older, he came to be extolled both as a ‘mighty
Nimrod’ and as a connoisseur in champagne; but he also, as will be seen,
subjected himself to influences which had the effect of refining his
personal tastes and habits, while his intimacy with King William III
could not but impart strength of purpose to his political action. But
the moral infirmity of the good easy man remained incurable, and proved
a source of sorrow to others besides Sophia.
-----
Footnote 64:
According to the Duchess of Orleans (Elizabeth Charlotte), the Duchess
Dorothea presented her, as a child, with two parrots, and the Duchess
Sophia ordered her to give in return her dog _Fidel_. ‘This was, to
the best of my belief, the only occasion in my life on which I ever
obeyed you reluctantly; for my little dog was very near to my heart.’
-----
The third of the brothers, John Frederick, like George William, matured
his mental powers by travel rather than by study. But this prince, whose
highest honour it is to have introduced Leibniz into the service of the
House of Guelf, was not wholly undeserving of the praise lavished on him
after death by the courtly philosopher in both German prose and Latin
verse.[65] John Frederick was at any rate possessed by an ardent
ambition, besides being determined to think out his own salvation.
During a visit to Rome, in the year of Jubilee, 1650, he was much
impressed by the arguments of Count Christopher von Rantzau, who, after
adopting the irenic ideals of the great Helmstedt theologian Calixtus,
had at Rome been brought over to Catholicism through the influence of
the eminent convert and convert-maker Holstenius. In February, 1651,
Duke John Frederick was himself at Assisi received into the Catholic
Church; but it was not till several months later that his conversion
became known. In December of the same year, at the very time when
commissioners sent by his elder brothers had arrived at Rome to dissuade
him from such a step, he made a public profession of his change of
faith. There is no reason for supposing that the wish for a Cardinal’s
hat was one of the motives that actually prompted his conversion, though
he certainly was in the course of his life a man of many
ambitions—including the High Mastership of the Germanic Order, and the
Polish Crown. The Cardinalate desired for, if not by, John Frederick,
was bestowed by Pope Innocent X upon a previous convert of Holstenius’,
Landgrave Frederick of Hesse-Darmstadt; and, after lengthy negotiations,
it was settled that Duke John Frederick’s _apanage_ should be increased
on condition of his not returning to Celle. But the good-natured George
William gave him quarters at Hanover, and even provided for his private
exercise of his religion in the Palace. This in turn alarmed the
Calenberg Estates; and further difficulties threatened when the convert,
well aware of the vantage-ground which he occupied by reason of these
very difficulties, showed himself disposed to marry. It was the fear
that, in this event, the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg would become a
Catholic House, which impelled George William, after he had made up his
mind to remain a bachelor himself, to hasten the marriage of Ernest
Augustus. The religious question thus, already at this point, directly
affected the determination of the future of the dynasty with whose
fortunes Sophia was about to associate her own; nor is it astonishing
that John Frederick should have bitterly resented the preferential
position conceded to Ernest Augustus, the youngest of the brotherhood.
-----
Footnote 65:
See _Leibnizens Geschichtl. Anpätze und Gedichte I._ (Vol. iv. of
Pertz’ collected edition).
-----
The future husband of Sophia had, as the youngest of the sons of his
mother, the Duchess Anna Eleonora, been kept near home in his boyhood.
He had even spent two years at the University of Marburg, where, in
accordance with servile academic usage, he had filled the office of
_Rector Magnificentissimus_, and he had afterwards been elected
_Coadjutor_ by the (Lutheran) Chapter of Magdeburg. This was a suitable
preparation for the succession to the ‘bishopric’ of Osnabrück, which,
in accordance with the provision of the Peace of Westphalia, was
reserved for Ernest Augustus on the occasion of the next vacancy in the
see. The conduct of this prince was, from the first, marked by a
circumspection which neglected no opportunity; he was on the best of
terms with both the eldest two of his brothers, and was devotedly
attached to the second, whose companion he was in a long series of
journeys and sojourns on the Lagoons.[66] Thus there established itself
between George William and Ernest Augustus a brotherly intimacy—a
_fratellanza_, to use an Italian term of almost technical
significance—which goes some way towards explaining how Sophia’s
marriage had been finally brought about. Ernest Augustus’ affection for
his favourite brother may be regarded as the most attractive feature in
his character; on the whole, his personality was a stronger though a
less pleasing one than that of George William. Like many of his
descendants, Sophia’s husband had an insatiable liking for ceremonial
and was a stickler for etiquette, albeit, in the early as well as in the
later years of his married life, his manners appear to have been
remarkably free from restraint in the privacy of domestic life.
Although Sophia’s marriage had not been exactly a love-match, in the
beginning, as she joyfully reported to her brother at Heidelberg, all
was roses at Hanover; her husband’s behaviour made her feel assured that
he would love her all the days of his life, and she idolised him so
sincerely as to think herself lost when deprived of his company. The two
good English ladies who had adhered to her since she left the Hague were
in all kindness dismissed from her service; one returning to Holland,
and the other being provided with a settlement on the spot; henceforth,
the life of Sophia’s husband was to be her own life. Unluckily, however,
this involved a constant intimate association with his brother George
William, of which she soon perceived the inconveniences, and which, but
for her sincerity and tact—for she was obliged to give proof of both
qualities—might have placed her in the falsest of positions. After she
had appeased her husband’s jealous suspicions, the two brothers joined
in pressing her to accompany them on one of their Italian journeys; but
she was quit for a trip to Holland in the company of her little niece
Elizabeth Charlotte, whom, as will be seen, her brother had assigned to
her care. After her return to Hanover she gave birth, on May 28th
(O.S.), 1660, to her first-born child, George Lewis, afterwards King
George I of Great Britain and Ireland. The following winter was spent by
her husband in Italy with his brother, according to his custom; but they
accompanied her down the Rhine from Heidelberg, where she had been
staying with her brother, to Rotterdam, where, as has been seen, she
bade a last farewell to her mother, the Queen of Bohemia, then on the
point of starting for England. The two Dukes and Sophia soon afterwards
returned to Hanover, in time for the birth, on October 2nd, 1661, of her
second son, Frederick Augustus. Two months afterwards, the see of
Osnabrück at last fell vacant by the death of the Catholic Bishop,
Cardinal Francis William von Wartenberg. The event (which had been
rumoured to have taken place already two years earlier) must have been
welcome to Sophia, as relieving her from a position by no means free
from difficulty, although in her letters she makes no reference to her
husband’s jealousy of his brother. After Ernest Augustus had held his
entry at Osnabrück as Bishop—a ceremony at which, as Sophia remarks, she
felt that her presence would be superfluous,—she joined him at the
castle of Iburg, which became her residence for many years. The little
Court moved about a good deal between Osnabrück and Iburg, besides
(after a time) occasionally staying at Celle and at Diepholz, the former
seat of the Counts and _Edelherren_ of Diepholz, whose line had become
extinct in 1585.
The change from Hanover was a delightful one for the Duchess Sophia;
for, apart from the fact that the Old-town of Hanover, within whose
walls lay the ducal castle, was a sombre and crowded enclosure very
unlike what was destined to become ultimately one of the most cheerful
and attractive of German capitals, she and her husband had resided there
in a position which, in spite of the excess of affection surrounding
them, remained one of dependence. They now for the first time tasted the
pleasures, on however small a scale, of sovereignty. She was, in German
fashion, ‘the Bishopess’; when she travelled in France, her _incognita_
designation was ‘Madame d’Osnabrück.’ As the old episcopal lodging at
Osnabrück was found inadequate to the ample requirements and luxurious
tastes of the new Bishop,[67] he at once set about buying land and house
property of all kinds with a view to the erection of a suitable
episcopal palace. The building of it seems to have been begun in 1665,
and seriously taken in hand from 1668; but it was not ready till early
in 1673, from which date Ernest Augustus and Sophia continuously resided
there for the last five or six years before their removal to Hanover.
The palace, which still stands (it was restored with quite unusual
success by the last King of Hanover), bears the name of Ernest Augustus
on its portal, with the Arcadian motto _Sola bona quæ honesta_. The
building erected by Ernest Augustus seems to have been intended for a
direct reminiscence of the Luxembourg, at a time when Versailles and the
Louvre were only in course of construction, and was, like its prototype,
surrounded by magnificent gardens, designed by the Bishop’s own
gardener, Martin Charbonnier, whom he had brought from Paris, and who
seems to have been a pupil of Lenôtre. The castle at Iburg was of a
similar type of architecture—heavy but not ineffective—and betrayed the
same lack of finish, due to the inadequacy of the expenditure upon
artistic work.[68] Meanwhile, on the breezy heights of Iburg, as is
shown by the evidence of her own letters and those of the incomparable
Palatine niece whom she carried thither from Hanover, Sophia spent the
happiest if not the most exciting years of her life. After all, she
writes in her favourite ironical vein, ‘One cannot live more than once.
Why vex one’s soul, if one can eat, drink and sleep, sleep, drink and
eat? All is vanity.... Tranquillity of the spirit is lovely, since from
it springs our bodily health. Those whom the Lord loves He blesses in
their sleep. We play at nine-pins, breed young ducks, amuse ourselves
with running at a ring or backgammon, talk every year of paying a visit
to Italy; and in the meantime things go quite as well as is to be
expected for a petty bishop, who is able to live in peace and, in case
of war, can depend upon the help of his brothers.’ In the summer an
annual visit was paid to the waters of Pyrmont, and gradually things
became more lively at home—in 1663, we find a company of French
musicians engaged for the pleasure of the Court. As a matter of fact,
Sophia, though she was very far from vegetating in either mental or
bodily inactivity, visited Italy but once, crossing the Alps for the
first time in April, 1664. Nor is there any better or more convincing
proof of her rare powers of observation and insight than that she should
have learnt so much—and not only as to the beauty of Italian gardens and
the charm of Italian manners—in the course of a sojourn extending over
little more than a twelve-month. While by no means irresponsive to the
aesthetic attractions of Rome and Florence, she was the last person to
give way to the religious influences in readiness to be exerted upon
her. Loretto annoyed her; and at Rome, with a spirit which Sir Henry
Wotton would have applauded, she refused an offering to the Blessed Mary
of Victory, to whom the Emperor Ferdinand II had dedicated his sceptre
in grateful remembrance of the battle of Prague. At Venice, amidst whose
gaieties and gallantries she found herself altogether ‘_depaisée_,’
though, nevertheless, by no means incapable of amusing herself, it was
brought home to her how largely religion was used as a cloak in a
society where the nuns made themselves agreeable to gentlemen and the
very churches were used for the purpose of assignations. Much in the
cynical tone which became habitual to Sophia and to her intimates is
attributable to experiences such as these, rather than to natural
irreverence. An attempt made at Rome to ‘save her soul’ by bringing her
over to Catholicism was so feeble that she had no difficulty in
repelling it; nor could anything have been better calculated to heighten
the repugnance with which such overtures inspired her than the want of
appreciation of the dignity of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, which
she thought observable in the illustrious convert (almost a _bête-noire_
to some of the Palatines) Queen Christina of Sweden, as well as in Pope
Alexander VII.
-----
Footnote 66:
In 1686 was published at Venice a folio, with nine plates, by G. M.
Alberti, entitled _Giochi festivi e militari, danze, serenate,
machine, boscareccia artificiosa, regatta solemne, e posti alla
sodifattione ... dell’ Ernesto Aufsusto Duca di Brunswick e Luneburgo
in Venetia_.
Footnote 67:
We have it on the authority of the Duchess of Orleans, that, when
Ernest Augustus became Bishop of Osnabrück, he at once launched forth
into so large an increase of his household, as to create in the child
the impression that he had become the possessor of great wealth.
Footnote 68:
See A. Haupt, _Die bildende Kunst in Hannover zur Zeit der Kurfürstin
Sophie_, Appendix to H. Schmidt, _Die Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover_.
Hanover, 1903.
-----
By none of the family was this indifference more keenly felt than by
Sophia’s brother-in-law, Duke John Frederick, who showed no sign of any
wish that his conversion should remain its own reward. Sophia was to
have reason for congratulating herself on her discretion in abstaining
from receiving an _incognito_ visit from him at Rome, before he left the
city. For hardly had her husband and she, in the early spring in 1665,
once more set foot in Germany on their homeward journey, when they
learnt that the eldest of the brothers, Duke Christian Lewis, had died,
and that John Frederick, having returned from Rome just in time, had
made forcible entry into Celle and Lüneburg, to which he contended that
George William, having once made his choice of Calenberg-Göttingen,
could no longer claim any right of succession. Inasmuch as the question
between George William and John Frederick, which the latter thus
proposed to settle by a _coup de main_, turned on the interpretation of
the will of their father, a bitter _Bruderstreit_ seemed to be
announcing itself; and John Frederick, in his usual sanguine way,
boasted his hopes of both Imperial and French support for his efforts as
a Catholic prince. On the other hand, the facile temper of George
William, who, moreover, at the time of his more ardent brother’s
incursion, was occupied with his own private affairs in Holland, might
have given John Frederick a chance, but for the exertions of Count
George Frederick of Waldeek, afterwards celebrated as the right hand of
William of Orange, and for the intervention of the Elector of
Brandenburg. Several Catholic Estates, such as the Elector of Mainz and
the Bishop of Münster, favoured John Frederick; on the other hand,
Sophia had solicited the diplomatic intervention of her brother, the
Elector Charles Lewis. After long and angry negotiations, in which the
Scandinavian Powers as well as France took part, John Frederick had to
rest satisfied with the addition of Grubenhagen to the territories
transferred to his sway from that of George William, who in his turn
entered into possession of the eldest brother’s portion of
Lüneburg-Celle. The energy of Ernest Augustus, which had been as
conspicuous in these transactions as had George William’s want of this
quality, was rewarded by the transfer to the Bishop of Osnabrück of the
Countship of Diepholz.
We are obliged to refrain from more than touching upon the remaining
course of John Frederick’s career, and the _régime_ now established by
him at Hanover—one of the most peculiar of the vicissitudes undergone by
that capital in the course of its many and changeful experiences.
Capuchin friars once more found a home at Hanover, which, in days of
old, had been a town full of churches and cloisters; a Vicar Apostolic
and Bishop of Morocco _in partibus_ resided there as the centre of a
propaganda fostered alike by Pope and Emperor.[69] The Jesuits at the
same time had a centre of activity at Hildesheim. But there was no
interference either with the rights of the Lutheran establishments, or
with the claims of free intellectual enquiry, as represented by those
whom John Frederick’s high-minded liberality drew to his Court, and,
above all, by his librarian, Leibniz. The political ambition of the
Duke, who cherished the design of securing a Ninth Electorate for the
House of Brunswick-Lüneburg a generation before it was actually
accomplished, ranged him on the side of France in the chief political
conflict of his times, and thus led him to stand in opposition, not only
to the interests of the Empire, but also to the policy, on which his
brothers finally determined, of resisting the action of Louis XIV. On
the other hand, it was John Frederick who set his younger brother the
example of a firm monarchical administration, and who took the
all-important step of providing this administration with the support of
a standing army (two-thirds of which he was, however, pledged by a
secret treaty to hand over as auxiliaries to France). But, before the
issues of the great European contest in which he was prepared to sustain
the part chosen by him finally declared themselves, he was overtaken by
death, on his last journey towards his beloved Italy, in 1679. Many
ambitions, as has been seen, had fretted his (far from pygmy) body. It
was natural that, estranged as he was from his brothers, he should have
hoped himself to become the founder of a dynasty; and it was equally
inevitable that his brother Ernest Augustus and his sister-in-law
Sophia, who were already intent upon guarding in every way the interests
of their own descendants, should have shown scant sympathy with his
matrimonial projects, which were, as a matter of course, directed to
securing the hand of a Catholic princess. Towards this end no aid could
be more effective, as none was more ready, than that of Sophia’s
sister-in-law, the ‘_Princesse Palatine_’ (Anne of Gonzaga), in whose
dexterous hold were successively gathered the threads of so many
marriage-schemes calculated to advance the interests of France, and
approving themselves to the Church of Rome. The _Princesse Palatine_
accordingly apprised John Frederick, whose ambition was at the time
occupied with thoughts of the next vacancy on the Polish throne, that an
alliance with one of her and Prince Edward’s daughters might ease the
way to such a goal:—‘_pour cela, il faut commencer avec le mariage_.’
The negotiations for the match were carried on by the busy French
diplomatic agent de Gourville, who, during these years and again at a
later date, was employed by the Government of Louis XIV in the task of
trying to win over the Brunswick Dukes to the interests of France, and
whose _Memoirs_ are thus a notable source of information concerning
their Courts and their policy.
-----
Footnote 69:
This was the vivacious Valerio Maccioni, one of the pleasant Catholic
ecclesiastics who were Sophia’s familiar associates and correspondents
in these kindly days. (Others were the Abbé (afterwards Count) Balati,
a Florentine nobleman who was afterwards of service to Ernest Augustus
as a diplomatist and to the ladies of his family in the matter of
_chiffons_ at Paris, and the Abbé Hortensio Mauro, Italian secretary,
and afterwards attached to the Court at Celle.) Maccioni, after acting
for some years as John Frederick’s ecclesiastical adviser and as papal
representative at Hanover, was episcopated in 1669, when about
thirty-eight years of age. He died at Hanover in 1676. Sophia was on
the easiest of terms with him, as is shown by the references, in her
letters to him, to the Holy Court at ‘Traive,’ and to a prophetess
with a magic mirror, whom she requested the Bishop to exorcise, should
he opine that the devil had a hand in her manifestations.
-----
The danger with which Sophia and her husband found themselves ‘_toujours
menassés_’ was realised, when, in 1667, John Frederick gave his hand to
the youngest of Edward’s daughters, Benedicta Henrica. But, though two
daughters were born to John Frederick (the elder of whom, Charlotte
Felicitas, afterwards became Duchess of Modena, while the second, as the
consort of Joseph I, attained to the dignity of Empress), his hopes were
not crowned by the birth of a son. Of the Duchess Benedicta, who, as a
Catholic, was excluded from the English Succession, to which, in her
later years, she had the first claim by birth among the surviving
descendants of the Queen of Bohemia, Sophia’s correspondence contains
occasional kindly mention; though there was little trace of the high
spirit of the Palatines in the gentle and sombre-featured widow of the
massive John Frederick. His own soaring ambition and imperious will
isolate his memory in the annals of his House, while the shadowy figure
of his consort has come to be all but forgotten in the history of the
English Succession.
It may be convenient to note in this place that, owing to the attack
made by ‘Münster’s prelate,’ as an ally of Charles II of England, upon
the United Provinces, the States-General had appealed for aid to George
William and Ernest Augustus, who duly arrived in their support. In
return, the Bishop of Münster threatened the city of Osnabrück, where
Sophia and her children accordingly had to take up their abode during
the winter 1665-6, under the protection of the Bishop’s troops, Iburg
being too exposed to be safe. It would have been a curious accident if
this Bishop’s war had ended in any mischance, by which the future
Heiress of Great Britain should have been taken prisoner by the ally of
its King. In June, 1666, Sophia was enabled to return to the ‘delightful
solitude’ of Iburg. The autumn and winter of 1666 she spent chiefly at
Osnabrück, while her husband and his brother were carrying on operations
against Sweden in defence of the city of Bremen.
At the time of the negotiations which ended in the establishment of Duke
George William at Celle, and of Duke John Frederick at Hanover, their
youngest brother, Ernest Augustus, and his faithful Duchess were much
exercised in spirit by the beginnings of another family trouble, of
which the course was to be more protracted and the consequences far more
enduring. For some time George William’s brother and sister-in-law had
been disquieted by the attentions paid by the amorous Duke to
Mademoiselle Eleonora d’Olbreuze, who, in 1665, when he first made her
acquaintance at the Hague, was lady-in-waiting to the Princess (Henry
Charles) of Taranto, by birth a Princess of Hesse-Cassel. The _animus_
of Sophia, which renders it necessary to treat with the utmost caution
any statement made by her or hers in the present connexion, is evident
from her earliest mention of the lady who was to be the object of her
long and bitter hatred, as ‘_une fille qui estoit à la princesse de
Tarente_.’ Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze sprang from an ancient Poitevin
family which belonged to the minor nobility of a province long full of
Huguenot sympathies, and which held a leading position in the oligarchy,
as it has been called, that charged itself with the religious and
intellectual interests of Protestantism in these regions.[70] That she
was exceptionally endowed with an ability including a great deal besides
tact, is abundantly clear not only from the success of her manœuvres for
raising herself, and afterwards her child, to such greatness as was
attainable by them, but also from her living to be chosen as the
spokeswoman of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg on a memorable occasion
in its history. Nor can there be any doubt but that her intellectual
influence was a refining one, while her personality must have possessed
a charm which is hardly suggested by such portraiture of her as remains.
Sophia, after having, apparently through Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze’s own
judicious prudence, been spared her company in Italy, had found herself
constrained, by her husband’s anxiety to please his brother, to bring
her over almost in state from Hertogenbosch to Iburg; and, though the
_Memoirs_ refer with scorn to the Frenchwoman’s real or pretended
conquests before that of George William, Sophia is obliged to confess
that she found the intruder both modest and pleasant of speech, and
altogether very amiable. Thus it is clear that she prepared with
consummate skill the first upward step on which so much depended, and
which she actually accomplished in November, 1665. On the solemn
occasion of the funeral of Duke Christian Lewis, the whole family,
including his widow, his brothers George William and Ernest Augustus,
and Sophia, met at Celle; and to this august conclave the new ‘Duke of
Celle,’ as he was now so usually called, made known what Sophia terms
his ‘anti-contract’ of marriage with Eleonora d’Olbreuze, and what, in
other words, was his recognition of her as his mistress _en titre_. In
this document, signed by his brother and sister-in-law, as well as by
his mistress and himself, George William repeated his promise to remain
unmarried, which he declared to have been dictated by his affection for
his brother, and by a desire to consult his interests and those of his
children. Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze, who had innocently begged that she
might henceforth bear the name of Madame de Celle, had instead to put up
with that of Madame de Harburg, by which, as Sophia rather savagely
adds, she continued to be known for the next ten years.
-----
Footnote 70:
This information I owe to Mr. H. H. Sturmer, author of _Some Poitevin
Protestants in London_ (London, 1896).
-----
Sophia and her husband seem at first to have regarded this revised
arrangement, which was substantially quite in accordance with German as
well as Italian precedents, as on the whole likely to ensure what to
them was naturally the main point, the continuance of George William’s
bachelorhood. In September, 1666, his mistress bore him a daughter, the
ill-fated Sophia Dorothea. From the same year onward, Ernest Augustus
and his wife’s own family rapidly increased, by the birth, in December,
of their third son, impartially christened Maximilian William after the
Catholic Elector of Cologne and the Protestant Elector of Brandenburg,
and the births of their daughter Sophia Charlotte, in 1668, and of their
sons Charles Philip, Christian, and Ernest Augustus, in 1669, 1671, and
1674 respectively. Sophia’s love for her children forms, perhaps because
of the perfectly natural expression which she gives to so natural an
affection, a most delightful feature of her personality. This love
enveloped alike the more and the less gifted, the successful and the
unlucky, the phlegmatic and mild-mannered, though ungainly ‘Brunswicker’
(her eldest son, George Lewis), and the fearless little spitfire of a
‘Palatine’ (her second son, Frederick Augustus)—as she described them in
their early days. We shall see how her tenderly loved only daughter’s
bright and enquiring spirit also commended her to her mother’s
intellectual sympathies; but her motherly heart flowed out towards all
her sons, and even the inexpansive nature of the eldest seems to have in
a measure warmed towards her. But she could only with difficulty
reconcile herself to a policy which made it necessary to sacrifice the
interests of his younger brothers to his, or rather to those of the
House as a whole; and even among these younger brothers themselves, it
would almost seem as if her anxiety, like a true mother’s, had been
deepest for those who most needed support. Thus we find her, when both
Frederick Augustus and Charles Philip were serving the Emperor in arms,
pitifully pointing out to Leibniz how the younger of the pair was not
‘_si chiche de ses sollicitations_’ nor ‘_si misanthrope_’ as his
brother, and succeeded better accordingly. Yet his prosperity, too, she
had at heart; nor could she suppress the thought that the sum spent on
the purchase of a regiment for him by his father was less than what the
latter had on occasion been known to lose at the basset-table.
In these earlier years, however, before the deeper anxieties of her
motherhood had yet come to Sophia, although the happiness of her life
was already beginning to centre in her children, it owed much to the
presence at Hanover and Iburg of the niece, who had become to all
intents and purposes her adopted child. From her fourth to her eleventh
year, Elizabeth Charlotte, the Elector Palatine’s only daughter by his
unhappy first marriage, was the constant companion of her aunt, to whom
this joyous period of intimacy sufficed to bind her heart and soul
during a long life of trials. It was in a happy moment that her father
resolved upon sending his child, in the company of her governess
(afterwards, as Frau von Harling, one of the most favoured recipients of
Elizabeth Charlotte’s flow of confidences), to what became the home of
her heart, and was, in after days, the perennial refuge of her thoughts.
As a child ‘Liselotte’—so she was familiarly called—was the very
incarnation of high spirits and natural gaiety, delighting in air and
movement like the leaves which the wind drives before its blast; hence
the sobriquet, untranslateable but conjuring up a world of fairies and
imps of mischief, by which she liked to speak of herself, even when
cribbed and confined amidst the royal splendours of Versailles.
_Rauschenblattenknechtchen_ never forgot either the homely comforts of
Hanover in meat and drink, or the airy freedom of the heights of Iburg;
and for its _châtelaine_, for her virtues and her wisdom, for her high
intellectual powers, and for the charm of her style, she conceived a
loving admiration, which long outlived its object, and which found
expression in many volumes of letters, brimful, from the first to the
last, of quick observation, animated comment, and a piquant or
pleasantly malicious wit, relieved here and there by touches of an
equally irresistible natural pathos. So early as 1663, Liselotte was, to
her unfeigned sorrow, summoned back to Heidelberg by her father, whom
her mother’s departure to Cassel had at last enabled to arrange his
family life after his own fashion. Sophia deeply regretted her niece’s
departure from Iburg, where, as she wrote, they had led a vagabond life
together; but, with her usual common-sense and self-control, she
declared it quite in order that the Infanta of the Palatinate should be
brought up at a Court like Heidelberg, rather than down in Westphalia,
where her kinsfolk had lived in simple _bourgeois_ condition and seen
few people. To her changed home Elizabeth Charlotte’s nature, readily
susceptible to kindness, without difficulty accommodated itself during
seven further happy years. The moral atmosphere in which they were spent
was that of a religious tolerance springing partly from kindliness of
disposition and partly from indifference; the epoch of religious strife
seemed over, and another at hand, of less fettered thought and
philosophic speculation. Into this new movement it was easy to enter
superficially, encouraged by the lofty aspirations for a reunion of
Christendom that occupied some of the foremost among contemporary
thinkers. From these influences, of whose effect upon the Elector
Palatine Charles Lewis and his favourite sister Sophia note has already
been taken, so receptive a mind as that of his Elizabeth Charlotte was
not likely to escape; and they undoubtedly help to account for the
process of the conversion which ominously preceded a marriage destined
to alter the whole course of her life. To the ‘_Princesse Palatine_’
(Anne of Gonzaga) and her allies no path seemed impracticable that led
to Rome; and, in the case of the niece, no such apparatus of argument
was required as had to be set in motion when the attempt was made at a
later date to work upon the mind of the Duchess Sophia and her husband
through the pertinacious fervour of Madame de Brinon and the swooping
condescension of the ‘Eagle of Meaux.’ For Elizabeth Charlotte was
constrained by the instinct of filial obedience, her father having
persuaded himself that the welfare of the Palatinate necessitated,
together with the sacrifice of his daughter’s happiness, the ignoring of
her conscience. That in this calculation he, as was indicated above,
terribly deceived himself, and that the bond thus knit proved the ruin
of the land which it was intended to benefit, only enhances and deepens
the cruel irony of the whole transaction. A marriage had been arranged
between Elizabeth Charlotte and Louis XIV’s brother, the Duke of Orleans
(whose first consort, Charles II’s sister Henrietta, had died in 1670,
in circumstances long regarded as suspicious); and, though no mention of
the subject of religion had been made in the contract, her conversion to
the Church of Rome was regarded as an indispensable preliminary step to
its execution, and it was necessary that this step should seem to have
been taken spontaneously. She was accordingly prepared for it by her
father’s secretary,[71] to the diversity of whose historical and
philosophical learning two volumes of _Chevreana_ survive to testify.
Hereupon she was taken to Strassburg, whither her aunt the Duchess
Sophia also found her way to meet her and her father, but where also
appeared the presiding genius of the whole business, the ‘_Princesse
Palatine_.’ After the sojourn at Strassburg—where aunt and niece
parted—Elizabeth Charlotte passed on to Metz, where she was received
into the Church of Rome, and thence into her new married life. The
religious comedy was completed by a letter from her to her father
entreating his pardon for her change of faith, and by his reply, the
really contemptible part of the process, making pretence of a virtuous
indignation. Whatever Elizabeth Charlotte’s feelings may have been at
the time, she afterwards made no secret of the matter to her aunt
Sophia, and frequently dwelt upon her aunt’s share in the transaction.
‘It was you,’ she says on one occasion, ‘who made me a Catholic’; and,
when Duke Antony Ulric had gone over to Rome, ‘Why,’ she asks, ‘should
you be so sorry, when you are such a fine convert-maker yourself?’[72]
But, though the constraint which had been put upon her never ceased to
rankle in her mind, and though her conversion was not consummated
without some rubs and some qualms, these feelings perhaps never went
very deep. Her real grief, which made her ‘cry all through the night
from Strassburg to Chalons,’ was at parting from her German home and its
associations, in which her whole heart was wrapped up; and of this
parting the enforced change of religious profession was merely an
incident. ‘ Between ourselves,’ she afterwards wrote to her aunt, out of
her gilded exile, ‘I was stuck here against my will; here I must live
and here I must die, whether I like it or not.’
-----
Footnote 71:
Urban Chevreau accomplished the task of ‘instructing’ Elizabeth
Charlotte in four weeks. It must have been about this time that the
same _savant_ induced her father to read a few pages of Spinoza, who
was thereupon invited to Heidelberg.
Footnote 72:
It should be noted that, at the time of Elizabeth Charlotte’s change
of confession, toleration still obtained in France. We have her own
assurance that, had the persecutions of the Huguenots at that date
already begun, she would have refused to be converted. In 1698, she
writes to her aunt Sophia: ‘At Court one never hears a word spoken on
behalf of those of the Reformed faith. If they had been persecuted in
this way twenty-six years since, when I was still at Heidelberg, you
would never have succeeded in persuading me to turn Catholic.’ Sophia
herself, when replying to a renewed attempt upon her Protestantism by
Mme. de Brinon, by the remark that she trusts in the goodness of God,
who cannot have created her to see her lost, adds that she cannot
reconcile herself to the persecution of the Protestants in France, who
crowd England, the Netherlands, and Germany as refugees.
-----
And so the genial daughter of the Palatinate, true of heart and sound in
body and mind, became the wife of a feeble and effeminate voluptuary,
devoid of all character or will of his own, and by him the mother of a
prince who, though neither incapable nor ill-meaning, typified the
decadence of that France which he was called to rule as Regent. But with
this long second stage of her life we cannot concern ourselves here.
About August, 1679, she had the pleasure of a visit from the Duchess
Sophia, who, as already noted, came to France at that time to see her
sister at Maubuisson. The aunt found her beloved niece stouter, but in
excellent spirits. On the invitation of the Duke of Orleans the Duchess
Sophia was present at Fontainebleau on the occasion of the wedding of
the Duke’s daughter by his first marriage to the King of Spain (Charles
II); and, though she kept up her _incognito_, King Louis XIV called upon
her, and charmed her by his conversation, which he magnanimously turned
to the success of the Hanoverian arms at the bridge of Conz, mentioned
below. For the rest, the sacrifice of which, for all her philosophy of
good humour, Elizabeth Charlotte was the conscious victim, was, as we
know, not only made in vain, but brought upon her father’s and her own
beloved Palatinate, in the shape of the so-called ‘Orleans War’
(1688-90), consequences which were the direct opposite of those intended
by him, and which caused her many days and nights of anguish. During the
half-century of her exile—for down to the day of her death, in 1722, she
never saw the Palatinate again—though she held her head high, with eyes
undazzled even by the closest propinquity to the sun, there was hardly
an experience of bitterness and disappointment which she was not fated
to undergo; and through all she had but one consolation, which was her
pen. She wrote because she loved her correspondents, but also because
she loved the relief of writing, and the opportunities thus afforded of
self-expansion and of free expression for the loves and hatreds of her
soul. That—in the days of Louis XIV—her letters would be opened, so as
to ascertain the working of her Protestant sympathies, and perhaps of
her interest in the English Succession question, troubled her not a
whit; if her insults to Madame de Maintenon—apparently quite unprovoked,
and certainly, in a large measure, baseless—were made known to their
object, this was so much gain to their author. Yet, after every
deduction has been made on account of the pride, the jealousy, the
personal and other prejudices, and the perennial impatience which
weariness of heart had made second nature to the kindly-hearted
Palatine, her picture of the Court of Louis XIV, in the latter half of
his reign, possesses a historical value which is only surpassed by its
general human interest.[73] It is, above all, in Elizabeth Charlotte’s
letters to Sophia, and in the references to _ma tante_ in those
addressed to her various other correspondents, that the pathetic side of
her humour asserts itself, together with the malicious; nor has the
whole literature of confidences any second example quite comparable to
this, either in volume or in the directness of its derivation from
nature’s self.
-----
Footnote 73:
In a series of articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, beginning
October 15th, 1906, entitled _Madame, Mère du Régent_, M. Arvé de
Barine takes great pains to show that in estimating the Duchess of
Orleans’ censure of the state of morals at the French Court we should
remember that she might have found a good deal to complain of nearer
her parental home.
-----
We return to Osnabrück and Iburg, whither Elizabeth Charlotte longed to
fly, tying herself to the end of a ribbon transmitted by her as a sample
of the fashions of Versailles. So long as the relations between Duke
George William and Madame de Harburg remained unchanged, Ernest Augustus
or his descendants were assured of the Succession in Celle and Lüneburg;
for it had been finally settled with John Frederick that the right of
further option, against which he had formerly protested, had now
determined. John Frederick’s marriage, in 1668, seemed to cut off from
Ernest Augustus and his line the prospect of succeeding in Hanover
likewise, until John Frederick, whose hopes of a son and heir had been
repeatedly disappointed, died in 1679 without having seen them
fulfilled. Thus, during these years, it was upon the Succession at Celle
that the ambition of Ernest Augustus and Sophia was concentrated; nor
had they for some time any reason to fear that their wishes would be
thwarted by George William. Indeed, his acceptance of the existing
situation seemed clear from his endeavours to secure, by means of a
series of treaty arrangements, a large private estate in land to his
children by Madame de Harburg. The early death of all of these, with the
sole exception of the eldest, Sophia Dorothea, born in September, 1666,
eventually made her a wealthy heiress; but some time passed before her
father abandoned all expectation of a son, and a disquieting rumour
reached Osnabrück that, if George William’s mistress were to present him
with the desired heir, it was his intention to marry her, his
‘anti-contract’ notwithstanding. As there had been precedents in plenty
for the promise,[74] so it might no doubt be possible to find others for
setting it aside. Already, Eleonora was tactfully asserting herself at
Celle, and her personality was becoming the dominant power in the ducal
Court. Some of her Poitevin relations held high office there; and,
though the fact that other Frenchmen of family entered the military
service both of George William and of his brother the Bishop was, at the
time, by no means an exceptional phenomenon, yet it added to the
significance of an influence which the policy of Louis XIV might just
then deem worth cultivating.[75] For the Brunswick Dukes were, from the
time of the Triple Alliance (1668) onwards, political personages of much
interest both to France and to her adversaries, and had, two years
earlier, even seemed to have some chance of subsidies from a Government
more in the habit of receiving than granting them—the Government of
Charles II. After John Frederick of Hanover had, as has been seen,
decided finally to throw in his lot with France, his brothers George
William and Ernest Augustus continued to be solicited by her diplomacy;
and it was with the palpable purpose of gaining over the former and more
important of the pair, that, in 1671, de Gourville was instructed to
question him by presenting a royal ordinance, naturalising his daughter
by Madame de Harburg in France as ‘_Demoiselle Sophia-Dorothée de
Brunswick et de Lunebourg_.’ But the bait was too minute.[76] Larger
issues were involved, and, though in 1671, apprehensive of the
consequences which a bolder policy might have for the safety of his
bishopric, Ernest Augustus actually entered into a treaty of neutrality
for two years with France, George William was by his far-sighted
Chancellor, Baron Lewis Justus von Schütz,[77] prevailed upon to stand
firm. When the invasion of the United Provinces of the Netherlands took
place in 1672, Duke George William ranged himself on the side of the
adversaries of the French invader, and very soon Ernest Augustus
followed suit. In 1674, George William, accompanied by Ernest Augustus,
was in command of the Brunswick-Lüneburg troops forming part of the
imperial army opposed to Marshal Turenne, the devastator of the
Palatinate, in Alsace; and, in the following year, the Bishop of
Osnabrück and his eldest son George Lewis achieved a brilliant military
success at the bridge of Conz, and followed it up by taking part in the
recovery of Treves. Before leaving Osnabrück for this campaign, Ernest
Augustus had handsomely raised his consort’s dowry to an annual income
of 16,000 dollars. ‘I hope,’ she wrote, ‘that I shall never need it, and
that the Parcæ will allow him to survive me.’ On this occasion he
returned wreathed in laurels. At Osnabrück an imposing triumphal arch
was erected by ‘the dancing-master Jemme,’ and all the princes and
princesses at the little Court joined in a dance given in his garden by
the same public-spirited professor. In 1675, they took part in the war
carried on by the Empire against Sweden, which they helped to oust for a
time from the duchies of Bremen and Verden. To allies so loyal and so
useful as the two Dukes, no reasonable favour could be refused by the
Emperor Leopold, who was manifestly unaware of the conflict between the
desires of the elder and the interests of the younger brother. (It is
interesting, as an illustration of the consistent dynastic policy of
Ernest Augustus, that, when in 1674, after some cautious hesitation, he
had concluded a ten years’ league with the Emperor, the United
Provinces, and Spain, he procured the insertion in the compact of a
clause binding the States-General to use their whole influence in the
peace negotiations in favour of his bishopric of Osnabrück being turned
into a secular principality.) In July, 1674, a patent issued from the
Vienna Chancery, granting to Madame de Harburg, for herself and her
children, the hereditary title of Countess of the Empire
(_Reichsgräfin_) of Wilhelmsburg—the designation of the landed property
between Hamburg and Harburg settled upon her and her descendants by her
protector. At the same time, the Empress Eleonora, a scion of the
Catholic Neuburg branch of the Palatine House, conferred upon her
namesake at Celle the Order of the Female Slaves of Virtue, hitherto
reserved for princesses. Soon afterwards, the right was secured to
Eleonora’s daughter Sophia Dorothea, in the event of her marrying a
prince, of bearing the arms of the House of Brunswick and of being
recognised as herself belonging to that House. The name of the prince
who was to secure the prize of the heiress’ hand while thus raising her
in advance of her mother, to the coveted rank, was no longer a secret:
it was Augustus Frederick, the youthful eldest son of Duke Antony Ulric
of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Antony Ulric was at the time, though
co-regent with his elder brother, involved in debt and prepared to bring
about a rise in the prospects of his family, even by means of a
matrimonial connexion in other respects not a little dubious. For the
conclusion of this match Sophia Dorothea’s legitimation was
indispensable; but her aunt, the Duchess Sophia, indignantly relates
that a shorter and readier way of reaching this end was suggested to her
brother-in-law by his Chancellor Schütz. He advised the Duke to marry
Sophia Dorothea’s mother. Schütz was the most capable politician in his
master’s Court, and served him, as his son-in-law Bernstorff afterwards
served Ernest Augustus and his son, with equal fidelity and distinction.
There is no reason for attributing sordid motives to the advice which
this petty Wolsey gave to his easy despot—that he should take the course
on which his heart might not unnaturally be supposed to be set. For the
moment, the incomplete step of securing a patent of legitimacy for his
daughter was deemed sufficient; but, very soon, Eleonora, or Eleonora’s
ally, prompted by the restless Antony Ulric, again entered into
campaign. At first, a morganatic marriage, with renewed safeguards for
Ernest Augustus and his line, was suggested; then, a preliminary attempt
was made to place the lady on a level with her lord, by obtaining for
her the title of Princess. The Duchess Sophia was on the alert, and
cites at length a letter which she wrote to her brother-in-law in order
to avert the impending thunderbolt, and his bland reply assuring her
that it would prove absolutely harmless to her family. In April, 1676,
the marriage of George William and Eleonora, who still remained Countess
of Wilhelmsburg only, was celebrated at Celle; and nothing could, on the
face of it, be more reassuring than the treaty which followed in May,
and which, while guaranteeing the Succession in George William’s
dominions to his brother and his brother’s descendants, actually
provided that the oaths of allegiance taken by his subjects in future
should be sworn to his brother as well as to himself. It seemed to
Sophia that this procedure might opportunely have been set on foot when
George William’s wife was again expected to present him with a son.
Meanwhile Eleonora speedily achieved the remainder of her ascent; in
April, 1676, Sophia had to learn that the Frenchwoman—in her intimate
correspondence this designation would have been avoided as
colourless—was prayed for in church at Celle, as if she were the
reigning Duchess; and, soon afterwards, the final blow descended, when
it became known that the Emperor’s envoy had saluted her by the title of
Highness. Sophia expresses herself, with not undeserved contempt, as to
the excuse preferred by George William, that he could not help obliging
one whom others called his wife. From the silence which, in the
remaining pages of Sophia’s _Memoirs_, ensues on a topic which cannot
fail to have continued to exercise her patience, we infer that, though
it was very long before either she, or anyone who cared for her, had a
good word for the Duchess of Celle, the common-sense which no kind of
emotion ever extinguished in her induced her to abandon the struggle
against the inevitable. She consoled herself, as she told her favourite
niece, with the reflexion that, whatever title the intruder might
herself bear, no son of hers could ever be more than a Count of
Wilhelmsburg, and that George William might still be trusted, in the
event of a son being born to him, to keep his promise to his brother.
The Duchess of Orleans did her best to promulgate this faith to
unbelieving or indifferent listeners at Versailles; but it was not in
this way that Sophia’s half-pathetic trust in her _ci-devant_ lover was
destined to be put to the proof.[78]
-----
Footnote 74:
One of these was the case of the Elector Palatine, Frederick I, just a
century earlier (1472), who after, on his usurpation of his nephew’s
dominions, making a promise similar to George William’s, twenty years
afterwards married his mistress with his nephew’s consent. Another
instance is that of Henry of Dannenberg, who, notwithstanding a
supposed promise, married, greatly to the vexation of his brother
William the Younger, the founder of the New House of Lüneburg.
Footnote 75:
No doubt a less reputable class of French and Italian adventurers also
found their way to George William’s court, which in 1670 Sophia states
‘under the roos’ to be called ‘_le Royaume de la Canalle_,’ adding
that the nobility is held of no account there, and that cooks are
probably better paid than Ministers of State.
Footnote 76:
According to another view, this naturalisation of her daughter,
together with permission to herself to return to France in the event
of danger, had been sought by Eleonora herself, aware of the jealousy
with which she was regarded by most of her protector’s relatives.
Footnote 77:
The elder Schütz was sent to London in 1683, to congratulate Charles
II on his escape from the Ryehouse Plot. His reports from London are
preserved from 1689 to 1709, the year of his death; but his
interesting correspondence with Sophia (recently edited with other
letters from her and Queen Sophia Charlotte by Dr. R. Doebner) does
not, with the exception of a single letter, include any letters dated
before 1701.
Footnote 78:
It was a proud experience of the Duchess of Orleans (in 1717) to find
that Louis XIV had observed her dislike of _mésalliances_, and more
than one racy reference to a horrible occurrence of the kind might be
cited from her letters. The Celle marriage she could never have
forgiven, if only for her aunt’s sake. Yet _mésalliances_ were not
altogether unknown in the House of Brunswick (see above as to ‘Madame
Rudolfine’)—perhaps for the very reason that it was formerly one of
those ancient German princely Houses (i.e. Houses which had a seat and
vote in the Diet before 1582) which sought to maintain the principle
of _Ebenbürtigkeit_. It is only in the branch of the House which
attained to a royal throne that a wise policy (embodied in the Act of
1772) substituted for a rigid rule a provision which has sufficiently
protected the dignity of the royal family and the interests of the
Empire. It may be added that, according to Lord Dover, the
_mésalliance_ with Eleonora d’Olbreuze prevents the British royal
family from taking rank as what is called _chapitrale_ in Germany.
(See Horace Walpole’s _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, Vol. ii. p. 251,
note.) Concerning the _Ebenbürtigkeit_ principle as recognised in the
House of Hohenzollern, and the rights of the head of the House with
regard to the marriages of its members, see an article by E. Berner in
_Historische Zeitschrift_, 1884, 4, _Die Hausverfassung der
Hohenzollern_ (a review of H. Schulze, _Die Hausgesetze der reg.
Deutschen Fürstenhäuser_).
-----
The influence of the Duchess of Celle upon her husband’s mode of life,
and upon the tone of his Court, was altogether so excellent that we may
without much hesitation discredit her sister-in-law’s insinuations as to
the bringing-up of George William and Eleonora’s only surviving child,
the ill-fated Sophia Dorothea. The engagement which had actually been
concluded between her and the youthful Prince Augustus Frederick of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel came to a sudden end by his death in August,
1676, from wounds received at the siege of Philippsburg; and the attempt
of his father Duke Antony Ulric to secure the hand of the heiress for
one of his younger sons met with no ready acceptance. Other suitors
appeared or were spoken of: the young Hereditary Governor of Friesland,
Henry Casimir of Nassau-Dietz, who was recommended to George William by
his cousinhood with William III of Orange, and Prince George of Denmark,
for whom fate had in store the splendid, if not in all respects
enviable, position of consort to an English Queen. Curiously enough, the
hand of the Princess Anne had at this time been also thought to be
within reach of Ernest Augustus and Sophia’s eldest son George Lewis,
who paid a visit to England from December, 1680, to the following March.
But for him, too, a different destiny was reserved; nor, if the account
of a most sagacious observer and true friend is to be trusted, had this
particular honour ever been coveted either by the Prince himself or at
Hanover—for this among other reasons, that Princess Anne’s birth on the
mother’s side was from a very second-rate family. The Prince had,
accordingly, taken very little trouble in the matter; so that, when he
left England, it was thought that the marriage would never take
place—all of which things Queen Anne never forgot.[79] Before long a
project of dynastic ambition ripened, as we must conclude, in the minds
of the brothers at Celle and Osnabrück, which, if carried out, besides
serving the immediate end of replenishing the resources exhausted by the
extravagant life of Ernest Augustus, would go far towards ensuring the
ultimate union of all the dominions of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line. As
to the former purpose, it probably weighed heavily with Sophia’s
husband, whose expenditure on travel abroad and on pomp and ceremony at
home had long been excessive, and who had more recently added to his
self-indulgences the costly luxury of a mistress _en titre_, in the
person of Clara Elizabeth von Meysenbug, since 1673, by her marriage to
one of Ernest Augustus’ chief courtiers, Baroness von Platen.[80] It
would not be easy to show from Sophia’s letters how she was affected by
a _liaison_ which lasted during her husband’s lifetime; one quite
welcomes the late indication afforded by her remark, on the occasion of
the visit of the Tsar Peter the Great, in 1697, that in Russia all women
paint, and that this was why Countess Platen so much charmed the
Muscovites. Of her personal power over Ernest Augustus, and of certain
other features in her history and that of her family, something will
have to be said below; but it may be as well to point out that there is
no satisfactory evidence to show that she played the part ascribed to
her in the tragedy to be noticed below. This was not Ernest Augustus’
only infidelity, for about the same date we hear of a relation between
him and one ‘Esther,’ a _femme de chambre_ in the service of his
wife.[81] Sophia, from whom her husband’s affections were thus being
alienated, after she had borne him six children, seems at first to have
felt anything but satisfaction at the project of a marriage between her
eldest son, George Lewis, and his cousin, Sophia Dorothea; indeed, in a
letter of November, 1677, the Duchess of Orleans, as her aunt’s faithful
echo, profanely denounces the union of such a creature with so worthy a
young prince as a sin against the Holy Ghost. In 1679, Sophia describes
the pill as difficult to swallow, though adequately gilded, and adds
that, for her part, she would have preferred a daughter of John
Frederick of Hanover with a third of the gilding. But, three years
later, in 1682, the Duchess of Orleans treats the marriage as an
accomplished fact. ‘She will,’ she observes, ‘imitate the discretion of
her aunt;’ but ‘like the parrot of the Duke of Savoy, though she holds
her tongue, she thinks a great deal.’ A large amount of fiction, the
origin of which is traceable to the same tainted source—a ‘historical’
novel published, nearly a generation afterwards, by the ingenious but
far from disinterested Duke Antony Ulric[82]—has accumulated round the
supposed exertions of Sophia to induce her brother-in-law, despite the
reluctance of his wife, to approve the sacrifice of their daughter. All
we know is that, by 1681, the tone of Ernest Augustus and Sophia towards
Eleonora had entirely changed; and it is clear what had made both the
parents of the ‘worthy’ Prince George Lewis intent upon bringing the
matter to a conclusion. About this time, Ernest Augustus had conceived
the design of obtaining the Emperor’s consent to the postulation of one
of his sons as his successor in the bishopric of Osnabrück,
notwithstanding the express provision of the Peace of Westphalia that it
should be alternately held by a Catholic and a Lutheran. Sophia was
quite prepared to drive a coach and four through that settlement, and
let the Catholics afterwards appoint two bishops in succession if they
chose. But this would have been a merely temporary gain for the House.
At the close of the year 1679, as has been seen, John Frederick of
Hanover had died without leaving a son; and to Ernest Augustus, on
succeeding to his principality, the prospect of an enduring greatness
for himself and his dynasty at last clearly opened. If the cordial
relations between his surviving brother and himself could be maintained,
the actual union in his hands, or in those of his descendants, of the
entire territories of the Brunswick-Lüneburg House, was now merely a
matter of time; and on the possession of so extensive and solid a
dominion his dynastic ambition would be warranted in basing ulterior
designs. Already personages of the greatest political consequence in
Europe began to interest themselves in the fortunes of the House of
Hanover, and in the immediate scheme of a marriage promising results of
so high an importance. Hardly had Ernest Augustus and Sophia held their
entry at Hanover, when, by the express advice of William of Orange, they
at once recognised the ducal title of Eleonora. In the same year the
august counsel of Louis XIV, still hopeful of conciliating the goodwill
of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes, was bestowed in favour of the match,
through his minister at Celle, the Marquis d’Arcy, to whom the Duchess
Eleonora spoke with gratification of the civilities of her
sister-in-law. The Estates of Celle-Lüneburg, on the one hand, and those
of Calenberg (Hanover), on the other, with a docility surprising after
their former insistence on continued separation, declared that, if the
marriage was actually concluded, they would consent to the establishment
of the principle of primogeniture; and a law establishing this
principle, the very coping-stone of Ernest Augustus’ dynastic policy,
received the Imperial sanction in 1683, though it was only promulgated
in the Brunswick-Lüneburg dominions, as part of the will of Ernest
Augustus, on his death fifteen years afterwards. This provision was to
entail upon Sophia even more personal unhappiness than the marriage of
her eldest son itself; but a renunciation of her own wishes had by this
time become a law of her life.
-----
Footnote 79:
See Ezechiel Spanheim’s _Account of the English Court_, printed by Dr.
R. Doebner in _English Historical Review_, Vol. ii. 1887, pp. 757
_sqq._ Spanheim’s statement as to the scruples felt at Hanover is
exactly borne out by an observation of Sophia, _à propos_ of the
proposed match between her son George Lewis and the Princess Sophia
Dorothea, that the example of the Prince of Orange (William III)
‘renders the notion more endurable.’ In other words, the House of
Hanover thought a marriage with a daughter of Anne Hyde a sort of
_mésalliance_. (See _Briefwechsel d. Herzogin Sophie mit d. Kurfürsten
Karl Ludwig_, p. 387.)
Footnote 80:
The Meysenbug family makes its first appearance as residing at the
Court of Osnabrück during Ernest Augustus’ episcopate.
Footnote 81:
An earlier _faiblesse_ (1668) of Ernest Augustus for a French lady,
Susanne de la Manoelinière, had been treated by his wife with great
discretion and success.
Footnote 82:
Vol. vi. of _The Roman Octavia_, a romance in the then fashionable
style of the _Grand Cyrus_.
-----
In September, 1682, the Duchess Sophia informed her ubiquitous
correspondent, the Abbé Balati, that henceforth Hanover and Celle would
reckon as a single State—a result so advantageous as to warrant defiance
of the German genealogical scruple about being equally grand on both
sides of the tree. Prince George Lewis had made up his mind, and his
mother trusted that he had done so under a good constellation.[83] On
November the 21st following, the wedding of George Lewis and Sophia
Dorothea took place at Celle, and was celebrated by Leibniz (such are
the vicissitudes of Court life) in indifferent French verse. Nothing is
known as to the early married life of a husband and wife who were no
better, though perhaps not much worse, assorted than most couples united
under similar conditions. Sophia Dorothea’s was an indolent and
emotional nature; the habits of George Lewis were active; he was fond of
the camp and the chase; and his bearing was characterised by a reserve
which afterwards became stolidity. But, in these years, he was much
absent from home, continuing his military career in the Imperial
service, taking an honourable part in the historic achievement of the
rescue of Vienna by Sobiesky, in 1683, and distinguishing himself two
years later at the capture of Neuhäusel in the Hungarian campaign of
Duke Charles of Lorraine against the Turks. Sophia Dorothea bore her
husband two children—George Augustus (afterwards King George II), in
1683, and Sophia Dorothea (afterwards Queen of Prussia and mother of
Frederick the Great), in 1685. Some letters of her mother-in-law, in
1684 and the following year, show that Eleonora’s daughter had not been
successful in conciliating permanently the sympathies of Sophia, whose
politeness towards the mother had not developed into any warm goodwill
towards the daughter; but the complaints against Sophia Dorothea are not
very serious, and rather suggest a spoilt child in the company of an
unsympathetic but by no means stony-hearted relative.
-----
Footnote 83:
‘_Il est à present_,’ she adds, ‘_avec sa maîtresse_.’ It is to be
feared that this should be translated literally.
-----
The _Memoirs_ of Sophia break off early in 1681, when, after a visit to
the Queen of Denmark in the latter part of the preceding year, she was
again left alone by her erratic husband, who had departed on one of his
pilgrimages across the Alps, although she was plunged into grief by the
news of the death of her beloved brother, the Elector Palatine. Her
eldest sister, the good Abbess of Herford, had, as we saw, died a few
months before their brother, and, in her solitary sorrow, Sophia wrote
that it would not be long before she followed them. When, therefore,
these _Memoirs_ are made to serve as a principal source for her
biography, the troubled circumstances of the time in which they were
actually written should be taken into account. She little knew how soon
a new epoch in her life was to begin, destined to impose upon her a
responsibility as great as it was unexpected. With however prudent a
self-restraint she might meet it, neither in her own eyes nor in those
of the numerous observers who henceforth watched every one of her
actions or movements, could it fail to add signally to her personal
importance. And although, according to modern notions, the Hanover of
the later seventeenth century might seem to differ but slightly, in its
capacity to become a theatre of political transactions of moment, from
the neighbouring city of Osnabrück, yet it should be remembered how
strenuously the deceased Duke John Frederick had exerted himself to make
his capital one of those secondary centres of political and general
intellectual life which, in this age, paid the homage of imitation to
Versailles. To him was owing the creation of a library which, if it
could not rival that for which Sophia’s paternal ancestors had found a
home at Heidelberg, was fostered by the care of Leibniz, whose services
were the noblest legacy left by his first Hanoverian patron, John
Frederick, to his successor, Ernest Augustus—a legacy of which the value
was to be so fully recognised by Sophia. In other respects, too—notably
in that of the attention now given at Hanover to the cultivation of the
dramatic and musical arts—court and town had been transformed under John
Frederick’s liberal _régime_; and an impulse had been given which his
younger brother sought, after his own fashion, to sustain. Leibniz, of
course, remained in his service, and was treated with a consideration
which he owed to his usefulness both as publicist and historiographer,
and which, thanks to the favour of Sophia, was never discontinued during
her husband’s reign. Relations with Italy and Italian musical art were
certain to be kept up under so constant a lover of Venice as Ernest
Augustus; an Italian opera was again established at Hanover under the
conduct of the distinguished Venetian composer, Agostino Steffani;[84]
and the Abbate Hortensio Mauro, who took up his residence at Hanover
about 1681, maintained at the Court of Ernest Augustus and Sophia a
lasting interest in the Italian language and in Italian art, while
himself becoming a trusted servant and friend of the Electoral family.
The Court of Ernest Augustus and France were from the first mainly
connected with his love of foreign luxury and elegance of all kinds. So
early as 1668, Baron Platen had secured for him a Parisian _maître
d’hôtel_; and, nearly every year, the Duke sent his _valet de chambre_
to Paris, there to consult a resident agent as to the requisites of
Sophia and her ladies. The Palace at Hanover was greatly ‘beautified,’
though a great deal more money was spent on decoration of one kind or
another than on architecture proper. It is reckoned that on the former
Ernest Augustus expended nearly 25,000 dollars at Hanover. Tapestry and
pictures were imported from Holland, and particular attention was given
to stucco-work, under the direction of an Italian _maestro_ named
Sartorio. In course of time, Sophia could summon French artists to
conduct the weaving of a great _Gobelin_ tapestry, which was carried out
in the _Reithaus_ at Hanover, and which represented scenes from the life
of Duke George of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the ancestor of the Hanoverian
dynasty, and from that of Sophia’s mother, the Queen of Bohemia. In
1695, the interior of the _Schlosskirche_ was completely gilded. With
the exception of the great _Rittersaal_, however, a very pompous and
heavy structure, nearly all the renovated palace buildings were
destroyed by fire in 1741. Ernest Augustus also built, in direct
connexion with the Palace, a new opera-house.[85] From the year 1684 we
have an account—_merum mel_—of a visit paid to Hanover (following on one
to Celle) by the celebrated French traveller Tavernier, whom Duke Ernest
Augustus came over (from Herrenhausen?) to welcome, together with
visitors so august as the Duchess Dowager of East Frisia and so
distinguished as the celebrated Brandenburg diplomatist and statesman,
Paul Fuchs. The old gentleman (Tavernier was then over eighty), who
mentions that the Duke spent Sunday morning at the ‘temple’ and the
afternoon at a performance of his company of French comedians, was
delighted both by the agreeable turn which the conversation took at
dinner—viz. the subject of his own travels in Persia and India—and by
the general urbanity and courteous liberality of his reception.[86]
There can be no doubt but that in these respects there were few
contemporary courts which outshone those of the Lüneburg Dukes. We shall
see how, as time went on, Sophia did what in her lay to maintain around
her a culture both higher and wider than would have specially commended
itself to the personal tastes of her husband, or of her eldest son.
-----
Footnote 84:
Steffani, after being employed in other diplomatic business by the
Hanoverian Court, was chosen to accompany the Princess Amalia,
daughter of the late Duke John Frederick, on her journey to Modena,
where she was married to the Roman King Joseph. Pope Innocent XI
hereupon created him Bishop of Spiga _in partibus_.
Footnote 85:
It was broken up in 1852. See A. Haupt, _u.s._, where the palace on
the property of Count Alten, which was at the time mortgaged to the
Platens, is said to be the one important specimen remaining of the
Italian architecture in the Hanover of the period. It was said to have
been built by Ernest Augustus for Countess Platen.
Footnote 86:
_Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron de l’Aubonne, Chambellan du Grand
Électeur. D’après des documents nouveaux et inédits, par Charles
Joret, Paris, 1881, pp. 342 sqq._
-----
For the present, everything at Hanover seemed shaping itself for the
benefit of the Hereditary Prince George Lewis, as the representative of
that principle of primogeniture which, in his father’s eyes, was of
paramount importance for the future of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, but
which brought many tears into the eyes of his mother. The principle in
question was by no means a new one in the history of the House of
Brunswick. It already obtained in the elder branch, and in the younger
had been established for Lüneburg-Celle and for Calenberg-Göttingen
individually. Unless it were secured, the Brunswick-Lüneburgers could
never hope to hold a more than subordinate position among the Princes of
the Empire; no dream of a Ninth Electorate was worth dreaming; and any
calculation as to further possibilities would have been more baseless
than a fabric of the air. But, while this was understood by Ernest
Augustus, and doubtless also by his eldest son, it is not wonderful that
the next brother, Frederick Augustus, should have bitterly resented the
consequences which followed for himself, and that his mother Sophia
should have been full of sympathy with his trouble. After obtaining
legal advice, Prince Frederick Augustus communicated his grievance to
the willing ears of his kinsman, Duke Antony Ulric, at Wolfenbüttel;
and, in the same quarter, the Duchess Sophia was lamenting the quarrel
which had already taken place between her husband and their second son.
‘Poor Gussy’ (_Arm Gustchen_), she wrote in December, 1685, ‘is
altogether cast out; his father will no longer give him any maintenance.
I cry about it all night long; for one child is as dear to me as
another; I am the mother of them all, and I grieve most for those who
are unhappy.’ Finally, a protest on the part of Antony Ulric was
presented to Sophia at Herrenhausen, and forwarded by her to her
husband, who was, according to his wont, enjoying himself at Venice. The
pressure was applied in vain; and, though ultimately, through the good
offices of George William, an understanding was patched up between his
brother and the hot-tempered Antony Ulric, Prince Frederick Augustus was
left to his own devices. He followed the example of his elder brother by
taking service with the Emperor and fighting against the Turks; but he
was still intending to institute a suit at Vienna for the recovery of
his rights, when, in January, 1691, he fell in a skirmish at Chemetzvar,
near St. Giorgy, in Transylvania. After a heroic struggle, the fourth of
Sophia’s sons, Charles Philip, had likewise fallen in battle against the
Turks at Pristina, in Albania, almost exactly a year before Frederick
Augustus. Charles Philip seems to have been his mother’s favourite
boy—possibly because of a natural disfigurement (of the head) which had
from the first aroused her loving pity; and the tragic details of his
dying, covered with wounds, on the battlefield, went to her heart. She
fell seriously ill, and even a visit to Carlsbad in the spring of the
year failed completely to restore her to health. We may so far
anticipate the chronological sequence of events as to note that, after
the death of Frederick Augustus, the third brother, Maximilian William,
who had at first acknowledged the principle of primogeniture, entered
the lists against it. He was joined in his resistance by the fifth,
Christian, who was likewise in the Imperial service, and who afterwards
(in July, 1703), as Major-General in the Imperial army, met with his
death by being drowned in the Danube near Ehingen. When the news of his
death came, those around his mother feared for her health—as she could
not find the relief of tears. In Maximilian’s quarrel, his mother’s
sympathies were again on his side, though, to judge from passages in the
correspondence of Sophia Dorothea, he was of a more or less flighty
disposition; and, when his father had not unnaturally declined to pay
him his appanage, she attempted to obtain some pecuniary support for him
at the Danish or at the English Court. Like his brother, he took the
officious Antony Ulric into his confidence, and communications were
opened with Danckelmann, the powerful Minister of the Elector of
Brandenburg, who, with the distinct purpose of thwarting the designed
consolidation of the Celle-Hanover dominions, kept up the tension
existing between his and the Hanoverian court, and that notwithstanding
the marriage, in 1684, of the daughter of Ernest Augustus, Sophia
Charlotte to the Electoral Prince—from 1688, Elector Frederick III of
Brandenburg. A plot was now hatched, of which the precise object
remained in some measure obscure, but as to whose progress the
quick-witted Sophia Charlotte contrived to send sufficient information
to her father. On December 5th, 1691, Prince Maximilian William was
arrested at Hanover, together with the chief agents of his design; and
one of these, the Master of the Hunt (_Oberjägermeister_), von Moltke,
with whom Danckelmann had been in communication, had shortly afterwards
to pay the penalty of death for the high treason laid to his charge.
Prince Maximilian himself was allowed to depart unharmed, after
renouncing all claims to the Succession, except in the case of his elder
brother’s dying without leaving a son. Although he did not keep his oath
very scrupulously, he refrained from any open violation of it during the
lifetime of his father, expending his energy in the military service of
Venice and of the Emperor. He commanded the first line of cavalry at
Blenheim, and survived till 1726, having missed the reversion of the see
of Osnabrück by a late conversion to the Church of Rome.[87] Earlier
rumours of a change of faith on his part had sorely vexed his mother, to
the unconcealed amusement of her niece, the Duchess of Orleans; but his
letters to Sophia, and the references to him in hers to Leibniz, give a
pleasing impression of his frank and open nature, although, impulsive as
he was, he seems to have been deficient in filial piety as in other
qualities showing moral depth.[88]
-----
Footnote 87:
Already, as a child of six, Maximilian (who seems to have been the
survivor of a pair of twins) had displayed an unusual piety, and kept
a prayer-book in his bed for matutinal use.
Footnote 88:
The Duchess of Orleans, who had been informed that a complaint had
been preferred to the Emperor by Maximilian, as to a sum of money
demanded by him from his mother, the Electress Sophia, not having been
sent to him by her, who had loved him so well, exclaims: ‘This is
abominable; this Prince can never meet with any good fortune either in
this world or in the next, after having done this abominable thing,
which I can never forgive him.’
-----
Sophia’s youngest son, Ernest Augustus, destined when the time came
(1715) to succeed to the see of Osnabrück, formerly held by his father,
and also to be created Duke of York and Albany, was still in his boyhood
at the critical stage which we have now reached in the history of his
House. His birth in 1674, which for a time endangered her life, had
elicited from his mother the confession that she already had boys
enough; and, inasmuch as there was some difficulty in finding a
godfather for him as the latest-born of so large a family, his eldest
brother George Lewis was called upon to undertake the responsibilities
of the office. The special bond thus established between the two
brothers held out firmly so long as their lives endured; indeed, the
Duchess of Orleans regrets that, instead of waiting upon his mother, the
Prince followed about his elder brother ‘like a spaniel’ (1707). While
it is impossible not to respect the loyal devotion of the younger of the
pair, the affectionate return made to it on the part of the elder,
‘serious’ as he always was in manner, should not be overlooked by those
who desire to form a fair estimate of the character of George I. Ernest
Augustus’ childhood was spent under his mother’s eye; and, in 1687, the
good Duchess of Orleans undertook to introduce his elder brother
Christian and himself at the French Court, where, for the better part of
two years, the two Princes, and Ernest Augustus in particular, by his
charming manners and quickness, did credit to their descent. In 1689,
they started on the indispensable Italian tour; and, in 1693, Prince
Ernest Augustus received the baptism of fire equally necessary to this
masculine brood in the battle of Neerwinden (Landen), where three sons
of the Duchess Sophia—George Lewis, Christian, and Ernest Augustus—were
engaged. In August, 1714, the Duchess of Orleans makes a very curious
remark concerning him, which suggests that there was a notion at the
time of passing over the Electoral Prince (afterwards George II) in the
English Succession.[89] The correspondence of Ernest Augustus, which
covers the years 1703 to 1726, reveals a simple and soldier-like
character, thoroughly loyal and singularly modest. His elder brother,
King George I, actually died in his arms at Osnabrück, and Ernest
Augustus, as Sir Henry Wotton might have written, ‘liked it not, and
died,’ little more than a year later (August 14th, 1728).
-----
Footnote 89:
‘I do not know whether it is true, but it is said here’ [at
Versailles] ‘that the English are ready to have the Elector of
Brunswick for their King, but that they will make it a condition, that
the Electoral Prince shall never succeed him on the throne. Duke
Maximilian I do not know, but, between ourselves, I would rather it
were Duke Ernest Augustus than the Electoral Prince; for my cousin,
Duke Ernest Augustus, has a good ancestry on both sides and is of
wholly German descent, whereas the Electoral Prince has some very bad
ancestors, and is described to me as so mad that I have often heartily
pitied his wife; of Duke Ernest Augustus I have never heard anything
but praise, and I have therefore a hearty regard for him.’
-----
Of Sophia Charlotte, her parents’ only daughter, the ‘_Figuelotte_’ of a
delightful babyhood, and during life the darling and in many respects
the semblance of her mother, it will be more convenient to speak in our
next chapter. Her youth had been happier than Sophia’s, from whom she
had inherited, together with her black hair, to which her blue eyes
offered a charming contrast, a rare healthiness of mind, as well as,
seemingly, of body, inexhaustible high spirits, and a rapidity of
apprehension which made her in her early girlhood a linguist such as her
mother and her mother’s brothers and sisters had been in their
generation. In 1679, she accompanied her mother on a visit to the French
Court, where her natural charms, and above all the brightness of her
intelligence, made so pleasing an impression that it was at the time
thought likely that she might return thither as the bride of one of the
Princes of the House of France. But at Hanover she soon seemed intent
upon very different interests; and she had become the pupil of Leibniz
before her destiny called her to give her hand to the widowed Electoral
Prince Frederick of Brandenburg (September, 1684). ‘It is fortunate,’
wrote her mother, ‘that she does not care for externals.’ The parting
went very near to the heart of the Duchess Sophia, who was now, more
than ever, left alone to support the dynastic endeavours and suffer from
the domestic troubles of the House of Hanover, while meeting the
responsibilities of her own title to the English Succession.
IV
THE ELECTORAL HOUSE OF HANOVER
(HANOVER AND HERRENHAUSEN, 1688-1701)
None of the varied experiences through which Sophia had passed during a
life of nearly sixty years, had either made her forget her English
descent, or led her to regard English interests as alien to her own.
During the reign of Charles II her personal recollections of his years
of vagrancy could not but render her discreetly indisposed to keep up by
letter any direct intercourse with her royal cousin; but she was not the
less desirous of remaining in touch with the progress of events in her
mother’s first and final home. After her brother Rupert had at last
settled down in England, she expressed a wish that he should be made a
peer, and thus be enabled to attend in Parliament and keep her informed
of the course of public business. She was naturally much interested in
the marriage, in 1677, of William Prince of Orange to the Duke of York’s
elder daughter, the Princess Mary; and, in 1680, she had the
satisfaction of welcoming to Hanover the Prince who had thus become
closely connected with the English royal family, and of receiving his
assurances of his anxiety to render some substantial service to her
husband’s House. It has already been incidentally noted how, in 1681,
her eldest son, George Lewis, had paid a visit to England, where he
might, it was hoped, secure the hand of Mary’s younger sister, the
Princess Anne. This scheme was favoured by the Prince of Orange, whose
own marriage had remained childless, and who could not ignore the fact
that the design for excluding his Roman Catholic father-in-law from the
English Succession had already assumed definite shape. In 1685, after
King Charles II had passed away, ‘unconcerned as became a good
Christian’—or, in other words, after having received the last
consolations of the Catholic faith—William expressed his conviction that
Sophia would share both his sorrow for the late King’s death, and his
joy at hearing of the unhindered accession of ‘_celluy d’apresent_.’ And
King James II himself could assure her that he would always ‘continue
the same good correspondence which she had with the late King his
brother.’[90] James II, to judge from an extant series of letters to
Sophia from his hand, proved as good as his word, and she answered him
in the same spirit. A constant communication seems, moreover, to have
been kept up between her and the English royal family, through the
personal agency of the faithful Lord Craven, of whom in 1683 she writes
as ‘at present my sole correspondent in England.’ James II had appointed
him Lieutenant-General of the Forces, and he would have been quite
ready, had it rested with him, to act a decisive part with his
Coldstreams on the King’s behalf in the closing hours of his reign.
Thus, when, in July, 1688, on the occasion of what ought to have been
the happiest event of that reign—the birth of an heir to the
throne—Sophia gave expression to her pleasure, the King wrote in return
that he could have expected nothing less from her; ‘for beside our being
so near related, you have always upon all occasion expresst a concerne
for me of which you shall always find me very sensible.’ And, with the
straightforwardness of character which was not less distinctive of her
than was her intellectual _finesse_, she never, either by word or by
deed, belied her goodwill to the unfortunate King, or allowed herself to
be impressed by the _consensus_ between blatant prejudice and more or
less wilful blindness that ‘doubted’ the genuineness of the Prince of
Wales. She transmitted to the Emperor Leopold a letter in which King
James had reproduced, for her benefit, the substance of the refutation
of these calumnious doubts laid by him before his Privy Council; and, so
late as 1704, she is found reproaching Leibniz for the courtier-like
insinuations which he seems to have hazarded as to the Prince’s birth.
Accordingly, at the time when the expedition of William of Orange was
preparing, King James wrote to Sophia in a perfectly trustful tone; he
had heard that, with the exception of her husband, all her Protestant
neighbours had contributed to the armament; but, if the wind continued,
he hoped nevertheless to be able to give a good account of it. As a
matter of fact, Ernest Augustus maintained a neutral attitude so long as
he could; and, so late as 1691, James II is again found applauding
Sophia’s husband for declining to support the ‘vemper’ (William of
Orange). Early in the next year, he continues to harp on the same string
to her, while avowing his confidence in the continuance of her good
wishes and requesting her to use no ceremony in writing to him. In 1693,
Lord Dartmouth, whom Sophia received at Hanover with much distinction
because of the kindness shown by his grandfather to her brothers Rupert
and Maurice, was informed by her that she maintained a constant
correspondence both with King James and with his daughter Queen Mary. On
the death of Ernest Augustus, both King James and Queen Mary Beatrice
warmly condoled with the widow, the former avowing his gratitude for all
the marks of esteem and kindness which she had so frequently shown to
him. It is interesting, too, to observe how Sophia, in conjunction with
her second self, the Duchess of Orleans, used her best endeavours to
make peace between King James and his eldest daughter, whose conduct
towards him he pardonably misjudged, but in whose sincerity of soul a
sure instinct led Sophia to place full trust. The two kinswomen had
never met, when, in June, 1689, Queen Mary wrote to Sophia to complain
of the harsh terms in which the Electress Sophia Charlotte of
Brandenburg was reported to have spoken of her, and took occasion, with
her usual candour, to dwell upon the conflict of feelings through which
it was her duty to guide her conduct. An active correspondence ensued
between the two women, who were truly worthy of one another, and who
had, moreover, some experiences of wedlock in common; and from this it
is clear that Queen Mary had, to her deep satisfaction, found in Sophia
a friend ready to credit her with real filial affection for her father.
In return she writes to the Duchess with a frankness declared by her to
be indigenous to Holland, where she had herself so long lived and where
Sophia had been born—each of them, as she says, having to bear her cross
as best she could.
-----
Footnote 90:
It is interesting to find Queen Mary Beatrice thanking the Dowager
Duchess Benedicta at Hanover for her congratulations on the same
occasion, and referring to her constant interest in the royal family,
and to the links between them.
-----
But, though Sophia was never willing to let political considerations
warp her natural affections or suppress her natural sense of justice,
she would hardly, like Mary, have gone so far as to say of herself that
she was unfitted for politics. The interests of her family and of the
Hanoverian dynasty were steadily kept in view by her, and it was these,
rather than any personal motives or wishes of her own, which determined
her conduct at the critical epoch of the Revolution. The events that
cost James II his throne, as speedily became clear to her, opened a new
political future for herself and her descendants. Before the sailing of
William’s expedition, when engagements in his favour were being entered
into by the new Elector (Frederick William) of Brandenburg, the
Landgrave (Charles) of Hesse-Cassel and the Duke of Celle, Burnet, as he
tells us, sent, from the Hague, a messenger to the Duchess Sophia at
Hanover. This messenger, a French refugee named de Boncour, was
instructed to inform her of the design of the Prince of Orange, and of
the certainty that, should the expedition prove successful, it would
result in the perpetual exclusion of Papists from the English throne. If
she could persuade her husband Ernest Augustus to sever his interests
definitively from those of France, there was little doubt but that,
after the two daughters of King James and the Prince of Orange, from
none of whom any issue was surviving, the Succession would be lodged in
her person and posterity. Burnet, who asserts that, in making this
communication, he acted entirely on his own responsibility, though his
action afterwards gained him William’s approval, adds that the message
was warmly entertained by the Duchess Sophia, but that her husband let
it pass by him. Ernest Augustus, not unnaturally, looked on the whole
question with a self-control facilitated by the fact that, in any case,
he could only benefit from the English Succession through his wife.
Whatever may be the measure of truth in this story (which, curiously
enough, is not to be found in Burnet’s _Original Memoirs_), it is
extremely improbable that the Duchess Sophia should have allowed
Burnet’s agent to ascertain her personal views concerning his
suggestions. When the expedition was actually on its way, she wrote a
letter to Leibniz from which nothing can be concluded as to her feelings
in the matter, except that, as was but natural, she was very anxious to
know what would come of it all, especially, as she writes in her
customary half-ironical vein, ‘inasmuch as the words “for religion and
liberty” are to be read on all the banners of the Prince of Orange.’
After the expedition had been carried to a successful issue, we find her
addressing the same correspondent in much the same tone; and, though her
letter of congratulation to William III is perfectly cordial and
contains a remarkably _à propos_ reference to the Blatant Beast, she
shows true dignity as a descendant of the Stewarts in avowing her
sympathy for William’s dethroned predecessor. But with the new King’s
reply, written from Hampton Court less than a fortnight after the
Coronation, the relations of Sophia to himself, and to the throne
occupied by him and his Queen, entered into a new stage, which may be
called the business stage.
In this letter, King William, without any circumlocution, expresses his
hope of finding good allies in the whole House of Lüneburg—that is to
say, in Sophia’s husband, as well as in her brother-in-law, on whom he
could already securely count. On the other hand, he points out that
Sophia has a very real interest in the welfare of his three kingdoms,
inasmuch as, to all appearance, one of her sons would some day reign
over them. Although Sophia still wrote to Leibniz (then at Modena) in
her habitual half-jesting tone as to the chances now opening to her,
there can be no doubt that she is correctly stated to have at once taken
action on King William’s hint, and to have requested several English
politicians known to her to support the project of naming her in the
Succession. The attempt made in this year (1689) to carry the project in
question through Parliament proves that the appeal had not been made in
vain.
On May 8th, 1689, the Bill of Rights and Succession came up for its
third reading in the House of Commons of the Convention Parliament.
While otherwise conforming to the Declaration accepted by William and
Mary earlier in the year, and containing a clause excluding Papists, it
made no provision for the event of the death without issue of Queen
Mary, the Princess Anne, and King William, upon whose issue the
Succession was, in the above order of sequence, settled. Such an event
was at the time far from improbable; should it actually occur, there was
considerable obscurity as to where the Crown would devolve. Would, for
instance, an infant child of Popish parents be excluded;[91] and—a far
more momentous question—would the exclusion extend to a Popish prince
who might have been converted to Protestantism in time to succeed?
Godolphin, a statesman not unnaturally suspected, at this season, of
facing both ways, but perhaps more benignantly towards the _régime_
under which he had risen so high than towards that in which his own
place was still doubtful, proposed a rider guarding the rights of ‘any
Protestant prince or princess’ as to his or her future hereditary
succession to the Crown. The proviso, in which, to the mover’s virtuous
indignation, more than one member suspected the influence of a foreign
Power, was rejected; but it is notable that, in the course of the
debate, Colonel Herbert stated that he had ‘seen a letter of a sister of
Prince Rupert’s, wherein she was complaining of great hardship done to
her children, that they were not regarded in the entail of the crown;’
he therefore moved that they should be mentioned in the Bill. The
proposal, which may confidently be ascribed to the action of Sophia
adverted to above, fell to the ground, the judicious opinion of Paul
Foley prevailing, that it was inexpedient suddenly to introduce any
further limitation of the Succession; but it had not been made wholly in
vain. When the Bill of Rights and Succession reached the House of Lords,
after, on the motion of the Bishop of Salisbury (Burnet), a clause had
been added extending the exclusion of Papists from the Succession to
princes or princesses married to Papists, the same useful henchman, in
accordance with the directions of the King, proposed, as a further
addition to the Bill, the naming, in the Succession, of the Duchess of
Hanover and her posterity. This amendment having been adopted by the
Lords without debate (which could hardly have been the case had the
ground not been prepared there) was carried down to the Commons, who, in
a debate held on June 19th, treated it in a very different spirit. One
member (Sir John Lowther) dwelt on the inexpediency of attempting to
settle the Succession a long time beforehand, instead of following the
example of Queen Elizabeth, who ‘was a wise Princess’; ‘this Princess of
Hanover,’ he pointed out, might turn Catholic before the time for her
succession had arrived. In the end, the amendment was rejected without a
division, and, a conference between the two Houses having proved
fruitless, the Bill was lost for the Session. The birth, on July 27th,
of Princess Anne’s son (afterwards Duke of Gloucester) took away from
the proposed addition its immediate significance; but, whatever may have
been the cause of the failure to give effect to the King’s wish, the
fault certainly did not lie with the Duchess Sophia. There were ‘heats’
enough in the politics of the day, and in the relations between Lords
and Commons in particular, to explain the incident; nor is it surprising
that, when Parliament reassembled in the autumn, the Bill of Rights and
Succession which was now passed contained no mention of the Duchess of
Hanover or her descendants. Burnet, ubiquitously assisting at every
stage of every transaction with which, as narrated by himself, he had
any connexion at all, says that by King William’s wish he wrote to
Sophia an account of the entire affair. We know, however, that Lord
Craven was sent to Hanover to explain it or to soften any unpleasantness
in the effect which it might produce; and, in a letter to Sophia, dated
December 10th, 1689, William himself explained to her that, though she
had not been designated in the Bill, she might rest satisfied with
things as they stood. She was Heiress Presumptive, in the event of
claims beyond those named in the Bill coming into consideration; and the
suggestion of Burnet was quite superfluous, that ‘if any in the line
before her should pretend to change, as it was not very likely to
happen, so it would not be easily believed.’ Sophia’s answer to King
William, in which she cordially thanks him for his exertions on her
behalf, closes the entire episode. She trusts that the expectation of
heirs implied in the Bill may prove correct; as for herself, her life
will be at an end before the matter is decided. She was, at the time,
close upon the sixtieth year of her life; and a son had just been born
to Princess Anne, who very possibly might yet have other children that
would survive her.
-----
Footnote 91:
Macaulay, who mentions this doubt, illustrates it by the supposed case
of an infant prince of Savoy. (See below.)
-----
After this negative, but in no sense final, result had been
reached, the Succession question remained in abeyance for
something like eleven years. It accords neither with the
circumstances of the situation nor with the character of Sophia,
to represent her as during this long interval sleeplessly intent
upon an issue so remote, so precarious, and so unlikely to prove,
in the strictest sense, personal to herself. But, on the one hand,
her and her family’s interest in the Succession question had once
for all been brought directly home to her; and, on the other, she
had had reason to appreciate the _bona fides_ and the genuine
goodwill towards her own contingent claim exhibited by King
William III. Already in 1689, primarily with a view to the
restoration of amity between Denmark and Holstein-Gottorp, Sir
William Dutton Colt was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Brunswick-Lüneburg Courts, being also
accredited to Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Hesse-Cassel; and in 1692
he was further formally instructed to treat for the entry of the
Dukes of Celle and Hanover into the Grand Alliance.[92] He appears
to have contrived to gain the good graces of the ducal families
both at Hanover and at Celle, and in 1693 he reports that the
Platens were jealous of his favour with the ‘Electrisse’;[93] for
Sophia and Eleonora were godmothers to his daughter, and bestowed
upon her their united names. The personal relations between Sophia
and the King and Queen of England at the same time grew more and
more cordial. William, though not as a rule inclined to sentiment,
early in 1691 condoled with Sophia on the death, at the close of
the previous year, of her son Frederick Augustus, for whom he had
cherished ‘_une amitié toute particulière_’; and early in the
following year Queen Mary delicately expressed her regret at
Sophia’s fresh family troubles (the death of her son Charles
Philip, and perhaps the catastrophe of his brother Maximilian).
These kindly feelings combined with political motives to induce
King William to contribute his good offices for bringing to a
successful end, in the same year (1692), the endeavours to which,
as we shall see immediately, the main political energy of the
House of Hanover had long been devoted—for the attainment of the
Electoral dignity. He had his reward when, as part of the bargain
between Ernest Augustus and the Emperor Leopold, the House of
Hanover definitively threw in its lot with the interests of the
Empire and the cause of the Grand Alliance. On Sir William Colt’s
death in the following year (1693), a new English Minister
Plenipotentiary to the Courts of Celle and Hanover was appointed
in the person of James Cressett,[94] who, though at first he
represents the Courts to which he was accredited as having ‘gaped
upon him like roaring lions’ (not feeling quite certain about the
British Parliament’s earnestness in the War), soon contrived to
place himself on a footing of intimacy there. Leibniz speedily
fell into a correspondence with him about the lead produce of the
Harz as compared with that of the English mines. But less academic
matters also occupied the attention of the new envoy; for, in
1692, two treaties had been concluded between the Ducal Government
and those of England and the United Provinces, according to which
Hanover was to furnish a force of 7,000 men, and the two maritime
Powers were to pay respectively 20,000 and 10,000 dollars a month
for their support, besides defraying two-thirds of the cost of
their rations and forage. In December, 1693, these subsidy
treaties were discussed in the House of Commons, and though the
‘Duke of Hanover’ was praised as a loyal ally, objection was taken
to the payment for bread and forage, on the ground that he might
well pay a larger proportion, ‘now that he is Ninth Elector.’ In
return, it was pointed out that, on the one hand, the Elector had
to pay his quota to the Empire, and that, on the other, if these
troops were not paid by England, they must be by France—a comment
not altogether unwarranted by the changes of Hanoverian policy.
Cressett remained the diplomatic representative of Great Britain
at the Lüneburg Courts till 1703.[95]
-----
Footnote 92:
_Notes on the Diplomatic Relations between England and Germany_, ed.
C. H. Firth: _List of Diplomatic Representatives and Agents, England
and North Germany, 1689-1727_, contributed by J. F. Chance, Oxford,
1907.
Footnote 93:
As Colt died in 1693 (at Heilbronn), on a mission on which he was sent
to treat with the Elector of Saxony, to bring him into the Grand
Alliance, I cannot say what was the nature of the series of holograph
letters from the Electress Sophia to Lady Colt, extending from 1681
(?) to 1714, reported in the _Times_ of April 14th, 1905, as sold by
auction.
Footnote 94:
There seems good reason for believing that the foreign lady, named
Louise-Marie, married by Cressett in 1704, about the close of his
residence at the Court of Celle, was a kinswoman of the Duchess
Eleonora. Cf., as to a survival of this connexion with the dynasty, H.
Walpole’s _Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II_
(1822), Vol. i. p. 79.
Footnote 95:
In 1700 he was also accredited to Berlin, where already in 1702 Queen
Sophia Charlotte thought him a trifle _passé_.
-----
A time of trouble was imminent for the domestic peace of the House of
Hanover, and Sophia, as was noted above, had not long before suffered a
severe shock in both mind and body by the death of her son Charles
Philip, soon followed by that of his brother Frederick Augustus. In the
spring of 1694 she was again seriously ill. Cressett, while noting that
‘her credit is not good in affairs,’ says that he ‘should be heartily
sorry to lose her, for she loves England.’ She recovered her strength at
Wiesbaden, and we find the good Queen Mary returning fervent thanks for
her cousin’s restoration to her usual health. She needed all her
strength to carry her through the painful experiences awaiting the
Electoral family—the tragedy of Sophia Dorothea, and, after this, the
long illness and death of the Elector Ernest Augustus. Amidst such
anxieties we may rest assured that, even had intrigue and manœuvring
suited her disposition, she would have had little leisure for engaging
in them. Her attitude during this period towards the Succession
question, which few events on the great political theatre were of a
nature to affect (for even Queen Mary’s death in 1696 made no material
change in the situation), was one of quietude—no doubt a vigilant
quietude. In 1694, Lord Lexington, a diplomatist whom William III had
good reason for trusting, and who, together with a Dutch
plenipotentiary, had mediated in the quarrel between Denmark and the
Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes concerning the Lauenburg Succession, passed
through Hanover on his way to his post at Vienna. And, in the following
year, we find Leibniz discussing with George Stepney, the brilliant
English diplomatist who, in 1693, was suddenly summoned into prominent
activity in several of the German Courts, the applicability of the
exclusion clause in the Bill of Rights to children, whether Protestants
or Papists, born of papistical parents. William III has been said to
have formed the plan of placing in the Succession the Prince expected to
be born to Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, by his Duchess Anna Maria,
and of educating him for the purpose in England as a Protestant. The
Duchess Anna Maria was a daughter of the Duchess Henrietta of Orleans,
and thus a grand-daughter of King Charles I; so that on the ground of
descent pure and simple she would have a claim to the English Succession
before the children of the Queen of Bohemia. But there is no proof of
any such design, or of any response to any suggestion of the kind on the
part of the Duke of Savoy; and, at the most, the idea was quite
transitory. If any hopes had been raised as to William’s intentions,
Victor Amadeus effectively extinguished them by abandoning the Grand
Alliance in 1696.[96] Of course, it by no means follows from the fact
that Leibniz was, throughout, Sophia’s chief counsellor with regard to
the Succession, either that she uniformly took his advice, or that she
was always desirous of being privy to the efforts in furtherance of the
claims of herself and her descendants, which, at times with _trop de
zèle_, came from his indefatigable publicistic pen. But it remains at
all events a curious coincidence that, soon after the House of Savoy
had, as it were, fallen out of the running, William III’s interest in
the House of Hanover—and perhaps in its claims concerning the
Succession—should appear to have revived. We shall return to this date a
little later; for the moment we must make some reference to matters
which seemed of far more importance to the House of Hanover than the
remote chances of the English Succession.
-----
Footnote 96:
In 1701, however, the Duchess Anna Maria protested against the Act of
Settlement, which limited the Succession to Sophia and her issue,
being Protestants. For an account of the reasons of Victor Amadeus’
original estrangement from France, and a searching analysis of his
character, see a remarkable _Relation de la Cour de Savoie_, July
15th, 1692, in Appendix to G. de Léris, _La Princesse de Virrue_ [for
a time the Duke’s mistress _et la Cour de Victor Amad. de Savoie_,
Paris, 1881, pp. 238-9.]
-----
The House of Hanover, apart from the interest which it had shown in the
military system of the Empire,[97] had a very direct share in causing
the declaration of war against that Empire, by which, in September,
1688, at the very time when he was promising assistance to James II
against the expedition of William of Orange, Louis XIV laid bare his own
designs against the peace of Europe. According to the manifesto of the
King of France, the successes of the Imperial arms in the east had
obliged him to protect his western frontier by crossing it; and, a
little before or after this declaration, his armies had entered the
Netherlands, and had invaded the Palatinate to enforce the claims
shamelessly put forward by him in the name of the innocent Duchess of
Orleans. In the Imperial advance in Hungary, and in the simultaneous
reconquest of the Morea on behalf of the Venetian Republic, Hanoverian
troops had borne a most distinguished part. It was therefore not
unfitting that the counter-manifesto, in which the glove hurled down by
Louis XIV was taken up, should have been composed by Leibniz, whose
publicistic pen was at the disposal of the House of Hanover. And among
the German princes who, in the October of this eventful year, at the
instigation of the new Elector of Brandenburg, Ernest Augustus of
Hanover’s son-in-law, and through the exertions of his minister, Paul
von Fuchs, met at Magdeburg to agree upon joint action against the
assailant of the Empire, none was more prompt, either in promise or in
action, than Ernest Augustus himself. While the Brandenburg troops
covered the Lower Rhine, the Hanoverian, Saxon, and Hessian secured the
line of the Main, by the occupation of Frankfort (November, 1688). In
May, 1689, the Grand Alliance was concluded, and though the Palatinate
could not be preserved from devastation, Frankfort was once more saved,
being occupied by a Hanoverian force of 8,000 men under Duke Ernest
Augustus and his eldest son, George Lewis. Under the command of their
Hereditary Prince, of whom there remains at least one letter written, in
the course of the campaign, with an afflatus of humour proving that his
heart was in active warfare, the Hanoverians forced Marshal Boufleurs to
relinquish the investment of Coblenz, and materially contributed to the
recovery of Mainz (September 1st, 1689). They were then transferred to
the Low Countries, where a series of campaigns was to ensue,
contemporaneous with the continuance of the conflict with the Turks. We
have seen how the sacrifices made by the House of Hanover within a
twelvemonth (January, 1690, to January, 1691) included the heroic death
of Prince Charles Philip in Albania, and that of his brother Frederick
Augustus, hardly more than a boy in years, in Transylvania. It neither
was, nor could be expected to be, the intention of Ernest Augustus, that
his House, which had served the Empire so well in both west and east,
should have so served it without reward. And the recompense desired by
him—one which, while conferring upon himself, as the head of the House
of Hanover, the highest dignity to which, as an Estate of the Empire, he
could, within its boundaries, lay claim, would at the same time reflect
lustre upon the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, whose future he had come to
regard as absorbed in that of its Hanoverian branch—could be no other
than the creation of a Ninth, that is to say Hanoverian, Electorate.
-----
Footnote 97:
See as to F. C. von Platen’s mission on the subject in December, 1686,
R. Fester, _Die Augsburger Allianz_, pp. 124 _sqq._, 167 _sqq._
-----
The desire or demand for this dignity was neither a sudden nor even a
new one. It had been in the mind both of Duke John Frederick and of his
librarian, Leibniz, though the latter, while giving utterance to it in
his _Cæsarinus Fürstenerius_ (1677), had at the same time delivered
himself of an elaborate protest against the preeminence in rights and
dignity claimed by the Electors over the other Princes of the Empire.
Such a protest was of course quite compatible with lending a willing ear
to any suggestion of conferring the Electoral dignity upon a
representative branch of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line itself. And
suggestions of the kind were inevitable, if only from the obvious point
of view that the Peace of Westphalia had left the number of Protestant
Electors in a disproportion of three to five, as against their Catholic
colleagues. The Great Elector of Brandenburg, in the varying
combinations of whose policy a single-minded care for the Protestant
interest was perhaps the most constant factor, had already during the
peace negotiations at Nimeguen expressed his willingness to assist in
bringing about the admission into the Electoral College of the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg—probably at that time in the person of George William
of Celle, as Ernest Augustus was still merely Bishop of Osnabrück. But
the argument from the Protestant point of view became a much stronger
one, when, in 1685, the death of the last Elector Palatine of the
Simmern line (Sophia’s nephew Charles) transferred the Eighth Electorate
to the Catholic (Neuburg) line. Nor should it be forgotten that,
although the political jealousy between the Houses of Brandenburg and
Brunswick-Lüneburg had never ceased to exist and to operate, and
although the advantage of balancing the growing power and influence of
the former, by adding to the _prestige_ of the latter, was very
distinctly perceived at Vienna, the two Houses were since 1684 closely
linked together by intermarriage. Sophia Charlotte, the new Electoral
Princess (from 1688 Electress) of Brandenburg, was never mistress of the
situation at Berlin, and, unlike her mother, gave to matters political
only just so much attention as seemed absolutely necessary. On the other
hand, Hanoverian interests could not but benefit from the presence at
the Brandenburg Court of a princess whose personality was not one to be
ignored, and who had in her mother a monitress to whom the constant
affection between them always made her ready to listen. And the friend
whom both mother and daughter trusted above all others as an adviser,
had in 1685 begun to devote his powers of argument to the cause which,
to the head of the House of Hanover, had become of paramount importance.
But a long siege was needed before the _Hofburg_ could be expected to
yield. The services and sacrifices which the Empire owed to the House of
Hanover were indisputable, and the solidity of its dynastic future must
have seemed beyond cavil, after the Duke of Celle had confirmed his
renunciation of any transmission of his dominions to a possible son of
his own, and had married his only daughter to the Hereditary Prince of
Hanover, where the law of primogeniture had been established. The
meeting (1689-90) of a Diet at Augsburg for the election of a Roman King
in the person of the future Emperor Joseph I, seemed a suitable
opportunity for bringing forward the Hanoverian proposal of a Ninth
Electorate through Ernest Augustus’ plenipotentiary, Count Platen. Yet,
although it could not but be of great importance to the Emperor to make
sure of the adherence of Hanover to the alliance against France, of
which at this very Diet he impressed the necessity upon the Electors,
the request of Ernest Augustus met with no acceptance either at Augsburg
or in the course of the ensuing negotiations at Vienna. So soon as the
Emperor appeared to favour Hanover’s desire for an Electoral hat,
Bamberg, Salzburg, Würzburg, Hesse-Cassel, and Pfalz-Sulzbach were
immediately on the alert to try for the Ninth Electorate on their own
account; and this general eagerness conveniently supplied the Imperial
Government with a new bait for gaining votes in the Council of
Princes.[98] Moreover, the high-handed action of the Brunswick-Lüneburg
brothers in the matter of the Lauenburg Succession (September, 1689) had
exercised a retarding influence, by which so friendly a court as that of
Brandenburg had been for a time affected. Even certain overtures made
through his emissary by Ernest Augustus—we may venture to surmise
without the privity of his wife—that, if such a concession would solve
the difficulty, he might be found disposed to listen to suggestions as
to his conversion to the Church of Rome, and his enumeration of the
services which his House had rendered to that Church, proved in vain.
Hanoverian diplomacy hereupon tried a different tack, and occupied
itself with a scheme for bringing about a combination between
Brandenburg, Saxony, and Hanover, which would put the requisite pressure
upon the Emperor by standing neutral between him and France. The device,
for which more than one historical precedent could have been found,
produced its effect on this occasion also, after Saxony had been induced
to fall in with it. According to the current account, the eminent
Hanoverian minister, Count Otto von Grote (who like Leibniz had been
introduced by Duke John Frederick into the Hanoverian service, in which
he spent twenty-eight years, doing his duty to the State in the very
spirit of Frederick the Great), forced the hand of the Emperor by
exhibiting to him at Vienna the compact with Saxony which realised the
menace of a Third Party in the European conflict. Even if this story is
apocryphal, there can be no doubt that the neutrality project furnished
a very powerful lever in the negotiations carried on at the Imperial
Court by Grote in conjunction with the resident Hanoverian minister,
President von Limbach. Their arguments were supported by representations
on the part of Great Britain, the United Provinces, and Brandenburg; but
they were still more effectively reinforced by the Emperor Leopold’s
pressing requirements for his next campaign against the Turks. Thus,
then, early in 1692, was concluded the Electoral Compact (_Kurtractat_),
in which the Dukes of Hanover and Celle undertook to provide, in
addition to subsidies, a force of 6,000 men in their own pay, to be
employed in the first instance against the Turks, and afterwards against
France, while a supplementary agreement bound both sides to perpetual
amity and military assistance, and assured to the House of Austria the
support of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg in future Imperial elections
as well as in the matter of the coming Spanish Succession. Hereupon, on
March 19th, 1692, the Imperial rescript conferring an Electoral hat upon
the Duke of Hanover was placed in the hands of his representative at
Vienna.
-----
Footnote 98:
Droysen, _Geschichte der Preussischen Politik_, Vol. iv. Part i. p.
87.
-----
But, before this act of authority on the part of the Emperor could
command the assent of the Estates of the Empire which he required in
order to proceed to the investiture, much remained to be done at Vienna,
where Grote was active in person during the latter half of the year; at
Dresden, where Jobst von Ilten, another specially trusted servant of the
Hanoverian dynasty, successfully exerted himself; and elsewhere. In the
midst of these difficulties, the Duchess of Orleans wrote to her aunt
that she was convinced as to the source of opposition being German
Princes rather than France. As a matter of fact, not only the political
but the religious interests were agitated with which the House of
Hanover had been, or might hereafter be, in conflict; and Grote was
informed that both the King of Denmark (Christian V) and the Pope
(Innocent XII) were adverse to the desired investiture. The good offices
of Brandenburg were, however, freely exerted in its favour, and the
Elector Frederick III’s envoy at Ratisbon, von Metternich, was
instructed to tranquillise the Catholic Electors by undertaking that, in
the event of the dying-out of the Bavarian and Palatine lines, the
establishment of a new Catholic Electorate should be promoted by
Brandenburg, Saxony, and Hanover. Thus, by the middle of October, 1692,
a majority of the Electors had been secured for the investiture, and it
was possible to ignore the violent opposition of Duke Antony Ulric of
Wolfenbüttel, who, as Elizabeth Charlotte had hinted, was irreconcilable
on this subject, and was calling out troops as if the world were out of
joint.[99] On December 10th following, the investiture took place at
Vienna, and Grote received the coveted Electoral hat for his master.
Ernest Augustus and Sophia were at Berlin on a visit to their daughter
when the good news reached them; a series of brilliant festivities
ensued as a matter of course, since Frederick III was always glad of a
reason for display; and, two days before Christmas, a defensive alliance
for three years was concluded between the two Electors, to be followed a
month later by an ‘everlasting league.’ This alliance, to whatever other
results it might or might not lead, unmistakably signified the
recognition of an important success gained for the ‘Evangelical’ cause
in Germany. Brandenburg, which was so soon to merge in the Prussian
Kingdom, and Hanover, whose heir was not long afterwards to mount the
English throne, would, if they held together, suffice to defy any
religious reaction in the Empire, and likewise be able to resist any
attempt in any quarter at asserting a political domination.
-----
Footnote 99:
See as to his opposition Bodemann, _Anton Ulrich und seine
Correspondenz mit Leibniz_, in _Zeitschr. d. histor. Ver. für
Niedersachsen_, 1879. It was largely from ambitious motives that this
Duke entered so zealously into the great scheme for a reunion between
Catholics and Protestants. (See Clemens Schwarte, _Die neunte Kur und
Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel_, in _Münstersche Beiträge zur
Geschichtsforschung_, Neue Folge, Münster, 1905.)
-----
Neither, however, had Grote’s labours as yet come to an end—though they
were a few months afterwards cut short by his death—nor were the
aspirations of the House of Hanover within the Empire satisfied by the
Electoral investiture of December, 1692. Brandenburg, Saxony, and most
of the other German courts recognised the new Elector; but the question
of his introduction into the Electoral College, which implied his
admission as Elector to his due share in the administration of the
affairs of the Empire—the question _quo modo_—had still to be settled.
The progress of its solution was delayed by a persistent opposition, of
which the guiding spirit was once more Duke Antony Ulric of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and which included the King of Denmark as Duke
of Holstein, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, and a number of other princes,
both temporal and spiritual, in the north and west of the Empire. In
1693, these formed an association which designated itself as that of the
Princes ‘corresponding’ against a Ninth Electorate, thus, as was justly
observed to the Emperor by the Elector of Brandenburg, who continued
loyally to support the demand of his father-in-law, lowering the
Imperial authority by ‘maintaining’ a resistance against a decision
already announced by it. The Elector of Saxony, John George IV, had been
likewise well disposed to the Hanoverian promotion; but, in 1694, he had
been succeeded by his brother Frederick Augustus (Augustus the Strong,
the lover of Aurora von Königsmarck), whom, as will be seen in a
different connexion, private as well as public motives had estranged
from the Hanoverian Court; and thus a fresh obstacle had been put in the
way of the admission of Ernest Augustus into the College of Electors.
The virulence of Antony Ulric’s jealous hatred, which, as we shall also
see, was to find in the Königsmarck catastrophe of 1694 and its
antecedents a most tempting opportunity for damaging the reputation of
the Hanoverian family, suggested to him what the Hanoverian diplomatist
Ilten termed a ‘_projet d’alliance diabolique_.’ Frederick Augustus was
to be gained over to the association of ‘Corresponding’ Princes by a
surrender to Saxony of the Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel claims to part of the
Duchy of Lauenburg, and he was to cooperate with Denmark in
dispossessing Hanover and Celle, who had occupied other parts of the
duchy claimed by them. Ernest Augustus had to appeal to King William III
to put a stop to manœuvres which threatened seriously to affect the
general peace of Europe.
Although the machinations of Antony Ulric were thus frustrated, he
succeeded in depriving his hitherto so fortunate kinsman, Ernest
Augustus, of the satisfaction of attaining in person to the consummation
of his chief dynastic ambition. Soon after the death of Ernest Augustus,
in January, 1698, the insensate jealousy of Antony Ulric led him to
make, with fresh assistance, an armed attack upon Hanover, which
amounted to an act of hostility against the Empire, committed at a
critical season in the affairs of Europe. The defeat of this attempt by
the energetic action of the Elector George Lewis broke down the
opposition of Antony Ulric in the matter of the Ninth Electorate (1702);
and soon afterwards he acknowledged the Electoral dignity and the
precedence of the Hanoverian Elector at the Diet (1703). Previously to
these occurrences, the exertions of Frederick III of Brandenburg had
succeeded in inducing the three Spiritual Electors to abandon their
resistance to the new Protestant Electorate (1699); but the outbreak of
the War of the Spanish Succession had thereupon caused further delays.
Thus it was not till 1707 that the positive assent of all the Electors
was secured, nor till September 7th, 1708, sixteen years after the
investiture at Vienna, that the Hanoverian envoy, von Limbach, at last
took his seat in the Electoral College at Ratisbon.
The marriage between Sophia Dorothea of Celle and her cousin George
Lewis of Hanover, which was to end so disastrously, came as a matter of
course to be represented as having been ill-omened at the outset. It is,
however, impossible to trust either the account of the transactions that
preceded this marriage, or that of the long train of events ending in
its dissolution, to be found in a long series of versions of this
pitiful story. In substance, if not in every detail, they all go back
upon the parent romance compiled by Duke Antony Ulric, very probably
with the aid of information furnished to him by the confidante of the
unhappy heroine. An authority so signally untrustworthy is best ignored;
though it would be idle to pretend that the copious stream, which has
flowed through all sorts of channels from this turbid source, is likely
to be wholly devoid of some admixture of truth.[100] In point of fact,
we cannot tell in what frame of mind Sophia Dorothea entered on her
married life, or even what was her mother’s view of the match. Eleonora,
beyond all doubt, tenderly loved her daughter; but Sophia Dorothea’s
nature was light and frivolous, and there had not, so far as is known,
been anything in her life to incline her to resistance. The views of the
Duchess Sophia on the subject of her eldest son’s marriage it may seem
easy to guess. But, though she had execrated the d’Olbreuze connexion in
all its earlier stages, and though she seems at no time to have
pretended to anything like affection for Eleonora’s daughter, we may
take it for granted that, so soon as the marriage-project had been
formally adopted as a matter of court and state policy, the Duchess
completely acquiesced in it. And, indeed, no doubt could exist as to the
advantages of the arrangement, whether from the point of view of the
political future of the dynasty, or from that of the present resources
of the House. The marriage-contract gave to the Hereditary Prince the
free use of his wife’s income, though it secured her fortune—which was
certain to be a very large one—to herself in the event of her husband’s
decease preceding her own. It was only at a later date, when a
dissolution of her marriage seemed desirable to Sophia Dorothea, that
she complained of the terms of this settlement. The great wealth of the
bride might well be held to cover whatever minor disabilities might
result to the possible issue of the marriage from the imperfection of
her own descent.
-----
Footnote 100:
The supplementary (sixth) volume of the _Roman Octavia_, which
contains the story of Sophia Dorothea under the title of the _History
of the Princess Solane_, was first published in 1707, when Sophia
Dorothea’s lady-in-waiting, Fräulein Eleonora von dem Knesebeck, who
had, from first to last, been in the secret of the Princess’ relations
with Count Königsmarck, either was or recently had been resident at
Wolfenbüttel under the protection of Duke Antony Ulric after her
escape from prison. In the revised edition of this ‘historical novel,’
published at Nürnberg in 1712 and dedicated to the ‘_Hochlöbliche
Nymfen-Gesellschaft an der Donau_, the name of _Solane_ was altered to
_Rhodogune_, and there were certain other changes. The derivation of
the traditional narrative from Duke Antony Ulric’s romance was
convincingly traced by the late Professor Adolf Köcher, who, though
disbelieving in the genuineness of the correspondence to be mentioned
immediately, succeeded in throwing a flood of light upon the entire
course of Sophia Dorothea’s story.—Writing, in 1709, about the amour
between the Landgrave Ernest Lewis of Hesse-Darmstadt and the
(married) Countess von Sintzendorf, the Duchess of Orleans observes
that, since the lady is quite ready to show the Prince’s letters, it
would be easy for Duke Antony Ulric to turn their affair into a
romance.
-----
Nothing, it may be added, could be more improbable than that either
George Lewis or his mother should have been at the pains of considering
how far Sophia Dorothea’s character and disposition were suited to his
own, or whether she would find any difficulty in accommodating herself
to his way of life. The Duchess Sophia had learnt by long experience to
bear with the open faithlessness of her husband, and with his frank
neglect of herself, without forfeiting the influence which her
intelligence had long assured to her over him and his affairs. How
should she, with her shrewd apprehension of the ways of the world, have
supposed that the same lesson would not be learnt by her new
daughter-in-law? And it may at once be stated that there is no
indication of George Lewis having during the early years of his married
life kept up any relation that would have been unbearable to his young
wife. If there was any truth in the rumour that he had been on terms of
intimacy with Countess Platen’s younger sister, Frau von dem Bussche
(_née_ Marie von Meysenbug), the relation must have been broken off
before his marriage, as indeed a further circumstantial piece of scandal
asserted. She appears to have been a very pretty person, with plenty of
admirers; and she is said to have set the fashion of ‘drinking tobacco’
among the ladies at Hanover.[101] For the rest, although George I was at
no time in his life in the habit of seeking personal praise, and in
truth cannot be said to have received an overflowing measure of it
either from contemporaries or from posterity, yet he was not without
qualities sure to impress themselves on anyone brought into close
contact with him. His unflinching courage and military capacity were
generally known; and it may further be averred in his honour, that he
was never found false to his word, and that he was unswervingly true to
any attachment once formed by him. His manners may, in his younger days
in particular, have had a smack of the camp, and they must at all times
have given proof of the reserve which was part of his nature, and which
bad and good fortune combined to harden into the stolidity of his later
years. That he made no pretence to intellectual tastes (though he
quarrelled with his illustrious historiographer’s unpunctuality in
fulfilling his engagement to digest the ancient records of the House of
Guelf) may have disappointed his mother, but could hardly perturb Sophia
Dorothea, who came of no lettered stock. In general, she might well have
been thought likely to suit her own fluid temperament to a character
cast in a stronger and sterner mould. The portraits which remain of her
show her to have been graceful and pleasing beyond the common, and this
impression is confirmed by notices of her personality dating from the
early years of her married life. Perhaps there may be perceptible in
certain of her portraits (one of which reminded the ingenious Wraxall of
Sterne’s Eliza) a sentimentality of the superficial kind; but nothing
could be more cruelly unfair than to draw from these likenesses
conclusions as to her levity of disposition. On the other hand, the
Duchess Sophia may be thought a prejudiced witness, when, in 1684 and
1685, she is found expressing distrust of both the smiles and the tears
of her daughter-in-law, and setting her down as an unsatisfactory
example for Sophia Charlotte, the apple of her mother’s eye; in truth,
however, the Duchess’ strictures cannot, in this instance, be said to be
very serious. The bad maternal bringing up of Sophia Dorothea, on which
the same censor’s faithful echo, the Duchess of Orleans, was afterwards
fain to dwell as the original cause of the Princess’ misfortunes, has
been waived aside as a mere invention of spite; yet it should not be
forgotten that both Sophia and her niece were, in their girlhood,
carefully and even rigidly educated, and that to this training the
unfaltering rectitude that marked the conduct of both is, in no small
measure, attributable. At the same time, it is equally obvious that the
kindly guidance by which the most perfect system of moral discipline
needs at times to be supplemented, or by which the absence of such
discipline may be in part redeemed, was wanting to Sophia Dorothea at
Hanover. While there can be no reason for gainsaying this, and while it
must be allowed to have been natural enough that those who had hated the
mother should have treated the misconduct of the daughter as what might
have been expected almost as a matter of course, yet the attempt to
throw upon the Electress Sophia the responsibility of the catastrophe
which we are about to narrate may be at once denounced as inherently
absurd. Whether or not George Lewis cruelly ill-treated his wife—and
there is no trustworthy evidence to support any such supposition—the
assumption is altogether unwarranted that either in his bearing towards
her, or in any other important relation of his life, he allowed himself
to be influenced by his mother.[102] Least of all was he likely to be
amenable to her counsel at a stage of his career when he must have known
her to be at heart adverse to his interest in the matter, all-important
to himself, of the institution of primogeniture. And as for Sophia
herself, though elaborate efforts have been made to represent her as
morally guilty of her daughter-in-law’s ruin, there is not a tittle of
evidence to support a conjecture in itself utterly improbable. For her
frankness and sincerity are never found belying themselves; and intrigue
of all kinds, as both her public and her private conduct show, was
wholly foreign to her nature. Moreover, though, as will be noted, no
letters from her hand referring to the crisis in Sophia Dorothea’s
affairs have been allowed to survive, the general tone of her
correspondence during these eventful years is one of a serenity of mind
unbroken, except by her grief for her losses as a mother.
-----
Footnote 101:
See _Briefe des Herzogs Ernst August_, &c., p. 33, note.
Footnote 102:
‘That the Elector is a dry and disagreeable gentleman,’ writes the
Duchess of Orleans in 1702, ‘I had opportunity enough to discern when
he was here ... but where he is entirely in the wrong, is in his way
of living with his mother, to whom he is in duty bound to show nothing
but respect.’
-----
At first, things seem to have gone well with Sophia Dorothea at Hanover.
The Hereditary Prince (for he was, of course, not styled the Electoral
Prince till 1682) continued the military career which best corresponded
both to his aspirations and to his habits—serving during a series of
campaigns in the Imperial army, and taking no part in the home
government till, about 1694, his father’s health began to give way.
Doubtless George Lewis’ long and repeated absences must have contributed
to keep him estranged from the Princess, and, as already observed, there
were at Hanover no members of the ducal family or court likely to aim at
endearing themselves to her. The star of Countess Platen, mistress _en
titre_, remained steadily in the ascendant, and her villa of Monplaisir,
in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital, became the centre of its
fashionable dissipations. Her sister, Frau von dem Bussche, was likewise
still to the front (she took part in Ernest Augustus’ farewell
expedition of pleasure to Italy, to be noticed immediately); but,
whether or not she had formerly been a recipient of the Hereditary
Prince’s favours, they do not appear to have continued to be bestowed
upon her either under her present name, or when, after her husband’s
death (at Landen), she bestowed her hand upon another gallant officer,
General von Weyhe.[103] When the exigencies of etiquette did not require
her presence at the interminable court dinners and suppers, or at the
operas in the new theatre, in which the heart of Ernest Augustus
delighted, Sophia Dorothea may be concluded to have led a life as
solitary as it was dull in her apartments in the Leine Palace at
Hanover.[104] The favourite companion of her long hours of idleness was
her lady-in-waiting, Fräulein Eleonora von dem Knesebeck, who had come
with her from Celle, and whose devotion, self-sacrificing though by no
means blind, was to involve her in the consequences of her mistress’
aberrations.
-----
Footnote 103:
He served with distinction under Marlborough in Flanders. The marriage
took place in 1696, two years after the Königsmarck catastrophe. Yet
the late Mr. Wilkins makes Countess Platen, ‘with a refinement of
cruelty,’ try to induce Sophia Dorothea to be present at the wedding.
This significant blunder, repeated in the second edition of _The Love
of an Uncrowned Queen_, is exposed by Mr. Lewis Melville, _The First
George_, Vol. i. pp. 52-6. A Fräulein von Weyhe was in Sophia
Dorothea’s service. The court of Hanover, after all, has much of the
aspect of a large family party. In 1701, Sophia mentions a tour to the
Harz made by the Elector in a company which included three ladies,
‘the Schoulenburg, Madame Wey, and Ernhausen, the Schoulenburg’s
sister.’
Footnote 104:
The Palace was enlarged about this time, and entirely ‘restored’ in
1831-41. In Sophia Dorothea’s days the bear at his chain and the lynx
in his cage were still to be seen near the guard-house at the outer
gate.
-----
In October, 1683, the Hereditary Princess gave birth to a son, who was
named George Augustus, in honour of his father and grandfather
respectively, and who was nearly half a century later to ascend the
throne of Great Britain and Ireland as King George II. We may feel
assured that an event so auspicious for the future of the dynasty, and
so speedily fulfilling the hopes with which the marriage had been
brought about, specially commended her to the favour of her
father-in-law; and, that this favour continued, is shown by his
consideration for her some two years afterwards. In 1684, Duke Ernest
Augustus had undertaken his last journey to the beloved land of Italy,
being accompanied on it by an oddly composed company consisting, among
others, of Count Platen and Major-General von dem Bussche and their
wives. During this visit the Duchess remained behind, professedly _à son
grand regret_, and Prince George Lewis was, for part of the time,
engaged in one of his Hungarian campaigns against the Turks. But his
Princess, at the particular request of her father-in-law, joined the
ducal party at Venice, arriving there just before the opening of the
carnival of 1686. ‘I am delighted to hear,’ writes the Duchess Sophia
from Hanover in January, ‘that my daughter-in-law and her following are
in good condition.’ Sophia Dorothea then accompanied the Duke for the
Holy Week to Rome, where their sojourn cost the cruel sum of twenty
thousand dollars; but, though her husband had by this time finished his
campaign, ceremonial difficulties (which one would have thought would
have affected the father as much as the son) prevented him from coming
to the papal city, and he amused himself with a trip to Florence and
Naples on his own account. All these things are told without so much as
a suggestion of untowardness; nor was it till long afterwards that a
scandal, promptly credited by the Duchess of Orleans, declared Sophia
Dorothea to have consoled herself for her husband’s absence by an amour
carried on at Rome with a French marquis of the name of de Lassaye. But
the story in question rests entirely on the braggadocio to which this
squire of dames treated the Duchess, and on the still more doubtful
evidence of certain compromising letters purporting to have been
addressed by him to Sophia Dorothea when at Rome, and printed by him in
his old age—as late as 1738. Thus the shame of this denunciation lies
entirely with its cowardly author.
There seems, however, little doubt but that, after her return from
Italy, Sophia Dorothea became further estranged from her husband. To
this date would have to be assigned, were it otherwise worth noticing,
the attraction said by the Duchess of Orleans to have been exercised by
Sophia Dorothea upon the Raugrave Charles Lewis, one of the family of
nephews and nieces ‘by the left hand’ to whom the Duchess Sophia
extended so benevolent and almost maternal a protection. According to
the same authority, it was to escape the wiles of the light-hearted
Princess that the Raugrave took service against the Turks in the Morea,
where he met with his death in 1688; but there was very probably more
malice than truth in the story. In March, 1687, Sophia Dorothea gave
birth to a second child, the daughter who was named after her, and who,
as the wife of King Frederick William I of Prussia, was to become the
mother of Frederick the Great and of his brother Augustus William, the
direct ancestor of the subsequent Kings of Prussia and of the German
Emperors of our own times. It cannot have been till after this event
that George Lewis, who seems to have remained nearer home after his
campaign in 1685, began to follow his father’s example and give
publicity to his preference of other attractions to those of his wife.
But much uncertainty exists as to the date at which this infidelity
began, and as to the extent to which it was carried. It has been widely
assumed, and is constantly repeated, that Countess Platen sought to
maintain the family influence over the Hereditary Prince, after he had
tired of her sister, through her daughter; but this assumption, which,
because of its revolting character, was carefully kept alive and
cherished by the detractors of George I and his dynasty, must be
dismissed as baseless. This celebrated lady, who, like the Duchess
Sophia’s own daughter, had been christened Sophia Charlotte, in 1701
became the wife of Baron von Kielmannsegg, a nobleman of honourable
reputation, who had for some years been attached to the Hanoverian
Court. Here the pair lived in unbroken union and enjoyed a distinguished
position; their villa of _Fantaisie_ on the avenue to Herrenhausen being
regarded as a favourite resort of foreign visitors to Hanover. They
afterwards followed King George I to England, where, after the
resignation of the Duke of Somerset, the high household office of Master
of the Horse was left vacant, in order that its duties might be
performed by the Hanoverian _Oberstallmeister_, while his wife was
created Countess of Leinster in the Irish and afterwards Countess of
Darlington in the English peerage. Neither at Hanover nor in England had
George I ever made any secret of the nature of the tie which he believed
to exist between her and himself; he had consistently treated her as his
half-sister, giving her at the Electoral Court precedence over the
Raugraves and Raugravines, and, in the patent that conferred an Irish
peerage upon her, causing her to be designated _consanguinea nostra_. So
simple an explanation of the honour in which she continued to be held
till her death in 1727 was of course insufficient for Jacobite spite,
for anti-German prejudice, and for the love of scandal on its own
account. On the other hand, the only personage whom, either before or
after he mounted the English throne, George publicly recognised as
mistress, was also the only lady at the Hanoverian Court who seems in
the days of his married life to have exercised a strong fascination over
him. Yet Melusina von der Schulenburg (afterwards Duchess of
Kendal)[105] appears at this time to have refrained from thrusting
herself into notice; and this agrees with the indications of refinement
which it is impossible to ignore in the portrait remaining of her in the
period of her youth.
-----
Footnote 105:
Of the persistently repeated story of King George I’s morganatic
marriage to the Duchess of Kendal there appears to be no proof. The
late Dr. Richard Garnett, who could hardly have failed to come across
whatever evidence on the subject existed, assured me that he knew of
none.
-----
Thus, then, scarcely anything is ascertainable as to the beginnings and
rise of the general sense of unhappiness which is known to have come
over Sophia Dorothea during her life at Hanover, and to which—some time
in 1692 or later—she gave _naïve_ expression by the avowal, afterwards,
with cruel ineptness, judicially quoted against her, that she would
rather be a ‘_marquise_ in France’ than Electoral Princess of
Brunswick-Lüneburg. Yet fixed antipathies of this kind are commonly of
gradual growth, and it would have been difficult for a nature like
Sophia Dorothea’s, craving for impulse to meet impulse, and quite
incapable of renunciation, to settle down into the dull acquiescence
which, with so many women, has to do duty for contentment. The restraint
of a monotonous existence and the petty rules of an elaborate etiquette,
imposed upon her among surroundings in which there was so much to annoy
her and so little to sustain her self-respect, must in any case have
made her restive and unhappy. Least of all could she have felt any
inclination to take an interest in the schemes of dynastic ambition to
which she knew herself to have been sacrificed—perhaps against the wish
of her best friend, her mother. The anecdote that it was attempted to
implicate her in the plot hatched by Prince Maximilian—Moltke, who was
to pay the penalty of the discovered design, being offered his release,
if he would charge her with a guilty knowledge,—may be dismissed as
fictitious. And it may be observed, by the way, that, while there is no
authority for connecting Countess Platen with the supposed offer, it
could not possibly have been promoted by the Duchess Sophia, whose
sympathies were on the side of Maximilian’s revolt against the principle
of primogeniture. Sophia Dorothea was, no doubt, on pleasant terms with
her high-spirited but flighty brother-in-law Maximilian, who, indeed,
unmistakably oppressed her with his attentions; but it is quite clear
that, in no sense of the word, can there have been anything ‘serious’
between them. We do not know how Sophia Dorothea was affected by the
rise in the family dignity which procured for her the title of Electoral
Princess. But, in regard to a question of still greater importance for
the future of the House, we have it on excellent authority that she took
a line opposite to that adopted by her husband. Sir William Dutton Colt,
who, as was seen, had entered upon his duties as English Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Hanover in 1689, while
describing the Duchess Sophia as an incomparable person, full of
charming wit, kindness, and civility, and speaking of the ‘Princess of
Hanover’ (Sophia Dorothea), for whom and her infant son, he says, Duke
Ernest Augustus showed great fondness, as beautiful, accomplished, and
agreeable, notes (in 1691) that the Princess was distinctly anti-English
in her sympathies. Her partiality for France might have found a
sufficient explanation in her descent, and in the associations so long
cherished by her mother at Celle; but Sir William Colt assigns another
reason that cannot be overlooked. The eldest son (George Lewis), the
envoy reported, was not in the least French in his inclinations; and the
French party, discontented with this, paid all the court imaginable to
the Princess—‘and I fear not without success, for she has no great
fondness for the Prince.’
It is, therefore, clear that, by this time (1691), Sophia Dorothea’s
feelings towards her husband had passed into a condition of more or less
active antipathy. And there can no longer be any pretence of doubt that,
whether or not the indifference of her husband towards herself had
hardened into positive unkindness, and whether or not this unkindness
(as there is absolutely nothing to prove) had shown itself in actual
ill-treatment, Sophia Dorothea was already under the influence of a
growing passion for another man. The story of the guilty loves of Sophia
Dorothea and Königsmarck need not be related at length here, since large
portions of their correspondence are generally accessible, at least in a
translation from the French originals, while a supplementary part is for
the first time (with the exception of two letters which have appeared
elsewhere) printed in an Appendix to the present book. The evidence for
the genuineness of this correspondence, in so far as the greater part of
it is concerned, which covers 679 pages, and is now extant in the
University Library at Lund, was practically irresistible as it stood,
and is confirmed beyond the last shadow of doubt by the letters in the
Royal Secret Archives of State at Berlin, which cover 65 pages, and
which are seen at the first glance to belong to the same correspondence.
They agree in the handwritings, and in the use of the same cipher, as
well as in all the distinctive features of style; they refer to numerous
details mentioned in the Lund letters; and to some of these certain of
the Berlin documents stand in the relation of supplements or answers. It
is said—but on no stated authority—that to these letters might be added
others, of contents unknown, in the possession of the present head of
the House of Hanover. No part of Count Königsmarck’s correspondence with
the Princess Sophia Dorothea remains in the possession of the present
representative of his family. As for the Lund documents, their history
can be satisfactorily traced up to the direct descendants of Countess
Lewenhaupt, the elder sister of Count Philip Christopher von
Königsmarck. The younger sister, the famous Countess Aurora, as will be
seen, actively intervened in the transactions that followed on its
discovery, at a time when both the sisters were residing at Hamburg. It
must be supposed that Aurora at some time transferred the letters from
her custody into that of her elder sister; how they came into her own,
must remain matter of conjecture, though it is a not unnatural
supposition that they were entrusted to her by the recipients. On the
other hand, the evidence of handwriting obtained by a comparison of
these documents with others of incontestable genuineness, from the hands
of Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck respectively, is entirely
satisfactory—though this part of the subject is complicated by the fact
(for as such it may be set down) that the Princess possessed the art of
writing in two different hands, while portions of her part of the love
correspondence were dictated by her to her confidante. (Königsmarck
wrote his own love-letters; but his official letters at Hanover are,
except the signatures, probably in the handwriting of his private
secretary.) But it is the internal evidence contained in the documents
themselves, in face of which the refusal to accept them, though
maintained by at least one historian of high eminence to whom this
period of Brunswick-Lüneburg history and this particular episode were
familiar as to no other among his contemporaries, must be said to have
broken down. The internal evidence in the present case consists mainly
of a number of coincidences of circumstance and date, such as it is
impossible to ascribe either to chance or to design, that have been
proved to exist between incidental statements in these letters and in
contemporary documents of unimpeachable authenticity. The most important
of these are the letters and contemporary despatches of Sir William
Dutton Colt, the envoy to the Courts of Hanover and Celle mentioned
above, now preserved in our Record Office, and extending over the period
from July, 1689, to December, 1692. (To these have, at all events, to be
added passages in the correspondence of the Electress Sophia, and
isolated statements as to the campaign in the Netherlands and the battle
of Steenkirke in particular, in a military list cited by Havemann, and
in a contemporary account of the battle in the _Theatrum Europæum_.) The
credit of placing this investigation on lines which could not but lead
up to an irrefutable issue belongs to the late Mrs. Everett Green, for
whom a careful second transcript had been made of the letters of which a
first, incomplete, transcript had been presented to her by the late
Count Albert von der Schulenburg-Klosterrode. The second, complete,
copy, carefully digested and arranged, was placed by Mrs. Green in the
British Museum, after she had, for prudential reasons, abandoned the
idea of embodying it in a published work. This task was accomplished by
the late Mr. W. H. Wilkins, in his own way, in a book afterwards
republished in a new and revised edition; but he did not live to carry
out his contingent design of some day ‘translating the whole
correspondence at Lund, at Berlin, and at Gmünden, and arranging it in
chronological order with the aid of first-hand documentary evidence
drawn from other sources.’ The corroboration of the genuineness and
authenticity of the Lund documents furnished by those now printed from
the originals in the Berlin Archives is, as observed, complete, and all
the more convincing, inasmuch as they must have been separated from the
rest at a very early date. It is stated in the Register of the Archives
of State at Berlin that they were found among the papers of Frederick
the Great at Sans Souci after his death; and the superscription which
they bear (‘_Lettres d’Amour de la Duchesse D’allen au Comte
Konigsmarc_’) is in the King’s own handwriting. How they came into his
possession must remain a matter of conjecture, which will be more
appropriately discussed elsewhere. It should perhaps be added that the
whole problem of the genuineness of this correspondence is of very
secondary historical significance; but, apart from the human interest of
the letters themselves, their whole story shows how difficult it is to
find, and perhaps also how difficult it is to kill, the truth.[106]
-----
Footnote 106:
For an examination of the whole question of the genuineness of the
Lund letters I must refer the reader to an article on the original
edition of Mr. Wilkins’ book, _The Love of an Uncrowned Queen_,
contributed by me to the _Edinburgh Review_ for January, 1901. I have
since re-examined the cipher with the aid of the key supplied by the
late Count Schulenburg to the late Mrs. Everett Green; and it
certainly fills one with amazement that any rational human beings
should have thought concealment attainable by so perfectly transparent
a disguise. But the miserable folly of the whole business is at least
consistent with itself.—As to the Berlin letters, Mr. Wilkins does not
explicitly say that he had seen them; but it was unnecessary that he
should do so, as an exhaustive account of them (with the text of two
of them) was given by Dr. Robert Geerds in the _Beitlage_ to the
_Allgemeine Zeitung_, No. 77, Friday, April 4th, 1902. The eminent
historian Dr. A. Köcher, after first directing attention to these
letters in the _Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie_, Vol. xxxiv. (art.
_Sophia Dorothea_), and declaring them an audacious forgery (he
repeated this assertion privately to myself), deposited in the Royal
Archives at Berlin a statement of his belief that a comparison of
handwritings left him in no doubt as to the letters being spurious;
but Dr. Geerds’ explanations on this head (see _Appendix B_) are to my
mind perfectly satisfactory.—I should like to add that at my request
Count Königsmarck, in December last, most kindly allowed the
examination of his family archives at Plaue near Berlin on my behalf
by Archivrath Dr. Paczkowski, but that no part of any correspondence
between Sophia Dorothea and her lover was discovered there. Dr.
Paczkowski carried out the task which he was so good as to undertake
with a thoroughness and _savoir faire_ reflecting the highest credit
upon himself and the distinguished official body of which he forms
part.
-----
Nothing indicates that Count Philip Christopher von Königsmarck, the
ill-fated hero of the tragedy of Sophia Dorothea’s life, made his
appearance at Hanover before the month of March, 1688, when his presence
at a court _fête_ is accidentally mentioned—just a twelvemonth after the
birth of the second and last of George Lewis’ and Sophia Dorothea’s
children. Königsmarck was a member of a Swedish family of high position
and great wealth, which had derived lustre from the important services
of Field-Marshal von Königsmarck in the latter part of the Thirty Years’
War, and which had, through him, acquired large estates in northern
Germany. The branch of the family to which Philip Christopher belonged
were citizens of the world; to set them down as adventurers argues an
imperfect apprehension of the spirit of their age, and indeed of that of
a great part of the following century also. Like the rest of them,
Philip Christopher had seen many courts already in his youthful days;
and nothing could be more probable than that he should have found his
way to Celle, especially as he had a family connexion with France, such
as would always have ensured him a welcome at the court of George
William and Eleonora. He may thus very well have formed a boy and girl
acquaintance with their daughter; but the statement said to have been
afterwards made by him, that he had loved her from childhood, is
insufficiently authenticated, and does not recur in any of his
love-letters. He then accompanied his elder brother, Count Charles John,
whose wanderings had been more widely varied than his own (and with whom
he is confounded by Horace Walpole, in his careless way), on a visit to
England. Here the elder brother was the principal figure in a _cause
célèbre_, the trial of himself and others for the murder of the wealthy
Thomas Thynne (‘Tom of Ten Thousand’), of which crime an elaborate
representation may to this day be seen carved in relief on the victim’s
tomb in Westminster Abbey.[107] Fortunately for himself, Count von
Königsmarck escaped the gallows, where the careers of his accomplices
ended; but England was no longer an agreeable place of sojourn for the
two brothers, and their travels recommenced. The elder died in the Morea
in 1686; so that it was the younger who, in 1688, inherited the wealth
of their uncle, on his death after a distinguished career as a commander
in the service of the Venetian Republic. Thus, when Königsmarck, after
visiting France and becoming acquainted with the Saxon Prince afterwards
known as Augustus the Strong, King of Poland, in this same year, 1688,
arrived at Hanover, he was not only a nobleman of much knowledge and
experience of the world, but a personage of great wealth, and an
extremely desirable acquisition for a court such as that of Hanover,
where there were excellent opportunities for spending money as well as
for encouraging its expenditure. On his side, Königsmarck, as the head
of his migratory family, may have wished to further the settlement of
his sisters; and the elder, about this time, married the Swedish Count
Axel Lewenhaupt, who two years later passed into the service of the Duke
of Celle. The younger, Aurora, had not as yet found at Dresden, where
her brother was probably already well known, the sphere in which her
beauty and wit, after liberally diffusing their radiance in many
regions, were for a time established as supreme; at Hanover, so fixed a
constellation as that of the Platen family was sure to regard this
brilliant meteor with much displeasure. But Countess Platen could raise
no objection to Ernest Augustus’ offer of a commission to Königsmarck;
and this offer was certainly made and accepted. For he is soon found
commanding a Hanoverian regiment, in frontier operations and in
Flanders, and afterwards holding, in the same service, a colonelcy of
dragoons.
-----
Footnote 107:
See Evelyn’s _Diary_ as to the scandal which surrounded the trial.
-----
So far we stand on solid ground; but, as to the beginnings of the
intimacy between Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck, and as to the
incidents that occurred in the period before the commencement of the
extant correspondence between them, we possess no trustworthy account
whatever. There is no evidence even to show the authenticity of the
story, which has been used with much effect in a recent poetic drama
(very different in conception from that imagined by Schiller on the same
theme),[108] that Königsmarck accompanied Prince Charles Philip in the
campaign in which the Duchess Sophia lost her favourite son, and that he
shared the Prince’s dangers, though escaping his doom.
-----
Footnote 108:
See Schiller’s _Dramatischer Nachlass_, ed. G. Kettner, Vol. ii. pp.
220 _sqq._ (Weimar, 1825), and the references there given to articles
by Kettner on the subject.—The play to which allusion is made in the
text is Mrs. Woods’ _The Princess of Hanover_ (1902).
-----
At the time when the correspondence between Sophia Dorothea and
Königsmarck opens—at the beginning of July, 1691—he must at any rate
have been for some time back in Hanover; for he had started at the head
of a regiment of foot in the ducal service on a march towards the Elbe,
undertaken for the purpose of ensuring the safety of Hamburg. A few
weeks later, he was himself sent to that city on a diplomatic mission
for the conclusion of a treaty of alliance with Sweden,—a balancing
operation on the part of Ernest Augustus, before he had made up his mind
to join the Grand Alliance against France. That this charge, for which
of course his Swedish descent rendered him particularly suitable, should
have been given to Königsmarck, proves him to have been at this time in
full favour at the Hanoverian court.
Inasmuch as, already in the earliest of his extant letters to Sophia
Dorothea, Königsmarck describes himself as _in extremis_, though at the
same time assuring her that his respect for her is as great as his love,
we find the pair already on the brink of an abyss of passion, and
understand why their correspondence was a clandestine one. Such, in
fact, it was, from first to last, intended to be and to remain; and all
the usual devices of secrecy at the command of the writers of these
letters were adopted for the purpose. Of course they were all—or nearly
all—written in French, the language ordinarily used at the Hanover as
well as the Celle Court. The communications from Königsmarck, which may
be said to form about two-thirds of the whole series of letters or
portions of letters, are, when they bear any address at all, directed to
Fräulein von dem Knesebeck, either by name or by some kind of
designation under which she is evidently intended. Part of the Princess’
letters are written in a hand differing so much from that which wrote
the remainder, and which a comparison with her undoubtedly genuine
writing seems to identify as her own, that it may be assumed to be the
hand of the confidante. In the actual composition of the letters, the
writers had further agreed to guard themselves by the adoption of a
twofold—or perhaps one should say threefold—system of cipher, which it
needs no Œdipus to unriddle, at all events sufficiently for the purposes
of detection.[109] Under such flimsy safeguards, explicable in Sophia
Dorothea’s case only by her youth and utter inexperience, and in
Königsmarck’s by the habits of a roving life which had led him to cast
himself recklessly into a whirlpool of excitement, the lovers gave full
vent to their feelings of amorous and jealous passion. The voice of
nature is audible in this correspondence, but it is singularly devoid of
charm. Königsmarck’s tone, as could hardly but be expected, has a
general tendency to coarseness, and is at times very gross, calling to
mind Stepney’s description of the unfortunate man, after his
catastrophe, as a loose fish whom he had long known and would always
have avoided. No similar charge is to be brought against the letters of
Sophia Dorothea, which are written in an easy and flowing style. But her
letters, as well as Königsmarck’s, contain passages irreconcilable with
any conclusion except one—that theirs was a guilty love. For the rest,
there is no straining of style in the correspondence, and those who
regarded it as fabricated might well describe it as a ‘clumsy’ forgery;
for it omits to make certain points which a forger could hardly have
missed. In the Lund letters, at all events, Königsmarck, except when
calling up the image of the Electoral Prince George Lewis in his marital
capacity, refers to him with good humour; and Sophia Dorothea gives
quite a matter-of-fact account of a quarrel between her parents.
-----
Footnote 109:
First, they use pseudonyms of a more or less allusive nature in lieu
of proper names. Thus _Don Diego_ and _la Romaine_ signify the Elector
and the Electress (the former is not a flattering nickname in
contemporary English literature; it will be remembered that the eldest
of Sophia’s sisters had in former days been called _la Grecque_ by the
younger); _le Grondeur_, _la Pédagogue_, are farcical names for the
Duke and Duchess of Celle, while the Electoral Prince, Sophia
Dorothea’s husband, is (not quite so intelligibly) called _le
Réformeur_; Countess Platen (query with an allusion to Monplaisir) _la
Perspective_, and Sophia Dorothea herself goes by the appellation of
_la petite louche_, or of _le cœur gauche_, or of _Léonisse_, a
character in a romance of the times. Aurora von Königsmarck is
_l’Avanturière_, and Prince Ernest Augustus _l’Innocent_. Secondly,
the writers of these letters employ a numerical cipher of a tolerably
simple kind. Of this Professor Palmblad, who published a few of the
letters (carefully selecting the worst), and who formed a monstrous
hypothesis upon them, lacked the key; Mrs. Everett Green, who
possessed it, was already able to decipher most of the names; Mr.
Wilkins had not to leave much obscure. Thirdly, names, and
occasionally other words, are spelt in figures, the chief difficulty
of deciphering being in this case the phonetic spelling adopted by
Königsmarck (_biljay_ = _billet_, &c.). Finally, the lovers also
resorted to an occasional cryptogram, which would not deceive a child.
A name, such as Chauvet, is split up and interlarded with the letters
‘_illy_’—thus: ‘_illychauillyvetilly_.’ The farce of insertion might
have gone further. Cf. _Appendix B_ as to the Berlin letters.
-----
It would be unprofitable to attempt here to follow the course of this
unhappy passion, of which many incidents have now been verified as to
time and place, chiefly by means of the despatches of the English envoy,
while the main event of its catastrophe is lost in impenetrable gloom.
Königsmarck—who asserts that, had he proceeded from Hamburg to Sweden,
he would have readily been admitted into the service of that monarchy,
where, on account of his numerous connexions in many lands at many
Courts, he might very possibly have come to play a conspicuous
part—chose, instead, to return to Hanover, probably in consequence of
the favourable reception accorded by the Princess to his still
hesitating written advances. His letters now begin to assume a freer
tone. Temporary separations inevitably ensued. He accompanies Duke
Ernest Augustus to Wolfenbüttel, while she remains behind; she joins in
a visit, in which he is not included, to her father at his hunting-seat
at Epsdorff, or at Wienhausen; and he has to swear eternal fidelity in a
letter signed in his blood, and to protest that he will go to the Morea
(whither Ernest Augustus’ son Christian was at the time intent upon
proceeding), in order to relieve her of his compromising presence. It
seems to have been not long after this that Sophia Dorothea succumbed to
her passion; and, early in 1692, fears were already pressing upon them
of discovery—in the first instance through her mother; for Königsmarck
had followed her to the Court of Celle. At last, in June, 1692, he was
obliged to join the Hanoverian force under the command of Sophia
Dorothea’s husband in Flanders; for Ernest Augustus, resolved on
striking a bargain for the Ninth Electorate, had now openly become a
member of the Grand Alliance. With the opening of the Flemish campaign
(during which Königsmarck took part in the battle of Steenkirke) begins
the series of the Princess’ letters, several of which are dated from
Brockhausen, where Prince Maximilian had taken refuge with the Duke of
Celle after his trouble at Hanover, while others are written from
Wiesbaden, which later in the year she visited with her mother. Many of
these letters contain details that admit of verification from Colt’s
despatches. The intrigue between Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck had now
passed into a phase in which expressions of love, jealousy, and haunting
apprehensions, breathlessly crowd upon one another; and, after the
Princess had returned to Hanover, it almost seemed as if she must listen
to the advice which he had sent to her from the Low Countries, and cut
the knot of their difficulties by flying with him.
We here touch one of the obscurest passages in this pitiful story, and
one which must here be dealt with quite briefly. It was quite impossible
that Königsmarck’s devotion to the Princess before his departure to
Flanders should have remained unnoticed at the Hanoverian court; and
nothing could have been more appropriate than that her mother-in-law,
the Duchess Sophia, who, without at all suspecting the worst, must have
been seriously annoyed by what she had observed—unless we are to adopt
the absurd supposition that she was pleased to see her daughter-in-law
beginning to go wrong—should have lectured the Princess on her want of
_conduite_. But Sophia Dorothea was aware that there was at court
another and a less straightforward influence, which she suspected would
be adverse to her—that of the Countess Platen. From what followed, there
can be no doubt that the Countess had reasons for bearing Königsmarck a
grudge; and it has been unhesitatingly assumed, in accordance with an
unauthenticated tradition, that her motive was jealousy, and that he had
formerly shared her favours. On the other hand, the Duchess of Orleans
deliberately states that there is no _apparentz_ of Countess Platen
having sought to attract to herself so young a man, and that it is more
likely that, as the Electress Sophia had been informed, the Countess
cajoled Königsmarck in the hope of his marrying her daughter; ‘for he
was a good match.’ This story also long found acceptance; but it does
not very well suit either Königsmarck’s account of his later meeting
with Countess Platen, or the jealousy of her which this account
unmistakably excited in the Princess. In any case, when it occurred to
Sophia Dorothea to consult the Electress Sophia Charlotte of Brandenburg
on the situation—a step which at all events shows her to have been
without fear of any underhand action on the part of her cousin or her
mother-in-law—Sophia Charlotte counselled her to conciliate the Countess
Platen; and this piece of advice was communicated by Sophia Dorothea to
Königsmarck. On his return to Hanover, about November, he seems to have
determined to contribute towards the appeasing of the powerful mistress;
but, whether in sheer recklessness, or because he considered himself
safe with the Countess, who would assuredly remain silent on the subject
towards her august protector, he clearly overdid his part. After this
escapade, a sort of desperate rage seems to have seized upon him, and
the correspondence of the year 1692 concludes with a brutally sarcastic
tirade launched against the new ‘Electoral Princess’ by her infuriated
lover. It is, then, manifest that Sophia Dorothea had grounds for
distrusting Countess Platen; but, how far the double insult offered to
the Elector’s mistress by Königsmarck’s conduct is to be connected with
the terrible events that followed, no evidence exists to show, and the
part of evil genius assigned to the Countess in the tragedy has had to
be written up with the aid of conjecture and fiction.
The last chapter of the correspondence, which extends from the early
summer to the close of the year 1693 (or thereabouts), shows the fatal
passion of the pair still aflame, but the clouds of danger thickening
around them. In the absence of her husband during the year’s campaign in
Flanders, the Electoral Princess continued to idle away her days with
her parents-in-law at Luisburg, or with her own parents at Brockhausen,
whither Königsmarck followed her. She took some comfort from the good
humour of the Electress Sophia; though, foreseeing that, if she came to
know the truth, she would show no pity, Königsmarck warned the Princess
that her mother-in-law would, sooner or later, be her ruin. At
Brockhausen, a nocturnal meeting between the lovers was not wholly
unwatched, and the letters afterwards interchanged by them show
increasing apprehension. Countess Platen herself vaguely warned the
Princess as to the risk she was running—an act which it must be conceded
at least admits of a kindly explanation. In her last extant letter,
Sophia Dorothea utters what comes very near to a cry of hopeless
despair. In the course of the month in which this letter was written
(August, 1693) Königsmarck was obliged to absent himself from Court, in
order to take part in a military movement intended to check a Danish
_coup de main_ upon the contested duchy of Lauenburg. When he returned
to Hanover, fresh warnings reached him—from old Marshal von
Podewils,[110] under whom he had served, and from the youngest of the
Hanoverian Princes, Ernest Augustus, whose devoted attachment to his
brother, the Electoral Prince, appears not to have prevented this act of
kindness. These warnings themselves, together with other indications,
show that, although the actual character of the intrigue between Sophia
Dorothea and Königsmarck may have remained unknown—unless indeed some
letters had already fallen into the wrong hands—the _liaison_ itself
was, as is, after all, usual in such cases, more or less of an open
secret, and that thus the pair were rushing headlong to their ruin.
Quite at the end of the year, Königsmarck had once more to go away from
Hanover; and, at this point, the Lund correspondence comes to an end
with a letter from him evidently addressed to the confidante, and,
through her, assuring _Léonisse_ that, whatever might befall, he would
not abandon her.
-----
Footnote 110:
‘_Le bonhomme_’ in the lovers’ cipher.
-----
The cessation of the correspondence leaves us in some doubt as to the
precise nature of the occurrences in Hanover in the earlier half of the
year 1694, which was to see the end of this lamentable history.
Königsmarck, who had returned to Hanover, quitted it again in April;
and, without having resigned his Hanoverian commission, betook himself
to the Court of the Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony (Augustus the
Strong) at Dresden. Here he undoubtedly behaved with an indiscretion
beyond that habitual to him, and it is probable enough—though this again
cannot be proved—that his vaunts included some reference to his
successes with Countess Platen. However this may have been, Königsmarck,
though he had not accepted a commission offered him in the Saxon army
and still remained a Hanoverian officer, could hardly expect on his
return to Hanover to carry on his amour as before. There had been
indications of an uneasy feeling at Court, which explain themselves
without the supposition that a combination was at work there to drive
Sophia Dorothea to her ruin, and without the wholly gratuitous
assumption that, in the front of that combination, stood the Electress
Sophia. Attempts were afterwards said to have been made to provoke
ill-will between the Electoral Prince and his wife through the agency of
her lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von dem Knesebeck; and, though there is no
reason for suspecting her of any interference of the kind, it is certain
that, about the early part of June, Sophia Dorothea left the Electoral
Court and repaired to her parents at Brockhausen. Once more, there is
nothing to show that her departure had been caused by actual
ill-treatment on the part of her husband. On her way home to Hanover,
she refused to alight at Herrenhausen in order to pay her respects to
the Elector and Electress; and, after ascertaining at Hanover that her
husband was away at Berlin, she resolved once more to join her parents
at Brockhausen. But they refused to receive her; and, on the fatal night
of July 1st, 1694, she was still with her faithful lady-in-waiting in
the Leineschloss at Hanover.
On the same night, Count Königsmarck left his house at Hanover, never to
be seen again. That his intention was to enter the Leine Palace and the
apartments of the Electoral Princess, there can be no doubt; but the
actual purpose of their meeting, and the plan on which they then agreed
or on which they had agreed before, remain unknown. They may have merely
designed to contrive her escape with his help to Wolfenbüttel, where she
might rely on a welcome from Duke Antony Ulric; or they may have
intended to realise the dream to which their correspondence refers, and
henceforth to belong wholly to one another. But, from Sophia Dorothea,
no attempt was afterwards made to extract an avowal on this head; and
the confidante, Eleonora von dem Knesebeck, persisted from first to
last, both during her imprisonment and after she had effected her escape
from it, in asserting the innocency of her mistress. Yet Fräulein von
dem Knesebeck confessed to having known of a ‘plot,’ and to having been
so full of uneasiness that tears and entreaties were needed to persuade
her to remain in the Princess’ service.
Some days passed before the disappearance of Königsmarck attracted
public notice. The first sign that there was something wrong appears to
have been the intimation, noticed in a despatch of July 3rd from
Cressett (Colt’s successor), that, while the Electoral Prince remained
at Berlin, the Princess was sick at Hanover. As a matter of fact, both
she and her confidante had been strictly confined to her apartments;
whether any letters from Königsmarck had been discovered in her keeping,
we do not know. But there is evidence that, already in May and June,
hands had been laid on some of the correspondence between the lovers;
and the knowledge of this had probably determined the Elector Ernest
Augustus to proceed against his daughter-in-law. And it is certain that
some of her letters were sent by the authorities at Hanover to her
parents; for Leibniz positively asserts that, had not her letters been
produced, they could not have thought her so guilty at Celle. These
letters must have been found in Königsmarck’s residence; and we have no
reason for doubting the statement that a thorough search was made in his
cabinet, in the presence of officials only, although it is added that a
packet of letters thought to be incriminating was sent by persons who
had been in his confidence to Celle, where his sisters soon afterwards
made their appearance. These latter, in all probability, formed the
correspondence which ultimately found its way to Berlin.
Both the Elector Ernest Augustus and Sophia Dorothea’s father, the Duke
of Celle, considering her guilt to be established, the question next
arose as to the way in which her case should be treated. In the first
instance she was taken to Ahlden, a magistrate’s house or ‘castle’—no
one who has cast eyes on it could ever think of it as anything but a
‘moated grange’—situate in a lonely marshland corner of her father’s
territory, at some twenty miles’ distance from Hanover. While she was
detained here in strict custody, the mode of procedure against her was
arranged. It was resolved, for the honour of the House—which, for good
or ill, was the dominant motive in the whole of this melancholy
business—to keep the name and person of Königsmarck out of the affair
altogether, and to make the desertion of her husband by the Princess the
ground of a suit of divorce before a specially constituted Consistorial
tribunal. This course, which could hardly have succeeded but for the
attitude maintained by her, was carried through with a completeness
which must have surpassed the anticipations of the astute minds that had
devised it. Throughout the enquiry, the Princess made no confession
whatever of any act of infidelity, adhering to the instructions conveyed
to her by her father’s ministers, Bernstorff and Bülow, who, in an
interview at Ahlden, had informed her that ‘everything was
discovered’—manifestly another reference to the evidence of part of her
correspondence with Königsmarck. Accordingly, notwithstanding the
representations of the honest counsel with whom she had been
provided—and to whose dissatisfaction with the proceedings and desire to
preserve the proofs of his not having been responsible for their result
is due the private preservation, at least in part, of the documents of
the divorce-suit—she refused to swerve from her declared resolution no
longer to live with the Electoral Prince as her husband. After some
attempts on the part of the Duke of Celle to mitigate the rigour of the
expected result, which were successfully resisted on the part of the
Hanoverian Government, the sentence of the Consistorial tribunal was
pronounced on December 28th, 1694, and delivered to the Princess at
Lauenau, whither she had been temporarily removed, on the last day of
the year. It dissolved the marriage between her and the Electoral
Prince, granting him, as the innocent party, permission to remarry, but
withholding this from her as the guilty party. She at once accepted the
sentence; a few days later her confessor informed her father that she
acknowledged ‘_sa faute_,’ and the justice of the punishment inflicted
upon her; and, in 1698, on the occasion of the death of the Elector
Ernest Augustus, she wrote to her former husband and to his mother, the
Electress Sophia, beseeching them to pardon her faults of the past, and
entreating the favour of being allowed to see her children. This favour
was never granted to her.
The Hanoverian court and Government had, as has been seen, persistently
striven to dissociate the disappearance of Königsmarck from the disgrace
of the Princess. In the first instance, this disappearance had been
simply ignored, while a circular had been issued to foreign courts,
drawn up in this sense, and attributing the alienation of the Princess
from her husband to the machinations of Fräulein von dem Knesebeck, who
was soon afterwards clapped into a dungeon at Scharzfels in the Harz,
from which she did not make her escape till four years afterwards.[111]
As to the vanished Königsmarck, it had been easy to stifle the anxieties
of the unhappy Sophia Dorothea, who, before she was effectually
silenced, had written a letter expressive of her fear that he had fallen
into the hands of a certain lady, and that his life might be in danger.
There can hardly be any doubt but that this referred to Countess Platen,
although it merely proves Sophia Dorothea to have been afraid of the
consequences of the Countess’ anger. Nor could it be impossible to
baffle the curiosity of the world at large—represented by no less august
an enquirer than Louis XIV—in the assurance that the mystery would in
due course be forgotten as a nine days’ wonder. But it proved a serious
task to meet the pertinacious efforts of Königsmarck’s sister Aurora,
who, adopting a rumour which for some time found an extraordinary amount
of credit, insisted that her brother was still alive, and, while
demanding that the truth should be revealed, pursued Countess Platen
(with whom she had a quarrel of old standing) with special animosity. It
is noteworthy that the Electress Sophia should be found taking the side
of Countess Platen, who, she writes, is not accustomed to be spoken of
in the terms applied to her by the Countess _Orrore_. Having been
forbidden to show herself in Hanover, Königsmarck’s dauntless sister
betook herself to Dresden, in order to secure the assistance of the
Elector Frederick Augustus in her quest. It was on this occasion that
she conquered that potentate altogether; and he espoused her cause so
heartily as to send Colonel Bannier to Hanover, there to demand that
Königsmarck, as an officer in the Saxon service, should be given up to
him. As late as December, 1694, Bannier remained convinced that the
Count was still alive, and detained as a prisoner somewhere in the
Palace. Not until after some months had passed was the tempest raised by
Aurora allayed, largely through the diplomatic skill of the Hanoverian
minister at Dresden, Jobst von Ilten. But her passionate activity, and
the widespread interest excited by so impenetrable a mystery, already in
1695 led to the publication of a narrative purporting to have been sent
from Hamburg to the French minister at the Danish court, which the
Duchess of Orleans characterised as impertinent and mendacious, and to
which Leibniz was instructed to supply a corrective commentary.
Meanwhile the Electoral Government had not only maintained an absolute
silence as to the Königsmarck affair, but had resorted to the expedient
of systematically destroying all evidence concerning it or in any way
connected with it. This policy was carried through with extraordinary
vigilance and consistency, as might be shown in various instances, of
which some reach down to our own times. Above all, a systematic
destruction took place of all the documents, whether public or private,
at Hanover, in London—and even in Ahlden—which might have thrown light
on the episode. Among the rest, the letters of the Electress Sophia
bearing on it were destroyed. This was in accordance with the wish of
the Duchess of Orleans, whose sagacity apprised her that there was
something in the rumours which had reached her, although the excellent
Frau von Harling had declared them to be all lies.[112] It would,
however, appear that, whether because of a desire on the part of the
Duke of Celle that some evidence should be procured which would justify
his assent to the severe treatment of his daughter,[113] or because of
the Electress’ own wish not to annihilate all proof, certain
incriminating portions of the correspondence remained undestroyed; and
these were perhaps the letters which are supposed to have been
afterwards sent to Berlin, in order to remove the doubts of Sophia
Dorothea’s daughter and namesake as to the misconduct of her mother, to
whom she always behaved with kindness—and which, afterwards, certainly
found their way into the hands of Frederick the Great and thence into
the Secret Archives of State. So far as Königsmarck is concerned, the
current story as to his death, and as to the horrible part played in it
by the Countess Platen, still remains unauthenticated. Horace Walpole,
the author of _Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard
III_, was prepared to believe a story which he professed to have derived
from George II, through Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole, according
to which, on the occasion of some repairs in the Leine Palace, the
remains of Königsmarck were discovered under the floor of Sophia
Dorothea’s dressing-room; and, of the assassins rumoured to have been
hired by Countess Platen, one at least is said to have been enabled by
his crime to found a family of much respectability at Hanover.
-----
Footnote 111:
Of this castle little or nothing remains at the present day but a
‘restored’ gate and staircase.
Footnote 112:
According to W. H. Wilkins, _A Queen of Tears_, George III similarly
ordered the destruction of the entire correspondence with Copenhagen
occasioned by the catastrophe of his daughter Caroline Matilda of
Denmark and Struensee.
Footnote 113:
In the spring of 1695, Cresset reports that the Duke and Duchess of
Celle feel some distaste, now, for the company of the Electress, on
account of the divorce proceedings.
-----
Sophia Dorothea herself was henceforth lost to the history of her House,
and almost fell out of the remembrance of the world in which she might
have played so prominent a part. She was now officially styled the
Duchess of Ahlden, the village on the Aller over whose immediate
district a certain petty jurisdiction was given to the prisoner,
together with a few shadowy rights of honour. During a period of
thirty-two years she lingered out here her life of durance—never being
allowed to quit Ahlden, with the single exception, when a movement of
Saxon-Polish troops seemed to render her place of detention unsafe, of a
brief visit to Celle, where, however, her father declined to see her.
Neither was she at any time permitted to go forth from her castle beyond
a distance of six miles; and her carriage, closely attended by a guard
of honour, had always to drive along the same road.[114] She had the
occasional consolation of a visit from her mother till the Duchess
Eleonora’s death in 1722; for the mother’s love never waned, and her
will contributed to make the prisoner nominally the possessor of great
wealth. On the other hand, she was, as already noted, never allowed to
see her children. She occupied herself much with works of charity and
piety. She presented an organ and candelabra to the parish church where
during part of her imprisonment she worshipped—and was extremely popular
in the village, which she rebuilt at her own cost after a fire in 1715;
and she gave much attention to the affairs in the neighbourhood,
receiving formal visits, and bestowing great care upon her personal
adornment. She never quite abandoned the hope of a change in her
condition, until shortly before her death she discovered that her
interests had been betrayed, and (it is said) most of her large
accumulated capital made away with, by an agent (a certain von Bahr), in
whom she had reposed confidence. The records of the poor woman’s life
during the long years of her confinement do not change our notions of
her character; but the story of her solitary woe needs no deepening.
-----
Footnote 114:
Her habit of driving along it at a furious pace recalls the practice
of a very different captive—Napoleon at St. Helena.
-----
George Lewis has met with nothing but blame for his share in the whole
story of Sophia Dorothea’s misfortunes. Our age happily refuses to
accept the view that what is unpardonable in a wife is venial in a
husband; but such was not the opinion of George Lewis’ contemporaries.
On returning to Hanover, he had found the relations between his wife and
Königsmarck very much of an open secret at court; and, when proofs were
in his hands, a divorce was the only course open to him, if the honour
of his House was to be vindicated. There was afterwards a rumour,
mentioned by Elizabeth Charlotte to her aunt, that he would take back
his wife on his accession to the Electorship at his father’s death; and,
in 1704, a report was again current at Paris, that the Duke of
Marlborough hoped to effect a reconciliation between the Elector and his
discarded consort. But, as a matter of fact, he never varied his
attitude towards her of absolute and immutable estrangement; and least
of all did he show any inclination to invite her to share the glories of
the English throne, though it is probable that he might, by such a step,
have diminished the prejudices to which he was exposed in his new
kingdom.[115] On the occurrence of her death on November 13th, 1726
(which, as is known, preceded his own by but a few months), he
prohibited a general mourning in the Electorate, and she was buried
without ceremony in the family vault at Celle, after her interment at
Ahlden had proved impracticable. There can be no doubt that the bitter
resentment with which her conduct had inspired him was, in a measure,
continued in his feelings towards his son, the future King George II;
but, though the accounts on this head are contradictory, it is at least
doubtful whether Sophia Dorothea’s son ever exhibited any active
sympathy for his unfortunate mother.[116] Sophia Dorothea the younger,
who, in 1706, married the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards King
Frederick William I), kept up some communication with her mother, and,
after she became Queen, took Eleonora von dem Knesebeck into her
service, besides entering into a more frequent correspondence with the
prisoner. But mother and daughter never met; and, finally, there seems
to have been a marked difference of opinion between them as to the
famous Double Marriage Project between the courts of Great Britain and
Prussia.
-----
Footnote 115:
It is a curious instance of a certain cynical hauteur in George Lewis
(which, however, contains an element of manly self-possession) that he
should have supplied the Duchess of Orleans with a key to the
characters of the Supplement to the _Roman Octavia_, in which Duke
Antony Ulric had taken the opportunity, perhaps with the help of
Fräulein von dem Knesebeck’s reminiscences, of giving to the world a
version of the whole story of the Duchess of Ahlden.—A French MS.,
_Histoire de Frédegonde, Princesse de Chérusque, Duchesse d’Hanovre,
Épouse de George, Roi de la Grande Bretagne_, proposing to give an
account, _inter alia_, of ‘_sa Prison au Chateau d’Alhen, où elle a
fini ses jours_,’ supposed to date from about 1740, was not long since
advertised for sale.
Footnote 116:
Lord Hervey’s story of his having preserved his mother’s picture may
be true; but the further statement that he proposed, if she had
survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen, needs a
stronger qualification than the ‘it was said,’ by which it is
accompanied. (_Memoirs_, Vol. iii. pp. 348-9.)
-----
That the unfortunate prisoner should have gained the active goodwill,
which the fair young Princess had never conciliated, of her
mother-in-law, the Electress Sophia, was hardly to be expected. Such
advances as were made to her by the Duchess of Ahlden seem to have been
coldly rejected; and the tone in which the Duchess of Orleans continues
occasionally to speak of her ill-fated relative no doubt reflects, with
tolerable accuracy, that adopted by her aunt in her non-extant letters.
The Electress, as we now know, had verified the conclusion of Elizabeth
Charlotte, that Sophia Dorothea’s case exemplified the proverb as to
there being no smoke without fire; and, while we may regret that the
charity which, in the matter of morals, the Electress Sophia readily
showed to the shortcomings of the men of her family, was never extended
by her to the daughter of Eleonora d’Olbreuze, there is in this rigour
nothing unnatural or incompatible with the rules of life which she
consistently observed. To argue, however, from this severity back to the
unproved supposition of an active cooperation on the part of Sophia
towards the ruin of her daughter-in-law, is palpably unjust. And it
should always be borne in mind that the sympathy of posterity was
secured to Sophia Dorothea by her misfortunes, not by her character, in
which there is little or nothing to admire, while much in it may have
justly repelled the sound and self-controlled nature of her
mother-in-law; and that the Electress was more impressed by the
Princess’ fall than by what might seem its legitimate consequences.
There seems no reason for attributing to the painful experiences through
which the House of Hanover had recently passed the decline which, about
this time, set in in the health of the Elector Ernest Augustus. His
illness (which Cressett thought in a large measure imaginary) has quite
gratuitously been brought into connexion with Sophia Dorothea’s
catastrophe, the suggestion being that the wife and the mistress of the
Elector had conspired to avert the consequences which might ensue, in
the event of his death and the accession of a new Electress. In June,
1697, the Electress Sophia informs the Raugravine Louisa that, though
the other symptoms in the Elector’s condition are good, his nervous
debility is great, and that it has been resolved to try the skill of a
Dutch empiric, with whose ‘_charlattaneri_’ she characteristically
expresses impatience. Towards the end of the year the course of his
malady seemed to have been in a measure arrested; but the decay of his
powers soon set in again with alarming rapidity. His life of constant
self-indulgence ended very miserably; for some time loss of sight in one
eye was feared, and after this he was all but deprived of the use of
speech. The Electress Sophia faithfully nursed him to the last. Even in
the days of his health she had bravely accustomed herself to his habits;
and she afterwards humorously related that she had made a point, in the
hour of domesticity, of filling his pipe with the tobacco which she
loathed. In his last illness she, during many months, never left his
side, except when he was asleep. The end came on January 24th, 1698; and
a letter written by Sophia a few months later shows her still in a
condition of deep and unaffected grief—hopeful only ‘_que le bon Dieu me
fera bientost rejoindre ce cher Électeur en l’autre monde_,’ but
consoled by the attentions of her children and her brother-in-law.
Ernest Augustus had well played his part as a ruler, not only providing
a sure basis for the progress of his dynasty to augmented power and
influence, but also strengthening and consolidating the civil as well as
the military administration of the Electorate established in his person.
His extravagant expenditure on himself and on his court, though no doubt
largely occasioned by habits of self-indulgence and a profligate
temperament, seemed in consonance with what was probably a well-merited
reputation for liberality of conduct and feeling towards those who
served him well. Thus he proved, in his way, an apt imitator of the
great French prototype whom he, not less than his brother John
Frederick, kept before his eyes; and the style in which he lived and
reigned suited the interest of the dynasty as well as his own tastes. At
the same time, he knew how to combine with his magnificence and
generosity a self-restraint that enabled him in his will to dispose of
an unencumbered personal estate. To Sophia his death, in more respects
than one, brought a considerable change. She had never ruled him, not
even controlled him by her influence, as Eleonora of Celle long
controlled her Duke, or as, in another generation, Sophia’s favourite
Caroline of Ansbach was to control King George II. But the aid of her
counsel had been of great value to Ernest Augustus, both in the ordinary
business of government and in great questions of state policy; and much
of the authority which thus accrued to her passed away with him. George
Lewis was not of a disposition likely to induce him, from motives of
piety, to show to his mother a deference beyond that of ordinary custom.
On the other hand, the death of Sophia’s husband gave to her more of
that freedom which no princess ever used less ostentatiously or more
nobly; it made her, in certain respects, more distinctly the centre of
the intellectual life of the Hanoverian Court than she had cared to be,
or at all events to seem, in the lifetime of Ernest Augustus; it
probably brought her closer to her daughter, and certainly allowed her a
fuller enjoyment of the friendship of Leibniz.
No sooner had the reign of Ernest Augustus come to an end, than his sons
Maximilian and Christian renewed their protest against the principle of
primogeniture which he had so persistently maintained;[117] and the
sympathy with Maximilian displayed by his sister, the Electress Sophia
Charlotte of Brandenburg, can hardly have failed to find a secret
response in the maternal heart of the Electress Dowager Sophia herself.
But, though there was some talk of her paying a visit at this season to
Berlin, she had learnt to tutor her own wishes, and was well aware how
much depended upon the maintenance of the good understanding between the
two Electoral Governments, which was at the time endangered by certain
territorial questions that may here be passed by. Thus George Lewis
succeeded without let or hindrance to the whole of the paternal
inheritance and expectancies; and, as was noted above, Hanover and
Brandenburg were united by a close and ‘perpetual’ alliance at the very
period when the dynastic ambition of the one seemed on the point of
consummation, and that of the other was near achieving its absorbing
object—the acquisition of a royal (Prussian) crown. That the Hanoverian
court was filled with joy by the success of the operations which ended,
early in 1701, with the coronation of the first Prussian King, Frederick
I, would be an unnatural supposition. The event had, however, been
rendered virtually inevitable by the accession, in 1697, of the Elector
Frederick Augustus of Saxony to the Polish throne; and the Elector
George Lewis was personally not so constituted as to be impelled, even
by jealousy, to an eagerness to follow suit. As for the Dowager
Electress Sophia, there was, to her, something more than compensation in
the thought that a royal crown now surmounted the brow of her favourite
child.
-----
Footnote 117:
Early in 1694, Cresset reports him as ‘moving heaven and earth’ on the
subject.
-----
Sophia Charlotte, her parents’ only daughter, had grown up in a long and
unbroken intimacy with her mother. With that mother, as already noted,
she had in common a clear and penetrating intelligence, a charm of
manner irresistible to anyone whom she chose to admit to familiar
intercourse, and a self-possession against which scandal waged war in
vain. She also had her mother’s intellectual curiosity and general love
of knowledge; but she must have approached more nearly to her aunt
Elizabeth in her power of entering into problems of philosophy, though
it is only with a grain of salt that the assertion can be accepted as to
the conferences between her and Leibniz having originated his
_Théodicée_. On the other hand, what little remains from her hand in the
way of familiar correspondence, can scarcely be said to be lit up with
the natural humour that her mother and the Duchess of Orleans always had
at command. Notwithstanding her power of delighting those admitted to
her society by the sunny brightness of her manner, when she was so
disposed, or when she was stimulated by intellectual interest, her
nature seems from early years to have possessed the tranquillity which
reason and resignation enabled her mother more gradually to acquire.
Probably a certain physical indolence, or phlegma, may have contributed
to this result; together with a calm determination to please herself—a
luxury in which her mother had rarely or never enjoyed opportunities of
indulging.
Already in her childhood, benefiting by the traditions in her mother’s
family as to the necessity of a good education based on linguistic
knowledge, she had exhibited signs of talent; while her character
probably owed much to the training of Frau von Harling (who was also
Elizabeth Charlotte’s governess), one of those teachers whose destiny it
is to be loved for their administration of the rule of law by pupils
who, under a less vigorous influence, would certainly be inclined to
remain a law to themselves. In the eleventh year of her age, Sophia
Charlotte, as we saw, accompanied her mother on a visit to the French
Court, while her father was recruiting his health at Ems. It was a
delightful visit—perhaps one of the happiest episodes of Sophia’s
life—in the mixture which it offered of pleasant retrospect under the
caresses of the faithful Duchess of Orleans, and of still earlier
reminiscences in the genial company of the Abbess of Maubuisson, with a
hopeful looking-forward to the future in store for her charming
daughter. King Louis XIV himself was the perfection of magnificent
courtesy, requesting his brother, the Duke of Orleans, not to whisper in
Sophia’s presence, and taking magnanimous notice of her daughter.
Sophia’s quick wit helped her through every difficulty, and enabled her
to avoid any mistake—even that of accepting a _tabouret_ when
self-respect bade her take a _fauteuil_, or not sit at all. She knew how
to meet both the stiffness of the French Queen (a Spanish princess) and
the effusiveness of the Spanish Queen (a French princess); nor was her
self-possession disturbed even by the splendour of Versailles, for
which, as she justly observed, art had done more than nature. As for
Sophia Charlotte, the impression created, both by her beauty and by the
extent of her knowledge, was such as to suggest to Louis XIV the idea of
a match between her and one of his princes. Nothing, however, came of
the notion except, perhaps, an accentuation of the diplomatic activity
of de Gourville at the Lüneburg courts. Sophia Charlotte’s quiet life
continued; and, though there was some talk of a Bavarian suit for her
hand, it gradually became known that her destiny was shaping itself
nearer home. The establishment of relations of intimacy between the
Courts of Brandenburg at Hanover had become a political necessity, and
Sophia had recognised the expediency of promoting his object with the
aid of her daughter’s hand. When, in 1683, the Electoral Prince
Frederick of Brandenburg became a childless widower, these speculations
at once assumed a practical aspect. The obstacles which had to be
surmounted did not include a religious difficulty, inasmuch as the
Reformed (Calvinist) faith, of which Sophia Charlotte made public
profession shortly before her marriage, was a form of religion always
favoured, though never actually professed, by her mother.[118] There is
no reason for crediting the story (which rests only on the gossip of
Pöllnitz) that it had been thought unnecessary to anticipate Sophia
Charlotte’s own choice of a form of Protestantism till it was known whom
she was to marry. But, whatever the daughter’s religious profession,
tolerance would always have formed part of her creed, as it did of her
mother’s. The marriage was celebrated at Herrenhausen on September 28th,
1684.
-----
Footnote 118:
‘I used,’ she writes to the elder Schütz in 1703, ‘to know all the
common prayers, practically, by heart, but I was never taught that our
religion much differed from the reformed religion of France and
Germany, and I have communicated in this also;’ and, again: ‘I have
had prayers offered for the Queen’ [Anne] ‘in both the German and the
French reformed churches here’ [at Hanover], ‘with the permission of
the Elector.’—Erman, preacher at the French Reformed church in Berlin,
subsequently wrote _Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Sophie
Charlotte, Reine de Prusse_.]
-----
From the first, Sophia Charlotte displayed that indifference to playing
any part in politics which seemed so strange in her, considering the
capacity which she indisputably possessed for exerting influence alike
by her personal charms and by her intellectual powers. But, during the
few remaining years of the Great Elector’s life, the Electoral Prince
Frederick was under a cloud; and, in 1686, he had to withdraw with his
consort to Halle. In 1688 he succeeded his father as Elector, and a few
months later his consort presented him with an heir to his honours (the
future King Frederick William I). She continued, however, to show little
disposition to assert the authority and influence which had now accrued
to her; and, though, during the ensuing decade, so eventful in the
history of the relations between the Houses of Hanover and Brandenburg,
she was always happy to exchange visits with her parents and to listen
to the advice bestowed on her by her mother, she cannot be said to have
taken much trouble to use, either directly or indirectly, the power
which she can hardly have lacked aught but the will to exercise. It was
not that she had to contend against any great strength of character in
her husband, who, if humoured in a few things, could without much
difficulty be ruled in the rest. But she did not care to stoop even to
the level of his rather commonplace and formal nature, in order to
conquer for herself an all-controlling influence in both public and
private affairs. She preferred to create a sphere or circle of her own,
into which only those were admitted who approved themselves to her, more
especially by their intellectual gifts. Here simplicity, typified by
black dress, was the rule. The colony of French refugees, which was in
these years establishing itself at Berlin and Brandenburg, was largely
represented in her intimate social circle. Sophia Charlotte appreciated
those gifts of conversation, of which, in her age, Frenchmen and
Frenchwomen possessed, if not the monopoly, at least a predominant
share; and she seems herself to have become mistress of an art which is
always more easily described than reproduced. She was fond of theatrical
entertainments of many kinds, and probably gave more offence to the
pietism prevailing around her by these, for the most part, innocuous
tastes than by her philosophising tendencies. Toland amused her, and she
was not, like her mother, obliged to respect British prejudices about
his views or principles, though she was indignant to have been supposed
to have gone so far as to ask a man without birth or official position
to dine at her table. In general, she was, no doubt, very much _sans
gêne_ in her relations with persons whom she liked; but, though scandal
was busy with these freedoms, she never compromised herself by indulging
in them too far. The height of her personal influence seems to have been
reached when, by 1696, the Elector Frederick III had fulfilled her
heart’s desire by building for her a country residence in the village of
Lützen on the pleasant declivities of the Spree. She had never been
willing to sojourn in the castle of Copenick, where her predecessor,
Frederick’s first wife, had pined away her days; and the ample gardens
at Berlin, which he had presented to his Electress, she had, with
intelligent philanthropy, mainly distributed in allotments among the
townsfolk, with whom, for this reason, and perhaps also because of a
sympathetic quickness of wit indigenous among the inhabitants of the
growing capital, her reputation always stood high. Lützenburg, as the
Italian villa, which gradually grew into a palace, was called, became
Sophia Charlotte’s chosen abode, although the magnificence with which it
was in course of time adorned, both inside and out, had not received its
final touches before her death, when this famous royal residence was, in
remembrance of her, rechristened Charlottenburg.
The death of Ernest Augustus, in 1698, as we saw, drew mother and
daughter more closely together; and, in the same year, a very important
ministerial change at Berlin, the circumstances of which to this day
occupy the attention of historical students, greatly increased Sophia
Charlotte’s opportunities of exercising a personal influence upon the
government and policy of her husband. The fall of the hitherto
omnipotent minister, Eberhard von Danckelmann, which was speedily
followed by his incarceration, affords a most striking instance of the
uncertainty of princely favour, and a cruel illustration of the
recompense that may await great political services.[119] Here it must
suffice to say, that Sophia Charlotte had certainly been jealous of
Danckelmann’s influence, and that his downfall was regarded by her
mother and her friends, even more decidedly than by herself, as an epoch
in her personal career. Leibniz wrote to her, with rather exasperating
_aplomb_, surmising that, since she had now secured the entire
confidence of the Elector her husband, she would recognise the necessity
of taking advantage of the situation (_ménager la conjoncture_). As
there was, he continued, an identity of interest between her and her
mother, it was to be hoped that they would find consolation for the
evils that had befallen them (the death of Ernest Augustus) in employing
their gifts so as to bring about a complete union between Sophia
Charlotte’s brother and her husband. (It may perhaps be noted that the
sorrow afterwards shown by George Lewis on his sister’s death indicates
the existence of a genuine affection between them.) Leibniz could not
think of anyone likely to manage so effectively the requisite
communications between the two Electresses as it would be within his own
power to do; and he suggested that this purpose would be most easily
accomplished if he were to be appointed to some supervising post
connected with science and art at Berlin, and thus supplied with a ready
reason for occasional visits to that capital. As a matter of fact,
Sophia Charlotte used her best endeavours to induce Frederick III to
call into life a (prospectively) Royal Society or Academy of Science,
which, as the Elector was quick to perceive, would conspicuously add to
the reputation of his court and to the glory of the monarchy of which he
was ambitious to become the founder; and, after Leibniz had spent
several months at Berlin, and conducted the deliberations on the
subject, besides participating in the intellectual delights of
‘Lustenburg’ (Lützenburg), the Society of Sciences was, in July, 1700,
actually called into life, with Leibniz as its perpetual president.[120]
-----
Footnote 119:
See H. Breslau, _Der Fall des Oberpräsidenten E. von Danckelmann_,
1692 (H. Breslau and S. Isaacsohn, _Der Fall zweier Preuss.
Minister_). Berlin, 1878.
Footnote 120:
Curiously enough, on the day after the opening of this august
institution, Leibniz took a prominent part in a ‘Village Fair’ at the
Court, of which a graphic description remains in a letter from him to
the Electress Sophia. It seems to have been a revised edition of the
_Wirthschaften_ of her youth, and of similar Arcadian diversions of
later days.—For an interesting survey of the relations—both personal
and philosophical—between Leibniz and Sophia Charlotte, see A. Foucher
de Careil, _Leibniz et les deux Sophies_, Paris, 1876.
-----
Danckelmann’s fall had, however, not put an end to Sophia Charlotte’s
difficulties at her husband’s court. Some of these were of much the same
sort as those from which her mother had suffered so much at Hanover, and
from which the more sensitive nature of her grand-daughter Wilhelmina
was afterwards to suffer at Baireuth. The Elector Frederick III’s new
minister-in-chief, Kolbe von Wartenberg, had himself many attractive
qualities; but his wife was of humble origin and undistinguished
manners. It pleased the Elector, apparently only for the sake of the
completeness of the thing, to confer on her the position of his mistress
_en titre_. Sophia Charlotte’s pride long rebelled against receiving
this lady at her private court. Another source of anxiety to Sophia
Charlotte was the training of her son Frederick William, which, during
part of his fourth year, she had entrusted to the veteran Frau von
Harling at the court of her mother, the Electress Sophia. But the boy,
both passionate and obstinate, could not agree with his cousin George
Augustus, and had to be taken back to Berlin. As he grew up he seemed to
care for nothing but soldiering, while he detested the ceremonial dear
to his father’s heart, and more distinctive than ever of the Court of
Berlin since the manœuvres for securing a royal Crown had assumed a
definite shape, and this project had come to absorb the entire policy of
the Brandenburg court and Government. Neither Sophia Charlotte’s nor her
mother’s intelligence could fail to grasp the situation. The Electress
of Brandenburg made up her mind that no personal grievance should
interfere with the maintenance of a good understanding between her
consort and herself, and received the Countess of Wartenberg at
Lützenburg, although, oblivious of her guest’s imperfections of
education, she welcomed her there with a few words of French. The
Electress Dowager Sophia was willing to cooperate; and, partly with a
view to procuring for the furtherance of the project the good offices of
King William III and of the Elector Maximilian Emmanuel of Bavaria,
Governor of the Austrian Netherlands, it was, in the spring of 1700,
arranged that the two Electresses should, on the pretext of Sophia
Charlotte’s health, repair to the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, and thence
visit Brussels and Holland. They accomplished this journey, on which
Leibniz was by his own ill-health prevented from accompanying them, but
in the course of which they, at the Hague, made the personal
acquaintance of another philosopher of European reputation—‘_l’illustre
Bayle, honneur des beaux esprits_.’ And, in October, 1700, they were
received at the Loo, where (as we shall see immediately) other matters
were also discussed between the Electress Dowager and King William, and
where he promised Sophia Charlotte to acknowledge her husband as the
first King in Prussia. The desire of Sophia Charlotte’s consort (rather
than her own) was consummated by their coronation as King and Queen of
Prussia at Königsberg on January 18th, 1701—the year which likewise
proved her mother’s conference with her host at the Loo not to have been
held in vain.
To understand this result, it is necessary to go back a few years, and
to recall the circumstances which, in 1696, had led to an earlier, but
more transitory, visit on the part of the two Electresses to the Loo.
The year 1696 was one of some importance in the history of the English
Succession question. After the death of Queen Mary, on December 28th,
1694, some time had necessarily passed before even a conjecture could be
formed as to the future intentions of King William, who was prostrated
with grief. But he was only in his forty-fifth year, and his remarriage
was therefore by no means an unlikely event. In the course of 1695,
speculation was accordingly rife on the subject, and, taking time by the
forelock, Louis XIV provided that any overtures made on William III’s
behalf at Stockholm (for the hand of the Princess Hedwig Sophia) should
meet with a cold reception. The hopes of the House of Savoy were once
more aroused. The claims by descent of the Duchess Anna Maria, daughter
of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, and grand-daughter of Charles I, and
of her issue, were superior to those of the Electress Sophia and the
House of Hanover; and, in the twofold event of another son being born to
Anna Maria and Victor Amadeus II, and of the boy being brought over to
England and there educated as a Protestant, he might acquire a
Parliamentary title. William III was supposed to look favourably upon
this scheme; and, though, already in the summer of 1695, there were
rumours of Savoy having entered into secret negotiations with France,
Victor Amadeus was one of the Princes who, about this time, ratified the
renewal of the Grand Alliance. But, in the following year, after France
had paid the price of the restoration of Pignerol, the Duke of Savoy
went over to her side (thus executing a movement of which he carried out
the exact converse in 1703, early in the great War), and thereby closed
any prospect of his House inheriting the English throne.
Meanwhile, King William’s widowed state occupied the thoughts of the
dynasty of whose close connexion with the House of Hanover we have just
been treating. Immediately after the campaign of 1695 and the renewal of
the Grand Alliance, the Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg had begun
to sound King William, through the agency of his favourite, Keppel (soon
afterwards created Earl of Albemarle), as to the royal intentions on the
subject of a remarriage, with a view to directing the King’s attention
to the Electoral Princess Louisa Dorothea, then fifteen years of age. In
the following year, 1696, William had found himself the object of an
unprecedented popularity in England, owing to the discovery of the
Assassination Plot, at the time when James II was known to be preparing
an invasion of these shores. The Jacobite interest, which was to have
benefited by the most gracious proclamation ever drafted by the exiled
King, experienced one of the most disheartening of its many rebuffs;
and, instead of reconquering his kingdoms, James II informed the Abbot
of La Trappe, that ‘all these attempts which seemed to be lost labour in
the eyes of the world, were great advantages as he managed them in order
to that great end which had now become his sole concern.’ Still, the
‘Prince of Orange’s’ weak condition of health prevented King James from
regarding the chances of his restoration as at an end; and, in the event
of his rival’s death, he was resolved to ‘return into England, though
three men had not followed him.’[121] In May, 1696, King William resumed
the command of the army in the Low Countries, but no military operations
of importance took place; and, in the course of the summer, the Elector
Frederick III, with his family and court, took up their residence at
Cleves, whither the Duke of Celle likewise found his way, and whence in
August the Electress Sophia Charlotte, with her mother the Electress
Sophia, paid an _incognito_ visit to the Loo in the King’s absence. He
was then invited to Cleves; but he preferred in the first instance to
send two agents—an Englishman (Southwell) and a Dutchman (General
Hompesch)—to report to him on the personality of the Princess Louisa
Dorothea. Their reports were unfavourable, and, the King’s visit having
been deferred on the plea of difficulties of ceremonial,[122] no less a
personage than Portland was sent by him to Cleves to make another
report. Though this again proved deterrent, William resolved to trust to
his own eyes, and, in September, paid a visit to Cleves, of which a full
account remains in a letter from Stepney, then in the royal suite, to
Sir William Trumbull. The Princess stood, during four hours, as a
spectatress of the royal game at _l’hombre_, while the favourite,
Keppel, was accommodated with a seat. But the visit led to no result;
and, when it became known that the two Electresses had abandoned their
proposed tour through Holland, it was understood that the marriage
project was for the present at an end.
-----
Footnote 121:
This was the time when James II refused Louis XIV’s offer of aid
towards securing for him the Polish throne, then vacant by the death
of John Sobiesky; on which occasion Sophia wrote to the Duchess of
Orleans that King James might pass for a saint, since we are told to
become as little children, or we shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven.
Footnote 122:
These were of a kind of which the Electress Sophia had, as we have
seen, had some experience. According to English usage, the King was
alone entitled to an arm-chair (_fauteuil_); but, according to the
German rule, the Electors were privileged to occupy an arm-chair even
in the presence of the Emperor. Hence the King and the Elector could
not _sit_ in one another’s company; and, when the King actually came
to Cleves, the Elector had to absent himself from the royal _partie_.
-----
Whether or not because of his own unwillingness to contract a second
marriage, as well as on account of the secession of the House of Savoy
from the Grand Alliance, the attention of William III, in the latter
part of 1696, turned more decisively than before to the Electress Sophia
and the House of Hanover. He interested himself directly in the still
unsettled question of the admission of the Elector of Hanover into the
Electoral College. About the same time (October), when George William of
Celle had returned home from a long visit to the Loo, whither he had
proceeded from Cleves, Leibniz (who, it must be remembered, was in the
service of the entire House of Brunswick-Lüneburg) put forth one of
those feelers by which he is henceforth found from time to time
endeavouring to test the sentiments of the Electress Sophia on the
Succession question. Though on this occasion he approaches the subject
most cautiously, it may be looked upon as significant that he prophesies
for Sophia’s grandson a renewal of the historic achievement of William
III. Nothing, however, could be more explicit than her reply refusing to
act on his insinuation. Two months later, she wrote to her niece, the
Raugravine Louisa, then on a visit to London, where she had met with
scant courtesy on the part of the Princess Anne, that everything
‘Palatine’ seemed to have quite fallen into oblivion in England, nor did
anybody there remember her (the Electress’) existence, inasmuch as there
was no apparent intention of allowing the Crown to descend to her
family.
During the period immediately ensuing, William III was necessarily
occupied by the task of securing his own seat upon the English throne,
rather than by that of determining its ulterior devolution. The success
of the peace negotiations which opened at Ryswyk, in June, 1697, was
rendered more than doubtful by the avoidance of any direct communication
between the representatives of the King of France and of the King of
England, whom Louis had as yet refused to recognise; and William III had
accordingly taken the startling step of entering into a secret
negotiation with France. Among the extraordinary rumours that hereupon
spread as to the compromise contemplated by the two sovereigns, was one,
wholly false, which contrived to make its way into ‘history.’ William,
it was said, intended to purchase peace by promising to secure the
Succession to the English Crown to the son and heir of James II. In the
instrument of the peace, William was not actually recognised as King of
England, Scotland, and Ireland by Louis XIV; but he was mentioned as
such in the preamble, and secured in his possession of these kingdoms by
a formula binding Louis XIV to refuse any direct or indirect assistance
to William’s enemies. Indeed, this indirect recognition, and the check
which it implied upon the original designs of Louis, constituted
England’s chief gain by the peace. William’s motives for seeking, in the
period next ensuing, to remain on good terms with Louis XIV, cannot be
discussed here; but they help to account for a certain slackness on
William’s part in his dealings with the Succession question, at a time
when it was becoming of the highest importance for the future of his
kingdoms.
In the autumn of 1698, however, shortly after the secret conclusion of
the First Partition Treaty between Louis XIV and William III, the latter
took up this question of a Succession which concerned him more nearly
than that to the Spanish monarchy. He was in the habit of annually
welcoming to the Loo, at this season, his old friend and
fellow-sportsman, Duke George William of Celle; but on the present
occasion they met in the hunting-castle of the Göbrde,[123] near
Lüneburg. The Elector George Lewis also put in an appearance there, as
did his son, the Electoral Prince George Augustus, and his daughter,
Sophia Dorothea the younger, then eleven years of age. Although Count
Tallard, the French ambassador at the Court of St. James, was thoroughly
puzzled as to the purpose of the King’s journey, it could be no secret
to the members of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In September, the
Princess Anne, who stood next in the Succession so long as King William
remained childless, had given birth to another still-born infant; and
her only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester, was known to be in
weak bodily health. Nor could any reliance be placed upon Princess Anne
herself, who was in constant communication with St. Germains, and who,
had her father but given his assent to her mounting the throne in due
course, would have been glad enough afterwards to play it into the hands
of her half-brother. King William must, therefore, manifestly have
visited the Brunswick-Lüneburg territories with at least a
predisposition towards placing the House of Hanover in a more
satisfactory position, in regard to the Succession, than it held at
present; but he had no reason for supposing that the members of that
House were themselves eager to meet him half-way. Strangely enough, the
personage who now came forward to urge upon him a decisive course, was
the Duchess Eleonora of Celle—perhaps with a view to thus recovering
some of the influence lost to her through her daughter’s catastrophe,
perhaps in the hope of mitigating the effects of that catastrophe for
the unhappy Sophia Dorothea herself, or simply from an inborn love of
diplomatic action and a general desire to make things pleasant. Leibniz
afterwards assumed to himself the credit of having given her the first
hint of speaking to the King. This she did before he quitted the Göhrde,
representing herself as obeying an inspiration from Hanover, and begging
her royal guest—now that the House of Savoy was out of the question—to
promote the placing of the Electress Sophia and her descendants in the
Succession. When the King pointed out that the Duke of Gloucester,
though in delicate health, might imitate him by growing up into manhood,
Eleonora further suggested that her grand-daughter, Sophia Dorothea the
younger, would be a suitable match for the Duke. George William of
course agreed _ex post facto_ to the step taken by his wife, but
stipulated that it should be mentioned to his nephew, the Elector, who
gave vent to his annoyance that the King should be led to suppose him to
have sanctioned this manœuvre. But, when the King met the Electress
Sophia at Celle, he referred to the question of establishing her and her
descendants’ claim, and, as Leibniz expresses it, made considerable
advances in this direction. Sophia, we may be sure, received these
advances discreetly; but that she should have rejected them, or have met
them with coldness, is a conjecture unwarranted by her conduct either
before or after. Neither can she be shown to have viewed with
displeasure the activity, restless though it undoubtedly was, of
Leibniz, who about this time corresponded with London as frequently as
possible and encouraged the efforts of a Hanoverian agent there. Had
Sophia taken up an attitude of indifference, King William would hardly,
in June, 1699, have informed her in writing that he had used his best
endeavours to bring the business to a conclusion satisfactory to her,
and that he felt assured of effecting his purpose within a very short
space of time. It is, moreover, significant that the two branches of the
House of Brunswick-Lüneburg were acting in perfect harmony with one
another; in May, Gargan, the Electress’ secretary, declares it
impossible to listen without emotion to the conversations between the
two illustrious ladies (Sophia and Eleonora), whom he describes as
related to one another not less closely by blood than by friendship.
-----
Footnote 123:
This favourite seat of both George I and George II was in September,
1813—shortly before Leipzig—the scene of a Hanoverian success against
a French division.
-----
The reason why the Celle interview led to no immediate results in
England lay, not in Sophia, but in the discordant relations between King
William and his Parliament, caused mainly by his policy with regard to
the Spanish Succession, into which of course the Electress and the House
of Hanover had not been initiated. So late as July, 1700, she wonders
what interest England and the United Provinces could have in seeking to
cement the power of France. The unfriendliness of Parliament to the King
had been heightened when, about a month earlier, the substance of the
Second Partition Treaty had become known in this country; and, as
matters now stood, there was little or no chance of the House of Commons
in particular agreeing to any proposals concerning the Succession that
should emanate from the King. In the midst of this trouble, less doubt
than ever remained as to the decrease of his physical strength, at no
time anything but precarious; so that, after Anne, the only hope for the
Succession depended on the feeble vitality of the young Duke of
Gloucester. Suddenly, on July 30th, 1700, the frail thread of his life
was snapped, and the prospect had vanished of a successor who would have
been generally acceptable, and, in all probability, have proved both an
intelligent and a kindly ruler. In announcing the news to the Electress
Sophia from Berlin, her vigilant monitor, Leibniz, promptly pointed out
that it would now more than ever be time to think of the English
Succession. But it so chanced that already, three days previously, she
had written to him on the same subject from Hanover, exhibiting her
usual perfect self-control. Though she took very coolly the news of the
young Duke’s ‘decampment’—as she called his death, perhaps in cynical
allusion to his innocent military tastes,—she by no means showed herself
blind to the importance of the event. Were she younger, she told
Leibniz, when informing him that, in October, 1700, the Duke of Celle
was to visit King William at the Loo, she might fairly have looked
forward to a Crown; as it was, had she the choice, she would rather see
her years increase than her grandeur. But she well knew that persons in
her station rarely have a choice, if they are resolved not to fall short
of their sense of duty. She could hardly be aware of the fresh intrigues
that were being carried on by the Princess Anne, or of the hopes, still
entertained by certain of William’s most loyal English subjects, that he
would marry again, perhaps this time choosing a Danish princess. But she
could not have remained unaware that the thoughts of a wider circle of
Englishmen were taking the direction of Hanover. Partly, however, under
the influence of the regrets caused by the recent death of the young
Duke of Gloucester, partly because of the wish to secure an heir to the
throne young enough to be Anglicised and, more especially,
_Anglicanised_ before his advent to it, politicians, and Tory
politicians in particular, were as yet intent rather upon the ultimate
succession of the Electoral Prince than upon that of his father, the
Elector, or that of his grandmother, the Dowager Electress.
At the meeting of King William with the Duke of Celle at the Loo, it was
arranged that he should receive there the Electress Sophia and the
Electress of Brandenburg, on the occasion of the visit to the baths of
Aix-la-Chapelle on which the latter had persuaded her mother to
accompany her. Burnet insists that now ‘the eyes of all the Protestants
of the nation turned towards the Electress of Brunswick’; but the
arrival in Holland, as his mother’s and grandmother’s visit drew to a
close, of the young Electoral Prince of Brandenburg (afterwards King
Frederick William I of Prussia) seems to have vividly suggested to
William III the notion of placing the heir of the Hohenzollerns in the
position left vacant by the Duke of Gloucester. This passing fancy may
be regarded as the sequel of a not less transitory ambition which
appears to have flitted through the mind of the Elector Frederick III,
of taking advantage of the Princess Anne’s unpopularity to endeavour
himself to find his way to the English throne. The idea of including the
Electoral Prince of Brandenburg in the Succession could not of course be
welcome to the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg; and we accordingly find
Bothmer, who was in the Celle service as envoy at Paris and was soon to
play an important part in the progress of the Succession question,
complaining to Ilten (August 31st, 1700) that the Berlin Ministry were
preparing for their young Prince the plurality of King of Prussia,
Stadholder, and King of England. Count Platen afterwards stated that he
had heard it suggested that the Calvinism of Berlin might suit King
William better than the Lutheranism of Hanover. Nor is it at all
unlikely that he recognised in the Electoral Prince the germ of
administrative powers to which full justice has only very tardily been
done.[124] But, however this may have been—and perhaps something might
be said as to the religious influence noticeable in this period of
Hanoverian history—there is no proof that William III seriously thought
of adopting the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, or of introducing him
in any other way into the English Succession. Moreover, even had this
been on his part more than a passing wish, he of course possessed no
right of nomination. No doubt, he would more speedily have dismissed the
fancy, had he believed the House of Hanover to be very eagerly intent
upon the prospect now opening before it. But, at all events it is
neither proved nor probable, that at the Loo the Electress Sophia once
more rejected the overtures of her host on the subject of the
Succession. The question possesses so much significance, if we are
desirous of forming a judgment as to the whole tenor of her conduct in
this matter, that it must needs be dwelt upon at some length. What
actually passed between her and the King on the occasion is unknown; and
her behaviour can only be conjectured from the attitude which she
maintained during a journey undertaken by her, it must be remembered, in
the first instance at all events, in her daughter’s interest rather than
in her own.
-----
Footnote 124:
It may be noted that Borkowski, _Königin Charlotte als Mutter und
Erzieherin_ (in _Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch_ for 1903), defends the Queen
against the charge of having insufficiently cared for the education of
the heir to the throne, and cites in proof letters addressed by her to
Alexander von Dohna, whom she selected and maintained against all
opposition as the supervisor of her son’s education.
-----
At Aix-la-Chapelle Sophia had received a remarkable letter from Stepney,
written from London about the middle of September, in which he reviewed
the entire situation. Remembering that in her veins ran the blood of the
Stewarts, and that her personal reminiscences mounted back to the days
of Oliver Cromwell, he excused himself from offering a decided opinion
of his own as to the genuineness of ‘_le Fils_,’ but pointed out that
there was no chance of his ever abandoning the religion of Rome, or
escaping from the political leading-strings of France. On the other
hand, he assured the Electress that the English were not Republicans at
heart, and that among them there was nobody capable of playing Oliver’s
part over again as ‘Captain-General.’ In response to his modest appeal
for a reply (by means of which he no doubt hoped to be able to clear up
the situation at head-quarters), Sophia wrote the letter, undated, in
which, from Lord Hardwicke downwards, so many critics have found
indications of her Jacobite tendencies. In this letter she declares
that, were she thirty years younger, she would have sufficient
confidence in her descent and in the religion professed by her, to
believe in her being thought of in England. After her death, which in
the natural course of things would precede the deaths of the King and
his appointed successor, her sons would be regarded as strangers.
Moreover, the eldest of them was far more accustomed to sovereign
authority than was the poor Prince of Wales, who was so young and would
be so glad to recover what his father had thrown away that they would be
able to do with him what they liked. After referring to her hope of
shortly seeing the King in Holland, whither she had been induced by her
daughter to accompany her, she added that she was of course neither so
philosophical nor so foolish as to dislike hearing a Crown talked of, or
as to refuse full consideration to her correspondent’s extremely
sensible and obliging remarks on the subject, though the number of
factions apparently existing in England made it difficult to feel sure
about anything.
Such is the substance of what is sometimes cited as the ‘Jacobite
letter’ of the Electress Sophia. Clearly, it is nothing of the kind; but
at most shows that, while primarily desirous of deferring all discussion
till she should meet the King, she desired to apprise him, through a
safe channel, that she was alive to the _cons_ as well as the _pros_—the
uncertainties as well as the opportunities—of the situation. Above all,
she wished to show herself aware of the possibility of that situation
being fundamentally changed by the conversion to Protestantism of the
‘Prince of Wales,’ as—assuredly without any _arrière pensée_—she
naturally called the kinsman whose claim to this title she had never
professed to doubt. Nor is any ‘Jacobitism’ on her aunt’s part proved by
the Duchess of Orleans’ nearly contemporary graphic account of King
James II’s tender sentiments towards the Electress, who, as he
stammered, ‘_m’a tou-toujours aimé_.’
The visit to the Loo was succeeded by a brief meeting between the King
and the two Electresses at the Hague, just before his departure for
England. It was on this occasion that Sophia Charlotte was accompanied
by her son Frederick William, for whom the King manifested a sudden
personal fancy. Whether under its influence, or because he had resolved
to respond to Sophia’s guarded attitude by maintaining a reserve of his
own, or, as is most probable, because English opinion was in his
judgment, as well as in hers, still unripe for action—certain passages
in the Electress’ correspondence with the Raugravine Louisa, a few
months later in date, show that William III had not arrived at any
immediate decision as to naming the Electress and her descendants in the
Succession, though he had held out to her the prospect of such a result
being brought about. This implies that she had by no means refused to
entertain such a proposal. In a word, the attitude of cautious
expectancy maintained by her and her House, was confirmed by her brief
personal intercourse with the actual occupant of the English throne.
Before the end of this year, 1700, all hesitation vanished from the
policy of William III. His hopes of securing the peace of Europe by an
international agreement based on the Second Partition Treaty were
finally extinguished, when the death of Charles II of Spain, on November
1st, was followed by the acceptance of his will, bequeathing the whole
of the Spanish monarchy to the Duke of Anjou, by that Prince’s
grandfather, Louis XIV. In February, 1701, French troops surprised the
Dutch garrisons in the Barrier fortresses; and the States General
recognised King Philip of Spain. The question whether England would
follow suit, or declare war, would have to be decided by the new
Parliament, summoned for February, 1701, ‘in respect of matters of the
highest importance’; which expression, as de Beyrie, the Hanoverian
resident in London, informed the Electress, unmistakably applied to the
choice of the Duke of Anjou, and to the English Succession. Stepney, or
some other correspondent, had previously apprised her of the course
which events might be expected to take in Parliament with regard to the
Succession. The Whigs would press for a further limitation in the
Protestant line, and, if necessary, for the exclusion of any child or
pretended child of James II except the Princess Anne. An effort
(proceeding from the Marlborough interest) in favour of the Princess
Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark, would serve to lead Parliament
to the direct Protestant line, beginning with the Electress Sophia, and
going on to the Elector and the Electoral Prince. Early in the same
month (November) the Electress, who was accompanied by Leibniz,
conferred with her brother-in-law at Celle. The Elector George Lewis was
not present; and the confidential memorandum on the rights of the House
of Brunswick-Lüneburg in respect of the English Succession drawn up
immediately afterwards by Leibniz for the use of Cresset, then at Celle,
contained a significant passage. The Succession, it was observed, could
much more easily be secured by the House, while King William, Duke
George William, and the Electress Sophia were still ‘_pleins de vie_.’
Soon afterwards, Sophia herself drafted a letter, which was approved by
the Duke of Celle, asking the King’s advice as to the course of action
to be pursued; and Leibniz, who thought this insufficient, was permitted
to compose a supplementary letter to Stepney, for the information of
Baron Schütz, who represented the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg at the
Court of St. James.[125] In this it was suggested that, while the
Electress wished not to appear at present to be taking any active steps,
a further limitation of the Act of Settlement might advantageously be
promoted in England by means of private overtures and of pamphlets not
purporting to emanate from Hanover. The Electress once more showed a
judgment superior to that of Leibniz, who, in his zeal, offered, if
called upon, to proceed to London in person, but whom, in May, 1701,
Stepney informed that, in his opinion, the English nation was so well
disposed towards the Hanoverian Succession that neither pamphlets nor
men of talent were needed to push it.
-----
Footnote 125:
She told Schütz, about this time, that she was very sensible of the
kindness shown her by the English people, but very sorry that she was
so old that she would never be of any use to them, and much annoyed
that her son had not the same inclinations on this head as she had
herself, and made no secret of his sentiments.
-----
In the meantime, Parliament, which sat from February to June, had nearly
concluded its session. The Speech from the Throne had duly recommended
the further limitation of the Succession in the Protestant line; and a
proposal for carrying this recommendation into effect was, without loss
of time, brought forward by the Whigs in the House of Commons (March
3rd). But, though the Tory majority in the House was not as a whole
unfriendly to the Hanoverian claims, the opinion prevailed that it would
be well to postpone the naming of any further successor, until certain
additional securities had been obtained for the rights and liberties of
the subjects of the Crown. It was generally understood that the
Electress Sophia should be named; but some desired to name the Elector
and the Electoral Prince likewise, in the expectation that the Electress
Dowager and the Elector would waive their claims. On the other hand, it
was felt that such an arrangement would involve a difference between the
English and the Scottish limitation, which latter had, already in 1689,
been made to include Sophia’s name; and this could not have been easily
set right until the anti-English feeling excited in Scotland by the
Darien Settlement affair should have had time to subside.
Thus, after the eight articles had been agreed upon which were to take
effect from the beginning of the new limitation to the House of Hanover,
and some of which were, as a matter of fact, dictated by jealousy of the
rule of a foreign line, the name of the Electress Sophia was inserted
without opposition; and by the _Act for the further Limitation of the
Crown, and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the
Subjects_—called in short the _Act of Settlement_—the Crown of England
was, in default of issue of the Princess Anne or King William III,
settled upon the Electress and her posterity, being Protestants. A
protest, inspired by the Duke of Berwick acting under instructions from
Louis XIV was, indeed, raised by the Duchess Anna Maria of Savoy, and
communicated to both Houses of Parliament by the envoy of Duke Victor
Amadeus II; but no notice was taken of it.[126] On June 12th, 1701, the
Act of Settlement received the royal assent, and, in his Speech from the
Throne, King William, after thanking the two Houses for further securing
the Protestant Succession, passed on to the subject of the Grand
Alliance. The answer of the House of Commons was an Address promising to
support the King in sustaining the alliances deemed necessary by him for
upholding the liberty of Europe and the welfare of England, and for
reducing the exorbitant power of France.
The Act of Settlement, which secured the Hanoverian Succession,
accordingly at the same time imposed certain fresh restrictions of the
prerogative, which had an important bearing upon the nature of the royal
authority exercised by Sophia’s posterity. Furthermore, the Act, in
which both the great English political parties concurred, secured the
Hanoverian Succession at a time when the critical struggle was about to
open between France and the renewed Grand Alliance; and thus, at the
very moment when the House of Hanover acquired a Parliamentary title to
the expectancy of the English throne, it was, again with the assent of
both parties, identified with the adversaries of France in the great
European conflict. Nor is it without significance that at this very time
a Pope (Clement XI) had been seated in St. Peter’s Chair, who, in a far
greater measure than his predecessor—for Innocent XII had on the whole
disappointed the hopes of Louis XIV—served the interests of France. The
letter addressed by Clement XI on his election in November, 1700, to
James II, had, in its ‘beautiful terms of paternal tenderness,’ drawn
tears ‘more from the heart than from the eyes’ of the exiled King.
Throughout these transactions, the conduct of the Electress Sophia had
been uniformly judicious—observing a wise mean between the adoption, as
a matter of course, of the advice readily given to her by Leibniz, and
an absolute impassiveness like that maintained by her eldest son. It
seems unwarranted to regard her as having energetically defended her
rights up to the time when policy and the condition of affairs in
England imposed upon her a certain reserve, and having at the last
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing both King and Parliament sue for her
acceptance of their offer. On the other hand, her conduct is
misunderstood when she is supposed to have resisted so long as possible
the unwelcome necessity of securing the inheritance of a throne to which
she believed her kinsman, the Prince of Wales, to have had a just claim.
She had frankly accepted the situation, and done her best to promote a
solution in the interests of her dynasty, without going further than
would have been either seemly or judicious. Her letter written on June
22nd, 1701, to Burnet (who describes himself as in more or less
continuous correspondence with her from the death of the Duke of
Gloucester onwards) exactly expresses her point of view. Though sensible
of his affection to her in the matter of the Succession, which excluded
all Catholic heirs, ‘who had always caused so many disorders in
England,’ she felt herself ‘unfortunately too old ever to be useful to
the nation.’ Yet she wished that ‘those who were to come after her might
render themselves worthy of the honour awaiting them.’
On August 14th, 1701, the Earl of Macclesfield arrived in Hanover, in
order formally to notify to the Electress Sophia the passing of the Act
of Settlement, of which, kneeling before her, he presented her with a
splendidly illuminated copy, still preserved in the Hanover Archives.
Macclesfield appears to have been chosen for the office at his own
request, as the son of a cavalier closely associated with Prince Rupert
and a visitor at the Hague in Queen Elizabeth’s days, and therefore
likely to be _persona gratissima_ to the Electress[127]—though his own
antecedents rather associated him with the Mohocks. He was accompanied
by three other Whig Lords, Say and Sele, Mohun (Macclesfield’s intimate,
who is stated to have taken care to be on his best behaviour) and
Tunbridge. In their suite was the ingenious Toland, with his enquiring
eyes wide open, and in his pocket, according to Luttrell, a ‘treatise
lately wrote in relation to the Succession, intituled _Anglia Libera_,
or The Limitation and Succession of the Crown explained and asserted,’
for presentation to the Electress. With them were also ‘Mr. King the
herald,’ who brought the Garter for the Elector, and Dr. Sandys, the
ambassador’s chaplain, who read the common prayers of the Church of
England before the Electress in her ante-chamber. ‘She made the
Responses, and performed the Ceremonys as punctually as if she had been
us’d to it all her life.’ These and other details may be read in
Toland’s _Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover_, which he
published after his return. He was particularly anxious to recount the
honours which he had received at Hanover and Herrenhausen, including
that of conversing with the Electress, who, on one occasion, had told
him that ‘she was afraid the Nation had already repented their Choice of
an old Woman, but that she hop’d none of her Posterity wou’d give them
any Reason to grow weary of their Dominion’—much the same words as those
which she had used to Burnet.
-----
Footnote 126:
‘I do not see,’ writes Sophia in April, 1701, ‘how he can claim the
English Crown before King James and his two sons, being himself as
much a papist as they are; but perhaps he is offering to have his son
educated in the Anglican religion.’
Footnote 127:
She writes that Macclesfield’s father had been most friendly to her as
well as to Prince Rupert—‘_car il voulait me donner au roi
Charles_.’—Macclesfield died shortly after his journey to Hanover.
-----
We need not dwell upon the solemnities at Hanover and Celle, whither the
special embassy proceeded in due course, nor upon the lavish munificence
bestowed upon the ambassador,[128] nor upon the medals distributed in
honour of the event, among which none was more remarkable than that
which exhibited the portrait of the English Matilda, the consort of
Henry the Lion, and, on the reverse, that of the Electress Sophia,
‘_Angliae princeps ad successionem nominata_.’ But it may be worth our
while in our next chapter to return to Toland, and to his account of the
Court of Hanover, as giving an interesting, though no doubt rather
rose-coloured, picture of the Electress and her surroundings, at a point
of time which may be described as the climax of her fortunes.
-----
Footnote 128:
The Electress bestowed on him a golden ewer and her portrait in a
jewelled frame—the total expense amounting to 20,000 dollars—rather
more than two-thirds of the sum spent during twoscore years on the
maintenance of the palace buildings at Hanover. No wonder that this
profuse expenditure was looked upon without much satisfaction in the
long years of waiting that ensued.
-----
V
THE HEIRESS OF GREAT BRITAIN
(HERRENHAUSEN, 1701-1714)
Great Britain was never to see the face of its heiress, and the
widowhood of the Electress Sophia was almost entirely spent in the
tranquillity of Herrenhausen. More than any other place associated with
her name, this palace and its still delightful gardens, in the midst of
which her statue now stands, recall her regal personality. The building
of the palace that was so long her home, and the laying-out of the
gardens where Leibniz was so frequent a companion of her long daily
walks, were begun by Duke John Frederick as early as the year 1665, when
the old hunting-box of Lauenstädt was transferred hither. Herrenhausen
Palace seems to have been reconstructed, under the superintendence of
Sartorio, in imitation of the new palace at Osnabrück, of which, as has
been seen, the younger brother, Ernest Augustus, had more or less
borrowed the design from the Luxembourg at Paris. Ernest Augustus and
Sophia elaborated John Frederick’s beginnings, considerably enlarging
the gardens, which were designed by the elder Charbonnier, and carried
out by him and his son, in 1697, though it was not till 1705 that the
Elector George Lewis caused them to be completed in their present form,
which suggests Dutch influences. Thus a pleasing mixture of styles and
associations is presented by the solid clipped hedges, some of which in
the garden theatre serve as side-scenes and conceal dressing-rooms
(these are attributed specially to Quirini), by the prim summer-houses
and the wilderness, by the grottoes and the cascades with their
stalactites and shells, and by the profusion of statuary in gilt lead
among the hedges and in cool marble by the artificial water. It was in
these gardens that, during her married life, when she was already
accustomed to solitude, Sophia consoled herself with the company of the
nightingales, and here that, in 1700, she is found amusing herself with
her ducks and swans, and with the new lodgings erected by her for their
convenience. She had a genuine fondness for innocent open-air delights;
at Lützenburg she speaks of her promenades with her daughter as
affording her the greatest delight, while her sons disported themselves
at the opera and at comedies played by ‘noble’ comedians; and on the
gravelled paths of her Herrenhausen gardens she indulged her love of
walking almost literally to the moment of her death. No fine day was
allowed to pass without an hour or two—or even more—of her favourite
pastime; and her persistency tired out all her attendants, except, as
Toland elegantly puts it, when they had the honour of enjoying her
conversation.[129]
-----
Footnote 129:
Sophia’s love of walking seems to have been inherited by her eldest
son. Marshal Schulenburg, when on a visit to his sister, the Duchess
of Kendal, at Kensington, in 1727, describes his life there as
fatiguing, inasmuch as he had to promenade with the King in the
gardens every evening for three or four hours.
-----
Among the buildings at Herrenhausen, where Sophia spent the greater part
of her life from 1698 to 1714, the Orangery, one of the largest of its
kind in Europe, ought specially to attract the visitor, since a portion
of it was the residence, modest in dimensions, but decorated in a florid
Italian style, of the Electress Dowager. It had been erected in 1692;
its great hall was painted by Tommaso Giusti and stuccoed by Dossa
Grana. The Electress’ rooms are small and narrow, but overloaded with
decorations, and not in the most perfect taste, with the exception of
the fine portal into the little garden.[130] There seems no reason for
crediting her with an artistic taste transcending that of most of her
contemporaries, or sufficiently formed to maintain the Dutch preferences
of her younger days against the more debased French and Italian, but
more especially Italian, modes favoured by her husband and his
brother.[131] Clever with her hands as in every other way, she
understood the use of the brush[132] as well as of the embroidery
needle;[133] but neither artistic industry nor art, although as a
descendant of the Stewarts she had doubtless inherited some love of
both, was a sphere in which she sought to shine. Her husband
consistently treated art as a mere handmaid to luxurious
self-indulgence; thus, while he devoted nearly 25,000 dollars to the
furnishing and adornment of his new opera-house, he wasted an even
larger sum in the expenditure of a single carnival season.
-----
Footnote 130:
See A. Haupt, _u.s._
Footnote 131:
She expresses extreme delight with the changes effected by Count
Rochus Quirini zu Lynar, who directed the building operations of the
Hanoverian Court, in the hunting-box of the Göhrde.
Footnote 132:
A copy of a portrait of her nephew, Raugrave Maurice, is attributed to
her.
Footnote 133:
The coverings of the chairs in the presence-chamber at Hanover, as
well as those of the altar in the palace chapel there, were
embroidered by her hands. She also embroidered a chair-cover for
Baroness Kielmannsegg—an attention bearing out the statement as to the
relations between that lady and the Electoral family given above. King
Frederick I of Prussia mentions his mother-in-law’s beautiful cabinet
of china at Herrenhausen.
-----
Sophia had never shown much sympathy with what may be called the
Venetian tastes of her husband; and, after her youth had ebbed away, had
more and more come to live an intellectual life of her own. Perhaps,
before recalling the political incidents of her last thirteen years in
connexion with the question which invested them with an European
significance, we may pause for a moment to summarise our impressions as
to the most important features of her mind and character, as they
present themselves to us more especially in these final years. The
tragic part of her life was now over; but, as has been well said by the
finest of the modern critics of her career, Professor Kuno Fischer, she
had herself never played the part of a tragedy queen. Even a panegyric
like that pronounced upon her by the old Hanoverian historian
Spittler—by no means an undiscerning flatterer—seems too highly strung.
He speaks of the ‘_Teutschgründliche überfürstliche Aufklärung_’—as who
should say, the enlightenment above the ordinary enlightenment of
princes, and one in its depth and thoroughness possible only to the
Germanic mind—that rendered her deserving of the friendship of Leibniz.
Beyond a doubt, Sophia was distinguished by an intellectual curiosity
that was still uncommon, though much less so than is often supposed,
among the women of her age. This curiosity her linguistic attainments
(she was, as has been seen, from her youth up mistress of half a dozen
languages) had long enabled her freely to satisfy. To the excellent
system of education under which she had been trained she owed her
acquaintance with various elements of theology, philosophy, and history.
This knowledge she had improved in the course of a long life, abounding
in (often involuntary) intervals of leisure, and bringing with it not a
few special opportunities of learned intercourse. She had spent some
years at Heidelberg, once more a fountainhead of learning; and, already
at Osnabrück, she had been ambitious of converting that modest episcopal
city into a centre of philosophical speculation, holding colloquies
there with Francis Mercurius von Helmont, the interesting son of the
great physicist.[134] At a later date she read at least one of Spinoza’s
works, towards which she seems to have been drawn by ideas of moral
philosophy in which some resemblance to his has been thought
traceable.[135] Yet it may be doubted whether either here or afterwards
at Hanover and Herrenhausen she was ever a profound student, or even so
much as an ardent reader of books. She was fond of reading memoirs—such
as those of Pierre Chanut, French ambassador at the Court of Christian
of Sweden, or the celebrated autobiography of Marshal de Bassompierre.
She had, also, a _penchant_ for novels, preferring to the fashionable
long-winded romances of her youth works enlivened by a humour congenial
to her own. She asked Leibniz to draw up for her a list of all the
novels she had read; for she had come to an end with _Don Quixote_ and
_Don Guzman d’Alfarache_, of which she preferred the former. Of German
romances, it is almost equally to her credit that she mentions
_Simplicissimus_, while avoiding the stagnant fashionable bombast of her
age.[136] A still more striking testimony to her critical insight may be
found in the remark, which the admiring Duchess of Orleans states to
have been confirmed by the Elector Palatine Charles Lewis, that nobody
in the world better possessed Michel de Montaigne better than her aunt
Sophia. Nor was she afraid of even more potent draughts; for, during her
return journey from Italy, the _Gargantua_ was read to her by Ezechiel
Spanheim, divine and diplomatist. On the other hand, she does not appear
to have greatly cared for historical reading on its own account;
according to Leibniz, the reason why she took pleasure in Clarendon was
‘because she was acquainted with many persons mentioned by him.’ Yet she
had no personal acquaintance with the Emperor Justinian, whom, as known
to her from the Byzantine historian Procopius, she compares with Louis
XIV. She certainly had a liking for moral theology and philosophy, which
were, in general, more in the way of the ladies of the period than the
historical sciences. She had read Boëtius, and was invited by Leibniz to
read the Jesuit Friedrich von Spee, a leader in the crusade against that
long-lived form of bigotry—the persecution of ‘witchcraft.’ Dogmatic
theology had no charms for Sophia; and even the faithful Bishop Burnet’s
book on a theme which ought to have interested her, namely, the
Thirty-nine Articles, she put aside as ‘_bon à feuilleter, mais non pas
à lire_,’ flippantly adding that the good binding of her copy would make
it an ornament to her library. Philosophy, like religion, seems to have
interested her primarily on the ethical side; the stoical maxims of
Seneca and Epictetus had impressed her mind before it had opened itself
to more comprehensive problems under the influence of Spinoza, whom, as
we know, her favourite brother had sought to domesticate at Heidelberg,
and afterwards, and, above all, under the influence of Leibniz. She can
at no time have been very well seen in metaphysics, the study of which
is held to contribute so largely to the formation of ideas on religion;
she shared her eldest son’s somewhat crude notions on the origin of
ideas, and would not—or could not—understand Leibniz’s argument about
monads. Possibly, like many clever people of both sexes, she was rather
too fond of startling her interlocutors; and the excellent Molanus
respectfully shakes his reverend head at ‘_Serenissima nostra, quæ a
paradoxis sibi temperare nunquam potest_.’ On the other hand, the
diplomatist Thomas von Grote, another of her intimates, moved perhaps by
a not unnatural jealousy, opined that the learned companions of her
Herrenhausen walks would in the end take her a little out of her depth,
though he had no fear that for her the consequences would be what they
had been for Queen Christina of Sweden. As for the mathematical and
physical sciences, she took that casual interest in them which, in the
case of great personages, and of great ladies in particular, alternately
makes the delight and the despair of _savants_; Leibniz distinctly
states that works dealing in detail with such subjects are not among
those which the Electress was fond of reading. When, in the last year of
her life, the Czar Peter came to Hanover and talked mathematics to her,
‘she held her tongue.’
-----
Footnote 134:
He seems to have frequented her society up to a late date. In 1696 the
Duchess of Orleans expresses her pleasure that her aunt should have
his philosophy to amuse her—though, for her part, she ‘does not see
how one can understand anything of which one knows nothing.’ The
younger Helmont’s doctrine of metempsychosis was not in the long run
satisfactory to Sophia, who had once said that it might account for
her unlucky son Maximilian’s resemblance to the ‘seven old Dukes of
Brunswick,’ who called all their servants ‘thou’ and occupied
themselves with making nets and drinking warm beer.
Footnote 135:
See H. Forst, _u.s._, p. 378.
Footnote 136:
Of course, she had to read the _Mesopotamian Shepherdess_ of the
interminable Duke Anthony Ulric; but she compendiously set it down as
a burlesque on the Bible.
-----
And yet, though neither a profound philosopher nor a phenomenally
accomplished blue-stocking, Sophia was the very reverse of a commonplace
personage. She was a woman of the world, but a very wise one. In age, as
in youth, she sparkled with wit and intelligence, and in her both these
gifts were interfused with that third and greatest gift of humour, which
is a property of the soul as well as of the intellect.[137] Of her
conversation we can only judge from her letters, of which we fortunately
possess a quite extraordinary quantity; but, if her speech was like her
writing, its style must have been equally far ‘_esloigné de
l’aigreur_,’—to borrow a phrase from Madame de Brinon, to whom she told
not a few home truths. Her letters combine with the supreme charm of
perfect naturalness a pungency in the choice of expressions superior, in
the opinion of the Duchess of Orleans, to any minted by the academies;
‘for to write agreeably is better than to write correctly.’
Occasionally, her wit was singularly incisive, as when she called the
same Madame de Brinon ‘_une religieuse qui passe pour bel esprit_,’ and
her eloquence extraordinary ‘_car elle parle toujours_’; or when, Toland
having _more suo_ taken it upon himself in argument to whitewash the
cannibals, she commended him for his prudence, in that, with all
Christendom against him, he had provided himself with protectors. Not
unfrequently, however, frankness and cynicism did duty for wit. Her
jests spared neither Leibniz, nor the House of Hanover, nor ‘_le bon
lord Winchilsea_,’ whom she found so heavy in hand, nor Queen Anne’s
husband, Prince George of Denmark, of whom, when it was proposed to
create him King Consort, she observed that he would be a King like Jove
among the frogs—and perhaps popular for that very reason. She had, too,
a good deal of fun as well as wit—as when, in acknowledging the courtesy
of an unknown Mr. Smith in sending a descriptive account of England and
the English (among whom she had ‘been brought up till she reached the
age of twenty’), she says that he describes London and St Paul’s and the
‘_pantquitinhouse_’ as if she had never heard a word about them. De
Gourville, whose qualities as a butt possibly remained a secret to his
sublime self-consciousness, suspected her of a natural inclination to
criticising any fellow-mortal brought into her presence, though he
allowed that the person bantered by her was sure to be the first to
laugh. She was a good hater, and could even hate at second hand, as in
the instance of Madame de Maintenon, the bugbear of the Duchess of
Orleans. But her aversions were, like all her feelings, kept in constant
check by the dictates of reason as well as by her care for the interests
of her family and House; and we have seen how even her sentiments
towards Eleonora d’Olbreuze underwent a gradual mitigation which
outsiders judged to be a complete change. It may, too, be doubted
whether sarcasm was really natural to her, though her sense of humour
always responded to the irony of things. She was alike open-minded and
open-handed, and had nothing of the stinginess which sits so ill on high
rank and position. Though towards the close of her life she was desirous
that an income should be granted her by the British Crown and
Parliament, it was only for political purposes that she desired this.
She had quite money enough, she said, to keep up her German
establishment. When she found that the distinguished services of the
Brunswick-Lüneburg officers and men were left unnoticed in the
_Gazette_, she was anxious to pay for a proper mention of them out of
her own pocket. The geniality of her disposition shows itself in an
affability which was the same to both great and small, and in her power
to interest herself with the same readiness in the discourse of
philosophers, the conversation of ministers of State, and the gossip of
country ladies on domestic thoughts intent. It also showed itself in a
hospitality which made everyone welcome at Hanover and Herrenhausen, and
a tact which put all at their ease there; at no court in the world,
wrote the Brandenburg statesman Paul von Fuchs, are _les étrangers et
les gastes_ treated better than at the Hanoverian. Though, during her
later years, she lived chiefly in retirement at Herrenhausen, she by no
means secluded herself, but received a large variety of visitors, both
princely, personages and political and literary celebrities. Above all,
it was always a delight to her to see Englishmen at her Court, as indeed
it had been even before the passing of the Act of Settlement; and in
welcoming them she carefully eschewed any and every distinction between
parties—divided as these were in England with a severity unknown at the
time to any other country. Occasionally, when the Elector was away on
his campaigns, she took his place at Hanover in the reception of
distinguished guests.[138] Amiable to all, she reserved the treasures of
her affection for those who were nearest to her—not only for the
survivors of her own passionately loved brood, but for all the younger
members of her family, in which she included the children of her
favourite brother.[139] The Duchess of Orleans comically avows her
annoyance that everyone who has had the privilege of living with her
aunt should be brought to entertain towards her the very sentiments of
love and affection cherished by Elizabeth Charlotte herself. Yet she was
quite impervious to flattery, and, when told by a diplomatist that the
court of Versailles was full of her daughter’s praises, remarked that
these were the usual talk to which an envoy was treated when there was
nothing else to say to him. In her later years, Sophia seems never to
have indulged herself either in outbursts of temper or in moods of
discontent; although she allows that her vexation about the vagaries of
her son Maximilian had proved to her that her philosophy was only skin
deep.
-----
Footnote 137:
In _The Freeholder_, No. 30, April 2nd, 1716, Addison quotes, _à
propos_ of offensive French criticisms of the English and other
nations, a passage from _Chevreana_, the amusing anthology of Urban
Chevreau mentioned on another page, in which the very sensible
proposition that ‘one ought not to judge well or ill of a nation from
a particular person, nor of a particular person from his nation,’ is
illustrated by the assertion that there are Germans, as there are
Frenchmen, who have no wit, and Germans who are better skilled in
Greek or Hebrew than either Scaliger or the Cardinal du Perron—‘there
is not in all France a person of more wit than the present Duchess of
Hanover, nor more thoroughly knowing in philosophy than was the late
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia.’ ‘Prejudiced’ witnesses are not always
in the wrong.
Footnote 138:
It seems right to observe that, though the tone of refinement
characteristic of the Hanoverian Court was largely due to the
Electress Sophia, the Elector George Lewis was by no means insensible
to her example. Toland speaks of the liberty of conversation, ‘that
nobody who deserves it will abuse,’ allowed at the Elector’s table.
And (which is a more entirely trustworthy statement, and one which
Toland would hardly have made had there really been no contrast
observable on this score with contemporary English habits) he adds
that the vice of drinking, for which the German nation is so much
branded, is so far from reigning at the Hanoverian court, that he
never knew greater sobriety than is to be found there.
Footnote 139:
I have already touched on her grief at her son Prince Christian’s
death by drowning in 1703; but the passage in which she refers to it
in a letter to the elder Schütz should be read as giving proof not
only of her maternal affection, but of the deep religious feeling at
the bottom of her heart. (See _Briefe an Hannoversche Diplomaten_
(1905), p. 175.)
-----
Those, wrote Elizabeth Charlotte, who thought her aunt incapable of
being of use in affairs of State, could have little knowledge of her
intellectual powers. We have seen, however, that during her husband’s
lifetime she had been allowed little direct interference in state
concerns, though on several occasions Ernest Augustus had benefited both
from listening to her advice and from utilising her personal influence.
Her eldest son was not the kind of man to concede, like a sultan at
Constantinople, a position of acknowledged control over his Government
to his mother, the Electress Dowager. When unable to render to Leibniz a
service solicited by him, she wrote rather bitterly that there were
times when she found silence best. But, apart from the Succession
question, towards which she, of course, occupied a distinct position of
her own, a considerable sphere of political influence remained open to
her in the last period of her life. More especially, she rendered
excellent service by maintaining a good understanding with the court of
Berlin, and by restoring it when the relations between the two courts
had become strained, and her daughter proved unable to manage them. The
influence which had been established over King Frederick I of Prussia by
his ‘_gnädigste Mama_,’ she contrived, though she saw through him, to
exercise even after her daughter’s death.
But even Sophia’s ‘nimbleness of mind,’ to use another expression of her
favourite niece’s, was not so marked a characteristic of her as was the
reasonableness which proceeded in nearly equal proportions from
intellectual enlightenment and from a beneficent disposition towards
humanity. She was, wrote Leibniz about 1701, ‘entirely on the side of
reason; consequently, all measures calculated to make kings and peoples
follow reason, will meet with her approval.’ A rationalist in the
stricter sense of the term she can hardly be called; though her wholly
unembarrassed way of expressing herself on any subject in heaven or
earth at times resembles a want of reverence.[140] She was irritated by
Toland’s restless tongue; but, while thanking Burnet for putting her on
her guard, indicated that she was too old for Toland to give her another
twist (perhaps this may be a coarse translation of ‘_pli_’) in religion
than that to which she had been long accustomed. For the rest, it was
not, she said, her habit to ‘catechise’ English visitors. Anthony
Collins’ plea for ‘Free-thinking’ struck her as both mischievous and
ridiculously superfluous—‘more especially in England, where there was
such a multitude of factions’; ‘Free thinquers,’ she observed, when
complaining of his insolence in sending her the book, ‘are against all
religions.’ All men, she allowed, might like to think as they choose so
long as their conduct was honourable; but in a well-governed State all
men ought not to be free to publish their opinions. Herein her
conscientiousness as a German Princess no doubt counted for something.
Thus, when she was asked to lend her aid towards inducing the East
Frisian Government to proceed against the spreading eccentricities of
the Pietists, she upheld the rights of authority. ‘Lutheran Princes,’
she declared, ‘are the Popes of our Church, and must be obeyed.’ For
herself, she had a thoroughgoing dislike of anything ‘enthusiastic,’ and
would not hear of shoemakers (like Jacob Behmen) becoming inspired
prophets instead of sticking to their lasts.[141] More than this: Kuno
Fischer rightly says that ‘to her clear practical intellect the
mysteries of religion remained obscure and alien’; and, when he asserts
that she was at bottom a deist in her opinions, this is in so far true,
that, while she avowed her belief in a personal Creator, she cannot be
shown to have gone further in any declaration of her convictions. In
1709, Leibniz informed Toland that the Electress ‘was accustomed to
quote and give particular praise to that passage of Scripture which
demands whether it be consistent with reason that He that planted the
ear should not hear, and He that formed the eye should not see?’ At the
same time, her latitudinarianism was perfectly candid. She certainly (in
1702) encouraged the notion which had occurred to her son-in-law, the
King of Prussia, of introducing the English Church liturgy into the
Calvinistic services, telling him that he might then call himself
Defender of the Faith. On the other hand, she had no sympathy with the
views of what in one of her letters she calls ‘_Heyschortz_’ men;[142]
she laughed at an English clergyman who refused to set his foot in a
Calvinist ‘temple,’ and she seriously blamed the early attempts of Queen
Anne, as she interpreted them, to force the Presbyterians into
conformity both in Scotland and in England. It was as a declared
adherent of the Reformed or (as in England alone it was called)
Calvinist confession, in which she had been brought up, that, as Toland
notes, she built a ‘pretty church’ in the New Town of Hanover for the
French Huguenot refugees, to which in his day King William III liberally
contributed; and she seems to have at least intended to build a church
for the German members of the same religious body. ‘You must know,’ she
humorously wrote to Leibniz on this occasion, ‘that I am _une dame fort
zêlée_.’ It was probably no mere commonplace of shortsighted criticism
when, in 1700, about which time the idea of seeking to evangelise the
heathen was first taking root in Germany, she pronounced it ‘a fine
enterprise indeed’ to send out missionaries to India. ‘To me it seems,’
she remarked, ‘that the first thing ought to be to make good Christians
at home in Germany, without going to so great a distance for the purpose
of manufacturing them.’ In a word, she should be credited with genuine
religious feeling; though demonstrativeness, whether on this or on any
other subject, was altogether out of her way. And she hated religious
factiousness, which she thought domesticated in England.[143]
-----
Footnote 140:
Among such passages can hardly be excluded her finding fault with the
Apostles, none of whom had been at the pains of eliciting from Lazarus
his experiences after death. Had anyone brought him to court, her own
natural inquisitiveness would certainly have prompted her to ask him
so obvious a question.
Footnote 141:
It has been seen earlier in this volume how she declined to be edified
by the peculiarities of Labadie and Labadism, and how sceptical she
had proved as to some new method of ‘healing’ imported from Holland at
the time of her husband’s final illness. Both she and Leibniz,
however, showed some interest in the vagaries of Rosemunde von Assing,
a young lady whose pretensions caused a good deal of trouble at
Lüneburg, and whom Molanus and the orthodox clergy proposed to clap
into prison. Leibniz thought the case worth attention, though its
phenomena might be ascribed to natural causes.
Footnote 142:
‘They say,’ she writes in 1711, ‘that the Bishops are busily preaching
Passive Obedience, although they had much better hold their tongues
and not interfere in matters of State.’ Thus, notwithstanding her
Stewart blood and her own protestations of impartiality, she had
something of the Whig in her, after all.
Footnote 143:
‘In all countries of the world,’ she wrote in 1703, ‘religion serves
the ends of morality. It is only in England that religion, I am sorry
to say, serves to create cabals.’
-----
We have spoken of the Electress Sophia’s profession of the Reformed
faith—a fact as to which, although it has been called into question,
there cannot really be any doubt. As we saw, she was, according to her
own account, in her childhood taught the Heidelberg Catechism; and, when
she married the Lutheran Ernest Augustus, it was arranged that, though
she was to take no Calvinist minister with her to Hanover, one should
visit the town three or four times in each year, in order to administer
the Sacrament to her. Toland explicitly states (as de Gourville, who in
1687 had a little scheme of his own for bringing over her husband and
his family to Rome, had also stated at an earlier date) that the
Electress was a Calvinist; but he adds, in illustration of the tolerance
prevailing at the Court of Hanover, that ‘most of her women and other
immediate servants were Lutherans, just as her son the Elector, though
himself a Lutheran, had many Calvinists belonging to him; and both their
Highnesses, to show a good example and their unfeigned charity in these
lesser differences, do often go to church together.’[144] Their only
daughter married a Calvinist,[145] and Sophia herself steadily adhered
to the confession in which she was born, though her latitudinarian
tendencies fell in easily enough with the tolerant principles prevailing
in the Lutheran Church of Hanover, and represented by the head of its
ecclesiastical administration, the worthy ‘Abbot’ Molanus.[146] Nor is
there any reason for supposing that, had she been actually summoned to
ascend the English throne, she would, in the matter of religion, have
failed to do what was expected of her. Early in 1713, she wrote to
Leibniz that Molanus had so well explained to her his Lutheran creed,
that there had been some talk of putting his exposition into print for
publication in England. Clearly, it was not any question of this kind
which would have interfered with her accession to the throne. She had
sufficient confidence in herself to shrink from no step approved by both
her reason and her conscience. Moreover, there are indications that she
by no means regarded the Church of her mother and her brother’s native
land with coldness; and, had Leibniz apprehended any objection on her
part, he would hardly have proposed that the English establishment which
he desired for the Electress should include an Anglican chapel. Indeed,
in 1703, she is found expressing a wish that Queen Anne would carry her
ecclesiastical zeal as far as Hanover, and contribute to the English
church there; ‘in which event we would call it the English Church, and
read the Book of Common Prayer in both tongues.’
-----
Footnote 144:
Perhaps it may be well not to enquire too closely as to their
behaviour when they got there. Sometimes, we are told, the Electress
fell asleep; occasionally, she wrote letters to her brother, taking
care, however, not to disturb her husband when engaged in reading a
play, which he did audibly.
Footnote 145:
Owing, however, to the different forms of faith professed by Court and
people in Prussia, the tolerance practised at Berlin was even ampler
than that prevailing at Hanover; and the subsequent marriage-treaty
between the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William and Sophia
Dorothea the younger, the only daughter of the Elector George Lewis of
Hanover, provided for her being allowed to adhere to the Lutheran form
of faith.
Footnote 146:
Gerhard Wolter Molanus, who held the Abbacy of the secularised
Cistercian foundation of Loccum, situate in the forest solitude near
Rehburg and the celebrated Steinhuder Lake, plays a considerable part
in Sophia’s correspondence. He exercised a great influence in the
direction of toleration and irenic ideals, more, however, by his
hierarchical position and personality than by his writings. The motto
of his life, ‘_Beati pacifici_,’ admirably accorded with Cistercian
principles. He lived to an advanced age—so advanced, that his mental
powers at last collapsed, and the good old man is said to have fancied
himself a barley-corn. At the small watering-place of Rehburg, the
Hanoverian Court held a _villeggiatura_—or rather a sojourn under
tents—as early as 1691.
-----
The one change, however, to which she would at no time have
consented,—not even, whatever de Gourville may have believed, when her
husband was entertaining some such thought in connexion with his long
effort for the Ninth Electorate[147]—was conversion to the Church of
Rome. In her old age, when Princess Caroline of Ansbach, for whom she
cherished a particular affection, was systematically tempted to qualify
herself by conversion to Rome for the hand of Archduke Charles,
afterwards the Emperor Charles VI, there can be little doubt that the
Princess was encouraged in her resistance by the Electress as well as by
Leibniz.
-----
Footnote 147:
The scheme tempted him, not only as likely to approve itself to the
Emperor and the Catholic Electors, but also as one which would
practically have secured the see of Osnabrück in perpetuity to his
House. It illustrates the popular ignorance in England concerning the
House of Hanover, that, if Toland is to be trusted, a report was
current that this House ‘was so indifferent in point of religion, as
generally to breed up one of their sons a Papist, in order to qualify
him for Bishop of Osnabrug.’
-----
Sophia was no stranger to one of the loftiest among the lofty
conceptions which occupied the great mind of her friend and counsellor,
Leibniz,—that which aimed at the reunion of Christendom. The
correspondence on this topic between Leibniz and Bossuet, which took
place in 1691-5, and after a pause was renewed in 1699, was brought
about through the joint mediation of Sophia and her sister, the Abbess
of Maubuisson. Mixed up in the transaction was Madame de Brinon, who
found a refuge at Maubuisson after the sudden termination of her rule at
Saint-Cyr. This good lady, whose ardent temperament was in glaring
contrast with Bossuet’s imperturbable calm, made repeated attempts to
bring the Electress of Hanover back into the fold, _en attendant_ its
enlargement by means of the Reunion. But Sophia was not at all flattered
by these high-minded efforts. She trusted—so she told Madame de
Brinon—in the goodness of God, who could not have created her in order
that she should be lost; for the rest, she could not reconcile herself
to the persecutions of the Protestants in France.[148] But her aversion
from Roman Catholicism went further than this. Although at times she
spoke of such doctrines of the Church of Rome as the Intercession of
Saints with nothing more than contemptuous indifference, she
occasionally assumed an attitude of open hostility towards a creed
which, as a child, she had been taught to hate. Of all religions, she
told Lord Strafford, there was none that she abhorred so much as the
Popish; for there was none so contrary to Christianity. Other passages
to much the same effect might be cited. For the rest, in an undated
letter to Madame de Brinon, Sophia, with her characteristic humour and
perhaps her characteristic want of external reverence, so clearly
explains her general religious position, that we may conclude our
attempt to indicate it by extracting from this letter the following
passage:—
The tranquillity of mind which God has granted to me on this topic, I
take to be so great a blessing, that He would not have bestowed it
upon any person whom He had not chosen to be among the number of His
elect. David wished to be only a door-keeper in the house of the Lord;
and I lay claim to no more important charge. Those who are more
enlightened than I am will perhaps fill higher places; for we are told
that in the Father’s house there are many mansions. When you are in
yours and I am in mine, I will not fail to pay you the first call; and
I fancy that we shall agree very well; for there will then no longer
be any question of religious controversies.
-----
Footnote 148:
To these persecutions she repeatedly returns. In 1709, we find her
expressing the opinion that the ‘poor’ French ‘galley-slaves’ should
not be forgotten in the peace negotiations then on foot.
-----
Leibniz, whose name has already so often occurred in this chapter and in
this volume, was consulted by the Electress Sophia in other matters
besides religion, philosophy, and science. Both as enjoying her
confidence and on his own account, he was a welcome guest at several
courts, including the Imperial; and to the Houses of Hanover and Celle,
in whose joint employment he stood as historiographer, he rendered
invaluable service, not only in that capacity, but also as a publicist,
on important occasions, demanding a comprehensive as well as effective
treatment of the problems handled by him. But his direct influence upon
the policy of the dynasty seems practically to have been limited to the
question of the English Succession, which, as we have seen, had, up to
the passing of the Act of Settlement, been regarded as more or less
personal to the Electress, and which, after that date, continued to be
largely, though by no means entirely, dealt with in the same way. Thus
his position at the Electoral Court, where there is no sign of his
having been consulted in matters of general politics by either Ernest
Augustus or George Lewis, was perhaps occasionally misunderstood at the
time, and has certainly been misunderstood since. He was never the
Electress’ secretary, or even her quasi-official political adviser; he
was only her trusted personal friend and servant, whose function in such
matters was to suggest rather than to advise, and whose influence upon
the conduct of affairs in which the Electress took an interest
accordingly varied at different times. His exertions as to the English
Succession, before 1701, have been already noticed. After the passing of
the Act of Settlement, the Electress Dowager appointed, as her
confidential agent to England, a diplomatic adventurer of the name of
Falaiseau, who had come over to Hanover in Lord Macclesfield’s suite;
and his reports seem, as a rule, to have passed through the hands of
Leibniz. From 1702 onwards, as will be seen, the conduct of the
relations of the House of Hanover began to fall largely into the hands
of Bothmer; and, in 1705, on the union between Celle and Hanover,
Bernstorff, and with him Robethon, passed out of the service of the late
Duke George William into that of his nephew, the Elector. The more
regular system of diplomatic representation at the Court of St. James of
itself diminished the influence of Leibniz on these relations, more
especially as Sophia never seems to have had much personal liking either
for Bernstorff (perhaps because of his ineradicable ill-will against
Brandenburg-Prussia, perhaps for other reasons) or for Robethon, who
became invaluable to the Elector as his private secretary. The
credentials of the Hanoverian envoys—the Schützes, Bothmer, and
Grote[149]—and residents at the Court of St. James—de Beyrie and
Kreyenberg—were made out in the joint names of the Elector and the
Electress Dowager, and all the official letters sent to England from
this time forward in the name of either were drafted by Robethon. Thus,
notwithstanding the active interest taken by Leibniz in a question the
progress of which had owed much and continued to be indebted to his
assiduity, its threads were no longer continuously in his hands. Whether
this was a misfortune for its ultimate development and solution, need
not be here discussed. From his earlier days onwards he had exhibited
something of the defect habitual to politicians more exclusively
academical than himself, who had a considerable experience of
affairs—the defect of excess, which includes the mistake of not letting
well alone. Not only, however, did the force of his genius enable him to
find out the heart of every political problem to which he addressed
himself, but the universality of his insight made clear to him its
various aspects, and the energy of his mind supplied the impulse which
converts design into action.[150] Finally, his literary skill,[151]
added to his gifts of finding his material and disposing it according to
the leading ideas with which he approached it, made him in the times in
which his lot fell, as it made Gentz, an infinitely inferior
personality, in another period of even deeper national humiliation, the
foremost publicist of his age.[152]
-----
Footnote 149:
Besides these, Count Ernest Augustus von Platen came over on two
ceremonial occasions. (See the _List of Diplomatic Representatives and
Agents, England and North Germany, 1687-1727_, contributed by J. F.
Chance to _Notes on the Diplomatic Relations of England and Germany_;
ed. C. H. Firth. Oxford, 1907.)
Footnote 150:
See E. Pfleiderer, _Leibniz als Patriot, Staatsmann, und
Bildungsträger_ (Leipzig, 1870), and, of course, Kuno Fischer’s great
work.—Perhaps the most signal instance of the way in which in the
political thought of Leibniz past and future came into contact (he
says himself: ‘_le présent est chargé du passé et gros de l’avenir_’)
is, as Ernst Curtius says (_Alterthum und Gegenwart_, pp. 219 _sqq._),
his famous Egyptian plan, of which an account was published in a
pamphlet in London, _à propos_ of the French invasion of 1803, and as
to which see Guhrauer’s _Life_, and K. G. Blumenthal, _Leibnizens
Ægyptischer Plan_ (Leipzig, 1869).
Footnote 151:
Nothing need be said here of his minor literary efforts, such as his
tributes in verse to the Electress Sophia.
Footnote 152:
In 1688, Leibniz prepared the counter-manifesto to Louis XIV’s
declaration of war in that year.
-----
That Leibniz, whose political services to the Electress and her dynasty
were, in any case, highly important, should at the same time have become
her chosen intimate and personal friend, forms one of his titles to the
grateful remembrance of those who believe this pair to have been worthy
of one another. From his conversation and correspondence, which, in her
later years, became more and more of a necessity to Sophia, her active
and receptive mind derived constant stimulus and refreshment; while his
humane as well as lofty wisdom, at no time seeking to avoid contact with
the actualities of life, but neither ever conceding to them a larger
claim than was their due, helped to fortify her character against the
risk of being mastered by the element of frivolity inborn in most of her
mother’s children. Leibniz’ own activity at Hanover, from the time when
(as far back as 1673) he had first entered into the service of Duke John
Frederick, was remarkably varied. He held the offices of librarian,
archivist, and historiographer; fostered, among other activities in the
dominions of his patrons, the endeavours of technical science, as in the
instance of the mining industry of the Harz; and organised both
scientific and literary effort, in connexion with his onerous task as
the historian of the Guelfs, with his work as a philologer and with the
studies in mental and moral philosophy, which were, in 1710, crowned by
the production of his _Théodicée_. His influence upon the foundation of
academies as levers for the advancement of scientific research[153] was
by no means limited to Berlin, where success had attended on his labours
in consequence of the sympathetic support of Sophia’s daughter. The
hopes placed by him on the third of the illustrious ladies of the
Hanoverian dynasty who felt themselves honoured by his intimacy, were,
notwithstanding her loyal efforts at the outset, doomed to
disappointment. The Electoral Princess (Caroline of Ansbach) had been
solaced by his _Théodicée_ in a season of great anxiety; but, when the
political consummation to which Leibniz had so actively helped to
prepare had been actually achieved, he had to remain behind in Germany;
and she found herself unequal to the task either of impressing his
claims upon her impassive father-in-law—or of reconciling his merits
with those of Newton.
-----
Footnote 153:
See L. Keller, _Leibniz u. die Deutschen Sozietäten des 17 Jahrh._, in
Jahrgang x. of _Vorträge u. Aufsätze a. d. Comenius-Gesellschaft_
(Berlin).
-----
During the years of Sophia’s widowhood, to which we must here confine
ourselves, Leibniz was drawn nearer to her, not only by intellectual and
moral sympathy, but also by the discomforts to which she was subjected
by the Elector’s coldness, and by that Prince’s habit of expecting all
services to be absolved as per contract. Sophia was unable to secure the
fulfilment of Leibniz’s wish for a sinecure like that by which his
friend, ‘Abbot’ Molanus, was recompensed for his ecclesiastical
services. But her friendship with Leibniz was not dependent upon favours
given or received. Not only was the encouragement which he derived from
his intimacy with her and from that which through her he enjoyed with
Sophia Charlotte and Caroline, of high value to him in the labours and
in the trials of his life; but in the Electress Sophia’s case, at all
events, her nature was in many respects supplementary to his own. Their
correspondence thus furnishes a memorial of a friendship alike sincere
and productive; and their names will always remain inseparable from one
another.
Sophia Charlotte, though her marriage had long since made it necessary
for her to leave her mother’s side, and though the trials to which she
had since been subjected had greatly added to that mother’s anxieties,
and had often been mitigated by her tact and good-humour rather than by
those of the Queen herself, remained Sophia’s truest joy, till taken
away by death in 1705. Mother and daughter had kept up a continuous
correspondence with one another, besides interchanging visits when
possible; nor could the completeness of the confidence existing between
them be better illustrated than by the treatment which, after Sophia
Charlotte’s death, it was thought judicious to apply to the documents of
their mutual affection. At the instigation of Leibniz, the extant
letters of the Electress Sophia to her daughter were committed to the
flames at Berlin, so that only a small remnant of the series, copied out
by him for his own use, have been preserved. Inasmuch as neither have
any letters from Sophia Charlotte to her mother come down to us, they
may be surmised to have been similarly destroyed by way of precaution.
Possibly, these proceedings may have been in part due to evidence
contained in these letters as to efforts made, in the Hanoverian
interest, at the Court of Berlin by Leibniz or others. The chief trouble
of Sophia Charlotte’s married life—King Frederick I’s infatuation for
the Countess von Wartenberg—had been particularly acute in the period
just preceding the Queen’s death; and her last visit to her mother (in
January, 1705) could only be carried out by her submitting to the
condition that an invitation to Hanover should also be sent to her
detested rival. During this visit Sophia Charlotte died, the victim of a
painful and incurable disease that befell her when her intellectual
abilities were at their full height. Her death, even more impressively
than her life, proved the justice of her grandson Frederick the Great’s
tribute to her strength of soul. The illness of the Queen had been
concealed from her mother, who herself lay ill; and thus, as she wrote,
heart-broken, to her widowed son-in-law, she lost her darling child
without even setting eyes upon her.[154]
-----
Footnote 154:
After Queen Sophia Charlotte’s death there was less love lost than
ever between the King, her husband, and the Elector, her brother. In
1711, the Electress Sophia, speaking of a melancholy journey of her
son-in-law’s, observes that it was a Divine punishment on him that he
should hate the Elector without any reason whatever.
-----
Princess Wilhelmina Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach had, in her
thirteenth year, been left an orphan by the death of her mother, who had
been united to the Elector John George IV of Saxony as her second
husband. In 1696, the child had been placed under the care of her
guardians, afterwards the first King and Queen in Prussia. Thus
Lützenburg became the home of Caroline’s childhood; and here she became
familiar with the intellectual society which Sophia Charlotte loved to
gather around her, and above all with Leibniz. The nature of their
intercourse may be gathered from the letter, sublime in thought, which
he wrote to her on the occasion of Sophia Charlotte’s death. Only a few
months after this event—in September, 1705—Caroline, lovely in person
and richly endowed in intellect, had illustrated the saying of the
Electress Sophia, that ‘nowadays princesses are sacrificial victims.’
After a proper interval had been allowed to elapse upon the breakdown of
the project of marrying Caroline to Archduke Charles, the Electoral
Prince George Augustus, to whom the thoughts of his grandmother, the
Electress, had been directed already during the attempts made in 1704 to
induce Caroline to change her religion, paid a preliminary visit to
Ansbach. The rumour which had arisen in 1702, that the Electoral Prince
was to find a consort in Sweden and Queen Sophia Charlotte’s
counter-suggestion of the Duchess Marie-Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp,
had alike come to nothing. On September 2nd, 1705, the marriage between
the Electoral Prince and Caroline of Ansbach was celebrated at Hanover.
Here Caroline spent the following nine years of her life, beyond a doubt
its happiest period; and, during the remainder of Sophia’s own
existence, she in a large measure filled the place in her affections
which her daughter Sophia Charlotte had so long occupied. The
congeniality of their tastes and dispositions made her a delightful
companion at Herrenhausen to her grandmother-in-law; and thus a kindly
fortune granted to Sophia, who was so singularly capable of enjoying it,
the truest joy of old age. The Electress repeatedly speaks of the
happiness of the marriage; nor can there be any doubt as to the genuine
affection on both sides which constituted that happiness. Early in 1707,
the Electoral Princess gave birth to her eldest son (destined afterwards
to disappoint an indulgent world as Frederick, Prince of Wales), upon
whom, a year later, his great-grandmother is found bestowing an
infantine equipment for a fancy ball; and three daughters were
subsequently born to the young pair, before they accompanied King George
I to England. The prospects of a permanent establishment of the
Hanoverian dynasty upon the British throne were thus signally advanced
by this marriage; and to these prospects and their initial realisation
we must now finally turn. They filled Sophia’s last years with anxieties
and uncertainties; yet, on the whole, life flowed more easily for her in
this final period of her existence; although the joyousness of girlhood,
which she so vividly recalls in her _Memoirs_, was a thing of the past,
together with the experiences—some grotesque, some painful, some
tragic—of her married days. The deep agitations of her life were at an
end; and she might pace the Herrenhausen gardens without caring too
deeply even for the chances of the English Succession.
Thus we may imagine this spirited and sensible lady, at any time in
these last thirteen years of her long life, exemplifying the old saw of
‘_mens sana in corpore sano_.’ In the main, she enjoyed excellent
health; and Leibniz’ description of the day of her arrival at Lützenburg
is certainly astonishing for a lady of seventy-four. It included, in
accordance with her usual habits, two hours of walking exercise. Erect
and handsome, with her mother’s aquiline nose and abundant hair, she
was, if not a Gloriana as imagined by poets, a princess worthy to mount
a royal throne—or at least one who, if placed there, would of a
certainty not lose the firmness of her footing by reason of such an
elevation.
After, in 1701, a copy of the Act pledging King and Parliament to the
new limitation of the Succession had been placed in the hands of the
Electress Sophia, thirteen long years of expectancy awaited her, which
might have made a less stout heart grow faint. Or, perhaps, it would be
more correct to say that a nature less happily balanced, and uninured by
experience, both inherited and personal, to the necessity of patience
and resignation, might have fallen into mistake upon mistake, and have
thus courted failure. Sophia, prudently choosing her own path, almost to
the last did nothing to affront the approach of success. To suppose,
however, that either her policy or that of her House was one of masterly
inactivity, would be almost as contrary to fact as the converse
assumption that, either before or after 1701, she was possessed by an
absorbing desire to find herself seated on the English throne. The
former supposition is confuted by the single circumstance that, by way
of furnishing the necessary means in the event of a sudden crisis, a sum
of not less than 300,000 dollars was secretly provided by the Committee
of the Calenberg Estates, and placed in the hands of the Hanoverian
envoy in London—the secret of this expenditure being kept for not less
than seventy years.[155] The other assumption is simply irreconcilable
with the whole tenor of Sophia’s life.
-----
Footnote 155:
In a letter from the Electress to Bothmer (_Briefe an Hannoversche
Diplomaten_, p. 319) she mentions some money of hers in England; but
the passage seems to refer to a private investment.
-----
The festivities at Hanover and Celle, on the occasion of the
transmission of the Act of Settlement, were hardly at an end, when King
William III had a meeting at the Loo with his old friend Duke George
William. The Duke was accompanied by his grandson, the Electoral Prince
George Augustus, whom, according to Toland, the King received as a son.
This Prince certainly seems in his youth to have displayed attractive
qualities, which were afterwards driven into the background by his
master quality, self-conceit; curiously enough, though he was a fair
linguist, it had not been thought necessary to make him well acquainted
with the English tongue. At this interview, the account of which shows
how loyally the old Duke of Celle was working for the interests of the
dynasty, King William promised to use his influence in order to obtain
from Parliament an annual revenue for the Electress Sophia, and
mentioned his intention of inviting her and the Electoral Prince to
visit England in the coming spring. On his sounding his next heir, the
Princess Anne, at all events as to the proposal of summoning the
Electress, she is said to have pretended to be still in hopes of an
heir. The Electress on her side seems to have trusted in the fulfilment
of the King’s promise, not only during the remainder of his reign, but
for a few months afterwards.
But no time was left to the King for carrying out his design. On
September 6th, 1701, nine days after the conclusion of the Grand
Alliance to which William III had set the seal on his visit to Holland,
James II died; and, by recognising his son as King of England, Louis XIV
once again, and more completely by his own act than ever, identified
himself with the Stewart cause. His grandson, King Philip of Spain,
followed his example; and Pope Clement XI publicly extolled the action
of Louis XIV, as entitling him to the gratitude of posterity. In the
final form of the instrument of the Grand Alliance—which William III was
not to live to see actually concluded—a clause was inserted binding the
contracting Powers not to conclude peace with France, until the King of
England should have received satisfaction for the grave insult involved
in the recognition of the ‘pretended Prince of Wales’ as King. In other
words, the War of the Spanish Succession had become a War of the English
Succession also; and, to whatever extent this fact might be overlooked
during the course of the conflict, it was certain to become prominent
again so soon as a settlement began to be seriously discussed. Inasmuch
as the first public suggestion of such a clause had been made by a
prominent Tory politician (Edward Seymour), it can hardly have been
inspired from Hanover, though in a letter to the Electress, written as
early as 1701, Leibniz had stated such a stipulation to be desirable.
In England, the recognition of the Pretender by Louis XIV had an
immediate consequence in the Attainder and Abjuration Acts, passed in
January, 1702, by William III’s sixth Parliament. The Act of Attainder
had been criticised beforehand by the Electress Sophia, who, in October,
1701, told Leibniz that there was an intention of declaring the poor
Prince of Wales a rebel, such as Monmouth had been declared to be before
him, ‘though his personal merit deserved a better fate.’ Why should she
have refused this modicum of sympathy to her kinsman, who, not more
unfortunate in his fate than he was in his infatuation, was about this
very time rejoicing that Pope Clement would manifestly ‘leave no stone
unturned to show how much he favours us’? The Abjuration Act, which led
to long and warm debates in both Houses, provided both for abjuring the
‘pretended Prince of Wales,’ and for swearing fidelity to the ‘rightful
and lawful King’ and ‘his heirs according to the Act of Settlement.’ A
motion in the Commons, carried by a single vote, made these engagements
obligatory; the opposition in the Lords ended in nothing but a protest,
the list of whose signatories, including the names of Craven and
Jeffreys, as it were mirrors the story of the downfall of the Stewart
monarchy in England.
On March 8th, 1702, King William III died, after a fortnight’s illness
following on his fall from his horse. To Portland, the faithful friend
for whom the King had asked, without being able to speak to him
intelligibly, shortly before his death, the Electress Sophia, when the
first shock of the blow had passed over, wrote in unaffected sorrow—
I assure you, Sir, that I have received with much pleasure the proof
of your kind remembrance of me, and that, in the midst of the sad
change which has come upon us, I called to mind that you would weep
with us for the loss which the whole of Christendom has undergone. But
when one does not die oneself, one has to see many others pass away;
and I cannot think that I shall live to see yet another calamity for
England of the same kind; for Queen Anne is much younger than I am,
who have entered my seventy-second year. Nevertheless, I feel much
happier than a Queen; for, God be thanked, I am still in very good
health, and have joined my daughter here, in order to enjoy myself
with her here in her country-seat.[156]
By the death, on March 8th, 1702, of King William III and the accession
of Queen Anne, the prospect which the Act of Settlement seemed to have
once for all thrown open to the House of Hanover was again clouded over.
Queen Anne, indeed, at once sent an assurance to the Electress through
the Hanoverian resident, the elder Schütz, that her sentiments towards
the House of Hanover were the same as those of her predecessor,[157] and
a few days afterwards repeated the message in writing. An Order in
Council directed the Archbishop of Canterbury to insert the name of the
Princess Sophia in the Book of Common Prayer; and, as was usual in such
cases, this Order was in due course sent on to Dublin.[158] It has been
observed, nor is there great exception to be taken to the remark, that
beyond the issue of this Order nothing was done by Queen Anne in the
whole of the earlier period of her reign on behalf of the Hanoverian
Succession. In other words, the proposals discussed at the Loo, which
were to have resulted in the payment of an annuity to the Electress, and
to her or the Electoral Prince residing in England, were not carried
further. Interchanges of civility, however, took place; and the Earl of
Winchelsea arrived at Hanover, in order to return the congratulations
brought thence by Count Platen on the occasion of Queen Anne’s
accession. But, though the special mission was flattering, Sophia’s
wish, that the ambassador might bring with him some money which she
might apply to the necessities of her sons Christian and Maximilian,
remained unfulfilled. For the rest, she told the Raugravine Louisa that,
for all the compliments which had passed, ‘time would show’ whether she
was still wanted in England; and she continued to bear herself calmly,
avoiding the appearance of excessive zeal that some of her partisans
could not deny themselves. She had thought it a piece of impertinence,
when, after his return to England, Toland had, early in this year,
followed up his _Anglia Libera_ by another publication provocatively
entitled _Reasons for addressing His Majesty to invite into England
their Highnesses the Electress Dowager and the Electoral Prince of
Hanover_; which, soon after Queen Anne’s accession, was duly censured by
the House of Lords. The Electress had reasons for disliking a
championship which under King William would have been superfluous and
was now inopportune. She could not consider Toland so ‘_infâme_’ as
Cresset painted him; and she took care that in her presence he should
not say a disrespectful word about Queen Anne. But, when, in 1702,
Toland found it convenient again to quit England for Germany, he left
the court of Hanover unvisited; nor does he seem to have reappeared
there till 1707.
-----
Footnote 156:
This letter is translated from one of the unpublished letters to the
Earl of Portland mentioned in the Preface.
Footnote 157:
She also renewed the assent given by William III to the measures of
force adopted at this time by the Elector of Hanover and the Duke of
Celle against the Dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.
Footnote 158:
In September, Sophia writes that Lord Stamford has been good enough to
transmit to her a dozen copies of the Prayer-book, with her name
inserted in it; but that there are not a dozen persons in Hanover able
to join her in using them.
-----
The Elector’s instincts as to the doubtfulness of Queen Anne’s real
sentiments on the subject of the Hanoverian Succession were justified by
what ensued. The hope of an immediate grant to the Heiress Presumptive
out of the ample Civil List good Queen Anne frustrated by the highly
popular step of making over to the Exchequer £100,000 towards lightening
the burdens of the nation. The claims upon the national resources were
many and urgent; and Parliament could perhaps hardly be expected to
consider how much a subvention was needed by the Electress, more
especially in view of the presents which, in accordance with the usage
of the times, she as well as the Elector had to make to a succession of
English special ambassadors. There can, however, be no doubt but that,
already in this early part of Queen Anne’s reign, and even before the
Toryism of her first Parliament had encouraged in her the tendency which
her choice of ministers had implied, deliberate attempts had been made
to influence unfavourably her attitude towards the Succession of the
House of Hanover. Moreover, her nature was so peculiarly prone to strong
personal attachments, and her gift of insight into the motives of men
was so unmistakably accompanied by an absence of all real power of
political judgment, that she could hardly but be dominated by a strong
prepossession against the line so likely to succeed her on the throne of
her ancestors. Yet, hitherto, neither the Electress Sophia nor any of
the members of her House—and least of all her impassive eldest son, who
at one time had been supposed to have a chance of the hand of the
Princess Anne—had been on unfriendly terms with the new Queen; nor is
there any reason for supposing her to have imparted to any of them a
share in the wild scheme rumoured to have been set on foot for ousting
her from the Succession. When, however, in May, 1702, the Whig Earl of
Carlisle, the First Lord of the Treasury, carried in the House of Lords
his demand for an enquiry into the scandalous rumour which asserted that
King William had intended by a kind of posthumous _coup d’état_ to raise
the Electoral Prince to the throne, Queen Anne showed no desire for the
vindication of her predecessor’s good faith towards herself, and
pointedly dismissed Carlisle from office. Nor is it probable that, at
this early stage, the Queen was much intent upon the interests of her
half-brother, the Pretender. The favourite advisers by whom she was
swayed—Marlborough and Godolphin—could have no wish to hurry her
intervention on behalf of either of the two sides, with both of which
they desired to stand well; and the Tory majority in the Commons,
typified by the Speaker, Harley, were certainly not prepared to unsettle
the Act of Settlement. The Act for the further Security of the
Protestant Succession passed in December, 1702, which declared it high
treason to seek to defeat the Succession to the Crown as now limited by
law, or to set aside the next Succession, followed the precedent of a
similar Act passed in the previous reign, and accordingly encountered no
resistance. Thus Queen Anne was slow to take up any definite attitude
towards the political problem which overshadowed the whole course of her
reign; and she was consequently all the more unwilling, and remained so
from first to last, to listen to any suggestion of carrying out William
III’s promise and inviting the Electress Dowager and the Electoral
Prince, or either of them, to England. The probability of this plan
being brought forward, either as a practical proposal or by way of
testing the sincerity of her own views on the subject, acted as a
perennial irritant upon the Queen. Neither she nor her advisers are to
be blamed for leaving without response the suggestion, pardonably enough
made by Sophia, that the un-English title of ‘Hereditary Princess’
should be conferred upon her. Other signs were noticeable of the
uncertainty prevailing at the Court of St. James. At Hanover and
Herrenhausen, Cresset watched the Electress with a suspiciousness that
could not escape her attention, though she commented on it with her
usual _insouciance_; and Stepney even left off corresponding with her
and her intimates, in order not to give offence nearer home. In
conversing with the Englishmen and Scotchmen who attended the Court of
Hanover, anxious to promote its fortunes or their own, the Electress
naturally sought to emphasise her confidence in her august relative, the
Queen. But in her intimate correspondence she was fain to strike a
different key. She told the Raugravine Amalia that Queen Anne had no
desire to be survived by her, although (quoting a Dutch proverb which
she has made classical) she allowed that ‘_creaking wagons go on for a
long time_,’ and suggested that the Queen’s real preference was for her
brother.[159] Matters continued very much in this stagnant and
unsatisfactory condition during the first three years (or thereabouts)
of Queen Anne’s reign. In March, 1694, Sophia writes with some
bitterness, that Queen Anne ‘seems to have more friendship for the King
of Prussia than for us, inasmuch as she speaks of the’ [Prussian] ‘and
says nothing of the Brunswick troops, without whom the battle’ [of
Blenheim] ‘could not have been won. This is a sample showing what is to
be expected in that quarter.’ And she adds that the statement in the
_Gazette_ of the great presents sent by the Queen to Hanover is untrue,
whoever caused it to be inserted.
-----
Footnote 159:
This, too, was the impression of Queen Sophia Charlotte at Berlin.
(See her letter to Bothmer, May 27th, 1702, in _Briefe an Hannoversche
Diplomaten_, p. 10.)
-----
It may, at this point, be noted that the violence of public feeling
which about this time disturbed Scotland had very seriously endangered
the prospects of the Succession of the House of Hanover in that kingdom.
Here, it was universally believed that Queen Anne cherished the secret
wish of securing the Succession to her brother; and no declarations to
the contrary exercised the slightest effect upon the stubbornness of
preconceived Scottish opinion. At the same time, a strong belief that
she meditated a Prelatic as well as a Jacobite reaction, led to the
anti-Episcopalian legislation of the last Scottish Parliament, which met
in 1703.[160] The Act of Security brought forward in this Parliament
provided that the Estates of the Realm should meet within twelve days
after the present Queen’s death, and should proceed to name a successor
professing the Protestant religion. A proposal to insert the name of the
Electress Sophia was rejected; but the ministers, besides frustrating an
attempt at inserting a series of limitations calculated to take away the
last vestige of authority from the Crown, also defeated a proposal to
limit the Protestantism of the successor to ‘the true Protestant
religion as by law established within this kingdom,’ which would have
excluded the Lutheranism of the House of Hanover. On the other hand, the
Government could not resist a clause, proposed by the Earl of Roxburghe,
precluding Parliament from naming, as successor to the Crown of
Scotland, the person who was successor to the Crown of England, unless
conditions should have been previously settled securing the interests of
Scotland against English or foreign interference. The Act of Security,
with this clause inserted in it, passed by large majorities; but the
Duke of Queensberry refused to give to it the royal assent. In 1704,
however, the national and religious agitation remaining unalloyed, the
Marquis of Tweeddale touched the Act with the royal sceptre: and a
condition of things was thus legalised which might at any time put an
end to the personal union of the two countries, or actually provoke war
between them. But time often provides its own remedy; and, in January,
1707, the Act of Union became law, whose Second Article, limiting the
Succession to Sophia and her heirs, had met with only a feeble
opposition upholding the provisions of the Act of Security. When the
Union was on the eve of actual accomplishment, the Electress Sophia
expressed herself as well satisfied, adding that, though she had never
supposed the Scottish lords against her, she thought it quite natural
that conditions should be imposed—another illustration of the way in
which she looked upon constitutional questions. In Ireland, the
Succession had already in the previous year been regulated by a measure
modelled upon the English Act of Settlement, but subjecting all
officials and magistrates to a rigid Church of England test.
-----
Footnote 160:
In June, 1702, Sophia had written that Scottish affairs seemed in a
troublesome state, but that she could hardly doubt that the Queen
would be prudent enough to leave the Scotch their _extempore_ prayers
... and that there would be no attempt to impose upon them bishops and
‘common prayer,’ by which means Charles I had spoilt everything.—For
an elucidation of the religious condition of Scotland as affecting the
question of the Hanoverian Succession, see Mr. Rait’s paper in
Appendix C.
-----
Even in this early period of Queen Anne’s reign, the Electress Sophia,
though, according to her wont, she abstained from all restless
manœuvring, was by no means without thought for the future. On June 4th,
1703, she signed three powers for Schütz, the envoy extraordinary in
London, authorising him, in the event of the Queen’s death, to bring
forward her lawful claim to the throne; and she kept up a correspondence
with friends in England, both directly and through Leibniz. In November,
1703, she put it to Schütz that, if Marlborough resigned the command in
the Low Countries, it would be right to appoint the Elector in his
place; ‘for if it is wished that the Elector should have a good opinion
of the English, they ought to do something towards making him entertain
such an opinion and enabling him in any court to support those who were
in his favour.’ As for Leibniz, though indefatigable and full of
initiative as ever, he naturally enough occasionally fell short of the
necessary familiarity with English persons and affairs. Thus, about this
very time, the Electress had to comment on his approval of a scheme for
marrying the Electoral Prince to one of Marlborough’s daughters, by
reminding him that the Duke had no more daughters in the matrimonial
market. Marlborough, however, gained the goodwill of the Elector, above
all by commending the behaviour of the Hanoverian troops at Blenheim;
and, on a visit to Hanover in December, 1704, while the laurels of his
great victory were still green, he completely won over the Electress by
the fascination of his manner. She declared that she had never seen
anyone ‘_plus aisé, plus civil, ny plus obligeant_,’ and that he was as
good a cavalier as he was a captain. The extraordinary civility shown to
him on this occasion, when a special household was provided for him and
other courtesies were multiplied,[161] was not thrown away. His
correspondence with the Electoral court—and with the Elector in
particular, whose admiration for the military genius of the great
commander was genuine—now became continuous.
-----
Footnote 161:
The Duke, we learn _inter alia_, played a game at cards with the
Electress and ‘Madame Bellmont.’ This Lady Bellmont or Bellamont, whom
Leibniz in vain begged the Electress not to admit into her intimacy,
was no other than Frances Bard, who claimed to be the widow of Prince
Rupert, and whose relations with him had certainly been of the most
intimate kind. She justified Leibniz by misusing her position at
Hanover to engage in Jacobite intrigue, thereby giving much trouble to
Cresset and to Edmund Poley, who succeeded him as envoy extraordinary
in 1703; and it is just conceivable that she may have in some measure
influenced the Electress in favour of the Pretender and his cause. She
died in 1708.
-----
The year 1705 marked an epoch in the history of the Succession question,
as we saw that it did in the personal life of the Electress Sophia, who,
during its course, lost not only her beloved daughter, but also her old
admirer and constant friend, Duke George William of Celle. All the
dominions of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line were now at last united under
the single rule of the Elector George Lewis, and into his coffers flowed
most of the great private wealth of his late uncle and father-in-law,
which had materially contributed to the high consideration enjoyed by
George William. About the same time the long-standing quarrel with the
elder (Wolfenbüttel) branch of the House of Brunswick was brought to a
close, and the House of Hanover stood stronger than ever before the
world. No season could have been more opportune for taking up the
question of the Succession with renewed earnestness. Its vigorous
prosecution was further favoured by the circumstance that the late Duke
of Celle’s prime minister, Baron Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, now
passed into the Hanoverian service, and, on the death of Count Platen in
1709, became prime minister at Hanover. He was already a statesman of
proved ability, trained in the school of his father-in-law, Chancellor
Schütz, whom he describes as one of the greatest and most capable
ministers ever known to him. While he always kept his political ends
clearly in view, Bernstorff’s political action was marked by
ruthlessness that is apt to make a statesman of his type cordially hated
where he is not eagerly followed; and his bitter jealousy of
Brandenburg-Prussia in particular was unlikely to commend him to the
goodwill of the Electress Sophia. Her faithful echo at Versailles allows
us to make a guess as to the sentiments of the Electress concerning him;
and they were afterwards reproduced by Queen Caroline, who, like
Elizabeth Charlotte, was unwilling to differ in her opinion of men or
measures from their venerated senior. Bernstorff’s activity in the last
stage of Sophia Dorothea’s catastrophe proves that he had not been
captivated by the influence which had so long been dominant at Celle;
and the Duchess Eleonora doubtless held the same opinion of him as the
other ladies. He devoted himself with indefatigable zeal to advancing
the greatness of the Hanoverian dynasty; but he laboured in no narrow
spirit and with no petty aims, as an adequate survey of his
statesmanship in the earlier years of George I, should it ever be made,
could not fail to show. With Bernstorff (to mention no other name) Jean
de Robethon had passed from the service of Celle into that of Hanover—a
perfect type of the sort of man and the sort of mind whose destiny it is
to be _a secretis_ of those whose grasp is on the wheel of State. After
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had driven him, like so many other
capable Frenchmen, into the service of the foes of France, he had served
his apprenticeship under no less a master than William III. During Queen
Anne’s reign he became one of the most assiduous and useful instruments
in the transactions connected with the Succession. For a time, he in
Bothmer’s absence attended to affairs at the Hague; but he then returned
to Hanover, where as confidential secretary he was of infinite service
to both the Elector and the Electress, and played a political part not
the less important because it was to a great extent played behind the
scenes. Bernstorff trusted no man more implicitly than Robethon, who, in
the end, was said to have acquired an unbounded influence over him; and
by Robethon were drafted all, or virtually all, the despatches and
letters sent to England by the Electoral family from the date of his
entrance into their service to that of George I’s landing in England.
All the more important of these documents likewise passed through the
hands of Hans Caspar von Bothmer, whose services to the dynasty had
likewise begun at Celle; whence he had been sent as envoy to Vienna,
passing on, after he had acted as a plenipotentiary at Ryswick, to
Paris. Unlike Bernstorff, and unlike Bernstorff’s master, Bothmer united
political insight of a high order with remarkable diplomatic ability and
tact; and, after he had, when the crisis came, shown perfect prudence in
the supreme moment of success, he was perhaps the only one of the
Hanoverians of the early Georgian period who attained to personal
popularity in London. But this was later. On the accession of Queen
Anne, it had been thought desirable that he should in the first instance
take up a post of observation at the Hague, since the Queen was at
present unlikely to welcome so prominent a Hanoverian diplomatist to her
Court. Thus it was from the Hague that he actively helped to bring about
the English legislative enactments, which we shall immediately notice,
and which signally improved the prospects of the Hanoverian Succession.
We shall see that, though his first and second stay as envoy in London
were but short,[162] he returned thither in time to direct the final
stage in the transactions connected with the Succession, and to apply to
this task a consummate skill and an equally conspicuous courage.
-----
Footnote 162:
He was accredited to London after the death of Schütz in August, 1710,
and remained certainly till March, 1711. He reappeared there in
October, and remained till January, 1711. He came back in June or
July, 1714. (Chance, _u.s._)
-----
The ministerial arrangements made after the death of his uncle by the
Elector George Lewis, who was at no time wont to delegate to others any
part of what he had clearly recognised as his own bounden duty, might
seem to imply that, from 1705 onwards, the conduct of the Succession
question was more and more taken out of the hands of his mother. It is
true that the Elector had, as the head of his dynasty, become more
vigilant; but her interest in the question had remained the same. And,
as a matter of fact, at no previous time had her name been bandied about
between the political parties in England as it was now and during the
remaining years of her life. To the close of the year 1705 belongs that
strange episode in the party history of the reign, the attempt on the
part of a section among the Tories to bring the Electress over to
England.
Hitherto, she had wisely refrained—nor is there any indication that her
eldest son and her grandson had done otherwise—from identifying the
interests of her House with either of the two Parliamentary parties,
both of which had had a part in the Act of Settlement. No doubt it was
the Whigs who had most warmly supported the insertion of her name in
that Act; the embassy which had brought it over to Hanover had been
exclusively made up of Whigs; and, writing to Leibniz towards the close
of 1701, Sophia, apparently with reference to the approaching English
elections, excusably lets slip the phrase: ‘_le parti des Whigs qui est
le nostre_.’ But, already in the following year, when annoyed by the
officious importunities of Toland and that other _grand fâcheux_, Sir
Peter Fraiser, she confided to her niece Elizabeth Charlotte her
resolution not to mix herself up with the manœuvres of the Presbyterians
and Whigs, which, as we have seen, were at that time agitating Scotland.
‘Besides,’ she observed, with a fastidiousness not inexplicable when the
composition of Macclesfield’s embassy is remembered, ‘the Whigs that
came to me here I found anything but charming.’ And, again in 1703, she
ordered Baron Brauns not to answer one of Toland’s long diatribes
against the Tories by more than a simple acknowledgment. There was no
fear, she remarked, of their supporting the Pretender; no person of
substance, in fact nobody but Catholics and adventurers set on making
their fortunes, were on his side; for the rest, she found as many honest
men among the Tories as elsewhere. She had, as a matter of fact, certain
affinities with this party; while some of their opponents in the House
of Commons offended her, as a true Stewart who remembered the excesses
of the Commonwealth days, by comparing the Prince of Wales to Perkin
Warbeck and branding him as a bastard—all in order to tickle the ears of
_le petit peuple_. There could be no question, she told Leibniz in the
same letter, as to the Prince’s claims interfering with her own; her
right was based on her Protestantism; except for this, many others stood
between the Crown and herself. While, then, she adhered to her
determination to place herself in the hands of neither party, there was
no reason why the Tories should not in their turn seek to make her
listen to their charming. When, about the end of 1704, it had become
known through Marlborough that the Electress would be pleased to receive
a formal invitation to England, both parties seem to have risen to the
occasion; but, while the Whigs returned to the notion of bringing over
the Electoral Prince, some of the Tories became intent on the Electress
herself being invited. Partly to ingratiate themselves with her, partly
to spite Queen Anne, who preferred to their guidance that of the
moderates of both sides under the leadership of Marlborough, Godolphin,
and Harley, the malcontent Tories, led by Rochester and known as the
‘High-fliers,’ resolved on an attempt to take the game into their own
hands. With Rochester she had been on friendly terms from the first; in
June, 1702, she writes that he was among the first to vote for the Act
of Settlement, and that she had always mentioned this to those who
wished to set her against him.[163] Towards the end of September, 1705,
a correspondent informed Rochester of the cordial response returned by
the Electress to certain overtures made on his behalf; he declared
himself convinced that, whenever the Queen and Parliament called upon
her, the Electress would, in the face of all difficulties, wait upon Her
Majesty in England; and, more than this, she had told him, and those in
attendance on her, that, so soon as the Parliament summoned her, she was
ready to obey. (In a letter to Schütz of about the same date, Sophia,
however, qualifies this consent by requiring a proviso that she should
be supplied with means of living in England as became a Princess of
Wales.) Though, Rochester’s correspondent added, the Elector was
exceeding modest on the subject of some of his family coming to England,
the Electress spoke as the Elector thought. Sophia was on friendly terms
with other members of the Tory party besides Rochester. With Ormonde,
for instance, she kept up a correspondence both in this and in the
following year. But the task of moving an address to the Crown, in which
it was proposed that the Heiress Presumptive should be invited to
England, was committed to a quite recent convert to the ranks of the
High-flyers, Lord Haversham. He displayed a proper zeal by hazarding the
suggestion that it would be of the greatest advantage for the Electress
to make the personal acquaintance of the Bench of Bishops. The comedy
ended in the rejection of Haversham’s motion by a majority of Peers; but
he returned to the fray in a pamphlet. In the Commons a letter
advocating the proposal, hinting that it was approved by the Electress
and censuring the Whigs for opposing it, was voted libellous. This
much-vext letter was signed by Sir Rowland Gwynne, who was at the time
residing at Hanover; but its real author was Leibniz. Towards the close
of 1705, Marlborough made use of the opportunity of another visit paid
by him to Hanover for explaining the situation to the Elector.
Marlborough, who, while anxious both to please the Queen and to keep the
game so far as possible in his own hands, was more and more identifying
his own interests with the ascendancy of the Whigs, easily succeeded in
making clear to the Elector, how it was not in his interest that his
mother should at present proceed to England; and he was able to add
effect to his arguments by exhibiting an official notice of the
intention of the English Cabinet to introduce Naturalisation and Regency
Bills in the interests of the Electoral House. The understanding between
the Elector and Marlborough now became better than ever, while the
Elector’s confidence in the Whigs steadily grew. It is impossible to say
whether this was the time when Marlborough proffered at Hanover a loan
of £20,000 in return for a blank commission signed by the Electress
Sophia, which conferred on him the supreme command of the military and
naval forces of the three kingdoms after the death of Queen Anne.
-----
Footnote 163:
On Rochester’s sudden death, in 1711, Sophia expresses her deep regret
for him as her friend—‘he had plenty of _esprit_, and was in no way a
republican.’
-----
The High-fliers had thus merely played into the hands of the Whigs, who
were in the majority in the new House of Commons that met in October,
1705. The Address to the Queen had warmly thanked her for her great care
and endeavour to settle the Succession of the kingdom of Scotland in the
House of Hanover; and soon afterwards the Bills were brought in which
Marlborough had announced at Hanover. By the first of these, the
Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dowager of Hanover, and her issue
were naturalised as English subjects; and it is strange that the legal
status thus secured to her should have been so persistently ignored in
English national biography.[164] The second of these Bills, purporting
to provide for the better security of the Queen’s person and Government,
was introduced in the Lords with much eloquence by the ever-young Lord
Wharton. This Bill made it high treason to assert in writing, and
attached the penalties of a _præmunire_ to the assertion by word of
mouth, that the Queen was not a lawful Sovereign, or that the Sovereign
in Parliament could not limit the descent of the Crown; and it further
appointed seven great officers of State, and certain other persons, to
administer the government of the realm in the event of the Queen’s
demise and the absence from England of her lawful successor. The Bill
met with no opposition in the Lords, though Rochester contrived to carry
a limitation, supposed to safeguard the Act of Uniformity; but in the
House of Commons it lay long on the table. The High-fliers, putting
forward as their spokesman Sir Thomas Hanmer (who up to the last
professed the deepest devotion to the interests of the Electress
Sophia), were once more attempting to take the game out of the hands of
the Whigs by proposing that the Electress should be brought over. Much
use was made, as appears from a passage in Burnet’s inaccurate
narrative, of a letter written in November by the Electress Sophia to
the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which she had reiterated the position
consistently maintained by her, that she was prepared to come to
England, should both the Queen and Parliament desire it. This position
was alike logical and appropriate; but the letter did not suit the
Whigs, who were well aware that Queen Anne would never be brought to
express such a desire. On the rejection of Hanmer’s motion the Electress
informed Burnet with much dignity that, should it prove to be in the
interests of State and religion, she remained ready to cross to England
if invited, provided she were created Princess of Wales. But, at the
same time, she expressed to Marlborough her conviction that her
intentions had been so misrepresented to the Queen that her coming to
England now would be superfluous. There is no reason for accepting
Burnet’s statement that her letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury had
been instigated by the Tories; but neither did she show any disposition
towards encouraging the Whigs. In truth, though Sophia was not destined
to mount a royal throne, and though what might be termed her monarchical
apprenticeship had been served in a State that had but recently ceased
to be petty and whose system of government was to all intents and
purposes absolute, she displayed a higher capacity for constitutional
rule than Queen Anne, who could only maintain a balance between factions
by subjecting herself to their leaders in turn. It cannot be
satisfactorily shown that the Electress definitely preferred the Tories,
while the Elector favoured the Whigs. In fact, she remained on good
terms with both the leading parties; although she did not turn a deaf
ear even to overtures from so unsafe a politician as Buckingham, who,
after taking a leading part in the attempt to bring her over to England,
tried to engage her in a fresh intrigue to that end.[165] The Regency
Bill, as it was shortly called, in the end became law; and Parliament,
which had further shown its goodwill to the House of Hanover by voting a
modest subsidy for the payment of additional Hanoverian and Celle
troops, was prorogued in March, 1706.
-----
Footnote 164:
She told Schütz (January 1st, 1706) that she thought the
naturalisation unnecessary, as it had been held to be in the case of
King William III and in those of her late brothers, but that she was
quite prepared to act as the Queen and Parliament wished. She would
have preferred the name ‘Brunswick-Lüneburg’ to be substituted for
‘Hanover,’ and the style ‘_Sérénissime_’ in lieu of ‘Excellent.’ The
former of these criticisms, at all events, was perfectly just.
Footnote 165:
I have modified some expressions in my first edition, after comparing
the account of F. Salomon, _Die letzten Regierungsjahre der Königin
Anna_, pp. 276-7; but I cannot come to the conclusion that the
attitude of the Electress as between the parties was even at this time
incorrect.
-----
In the following May, Lord Halifax, who as Charles Montagu had been a
leading Whig statesman already under William III and had quite recently
been appointed one of the Commissioners for the Union with Scotland, was
chosen, no doubt on account of his position and accomplishments rather
than because of any personal attractiveness, to proceed to Hanover,
there to present the Naturalisation and Regency Acts to the Electress
Sophia, now the first subject of the English Crown.[166] Halifax was
also the bearer of a Garter for the Electoral Prince, on whom a few
weeks later the Queen conferred the title of Duke of Cambridge. On his
way Halifax had secured the inclusion of a guarantee of the established
Succession in future treaties with the United Provinces. In his suite
was Addison, now one of the Under-Secretaries of State; but the
reticence of this celebrated personage seems to have disappointed the
Electress.
-----
Footnote 166:
This visit synchronised very nearly with the coming of age of the
Pretender (June), who seized the opportunity to assure Pope Clement XI
that ‘no temptation of this world, and no desire to reign, should ever
make him wander from the right path of the Catholic faith.’ The
anecdote must go for what it is worth, which was said to have been
related by Halifax to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her husband: how,
at his first formal audience with the Electress, she ran across the
room in order to place herself in front of a portrait of the
Pretender, and thus screen it from the ambassador’s eyes.
-----
From a later remark of Leibniz we gather that, on the occasion of
Halifax’s embassy, the Electress made no secret of the view held by her
and the Elector with reference to the Succession. It rested, she
considered, on hereditary right; though, in the interests of the nation,
certain persons possessed of claims prior to her own had been excluded.
In other words, she acknowledged that Parliament had a right to exclude
Catholics from the Succession, but declined to regard her title to the
Crown as primarily a Parliamentary one. As a matter of fact, neither the
Electress nor the Elector was much edified by the embassy of Halifax. He
submitted to her a list of twenty-one persons, whom according to the
Regency Act she was called upon to appoint as Lords Justices, in
addition to the great officers of the Crown, for carrying on the
government after Queen Anne’s death in the event of her own absence from
England. Of these twenty-one names, as it afterwards appeared, she
struck out seven, one of which was that of Halifax himself.[167] As to
the titles conferred upon the Electoral Prince (which, Sophia said, were
so many that she had to write them down in her almanack lest she should
forget them), the grant of an annual income to herself as Heiress
Presumptive would have been more to the point; inasmuch as the titles
were given to enable the Prince to take his seat in Parliament, from
which Hanover was a long way off.
-----
Footnote 167:
It was said that, when, after the death of Sophia, it fell to the
Elector, her son, to substitute his nominations of additional Lords
Justices for hers, and the original document was accordingly produced
in London, the cover enclosing it was found to have been broken open.
It was further reported that, after much wrangling with her ministers,
Queen Anne cut the discussion short by taking upon herself the blame
of having opened the cover.
-----
The elements of satisfaction contained in the Acts brought to Hanover by
Halifax were not over-estimated by the Electress, to whom it must by
this time have become clear that the real difficulty in placing the
House of Hanover in its proper position towards the country with which
it was to be inseparably connected, lay with Queen Anne herself. More
especially after the publication of Sir Rowland Gwynne’s unfortunate
letter, the Queen thought that explanations were due to her from the
Electress, who in truth had none to give. Marlborough had been wise
enough to abstain from delivering at Hanover a letter written by the
Queen in this sense and entrusted by her to him, and, instead, had held
conciliatory language, advising both Electress and Elector to declare
themselves absolute strangers to the obnoxious manifesto. The advice was
judicious; for, as Marlborough had predicted, the original proposal did
not die out. In 1707, one Scott, an Englishman or Scotchman in the
service of the Elector, entered, according to Marlborough with the
cognisance of the Electress, into a negotiation with the High-fliers;
but he was stopped by the Elector himself. In July of the same year, the
Earl of Peterborough, when returning to England from Spain to give an
account of his proceedings there, spent some days at Hanover and
Herrenhausen, where he addressed a letter to the Elector and another to
the Electress, in which he insisted on the necessity of the residence of
a member of the Electoral House in England. Sophia handed the letter
intended for herself to her son, who, in the plainest terms, expressed
his determination to take no steps in this direction, unless with the
approval of the Queen and her ministers. Meanwhile, though perfectly
prudent in her own conduct, the Electress could not altogether conceal
the annoyance caused to her by the cold and suspicious attitude
maintained by Queen Anne towards everything connected with the
Succession. Sophia complained repeatedly that from England came nothing
but titles and compliments, and declared that she would not be made to
pay for any more special ambassadors from the Court of St. James. (Her
present of gold plate to Halifax had cost her some 30,000 florins.) For
the conveyance of honours that cost nothing she was, she said, perfectly
content with Mr. Howe.[168] When Leibniz reported to her as to prospects
of the Union between England and Scotland, which was actually achieved
early in 1707, she rather sharply replied that she had no wish to
discuss the affairs of either kingdom: ‘_comme je n’en tire rien, je n’y
suis point intéressée_.’ She can, however, hardly have been so
indifferent to the subject as she pretended to be; since a clause in the
Act of Union definitively settled the Scottish Succession upon herself
and her descendants. Nor can she have remained unaware that, as Queen
Anne’s reign continued and the apprehensions excited by the growing
intolerance of the Church of England more and more endangered the
maintenance of the Union, Scottish Presbyterianism was, irrespective of
this consideration, obliged to look to the Hanoverian Succession as the
best guarantee of its own security.
-----
Footnote 168:
Brigadier-General Emmanuel Scroope Howe was English resident at
Hanover from 1705 till his death in 1709. He was, as mentioned on a
previous page, the husband of Ruperta, Prince Rupert’s daughter by
Margaret Howes. Ruperta seems herself to have helped to embroil
matters by writing some highly indiscreet letters to England, in which
she dwelt on the apathy of the House of Hanover towards the
Succession.
-----
We know for certain that the Electress was well informed as to the
existence of a secret sympathy on Queen Anne’s part with the Pretender;
since we have the explicit statement of the Duchess of Orleans that her
aunt believed the Queen to be secretly desirous of the accession of her
half-brother, and further believed ‘that she would some day bestow the
Crown upon him.’ Nor can we regard the latter clause a mere phrase, when
we remember the earlier communications in this sense between Anne and
her exiled father. But it by no means follows from this that this
solution was one desired by the Electress Sophia herself. According to a
fairly well authenticated anecdote, a bundle of letters was, some time
in the reign of George III, found in Kensington Palace, endorsed in
William III’s own handwriting ‘_Letters of the Electress Sophia to the
Court of St. Germains_’; and a plan which had been formed for publishing
these letters was frustrated through their being destroyed by George
III’s orders. But as to the contents of these letters there is no
satisfactory evidence at all. Again, it is no doubt true, and of a piece
with George I’s habitual method of dealing with inconvenient evidence,
that, in 1714, he requested the Duchess of Orleans to destroy all the
letters received by her from the Electress which contained any reference
to the House of Stewart; and, though the Duchess of Orleans, who made no
secret of her own sympathies, and whose portrait quite appropriately
found a place in the Stewart family museum at Caillot, says that her
aunt did not obey this wish, no such letters have been found, with a
single exception. In this letter, dated March 21st, 1708, after
mentioning that the ‘Prince of Wales’ was at Dunkirk (whence he
afterwards started on his brief expedition to Scotland), the Electress
Sophia indulges in the reflexion: ‘Who knows whether God will not
elevate him who suffers so innocently?’ But though, in matters
concerning the line from which she was descended, as well as with regard
to her own immediate family, Sophia’s nature was very far from being
untouched by sentiment, she never allowed herself to be subdued by it.
In her tenderness of feeling towards the House of Stewart she set an
example followed by the Hanoverian dynasty when in possession of the
British throne—from George I downwards, of whose kindliness of feeling
towards the exiled House instances might easily be cited.[169]
-----
Footnote 169:
The same feeling notably descended to George III, who granted an
‘apanage’ to the Cardinal of York in his last years; to George IV, who
as Prince Regent provided a solemn sepulture for the remains of James
II, and erected a monument to the last of his descendants; and, as is
well known, to the last and most illustrious sovereign of the
Hanoverian dynasty.
-----
Thus, in this period Sophia returned to Queen Anne coolness for
coolness, and though at times she might almost have seemed to herself
indifferent to her prospects and those of her posterity, while at other
times she thought of herself as ‘a candidate for Sion’ rather than as
the heiress to a throne, she was content to avoid any false step, and to
leave unjeopardised a future which she could not control. As late as
September, 1708, in mentioning the visit of Lord Hereford and two Whig
M.P.s, she writes that she found them very warm for the Succession, and
that she supposed they would always continue of the same mind, so long
as it paid them; at present it did not seem to pay _her_, for she was
not treated as its Princess of Wales. But, in the course of this year,
the Whigs were fully established in power; and, when the death, in the
autumn, of Prince George of Denmark, together with the subsequent
refusal of Queen Anne to remarry, had removed the last possibility of
issue from the reigning sovereign, the Hanoverian prospects of course
grew brighter. The House stood well at this season in the eyes of Europe
and of England. George Lewis’ envoy at Ratisbon in this very year at
last gained admittance into the Electoral College; and in the previous
year (1707) the Elector had assumed the command of the army of the Lower
Rhine, though his unswerving loyalty to the cause of the Grand Alliance
had met with an incomplete response of confidence on the part of its
military leaders. Courtiers and others cultivating a consciousness of
coming events began to recognise the necessity of turning their faces
towards the rising sun. Mrs. Charles Howard, for instance, had the
honour of being (with her husband) presented to the Electress Dowager,
and of receiving particular notice, both from her and from the Electoral
Princess—as one of whose bed-chamber women she was in later days to play
so conspicuous a part at the British Court. But Queen Anne persisted in
the attitude which she had assumed, and in the autumn of this year
frankly told Lord Haversham that she could not tolerate the notion of
the presence in this country of any successor, even were it to last no
longer than a week.
When the approach of the great ministerial crisis of 1710 first
announced itself by the dismissal of Sunderland, the Elector was moved
to perhaps the most distinct expression of political opinion in British
affairs to which he committed himself at any time before his accession
to the throne. In a spirited remonstrance addressed by him to the Queen,
he gave words to the hope that she would enter into no further changes
in the present Ministry and Parliament. The Electress in the meantime
remained mistress of herself; and George Lewis followed her example,
when the crisis reached its height, and the wheel of fortune once more
brought the Tories uppermost. Neither Sophia nor her confidential
counsellor Leibniz looked with fear or even with disfavour upon the
transactions which seemed to have put a new face on the entire scheme of
British State policy. The leading spirit of the new combination was
Robert Harley, who possessed many valuable political qualities, but who
was above all a born intriguer. The moderation of his conduct was set
off by his personal merits, among which, in a brilliant literary age,
his genuine love of literature was by no means the least important.[170]
Leibniz, whose own political influence at Hanover had of late visibly
declined, was much gratified by the marked civility shown to him by one
of his London correspondents, Dr. Hutton, a follower of Harley.
-----
Footnote 170:
The latest tribute to it is the conjecture crediting him with the
original authorship of _Robinson Crusoe_.
-----
Queen Anne herself lost no time in communicating to the House of Hanover
her own view of the political changes which opened the concluding period
of her reign. In the autumn of 1710, Earl Rivers (by whose appointment
to the constableship of the Tower these changes had been heralded) made
his appearance at Hanover. His personal reputation was far from
immaculate; but he had been a successful general. At the time of his
arrival at Hanover, Sunderland’s dismissal had been succeeded by no
further ministerial changes. That Queen Anne should not have resented
the protest against this step transmitted by the Elector through Bothmer
at the Hague, indicates her hesitancy in the process. But, when a
further series of ministerial changes had been accomplished in England,
Rivers, who had made himself very acceptable at Hanover even to the
Elector, began to develop the ulterior purpose of his mission.
Unmistakably, it was intended to facilitate the overthrow of
Marlborough, without which these changes would remain incomplete, by
putting the Elector in his place as commander-in-chief in the war,
which, as Rivers assured him, the new British Government intended to
carry on with undiminished vigour. The ambassador was instructed to
state that the Queen could no longer suffer the insolence of those whom
she had raised to the highest pitch of power and authority. But, before
Rivers reached the Electoral Court, Marlborough had already conveyed to
George Lewis assurances of his fidelity to the Hanoverian Succession;
and the House of Hanover was thus confirmed in the attitude of caution
which it maintained in this very trying turn of affairs. There was no
reason why Elector and Electress should remain deaf to the blandishments
of the well-affected and reasonable Tories, whose theory of the
Succession harmonised with Sophia’s own. But, at the same time, it would
have been not less unwise to court the goodwill of the Queen and her new
ministers by cutting communications with Marlborough and the Whigs, than
it would have been to yield to the Whig proposal, communicated through
Robethon, to base the claims of the House of Hanover on the principles
of the Revolution of 1688. Leibniz was able to demonstrate the perfect
consistency of the course pursued by the House he served; and the
firmness and prudence with which the Elector resisted perhaps the single
temptation which, in the whole course of these transactions, he
personally found it hard to withstand—the offer of the supreme command
in the war—deserves a fuller recognition than has usually been accorded
to it.
The final period in the history of the Hanoverian Succession—though even
during this period the question had, as will be seen, still to pass
through a series of stages before it was solved—began with the
transformation of the British Ministry into a Tory Government, and the
overthrow of the Marlborough influence, which, with that of Godolphin,
had so long cast its spell over Queen Anne. During the last month or two
of 1710,[171] Schütz having died in the previous August, Bothmer was
performing the duties of envoy extraordinary in London, where he
remained till the following March. The Electress was extremely desirous
that he should, unlike Schütz and Kreyenberg, refrain from showing any
inclination towards either of the political parties; here in Hanover,
she assured him in January, 1711, ‘we do not know the meaning of the
terms Whig and Tory, and decline to distinguish individuals under those
names’; and she applauds him for having already, as she hears, managed
to create a far more agreeable impression than that made by his
predecessor. But this attempt on the part of the Electress to hold the
balance between the two parties, and to make Bothmer do the same, could
not be of long endurance. On April 17th, 1711, the Emperor Joseph I
died; there could be no reasonable doubt as to the succession of his
brother, the titular King Charles III of Spain, to the Imperial throne;
and an irresistible impulse was given to the desire for peace, with
which the new British Ministry was known to be in sympathy.
-----
Footnote 171:
The Electress wishes him a happy voyage on October 29th.
-----
Henceforth, until the Peace had been actually concluded, the question of
its conclusion dominated all others, and that of the Succession among
the rest. It might suit the purposes of the Whigs, who were opposed to
the Peace, to represent the desire of bringing it about as put forward
with a view to covering Jacobite designs with regard to the Succession;
as a matter of fact, the Tory leaders, though they might amuse
Berwick—or others who were as ignorant of England as he was—with
proposals about bringing over the Pretender to reside in England on his
half-sister’s invitation, were very careful not to allow any premature
Jacobite outbreak to interrupt the peace negotiations. When, in October,
1711, Bothmer returned to London as envoy extraordinary, the situation
had, for better or for worse, cleared up; and it would have been
impossible for the most skilful of diplomatists, with the strongest wish
to carry out the conciliatory intentions cherished by the good
Electress, to avoid an early collision with the Queen’s ministers, and,
in consequence, to place in his own way an insuperable obstacle against
securing her own goodwill. For the Elector was, heart and soul, in
favour of the continuance of the war; and the immediate purpose of
Bothmer’s present mission was to overthrow the peace policy to which the
Queen’s ministers had made up their minds. He brought with him an
elaborate memorandum from the Elector, dated November 28th, 1711,
against the conclusion of peace with France; and in January, 1712, this
memorandum was supported by a letter from the Elector asking for a
hearing for his envoy. These documents were presented to the Queen on
February 14th. As a matter of course, they were ascribed by the
ministerialists to Whig influence, and represented as implying an
attempt to bring about the continuance of Marlborough in the command.
There was no warrant for either assumption; and it may be added that the
Electress instructed Bothmer to express to Ormonde, as a tried friend of
hers, the particular gratification with which she had heard of his
appointment.
Violent altercations in Parliament ensued; and Bothmer clearly perceived
that any attempt to renew at present the proposal of inviting over the
Electress and the Electoral Prince, if not the Elector himself, could
have no other effect than that of uniting with the Jacobite wing of the
Tory party the followers of Harley, with whom it was a cardinal
principle to ‘use the Queen with all duty and respect imaginable.’ On
the representations of Bothmer, Somers, Sunderland, and Godolphin agreed
not to move in the matter without the Elector’s assent; and this was
sure not to be given, until an invitation should have been approved by
Queen and Parliament. Thus a blunder was avoided which must have proved
more disastrous to the prospects of the House of Hanover than that
actually committed three years later.
Both in 1710 and 1711 the air was full of more or less unsubstantial
schemes for bringing about, at what already seemed the eleventh hour,
the succession of the Pretender; and rumours were rife as to the gradual
transformation of the Ministry into a Jacobite Cabal. Though Leibniz was
no doubt right in saying that the question of inviting to England, or
(as the Electress so consistently repeated) of granting an income to,
one or more members of the Electoral family, was the touchstone of the
real intentions of the British Government, and though this may, as he
asserts, have also been the opinion of the Elector, yet there was no
question at Hanover of claiming any such concession. In April, 1711, the
Electress declared herself wholly uncertain of what would happen even in
the event of Queen Anne’s death—for ‘what Parliament does one day, it
undoes the next.’ Thus, when, in the autumn of the same year, Lord
Rivers made his second appearance at Hanover, the letter which he
brought with him from Queen Anne, and his assurances of her care for the
interests of the Electoral family, were received by Sophia with proper
expressions of gratitude, whatever she might privately say as to the
expense which this mission entailed upon the Hanoverian Court, with
little prospect of return. There was, indeed, some talk of the Elector
being offered the chief command in Flanders after Marlborough’s
dismissal in December, 1711; but nothing came of the suggestion, and in
January, 1712, the Electress is found expressing her satisfaction at the
appointment of Ormonde, who had always been so friendly to her. But as
to the main object of his mission Rivers completely failed; for George
Lewis firmly declined to give his approval to the British overtures of
peace to France, at the risk of deeply annoying the Queen and her
ministers by thus falling in with the wishes of the Whigs. He took his
stand on the principles of the Grand Alliance, from which he had never
swerved; while his mother judiciously held the balance by refusing to
accept the insinuations of her correspondent at the Hague, Lord
Strafford, against the inclinations of her House and Bothmer towards the
Whigs, and appealing with much dignity to her conviction that, beyond
the devices of Whigs and Tories, the Protestant Succession could depend
on the support of the nation. Meanwhile, the two parties were alike
striving to apprise the Hanoverian Court of the direction in which to
look for its friends. The anxiety of the Whigs to identify their party
with the Electoral House is at the same time proved by the motion of the
Duke of Devonshire to give precedence to the Duke of Cambridge over
other Peers.[172] The Ministry overtrumped this modest effort by a Bill
giving precedence to the entire Electoral family, which was passed in
two days (January, 1712), and which the minister’s kinsman, Thomas
Harley, was in July specially sent over to present to the Electress. She
took the announcement of this new visit very coolly, regretting the
expense to which she was put by it, and observing that, if the British
throne were for sale, France on behalf of its client could afford the
purchase better than the House of Hanover, which had no intention of
imitating the prodigality of Augustus II of Poland.[173] Her instinct
was correct, for Thomas Harley had instructions which, while pretending
to put the blame on Bothmer, seriously reflected on the Elector’s
opposition to the peace policy pursued by the British Government. In the
course of the negotiations carried on at Paris in August, 1712, between
Torcy and Bolingbroke, the latter on one occasion even went so far as to
hint at the despatch of a British fleet into the Baltic, with a view not
only to controlling the northern troubles, but also to frustrating
possible designs on the part of the Dutch _and of Hanover_.[174]
-----
Footnote 172:
He had been created a Knight of the Garter in 1706, but not installed
till December, 1710, Lord Halifax acting as his proxy.
Footnote 173:
_À propos_ of the mention of this sovereign it may be noted that about
this time Queen Anne thought fit to impose upon the Electress the task
(specially disagreeable because she specially disliked him) of
dissuading King Augustus from forcing his son and namesake to follow
him into the Church of Rome. Augustus II actually promised Queen Anne
to send his son to England; but in the meantime the latter had been
received into the Catholic Church at Bologna.
Footnote 174:
O. Weber, _Der Friede von Utrecht_, p. 313.
-----
Meanwhile the Court of Hanover, while maintaining unchanged its attitude
towards the general question of war or peace, had immediate interests of
its own to watch besides such as might be involved in the question of
the English Succession. The recognition of the Hanoverian Electorship,
for instance, was demanded from France, _pari passu_ with that of the
Prussian Kingship. Early in the year, in the negotiations already in
progress, Bothmer, whom Oxford and Bolingbroke persisted in treating as
antagonistic to their Government,[175] returned to his post at the
Hague. In December, 1712, Baron Thomas von Grote, who belonged to a
family of high distinction in the Hanoverian service, arrived in London,
nominally with the special charge of returning thanks for the Act of
Precedence. His instructions, drawn up by Robethon in the name of the
Electress Sophia, illustrate the penultimate stage in the final period
of the transactions concerning the Succession. He was to be polite to
all, and not to consider himself debarred from taking counsel with the
old friends of the House—in other words, with Marlborough and the Whig
leaders—so long as this was done privately and secretly; and he was to
avoid giving umbrage to the Queen’s ministers, and above all to the
Queen herself. The Elector furnished him with a special commendatory
letter to Oxford. He was to make friends with the clergy, and to
reassure them by pointing out that the ecclesiastical system of the
German Lutherans was to all intents and purposes an episcopal one. The
everlasting delicate question as to the summoning of the Electress or
another member of the Electoral family to England he was to treat as if
this event might any day come to pass; and, at the same time, he was to
press for a proposal to Parliament on the subject of an
establishment—say at Somerset House. The Elector, while of opinion that
such a proposal would furnish the best means of testing the sincerity of
the Queen’s and her advisers’ intentions, declined to influence
Parliamentary opinion by means of any expenditure of his own, though it
would seem that he had previously not objected to Bothmer’s attempting
to gain over some noble Lords against the Peace by similar inducements.
But, though he still abstained from any intervention in British home
affairs, his own instructions to Grote were less carefully balanced than
those of the Electress, and left no doubt as to its being the leading
Whigs on whom he reckoned as the true friends of the House of Hanover.
-----
Footnote 175:
Bolingbroke hated Bothmer, and described him as, ‘notwithstanding that
air of coldness and caution which he wore, the most inveterate party
man that I ever saw, and the most capable of giving _tête baissée_
into the most extravagant measures that faction could propose.’ (Cf.
Salomon, p. 239, and note.)
-----
Both at Hanover and elsewhere, however, eager friends of the dynasty
advocated a more expeditious procedure. In September, 1712, the
indefatigable Leibniz submitted a scheme, concocted by busy brains in
London, for including the demand for establishing the Electress in
England among the conditions of the Peace of Utrecht. But, though both
in her correspondence, and in conversation with Thomas Harley, she had
given considerable attention to the scheme, she ultimately declared it
impracticable. The unsatisfactory action of the English ministers in the
matter of the Dutch guarantee of the Hanoverian Succession had once more
rendered her diffident; she was, she said, so old that there was no
reality in all her talk; were she younger, she added with a touch of her
old spirit, the sovereignty of England should not pass by her.
The Peace of Utrecht, when actually concluded in the spring of 1713, was
in many respects unsatisfactory to the Elector; and as an Estate of the
Empire, he must have been well content to withhold his signature from
it. But it contained a very explicit recognition of the Hanoverian
Succession by France and the other signatory Powers; so that, in this
respect at all events, Bothmer’s exertions had been entirely successful.
Yet the tone prevailing at court and in ministerial circles in London
very imperfectly agreed with this result; and in Hanover there was a
growing disbelief in the sincerity of the sentiments entertained in
these quarters. Grote found himself coolly received, and his attempts to
obtain assurances baffled. Various suggestions offered by him were
ignored; and in a lengthy despatch which he sent home in February (a few
weeks before his death) he drew the darkest picture of the political
situation which had as yet reached Hanover. He considered that, in spite
of the generalities in which Oxford shrouded himself, he had gradually
gone over to the Jacobites in order to please the Queen, while
Bolingbroke he regarded as an open Jacobite on his own account. He
thought that, as to the Pretender, there was reason for fearing the
worst; he had heard that the Queen had expressed a wish to see her
half-brother in England after the conclusion of the Peace, while the
question of inviting over a member of the Electoral family had been
indefinitely postponed. Part of this report sufficiently tallies with
the information with which about this time the Pretender was being
constantly supplied by his illegitimate half-brother, the Duke of
Berwick. Though sanguine as to methods of action, Berwick never
minimised the chances of the Hanoverian Succession; the first thing
requisite, he wrote to James in November, 1712, was to checkmate
Hanover; the rest could then be easily accomplished without mentioning
the name of the legitimate claimant. Both Oxford and Bolingbroke,
Berwick wrote in May, 1713, were heartily resolved to go forward; in
July, he reported them to be rather less ardent; but these were mere
fluctuations. From all this it is tolerably clear that Oxford, in trying
to deceive others, deceived himself. Much of his political life had
consisted in a successful endeavour to face both ways without laying
himself open to the charge of double-dealing. He now persuaded himself
that he was throwing dust in the eyes of the Elector and Electress and
the friends of the Hanoverian Succession, while at the same time drawing
as near to the Jacobite projects as safety permitted. He was, above all
things, a Parliamentary statesman, and nothing but the decision of
Parliament would determine his ultimate choice of sides; but, as the
majority was at present constituted, while the great achievement of the
Peace assured the advance of Tory ascendancy, and the Queen seemed less
and less inclined to reconcile herself to the Succession of the House of
Hanover, he looked to the triumph of the Jacobite cause as the event
towards which his course would be most safely shaped. With Bolingbroke,
the case was wholly different. Oxford was prepared to be in the end
guided by the Parliamentary majority; Bolingbroke was prepared to
educate it up to that end—only he used a more sportsmanlike phraseology.
For himself, he made no secret whatever of his likes and dislikes; kept
up a constant intercourse with Jacobites and Frenchmen; and at times, as
Grote complained, did him the honour of treating him ‘_de coquin ou de
fou_.’[176]
-----
Footnote 176:
Salomon, _u.s._, p. 223, from the Hanover Archives.
-----
Meanwhile, the Queen and the Lord Treasurer continued their _banales_
expressions of friendship and goodwill at Hanover, where, on March 17th,
1713, the useful Thomas Harley presented a letter from the Queen,
declaring her intention of treating the interests of the House of
Hanover as her own. But neither this letter, nor the amicable phrases
with which in April she opened Parliament after its adjournment, evoked
any warm response at Hanover. Sophia, indeed, wrote to Strafford at the
Hague, begging him to thank the Queen, and adding that, as she had no
expectation of ever ascending the throne herself, she hoped that Her
Majesty would entertain no aversion to her on that score. But, as she
told Bothmer, she only paid back Strafford in the coin she received from
England—words, not deeds; and, on the whole, Leibniz’s epigram not
unaptly summed up the situation—
_‘Hannoverana domus magnâ me gaudet amicâ,’
Anna refert; tacita est Hannoverana domus._
An attempt had been indeed made, or suggested, to utilise the Queen’s
friendly expressions for a bold venture on the part of the House of
Hanover; but it had been still-born. After Grote’s death in March,
Kreyenberg had carried on the affairs of the Hanoverian Legation in
London; and reports were also from time to time sent to Hanover by the
Dutch resident in London, L’Hermitage. In one of these (dated May 9th,
1713)[177] the very important proposal was made that the Electoral
Prince should come over to England on his own account, inasmuch as the
Queen would never send for him. The notion found the utmost favour with
the Whig leaders, who knew how much depended on the issue of the
approaching election, and who hoped that it might be influenced by so
bold a step on the part of the Hanoverian family. But Bernstorff, who
was in favour of the scheme and without whose persuasion there was no
prospect at all of the Elector approving it, was ill at the time; and,
when he recovered, the Elector was found to be entirely under the
influence of advice against action. An attempt to bring about the repeal
of the Union with Scotland was defeated, without the question of the
Hanoverian Succession playing more than a subsidiary part in the
dispute.
-----
Footnote 177:
Printed in Macpherson, Vol. ii. pp. 792-3. See on this transaction
Salomon, _u.s._, pp. 225 _sqq._
-----
When, in the following July, Parliament, after approving a number of the
Treaties which formed the Peace of Utrecht,[178] was prorogued, on the
eve of a General Election, the Queen’s Speech significantly omitted the
usual announcement of her readiness to support the Protestant
Succession. While the versatile intellect of Leibniz was still devising
new schemes for bringing about the desired result, the Elector adhered
more closely than ever to his original policy. In August, 1713, Baron
von Schütz the younger (George William Helwig Sinold), the son of the
former envoy of the Court of St. James and the grandson of the Celle
Chancellor, arrived in London as envoy. The choice of this agent was at
the time unfavourably criticised by some of the Whigs, who thought that
a politician of greater experience should have been selected. Sophia
would not commit herself to Bothmer on the question whether Schütz would
be better liked than her correspondent had been in England; ‘at all
events,’ she said, ‘nobody will be attracted by his appearance’ (_il ne
payera pas de mine_). We shall have to enquire immediately whether, in
the great diplomatic catastrophe which befell him, the younger Schütz
was himself deserving of blame. He was instructed by the Elector in the
sense of an absolute abstinence from interference in British affairs.
Even as to the question of inviting a member of the Electoral family to
England he was to take up a distinctly negative position; but, at the
same time, he was to treat as indispensable measures the removal of the
Pretender from Lorraine and a provision for the Electress as Heiress
Presumptive of Great Britain. The envoy’s reports were far from
encouraging, and his information as to the views and intentions of the
Queen and her advisers again agrees with that transmitted by Berwick to
the Pretender.
-----
Footnote 178:
By composing the _Te Deum und Jubilate_ for the celebration of the
Peace at St. Paul’s on July 7th, Handel gave great offence to the
Hanoverian Court; nor was he readmitted to favour till some little
time after the accession of George I.
-----
The tide of danger was unmistakably rising. Parliament was dissolved in
August, 1713; and a proposal was on foot to bring to bear upon Queen
Anne at the opening of the new Parliament the direct personal influence
of the presence of her half-brother in England. In the attitude of
Oxford and Bolingbroke no hopeful alteration occurred. In defiance of
the manifest irritation of the Queen, the Elector coldly declared
himself unsatisfied with the guarantees which he had so far received,
and declined to sanction any expenditure on pamphlets or newspapers, or
on more direct means of influencing elections or gaining over
necessitous Peers. Yet, to the amusement of Sophia, whose sense of
humour never deserted her, Hanover and Herrenhausen continued to attract
not a few Englishmen desirous of being found in this vicinity at the
critical moment. They were, however, she thought, reckoning without
their host in hoping to strew palms before her on her entrance into
London; she feared that she could not contrive to live as long as Queen
Anne, so as to prove to them her gratitude. And yet, when in the last
days of the year Queen Anne herself fell ill, and the agitation in
England was raised to an unprecedented pitch, it seemed as if,
notwithstanding what Sophia described as her ‘incurable malady of having
passed her eighty-fourth year,’ her repeated prediction that she would
never herself mount the British throne would after all be falsified. In
November she had herself been ill, suffering so seriously from an
affection (erysipelas) to which she was subject, that fears were
entertained for her life. But she soon recovered sufficiently to write
to the Duchess of Orleans, and with her usual spirit she insisted on
following the Elector to the Göhrde.
The situation was now coming to be one of a very high tension. On the
one hand, Strafford, who never ceased from trying to persuade the
Electress that the Tories were her friends, and that there was not a
Jacobite left in the party, assured her that what he had observed during
the Queen’s illness had convinced him of the strength of popular opinion
in England in favour of the Protestant Succession. And Steinghens, the
Elector Palatine’s minister in London, who was on a footing of intimacy
with Oxford, declared to his correspondent, General von der Schulenburg,
that had Queen Anne died during her illness the Princess Sophia would
have been proclaimed on the same day. Assurances of devotion poured in
from every side; in February, Secretary Bromley laid himself at the
Electress’ feet; and Archbishop Dawes entreated attention to his own
humble endeavours and to the faithfulness and zeal of the whole body of
the clergy. On the other hand, the demeanour and utterances of those in
power were not growing more propitious as the new year came in. Cautious
as Oxford was in his utterances, perhaps the most striking of all the
self-revelations reported of him at this critical time was that which,
in December, 1713, he made to the Abbé Gaultier, according to the
statement of the latter to De Torcy: ‘So long as I live, England shall
not be governed by a German.’ Except through Gaultier, however, Oxford
was inaccessible on the subject, and though, in January, 1714, he was
said to have sent a private messenger to the Pretender, in the following
month Berwick heard that the Lord Treasurer’s intentions were still
quite unknown, and suggested to James to make sure of the Queen and
Bolingbroke by writing to them himself. Berwick’s scheme of the
Pretender coming over to England in secret, so as to enable the Queen to
declare in his favour at the opening of Parliament, was quite visionary;
for Louis XIV was not inclined to make any move in his support, except
by placing two men-of-war at Havre at his disposal; and the Tory leaders
were wholly intent upon removing, in the first instance, the insuperable
obstacle to any chance of the Pretender’s success by inducing him to
come over—to the Church of England. As for Bolingbroke, who must have
known that such a solution was not to be looked for, he seems to have
been willing to depend on the double chance of something unexpected
happening at the critical moment, and of the Hanoverian successor
proving unable to maintain herself—or himself—on the throne even after
mounting it. Thus, as the crisis drew nearer and nearer, the Tory
leaders were becoming less and less prepared to meet it.[179]
-----
Footnote 179:
These conclusions seem irresistible in view of the documents,
especially the despatches of Ibberville, collected by Grimblot and
reviewed by Salomon, _u.s._, pp. 235-64.
-----
And so it came to pass that, when, in February, 1714, the new Parliament
met, with a Tory majority in the Commons outnumbering their opponents by
at least two to one, the Queen’s Speech could hardly have been more
ambiguous in tone than it actually proved. She, like her ministers, had
no wish for the House of Hanover, and saw no present chance for the
Stewarts. While, therefore, discrediting all reports implying that the
Protestant Succession, as settled in the House of Hanover, was in
danger, the Speech also referred to the attempts ‘to weaken the Queen’s
authority or to render the possession of the Crown uneasy to
her’—obviously alluding to the design of bringing over a member of the
Electoral family. While Bolingbroke may have been prepared to make use
of this design so as to bring about a complete rupture between the Queen
and the House of Hanover, Oxford could not but directly oppose a step
which would have forced the hands of the Government, and removed the
ultimate use of the situation out of his own wary hands. Yet nothing
could have been more distinctly double-faced than his action in the
early months of 1714. He dangled before Schütz the offer of a revision
of the Regency Bill of 1705, which was to enable the court of Hanover to
name the whole body of Regents, but which also might have furnished an
opportunity for giving the _quietus_ to the entire Bill. Not long
afterwards, in March, he expressed his intention to bring in a Bill
declaring the introduction of foreign troops into England an act of high
treason. But ‘under which King,’ or under what Government, could the
foreign troops whose arrival was thus to be prevented have been
levied?[180]
-----
Footnote 180:
Salomon, _u.s._, p. 272. Klopp, vol. xiv. p. 540, gives a summary of
the discussion of Oxford’s announcement from the Lords’ Debates.
-----
Though the calculated untrustworthiness of Oxford, and the reckless
speculativeness of Bolingbroke, had by this time become as much of an
open secret as had the consuming desire of the Secretary of State to
supplant the Lord Treasurer, there was even now no disposition on the
part of the court of Hanover to commit itself by any rash act. There had
never been any real divergence of policy between the Electress and her
son, the Elector, though his consistency of conduct had perhaps been the
more formally complete, and we cannot follow him, as we can the
Electress, in his private comments on the angular points which from time
to time presented themselves in the situation. Now, they were more than
ever at one in their determination to abstain from precipitate action.
Robethon’s memorandum of _Reasons for not sending the Electoral Prince
to England_ (January, 1714), whether or not the Elector’s dislike of his
son had anything to do with the conclusions reached, reiterated the old
objection of the Electress to a course which would appear to be dictated
by a desire to gratify the Whigs by offending the Tories, instead of
uniting the moderate men of both parties in support of the Succession.
Sophia had, by this time, come to have so little faith in either of the
English political parties that, as she told Strafford, she disliked the
very names of Whig and Tory; and, as an octogenarian, she was inevitably
indisposed to run any great personal risk or court any serious personal
change. She gave Schulenburg to understand that she would never consent
to proceed to England without the Elector. Yet neither she nor her son,
who might be depended upon not to start for England a day too soon,
affected indifference towards the Succession; and even on the question
of sending the Electoral Prince to England, there were signs that, in
deference to Bothmer’s advice, this course might after all be adopted,
so soon as the Emperor should have concluded his peace with France.[181]
It is no doubt in this connexion that, in the very last letter to
Leibniz preserved from the hand of the Electress Sophia—which bears the
date of May 20th, 1714 (N.S.)—she refers to a step which, as we shall
see, she had just taken, and which Queen Anne had chosen to regard as a
provocation offered to herself.
-----
Footnote 181:
Bothmer to Robethon, January 2nd, 1714. (Cited by Salomon, _u.s._, p.
232, from the Stowe MSS. in Brit. Mus.)
-----
We must go back for a moment to the previous month of April, in which
the relations between Queen Anne and the House of Hanover seemed to have
become rather easier. Had she and her advisers—Oxford in
particular—gained some special insight into the fundamental weakness of
the Jacobite position? Though the secret was open enough, one is almost
inclined to some conclusion of the kind, in view of a communication from
Berwick to James, dated April 11th, which describes the situation so
lucidly that it seems worth while to extract from it the following
passage (substituting real names for the transparent pseudonyms):—
I discours’d de Torcy about the King [James]’s resolution to be taken
in case Queen Anne should break. I find he knows not what to advise;
and in truth it is to be wish’d one could have some newse of Ormonde
[now Commander-in-chief], and see what disposition the Parliament will
be in, before one comes to a positive determination. The point is very
nice; on one side it would look odd in the world that King James
should see the Elector of Hannover quietly gett Queen Anne’s throne
without making the least opposition; on the other side to beginn an
expedition there must be money, provision of arms, and all many other
things which I fear the King [James] wants, besides that there can be
no hopes of success unless one can gett some officers of the army. A
great many of the Scotch will oppose the business and ’tis much feared
the Highlanders will have but very small means for so great an
undertaking. The Elector has actually the law for him; the United
Provinces are engaged to support him; the Kings of France and Spain
have promis’d not to meddle in it; and I find the English [i.e. the
English friends of the King] so very slow and cautious that ‘tis much
to be doubted their giving any helping hand.
Not long afterwards, Berwick had no better advice to give his royal
kinsman, than that he should keep his own counsel as to the point on
which he had made up his mind, and not allow his friends in England to
think the desired consummation (his adoption of the Protestant faith) an
event altogether out of the question. When the signs of the times seemed
so unpromising to those who watched them with the most direct and
personal interest, and when, as to the problem on which chances mainly
turned, they could only advise a policy of temporising and
dissimulation, Oxford may well have been more desirous than ever to
safeguard his own future by seeking to maintain a good understanding
with the other side. In this month of April, he is accordingly found
tendering assurances not only of his own devotion, but also of Lady
Masham’s, to the Hanoverian Succession, and declaring his conviction
that the Queen was for it; though, as towards her, he again guarded
himself by deprecating the establishment of a second Court in England.
About the same time, his kinsman Thomas Harley again arrived at Hanover,
with a letter from the Queen to the Electress, blandly enquiring whether
there was anything which in her judgment would further secure the
Succession of her House. Should she have no suggestion of further
guarantees to offer, this would be taken as implying that the existing
guarantees were regarded as sufficient. At the same time, the House of
Hanover was warned against giving any encouragement, directly or
indirectly, to a faction which was working for its own advantage only.
Harley brought no message from the Queen inviting any member of the
House to England; and the above-mentioned enquiry, as Bolingbroke’s
comments on it to Strafford implied, suggested a defiance rather than an
invitation. He was specifically instructed to offer her on the part of
the Queen an annuity (_pension_) for herself; but this the Electress,
with her usual quickness of insight, declined. The revenue desired by
her was, she said, one that should be granted to her in due form as
Heiress Presumptive by Queen and Parliament, in accordance with the
precedent of the allowance made to Queen Anne herself, when Princess of
Denmark in the preceding reign. Either before or after the Electress
sent this reply—on May 7th—both she and the Elector attached their
signatures to a formal answer to the enquiry brought by Thomas Harley.
In this important memorandum they reiterated the view which had been
expressed in Schütz’s instructions, that the Succession could not be
held to be really assured unless an end were put to the danger of
invasion by the Pretender by his being made to leave his present
residence in Lorraine, and that it was desirable to secure a revenue to
the Electress by Act of Parliament. They further declared it to be
desirable that a member of the House of Hanover should be established in
England, in order to watch over the important interests at issue. There
can be no doubt but that the Electoral Prince was the member of the
family whom the memorandum had in view. The document was signed and
sealed by both the Elector and the Electress; and a covering letter from
the former to the Queen thanked her in the most conciliatory tone for
her continued care for the Protestant Succession. This memorandum, for
which the Elector was directly responsible in conjunction with his
mother, takes the bottom out of the supposition that he was at this time
ready, if he could do so with honour, to relinquish his claims.
But before the memorandum was actually transmitted, a cold blast had
suddenly blown athwart the relations between the House of Hanover and
Queen Anne. In the ordinary course of things the Electoral Prince, as
Duke of Cambridge, would have, like any other English Peer, received his
writ of summons to attend the Queen in Parliament. Aware, however, of
her sensitiveness on the subject of the presence of a member of the
Hanoverian family in England, the Lord Chancellor (Lord Harcourt) had
thought proper to delay indefinitely the issue of the writ. The demand
for it had originally been suggested to Schütz by the Earl of
Nottingham, who, though a High Church Tory, had long broken with the
court; and, though an attempt to obtain the writ from the Lord
Chancellor made at the instigation of the Whig Lord Cowper had failed,
Schütz had naturally felt uneasy at its issue being delayed. When, in a
letter to him, the Electress Sophia had given vent to her astonishment
at the fact that the patent of the Duke of Cambridge had not been in due
course followed by a writ, and had expressed her opinion that the Lord
Chancellor would not object to Schütz’s ‘_asking for it and the reason_’
(of the delay), he had interpreted this expression of opinion as a
command. The Whig leaders, including the Duke of Somerset, to whom
Schütz had shown the Electress’ ‘order,’ had, according to his own
account, been delighted with it, and had approved of his proposal to
take action upon it. In the Electress’ letter to Leibniz of May 20th,
already mentioned, she explicitly states, not, as Schütz puts it, that
she had ‘ordered the writ,’ but that she had directed him to enquire
from the Lord Chancellor whether the Electoral Prince ought not to
receive it—which is not quite the same thing. But her letter to Schütz,
on which the whole matter turns, cannot be said to be ambiguous, or to
allow of any interpretation but that put upon it by him.[182] Even if it
be the case that the memoranda of Hoffmann, the Imperial resident at the
Court of St. James’, imply that, so far as he knew, there was no
intention at Hanover of actually demanding the writ till the meeting of
the next Parliament, this would not make it necessary to place a forced
interpretation upon the Electress’ letter, with which in any case the
Elector had no concern, and which can hardly have referred to the next
Parliament, when the present was little more than two months old. The
Hanoverian court had been pressed both by Marlborough and by Prince
Eugene (who never believed in a policy of masterly inaction) to do what
it could to obtain a summons for the Electoral Prince, and the Electress
is known to have had this matter at heart, while the Elector’s feelings
towards his son made him from first to last averse to carrying it into
execution.
-----
Footnote 182:
It seems necessary to quote the actual text of this much-vext letter:
‘_Je vous prie de dire à Monsieur le chancelier Mylord Harcourt qu’on
est fort étonné ici qu’on n’a pas envoyé un writ à mon petit-fils le
prince électoral pour pouvoir entrer au parlement comme duc de
Cambridge, comme cela lui est dû par la patente que la reine lui a
donnée. Comme il a toujours été de mes amis aussi bien que son cousin,
je crois qu’il ne trouvera pas mauvais que vous le lui demandiez et la
raison._’ (_Briefe der Kurfürstin Sophie an Hannoversche Diplomaten_,
p. 213.)
-----
Schütz, who, it must be remembered, was accredited from the Electress as
well as from the Elector, had acted in accordance with his instructions;
but he can hardly be acquitted of precipitancy, and of an excessive
readiness to listen to the opinion of the Whig leaders before assuring
himself of the approval of the Elector. In any case, the die had now
been cast. Harcourt had replied that the writ was quite ready, but that
it was not customary for Peers to demand their writ except when on the
spot; he would, however, mention the subject to the Queen. The Cabinet,
summoned to deal with the envoy’s demand, decided that the writ could
not be refused, though, according to Gaultier’s information, Bolingbroke
had supported the Queen’s opinion in favour of refusing it. On April
17th, it was handed to Schütz by the Lord Chancellor, or in accordance
with his orders. Being requested to state by whom he had been directed
to demand the writ, Schütz seems to have mentioned the name of the
Electress; but this is not attested by evidence at first hand. Schütz
was speedily informed by Oxford that he would do well not to show
himself at Court, and was afterwards formally prohibited from appearing
there; but, as a matter of course, there was no question whatever of
breaking off diplomatic relations, these being carried on for the time
by Kreyenberg. Presently—on April 22nd—the envoy took his departure. On
his arrival at Hanover, the Elector made a point of declining to receive
Schütz; censured him for having obeyed any orders but the Elector’s; and
told Thomas Harley, who, before taking his departure from Hanover,
waited on him, with his whole _posse_ of Englishmen, that Schütz had
never been instructed to demand the writ, and that he (the Elector) had
never intended to send his son to England without the knowledge of the
Queen. This formula may perhaps be reconcilable with the information
given by Robethon to Lord Polwarth,[183] according to which the Elector,
though he knew nothing about the demand for the writ, would have sent
the Electoral Prince to England in the end, had it not been for the
Queen’s letter to be mentioned immediately, which ‘changed the entire
system.’ There seems to have been a good deal of feeling at Hanover—a
feeling shared both by the Whig leaders in England and by Bothmer at the
Hague—that, the writ having been now secured, the Electoral Prince
should be sent over. But this the Elector refused to do; and the success
with which he had thus kept out of the whole of this transaction—the
single wrong move made on the Hanoverian side in the whole course of the
game—must be placed to the credit of his judgment, whatever course he
may have intended to take at a later date. But how far both he and the
Electress were from being intimidated by the displeasure of the Queen,
is shown by the fact that at Thomas Harley’s farewell audience the
Elector placed in his hands the outspoken memorandum signed by the
Electress and himself on May 7th. As for Sophia, the tone of her letter
to Leibniz containing a narrative of the entire transaction is perfectly
cool; and in it she as usual expresses the belief that, in spite of her
recent illness, Queen Anne will outlive her Heiress Presumptive, and
cites the proverb, ‘_krakende Wagens gân lang_.’[184] Her reply to
Strafford’s letter entreating her to signify her disapproval of Schütz’s
action is unfortunately lost, though its purport was said to have been
the same as that of the Elector’s parting declaration to Thomas Harley.
The situation seemed far less terrific at Hanover than it did in London,
where the Queen’s wrath was visibly ablaze, so that the House of Commons
deferred voting payment of the arrears due to the Hanoverian troops, and
where it was believed that if the Electoral Prince were after all sent
over an invitation to the Pretender would follow. Moreover (though this
is a matter into which it is impossible to enter here), the opposite
views taken by Oxford and Bolingbroke as to the final issue of the writ
undoubtedly helped materially to hasten the fleeting triumph of the
younger over the older minister.
-----
Footnote 183:
Lord Polwarth, eldest son of the Earl of Marchmont and member for
Berwick-on-Tweed (who afterwards became an intimate friend of
Bolingbroke), had kept up a correspondence with the court of Hanover
since his visit there in 1712.
Footnote 184:
I do not know whether anything on the subject is mentioned in the
fifteen letters from Sophia to Lady Colt, said to range from 1681 to
May 15th, 1714, and to have been sold by auction in 1905.
-----
From what has been said it will appear how greatly the facts of the case
are exaggerated and distorted in the tradition attributing the death of
the Electress Sophia, which took place at Herrenhausen on June 8th,
1714, to the agitation caused by the letter addressed to her by Queen
Anne in connexion with the affair of the writ, and accompanied by two
letters from the Queen on the same subject to the Elector and the
Electoral Prince. Undeniably, the Queen’s letter to the Electress
Sophia, though taking a less severe form of reprimand than the companion
missive to the Electoral Prince, was both offensive and insolent; for
Queen Anne, who (with the exception of the Prayer-book Order) had taken
no step towards admitting the Electress and her descendants into the
royal family, could not lay claim to any formal authority over them.
That this view was widely taken of the letters may be gathered from the
fact that Boyer (Swift’s ‘Whig dog’), who had been taken into custody on
a warrant from Bolingbroke for publishing them, was, a few months after
the accession of George I, discharged—so that their publication was
evidently regarded as having proved serviceable towards that result. Nor
was the effect of the letters likely to be mitigated by the honeyed
protestations of Oxford, whose system of procedure the letters almost
hopelessly traversed, in a communication to the Elector accompanying
them. The sharp wit of the Electoral Princess Caroline suspected that it
was not he, but Bolingbroke, who was their draughtsman; and there can be
little or no doubt as to the correctness of this surmise. It cannot but
have been shared by the old Electress, and must have contributed to make
her stand firm against a blow contrived by an all but avowed adversary
of the lawful claims of herself and her House.
Yet there can be no doubt that at the time the death of the Electress
Sophia was very generally connected with, if not directly attributed to,
the advent of the Queen’s letters. The very straightforward account
transmitted to Marlborough by Molyneux, who had been sent to Hanover by
the Duke to counteract the effects of Thomas Harley’s mission, shows the
Electress to have been much agitated on the evening of the day
(Wednesday, June 6th) on which, about noon, the letters had been
delivered to her at Herrenhausen. On the following day, though Molyneux
was told she was not well, she ordered him to send copies of the letters
to Marlborough;[185] on Friday, June 8th, she seemed well, but was still
occupied with the subject and ordering fresh copies of the letters; she
dined with the Elector, and in the evening was, according to her habit,
walking in the gardens, when rain suddenly fell. As she quickened her
speed in order to find a shelter, she dropped down and rapidly passed
away. The letters of the Countess of Bückeburg[186] to the Electress’
niece and constant companion during the last fifteen years, the
Raugravine Louisa, corroborates this account, and adds one or two
significant touches. On the Wednesday the Electress said to the writer
of the letter: ‘This affair will certainly make me ill—I shall never get
over it’ (_j’y succombrai_). ‘But,’ she added, ‘I shall have this
gracious letter printed, so that all the world may see that it will not
have been by my fault, if my children lose the three Kingdoms.’ And, on
the Friday, though to all appearance in her usual strength, she
continued to talk of English affairs with the Electoral Princess. And,
since the Electoral Princess Caroline herself informed Leibniz, on June
7th, that the Electress and the Electoral Prince intended to send the
Queen’s letters to England, it may be concluded that this high-spirited
but rather venturesome design still further excited the old lady.
Although the outer world had continued to believe her to be as full of
vigour as ever, she had of late begun to take some thought of her
health—a notable sign, inasmuch as ordinarily she set no high value on
medical advice, being of opinion that no doctor can predict anything
with certainty except that a person who died in February will not be ill
in March. Probably, she was aware of the tendency to apoplexy which,
already thirteen years earlier, her faithful friend Leibniz had observed
in her. On the whole, the natural conclusion appears to be that the
agitation produced in her by the Queen’s letters, together with her own
resolution not to sit still under the affront, contributed to the
collapse of a frame enfeebled by advanced old age, but that this trouble
was the occasion rather than the cause of her decease. For her epitaph
seems to tell the truth when, in perfect agreement with the Countess of
Bückeburg’s statement that ‘never was there seen a death more gentle or
more happy,’ it describes the Electress’ death as having been not less
peaceful than sudden. Her character lies almost open to us in her
private letters, and, as she told Leibniz in April, 1713, she had made
it a principle to keep her mind tranquil, and not to allow it to be
affected by either public or private troubles. As to her death, she had
written to him a little later, it would no doubt be a finer affair if,
in accordance with his wishes, her remains were interred at Westminster;
‘but the truth is that my mind, which hitherto has managed to rule my
body, at present suggests no such sad thoughts to me, and that the talk
about the Succession annoys me.’ Read in the way in which so many of her
letters ought to be read, as half-ironical, the words just quoted attest
the self-control and self-possession that were on the whole the most
noteworthy features in the character of this remarkable woman. But
neither this passage, nor anything else that remains from her hand,
contradicts the belief which is derived from a review of her entire
career, that from first to last she proved herself equal to the
responsibilities of her life, and that, had she been actually called to
the throne, she would have been not less ready than worthy to reign as a
Queen.
-----
Footnote 185:
It was through these copies that the letters seem afterwards to have
become known.
Footnote 186:
This appears to have been the Countess Johanna von der
Lippe-Bückeburg, who, on being divorced from her husband, was besieged
by him in her residence at Stadthagen near Bückeburg, from which he
thought himself entitled to expel her. She appears to have been a
welcome visitor at Herrenhausen, where she told the story of this
siege ‘_fort joliment_.’
-----
We possess a minute official account of the proceedings after the
Electress Sophia’s death—of the sealing-up of her personal effects by
the Elector’s orders; of the embalming of the corpse, the night-watch
over it, and its transportation on the evening of the following day to
Hanover.[187] Unfortunately, the list of those who paid her the last
honours at Herrenhausen does not include the names of the ladies and
‘_cavaliers_’ who had been in personal attendance upon her.[188] Her
remains were deposited in the chapel of the royal palace—the old church
of the Minorites—at Hanover, with proper care and decorum, but, as is
formally stated, ‘without ceremony,’ i.e. without any religious service.
A record likewise exists of the Court-mourning ordered, and the black
draping of the chapel and of the apartments of the late Electress and
the members of the Electoral family at Herrenhausen. To make the formal
announcement of his mother’s death and of his own assumption of her
claims to the British Succession, the Elector George Lewis once more
sent Bothmer to London, the real object of the choice being of course
the intention that this most capable diplomatist should, while keeping
on good terms with the Queen’s ministers, concert further action with
the Whig leaders. On June 15th, the Elector signed certain powers for
the event of the Queen’s death, which would have given to his envoy an
authority superior to that of the Lords Justices; but, as theirs rested
on an Act of Parliament, the special authority entrusted to Bothmer was
really as futile as that which had in similar terms been previously
conferred on the elder Schütz, Grote, and the younger Schütz in turn.
Bothmer’s reports show that Bolingbroke was believed to be acting in the
interest of the Pretender; and of the truth of this charge, after he had
succeeded in ousting Oxford from office, the latter, who had himself
continued to be suspected of Jacobitism, personally assured the
Elector’s envoy. On the part of Queen Anne, the Earl of Clarendon, a
Tory Peer of high connexion, but of marked incapacity,[189] arrived at
Hanover on July 7th to express to the Elector the Queen’s sympathy with
his loss. Clarendon, who had been entrusted with an extraordinary
mission to Hanover before the occurrence of the Electress’ death, also
brought with him an answer to the Electoral memorandum of May 7th,
drafted by Bolingbroke, which declined all the demands made in the
memorandum. Clarendon was charged with some polite explanations; but the
Elector had no intention of trusting either to these or to the chapter
of accidents. With an alertness rarely shown by him before his mother’s
death in regard to matters connected with the Succession, he promptly
caused a fresh instrument of Regency comprising his own nominations of
Lords Justices to be prepared: and from this revised list Marlborough
was omitted—either because he was not in England, or in consequence of a
knowledge on the part of the Elector of the double game which even now
the Duke was playing. At Hanover things seemed to be taking their usual
course; but the visit paid to the Elector early in August by his nephew,
the new King Frederick William I of Prussia, was not without its
significance. For George Lewis was already taking thought of the safety
of his Electorate in the event of his being called to England, and
welcomed the assurances of support received by him from the King of
Prussia and other German Princes. They could not know, but they might
well suspect, the secret offers of assistance which Louis XIV had made
to Queen Anne through Bolingbroke, and which the latter had contingently
accepted. It was a few days after the termination of the King of
Prussia’s visit that the news arrived in Hanover of the death of Queen
Anne on August 1st.
-----
Footnote 187:
Malortie, _Der Hannoversche Hof_, &c., pp. 225 _sqq._
Footnote 188:
The continuous series of the letters addressed by her youngest son,
Duke Ernest Augustus, to his friend J. F. D. von Wendt, breaks off in
November 1713.
Footnote 189:
He had, as Lord Cornbury, been Governor of New Jersey and New York,
where he left no honoured name behind him.
-----
The events which had crowded on one another between the death of the
Electress Sophia and that of Queen Anne belong, not to Sophia’s
biography, but to that of the sovereign whose Heir Presumptive was now
Sophia’s son. That this heir was a ruling foreign prince, whom no
immediate descent or early associations connected with the House of
Stewart, and whose own dealings (apart from his mother’s) with English
politicians had been to all intents and purposes entirely with Whigs,
could not but intensify the aversion from the Hanoverian Succession
entertained not only by the Jacobites but also, though in a less degree,
by those of the Tories whose political sentiments were in nearest touch
with theirs. The bonds of party union had just been drawn closer among
the Tories at large by the Schism Act, and the Church had been more
decisively than before rallied to the Government. But even so, Oxford
was still unable to make up his mind to risk everything by inviting or
allowing the Pretender to appear on English ground. Hence, not quite a
fortnight after the Electress Sophia’s death, the proclamation against
the Pretender was issued, and, a fortnight later (July 9th), Parliament
was prorogued to an early date in August.
During the interval, it was manifest, the Queen must make up her mind
between her two chief counsellors, of whom one still thought it possible
to tack and tack about, while the other was still hoping for a wind so
strong and straight that he might drift before it into the desired port.
The Queen decided for Bolingbroke, and, on July 27th, Oxford was
dismissed from office. Bolingbroke’s moment had come, but he was unequal
to its call. Instead of bringing the Pretender to England, he thought
that even now there remained time for him to weld the Tory party still
more closely together, by means of his Church policy above all, and to
form a Jacobite Ministry that would be in readiness at the critical
moment, while in any case the Whigs must be prevented from bringing over
the Elector or the Electoral Prince in the interval. Bolingbroke and
those in his confidence were very hopeful in this their brief day of
authority; but the Whigs were more than hopeful—they were prepared.[190]
The organisation set on foot by their leaders overspread the country,
and the very symbol or token of action was agreed upon, while
Marlborough was waiting at Ostend to resume the command of the army.
And, throughout the great body of the middle classes in England—among
the Nonconformists in particular—a ready expectancy awaited the
accomplishment of the Protestant Succession.
-----
Footnote 190:
The Whig ‘plot’ to which Mr. Sichel refers in his _Life of
Bolingbroke_ p. 351, as revealed by Chesterfield at a later date,
seems to belong to March 1714, when the Queen had (on the 11th) a
sudden attack of erysipelas.
-----
At last, and with a most extraordinary rapidity in the sequence of its
events, the end came. The malady to which Queen Anne was to succumb
announced itself on July 27th. By July 30th the anxiety had become so
grave that, at a meeting of the Cabinet and of a few Privy Councillors
not forming part of it, presided over by Shrewsbury, orders were issued
to close the ports, to hold twenty men-of-war in readiness, and to make
the Lord Mayor responsible for the safety of the City of London. On the
following day, the control of affairs finally passed out of
Bolingbroke’s hands, when, after a meeting of the whole Privy Council,
at which Bothmer and Kreyenberg were present, the Queen, in accordance
with the Council’s recommendation, placed the Lord Treasurer’s staff in
Shrewsbury’s hands. A courier was sent to Strafford at the Hague, to
remind the authorities there of the guarantee to which they were bound
by treaty; and the British troops were recalled from the Netherlands.
Early in the morning of August 1st, the Queen lay dead. Everything was
in readiness. Kreyenberg made his appearance with a box containing the
commission of the Lords Justices; and of the eighteen names included in
it thirteen were found to be those of Whigs. During the morning, Peers,
Privy Councillors, and Members of the House of Commons flocked in to
append their signatures to the proclamation notifying the death of Queen
Anne and the accession of King George. It was read by the heralds at
Charing Cross and Temple Bar, and within the City; and a few days later
the King was again proclaimed there, as well as at Edinburgh and Dublin.
The Houses of Parliament, which had assembled for formal business on the
day of the Queen’s death, four days later voted loyal addresses to her
successor.
Bothmer, who had controlled the entire process of these
transactions,[191] had promptly despatched his secretary, Goedeke, to
carry to King George the great news of his accession. He arrived at
Hanover on the morning of August 6th, just a day after Secretary Craggs,
who brought, with other missives, a letter addressed to the Elector on
the day before the Queen’s death, and informing him that everything was
in readiness for his immediate journey to England so soon as that death
should actually have taken place. On August 8th, the Earl of Dorset—a
young Whig Lord, described, in his later days, by a severe critic as ‘a
perfect English courtier’—arrived from England with his suite, to make
the official announcement on behalf of the Lords Justices. Doubt has
been thrown on the statement that Goedeke, having reached Hanover,
communicated the news to Clarendon, who had returned from dining with
the Elector and Baroness von Kielmannsegg at her villa, Fantaisie, and
who at once bore the tidings to George I at Herrenhausen. In any case,
the formal announcement to the new King was made by Dorset on August
9th, when he was received by George in the flower-garden of the Orangery
at Herrenhausen. Inasmuch as, on that very day, the Earl of Berkeley
assumed the command of the imposing naval squadron which, a little more
than a week afterwards, anchored off the Dutch coast, there was no
reason why the new King should delay his departure. Whether, however,
because of his confidence in the circumspection of his English friends,
or because of his attachment to his Electorate, George I was in no
hurry. To be in no hurry may be accounted one of the minor virtues in a
monarch. He left Herrenhausen on the morning of August 31st, bidding
farewell to his and his mother’s favourite place of sojourn in words
which, if the court chronicler is to be trusted, betray more of
sentiment than he was in the habit of expressing, but at the same time
show him to have had no intention of breaking with the traditions of the
past. ‘Farewell, dear place, where I have spent so many enjoyable and
tranquil hours. I leave you, but not for ever; _for I hope to see you
again from time to time_.’
-----
Footnote 191:
It was Bothmer who advised the destruction of a packet of letters
found in the Queen’s private apartments by the Lords Justices and
himself, and who, during the burning of them, thought that he
recognised the handwriting of the Pretender.
-----
In the same spirit, George I’s departure was left unmarked by any
solemnity or ceremonial whatever. He was accompanied on his journey by
his son, with whom the death of the old Electress seems to have
furnished him with an opportunity of placing himself for the time on
seemlier terms. The Princess (Caroline of Ansbach) followed rather
later, with her children.[192] The King’s favourite brother, Prince
Ernest Augustus, remained behind in Hanover, chiefly, no doubt, in order
that he might fill the Elector’s place at the Privy Council there, and
also for the purpose of taking care of his expectations at Osnabrück,
which were realised a year later, when he succeeded to the bishopric
formerly held by his father, his elder brother, Maximilian William,
being, as a convert to Rome, left out in the cold. Six months later, the
Bishop[193] was created Duke of York. At the Hague, the royal party was
joined by Baroness von Kielmannsegg; Melusina von der Schulenburg
followed in due course. With the King were his prime minister,
Bernstorff, and Baron von Schlitz-Görz, who was to succeed Bernstorff in
the same capacity at Hanover, besides three Privy Councillors, of whom
Robethon was one, and a small Chancery staff. The chief officers of the
Hanoverian Court, and a fairly ample household, including ‘Mr. Mehmet
and Mr. Mustapha,’ live remembrances of the King’s Turkish campaigns,
raised the royal retinue to the moderate total of something less than
one hundred persons.
-----
Footnote 192:
So late as a fortnight after Queen Anne’s death, the Duchess of
Orleans mentions a report that the English people were quite contented
to have George I for their King, but on condition that the Electoral
Prince should never be his successor. Probably, Elizabeth Charlotte’s
personal prejudices inclined her to give credit to this ridiculous
rumour; for she is unable to forego the opportunity of alluding to
George Augustus’ ‘ill ancestry.’—O. von Heinemann, _Geschichte von
Braunschweig und Hannover_, vol. iii. p. 228, mentions, without
reprobating, the mendacious ‘Court scandal,’ explaining the quarrel
between father and son by a supposed passion of the former for his
daughter-in-law!
Footnote 193:
His letter describing his early days in his episcopal city gives a
delightful picture of still life. ‘I have allowed myself the pleasure
of taking a walk along the ramparts, in which all the small boys of
the town have accompanied me.’
-----
Bolingbroke afterwards asserted that King George, though he had quitted
Hanover in the apparent resolution of leaving the Tory Government in
England unmolested, had during his stay in Holland, in consequence of
earnest importunities on the part of the Allies, and particularly of
Heinsius and some of the Whigs, come to a contrary decision. How far
this assertion, and the belief that the impeachment of the Tory leaders
was due more particularly to the inspiration of Bothmer, are correct,
the present is not an occasion for enquiring; but enough has been said
in the course of this narrative to indicate that George I was not easily
led, or easily turned.
On September 16th, 1714, the new King of Great Britain sailed from
Oranie Polder; on the 18th he landed at Greenwich; and two days later he
held his entry into London. His Coronation took place at Westminster
Abbey on October 18th. Few men who have laid claim to so dazzling and so
elusive a prize as that which fell to his lot have maintained their
claim with so calm a resolve and so consistent a self-restraint. Whether
or not circumstances—such as an armed landing on the English coast by
the Pretender, or merely his personal appearance on English soil—might
have led to a counter-attempt on the part of the Heir Presumptive to
assert his claim to the throne in person, who shall say? And who will
lay it down whether in putting his right to the test, even at the risk
of civil war, he would have done wrong? Such a step he had not been
called upon to take; and his course of conduct had remained consistent
throughout. Although he had little personal inclination for the change
which his accession to the British throne involved, this should not
detract from the tribute due to his conduct before that accession. As
his claim descended to him from his mother, so he had inherited from her
some, though not all, of the qualities which, in her, well became the
Heiress of Great Britain. True to the friends of his House, and without
fear of its enemies, he professed no feeling which he did not entertain,
and shrank from no duty that was imposed upon him.
The princely sense of honour to which the Electress Sophia and her son
were true in accepting the great responsibility to which they were
called by the Act of Settlement was beyond a doubt their primary motive
in meeting it. But, at the same time, they were alike fully conscious of
the significance of the cause embodied in the Protestant Succession; nor
was the triumph of that cause, to which Sophia looked forward with
hardly a thought of self, merely or mainly the fulfilment of a great
dynastic ambition.
APPENDIX A
GENEALOGICAL TABLES
I. FAMILY OF FREDERICK V, ELECTOR PALATINE.
FREDERICK V (1596-1632) m. ELIZABETH (1596-1632).
|
+-----------------------+------------------------+
| | |
(1) (2) (3)
_Henry Frederick_ _Charles Lewis_ _Elizabeth_
(1614-1629). (1617-1680), (1618-1680),
Elector Palatine Abbess of Herford
(1648); (1667).
m. (1) Charlotte, d. of
William Landgrave of
Hesse-Cassel;
(2) Maria Louisa, d. of
Baron Christopher von
Degenfeld.
|
By (1) | By (2)
+-----------------------+------------------------+
| | |
_Charles_ _Elizabeth Charlotte_ Eight Raugraves and
Elector Palatine (1652-1721); five Raugravines.
(1651-1685). m. Philip Duke of
Orleans.
+-----------------------+------------------------+
| | |
(4) (5) (6)
_Rupert_ _Maurice_ _Louisa Hollandina_
(1619-1682). (1620-1652). (1622-1709).
Abbess of Maubuisson
(1664).
+-----------------------+------------------------+
| | |
(7) (8) (9)
_Lewis_ _Edward_ _Henrietta Maria_
(August-September (1625-1663); (1626-1651);
1623). m. Anna Gonzaga, d. of m. Sigismund
Duke Charles of Nevers. Rákóczi,
s. of Prince
George I
of Transylvania.
+-----------------+----------------+-----------------+
| | | |
(10) (11) (12) (13)
_Philip_ _Charlotte_ SOPHIA _Gustavus_
(1627-1655). (1628-1631). (1630-1714); (1632-1641).
m. Ernest Augustus,
afterwards Elector of
Hanover.
Cf. Voigtel-Cohn’s _Stammtafeln zur Gesch. d. deutschen Staaten u. d.
Niederlande_ (1871), _Tafel_ 51. Feder, pp. 3-4, has gratuitously
shortened the lives of not less than three of the Palatine children.
II. DESCENDANTS OF DUKE GEORGE OF BRUNSWICK-LÜNEBURG.
GEORGE (1582-1641) m. ANNA ELEONORA of Hesse-Darmstadt.
|
+----------+---------+-----------+---------------+
| | | | |
_Christian | _John Frederick_ | _Ernest
Lewis_ | (1625-1679); | Augustus_
(1622-1665); | m. _Benedicta | (1629-1698);
m. _Dorothea_ of | Henrietta_ of | m. Sophia
Holstein-Glucksburg.| the Palatinate. | of the
_George | | Palatinate.
William_ | _Sophia Amelia_ |
(1624-1705); | (1628-1670); |
m. Eleonora | m. Frederick III |
d’Olbreus. | of Denmark. |
| | |
_Sophia +-+-----+------+-------+ |
Dorothea_ | | | | |
m. George _Anna | _Henrietta | |
Lewis of Sophia._ | Maria | |
Hanover | Josepha._ | |
| | |
_Charlotte _Wilhelmina |
Felicitas_; Amalia_; |
m. _Rinaldo_ m. Emperor |
of Modena. Joseph I. |
|
+----------+--------+----------+---------+------+----+--+
| | | | | | |
| _Frederick | _Sophia | _Christian_ |
| Augustus_ | Charlotte_ | (1671-1703). |
| (1661-1691). | (1668-1705); | _Ernest
| | m. Frederick I | Augustus_
_George Lewis_ | of Prussia. | 1674-1728).
(_George I_) | | |
(1660-1727); _Maximilian | _Charles
m. Sophia William_ | Philip_
Dorothea of (1666-1726). | (1669-1690).
Celle. _Frederick
| William I_
+--+----------------+ of Prussia.
| |
_George _Sophia
Augustus_ Dorothea_
(_George II_) (1687-1757);
(1683-1760); m. _Frederick
m. Caroline of William I_
Ansbach. of Prussia.
APPENDIX B
CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PRINCESS SOPHIA DOROTHEA AND COUNT KÖNIGSMARCK IN
THE ROYAL SECRET ARCHIVES OF STATE AT BERLIN
The original French text of the Letters which the liberal courtesy of
the authorities of the Royal Secret Archives of State at Berlin enables
me to reproduce in this place is here printed as supplied by their
copyist. The packet containing the Letters is inscribed in the
handwriting of Frederick the Great in the words of the title here
prefixed to them. The spelling of the words in the Letters, the way in
which those words are run into one another, and the sequence of the
Letters, have (except in one instance in which there had been an evident
misplacement of manuscript) been left as they stand in the transcript.
The words ciphered in numbers, whether in whole or letter by letter,
have been deciphered—each deciphered word, whether proper or common,
being distinguished by italics. The nicknames (or designations applied
to particular persons by the writers of the letters, in accordance with
a mutual understanding between them) are left as they stand; their
equivalents, so far as known, being mentioned at the end of this
introductory note.
An English translation is appended, in which an attempt has been made,
besides assigning the Letters to their respective writers, to supply
dates, where possible, to those which are undated, and to place them in
their probable chronological sequence. This attempt is based in the main
on a comparison of the Berlin with the Lund Letters. It could not be
carried very far without establishing beyond all possibility of doubt
the fact that the two series form an organic whole, and that each of
them proves incontestably the genuineness of the other. A few brief
notes have been added, identifying names of persons or places, where
this could be done.
The original (French) letters are numbered consecutively (1-34); the
English versions are arranged so far as possible chronologically, and
numbered so as to correspond with the originals (F 1-F 34).
Nothing is actually known as to the way in which the Berlin Letters,
whose number is less than one-tenth of that of the Letters preserved at
Lund, came into the hands of King Frederick II of Prussia, the son of
Sophia Dorothea’s daughter and namesake and of her consort King
Frederick William I. It is proved by fragments of the proceedings for a
divorce against the Electoral Princess that letters which had passed
between the lovers had been seized already in the course of the two
months (May and June, 1694) preceding the disappearance of Königsmarck,
and had thus come to the knowledge of the Electoral Government. (One of
the letters here printed shows how apprehensive the guilty pair had been
of such an occurrence.)
In Cramer’s _Memoirs of Countess Maria Aurora Königsmarck and the
Königsmarck family_ (1837), a book which, notwithstanding the addition
of a great deal of second-hand matter, is beyond a doubt largely based
upon original documents, will be found an apparently authentic report of
Auditeur Rüdiger (dated July 1, 1695). He states that after
Königsmarck’s disappearance on July 1, 1694, a certain von Metsch (who
was married to the sister of Eleonora von dem Knesebeck, and had served
as intermediary at some stages of Königsmarck’s secret correspondence
with the Princess) was frequently in the company of Königsmarck’s
secretary, Hildebrandt. In reply to an enquiry from the latter, Metsch
stated that on the Count’s journey to Dresden he had seen in his
possession a packet of letters tied together with yellow ribbon in a
little box, of which the Count took particular care. This packet, by
Hildebrandt’s advice, Metsch now sent unopened by the hands of a servant
to Celle. If this statement is correct, there is much probability in the
conjecture that these were some of the letters which found their way to
the sisters of Königsmarck, and ultimately into the library at Lund.
Two days later, again according to the statement of Rüdiger, who had it
from Hildebrandt, the latter was ordered by an official personage
(Secretary Zacharias) to open Königsmarck’s apartments for a thorough
examination of them and of all the furniture. In the course of the
examination of the Count’s bedroom (_Cabinet_) Rüdiger was called to
summon a locksmith to open the writing-table; but during the actual
opening of it he remained in an ante-room. After this the rooms were
sealed up, and the flow of talk began.
Possibly this was the way in which the Hanoverian Government obtained
possession of the letters which, in the opinion of Leibniz, brought home
conviction of Sophia Dorothea’s guilt to her parents at Celle; though
after the divorce the Elector Ernest Augustus refused either to allow
the letters to be kept at Celle, or to have them burnt _instanter_. In
any case, there would thus be no difficulty in accounting for the
preservation of evidence which could afterwards be sent by the
Hanoverian court to that of Berlin, in order to convince Sophia
Dorothea’s daughter, who is said to have desired the liberation of the
‘Duchess of Ahlden’ from her imprisonment, of her unhappy mother’s
guilt.[194]
-----
Footnote 194:
In the above, which it will be observed hardly passes out of the
region of conjecture, I have followed the argument of Dr. G. R.
Geerds, comparing Cramer as to the basis of fact.
-----
I subjoin so much of Count Schulenburg’s key to designations and
numerical ciphers for names, as applies to the Berlin Letters; it is
supplemented in their case by Dr. Geerds and myself:
100 = Elector (Duke) of Hanover.
101 = Duke of Celle.
102 = Electoral (Hereditary) Prince (George Lewis).
103 = ? Fieldmarshal Podewils.
112 = Prince Maximilian.
120 = Königsmarck.
200 = Electress (Duchess) of Hanover.
201 = Electoral (Hereditary) Princess (Sophia Dorothea).
202 = Countess Platen.
214 = Fräulein von dem Knesebeck.
227 = Duchess of Celle.
300 = Hanover.
301 = Luisburg.
305 = Celle.
La Romaine = Electress (Duchess) of Hanover.
Le Reformeur = Electoral (Hereditary) Prince.
L’Incommode = Electoral (Hereditary) Prince.
Le Pédagogue = Duchess of Celle.
Le Grondeur = Duke of Celle.
La Boule = Electress of Brandenburg (Sophia Charlotte).
L’Innocent = Prince Ernest Augustus.
Léonisse = Electoral (Hereditary) Princess (Sophia Dorothea).
Le Cœur Gauche = Electoral (Hereditary) Princess (Sophia Dorothea).
La Confidante = Fräulein von dem Knesebeck.
La Marionette = A sister of Landgrave Ernest Lewis of
Hesse-Darmstadt.
The titles ‘Elector,’ ‘Electoral Prince,’ ‘Electoral Princess,’ could
not have been formally used until after the date of the Electoral
Investiture, December 19, 1692. (Cf. Königsmarck’s sarcastic letter
_ap._ Wilkins, p. 258.[195]) Before the Investiture the titles were
‘Duke,’ ‘Hereditary Prince,’ and ‘Hereditary Princess,’ and these
designations have accordingly been adopted in the original and in the
translated letters belonging, or held assignable, to earlier dates.
-----
Footnote 195:
The edition of _The Love of an Uncrowned Queen_ edited by me is the
revised edition of 1903. Dr. Robert Geerds’ article, as already
stated, appeared in the _Beitrag zur Allgemeinen Zeitung_ for Friday,
April 7th, 1902.
-----
Wilkins (p. 218, note) thinks that La Marionette was ‘probably a
Princess of Hesse.’ Her brother is said (by Sophia Dorothea) to be ‘with
the army,’ and by Königsmarck to be ‘near’ Sophia Dorothea, also at
Wiesbaden, and ‘in his own country.’ The only Princess of Hesse whom
these indications would fit would be one of the three surviving elder
sisters of Landgrave Ernest Lewis of Hesse-Darmstadt, who served under
Margrave Lewis William of Baden. They were Magdalena Sibylla, Duchess
Dowager of Würtemberg, Maria Elizabeth, Duchess of Saxe-Römhild, and
Sophia Maria, Duchess of Saxe-Eisenberg.
The above list leaves unexplained the following numerical ciphers used
in the Berlin Letters: 20, 110, 127, 131, 307, 308, 2000—seven in all,
as against sixteen left unexplained by Dr. Geerds. Resort is now and
then had in these Letters to the extraordinary notion (it can hardly be
called a cipher) of disguising a word in a crowd of _jllj_’s or
_illy_’s, thus:
_jlljlandjlljgrajllivejlli_ = landgrave.
The letter-key, with which a large proportion of the words in the
Letters have been deciphered at Berlin, is as follows:
22 = a 41 = n
24 = b 42 = o
25 = c 45 = p
27 = d 46 = q
29 = e 47 = r
30 = f 50 = s
32 } = g 51 = t
37 } 53 = { u
33 = h { v
35 = i 54 = { v[196]
31 = j[196] { w[196]
37 = l 55 = x
39 = m 56 = y
50 = z
-----
Footnote 196:
See letter F 16 below.
-----
LETTRES D’AMOUR DE LA DUCHESSE
D’ALLEN AU CONTE KÖNIGSMARC
1
_Princesse héréditaire_ a bien jmpatience de sauoir si _Königsmarck_
est _arivé_ hereusement il sest passé bien des choses que _Princesse
héréditaire écrit sur le feuillet qui est tout blanc_ ie ne peus me
consoler _d’avoir si tost perdu Königsmarck_ labsence en paroist mille
fois plus cruelle ie suis _abatue_ a ne pouuoir me _soutenir l’exes
des plaisirs_ et la douleur de ne plus uoir ce que j’aime me mette en
cét estat quil est cruel de _se separer_ de uous uous estes le plus
aimable de tous les homme plus on uous uoit plus on uous descouure de
charme que ie suis heureuse d’estre aimée de vous et que ie connois
bien tout mon bonheur tout ma felicité
la continuation
dépend de cette tendresse charmante
si elle uient a me manquer ie ne ueus plus uiure uous me tenez lieu de
tout et tout le monde ensemble ne mest rien ie souhaitte que uous
soyez aussi content de moi que ie le suis de uous uous mauez enchantée
et ie me sens plus tendre que jamais sojez de meme et il ne manquera
rien a mon bonheur ie ne uous dirai point que toutes les actions de ma
uie uous marqueront mon attachement uous deuez en estre persuadé et le
tems uous fera connoistre que ie ne ueus uiure que pour uous
_Princesse héréditaire part demain_.
J’ay donne ordre a 220 de m’envoier vos lettre par _nienb_.
2
_Brockhausen._ Jeudi 22 Juin.
_Princesse héréditaire ariva hier au soir_ elle est contente du
_Duchesse de Celle_ ie ne doute point quelle ne fasse tout ce que lon
voudra _Duc de Celle_ est bien plus difficile ie nai point encore eu
de vos nouuelles dont ie suis bien triste ie me flate pourtant quil ne
sest rien passé puis que ie nai rien apris _Duc de Hanovre va lundi a
Hanovre_ cela sest _resolu hier_ si ie lauois seu plustost _ie ne
serois pas partie_ et iaurois peu uous uoir encore quelque jours ie
suis persuadée quil a attendu Expres et cela me donne un urai dépit
car ie hais plus que la mort tout ce qui ueut mesloigner de uous jl
faut estre bien malheureux pour passer la uie comme je le fais
cependant ie ne voi point de fin a mes peines iai fait milles
reflexions hier seule dans _ma chaise_ qui mont desesperée ie ne
saurois penser que ie vai estre tout un mois sans vous voir sans une
douleur mortelle toutes _les mesures_ quil _me faut garder_ me ... ie
ne saurois me passer de uous ie ne uoudrois uoir que uous dans le
monde cependant ie ne uous uoi point jl faut a tous momens men separer
jl mest impossible de uiure dauantage dans cette contrainte elle me
desespere ma passion augmente tous les jours ie ne sai ce que uous
mauez fait mais vous mauez enchantée la derniere fois que ie vous ai
ueu et ie ne uous ai jamais aimé auec tant dardeur que ie le fais jl
est seur que uous me ferez tourner la teste jai fait hier une chanson
et cela me fait uoir que lamour fait des miracles ie ne saurois
mempecher de uous la dire cest sur lair dans mon malheur ...
sans mon ... tout le monde mennuye
luy seul fait mon bonheur et mes plaisirs
il est lunique charme de ma uie
et en luj seul ie borne mes desirs
cest mon coeur tout seul qui parle jespere que ie nen demeurerai pas
la et quauec le temps ie pourrai uous le disputer 101 [or 201] va
mardi a _Celle_ cest pourquoi ne mescriuez plus que ie ny sois
_Duchesse de Celle_ a promis _au pauve 2000 escus si Prince
héréditaire ne revient poit_ cela redouble mon amitié _Princesse
héréditaire_ a parlé hier a _Luisburg_ a 110 il en a cherché loccasion
cest pour lexhorter a ne _doner aucune prise a ses ennemis_ et a se
défier sur tout de _Comtesse Platen Princesse héréditaire_ la fort
prié de lauertir de tout ce qui la regarderoit jl lui a promis ie ne
say si tout cela ne regarde point _Königsmarck_, ie ne saurois vous
parler que de la douleur ou ie suis destre si loin de uous ne uous
consoler point de mon absence ie uous en conjure et najez point de
joye que ie ne sois auec uous grand dieu quel charme et quels delices
destre toujours auec uous plus on uous void plus on uous trouue au
dessus de tous les hommes du monde je ne suis occupée que du souuenir
charmant de la derniere fois que ie uous ai ueu jl ne sortira jamais
de ma memoire ha mon cher enfant que uous estes tendrement aimé et
quil mest jnsuportable de ne uous point voir je vai me mettre au lit
jespere que mes songes uous representeront aussi charmant que uous
lestes si ie ne crojois uous uoir en dormant ie ne uoudrois point
dormir du tout car tant que ie suis esueillée uous moccupez
entierement et ie nai dagreable dans ma uie que le tems que ie passe a
penser a uous bon soir le plus aymable de tous les hommes uous estes
adoré et uous le serez toute ma uie adieu encore une fois pourquoi ne
suis je _pas entre vos bras_ jen mourrois.
mecredi _Princesse héréditaire_ a esté a table et parla a 110 ensuite
a _Feltma_ elle _ariva tard Prince Max_ la _receut_ et _lui dona la
main_ elle lui a parlé fort peu _Duc de_ Celle vint dans la chambre
_Prince Max_ ny entra point du tout _Duchesse de Celle_ estoit allé
_au devant dele_ et reuint tard car elle ne trouua point _Princesse
héréditaire_ on soupa ensuite _Princesse héréditaire Duchesse de
Celle_ et _Duc de Celle_ out esté ensemble tous seuls _Duchesse de
Celle_ mene Princesse électorale _chez elle_ et personne ny a mis le
pied.
3
Que ne soufertong cant jl faux se separrer de vous, tous les tourmens
du monde, ne pove pas tans faire soufrir, mais je me remais de mon
schagrein, puisque vous voules que je ne dois poins avoir de la
jalousie, je vous avoue qui laÿ difisile, dan avoir poin cant on aÿt
elonjé, de l’objaÿ que lon adore, mais mon anje vous m’aves tans
promis de garder unne bonne condouite que je me fie à vous, et je vous
pos assurer que dans se moment je suis san jalousie, mais non san
schagrein, et vostre depars me schagrine plus que jamais je ne
comprens pas se que je deviendraÿs a lafein, je say bien que je ne pos
pas toujour aistre à vostre veue, et sepandans, je san que tros que je
ne peus plus me separer de vous, vojes en quelle étas vos bos sieux
mon mis. je vous énvois la copie de la lestre dong je vous aÿ parlée
sait most en most comme l’orriginal, je vous demande pardong de la
main barbouliose dong je me suis servis, je lay fais copié par mon
page, qui ne saÿ se qui l’ecrist. M. Gor ma fais un compliment de la
par de la Deuschaise d’Essenack elle ma fais dire que quois que j’avas
éviter de luis parler, elle monstreray qu’elle sonje plus a moÿ que je
ne sonje à Elle, je vous jureraÿ que se compliment ma pas fais
solement plaisir, aux contraire il me fasche quelle me la fais faire
je ne suis poin sortis de ma schambre toust auxjourduis et je crois
que je feraÿ demaime demain; mande moÿ pour me consoler comme vous
vous governes et can vous seraÿ de retour, je mor dannuis et de
schagrein si je ne vous vois pas bientos; adieux mon Emable coeur,
sonjes à vostre fidail amang et ne l’oblie pas parmis tous saite foule
de monde, éncor unnefois adieux
jodis à 12 hor apres minuit mon mal de
postrine me continue mais je naÿ point
eus de fiavre.
4
jodis
il me fallais vostre lestre pour me soutenir dans le desespoir aux
j’aistois, voila se que saÿ cant on agit auxvertement et si vous mavié
pas parlé de ... je crois que je nauraÿ peus tenir plus longtemps, je
me suis pourtang gouverné forbien, et j’ay voulus auxparavang savoir,
se que vous me dirie, et je me suis point émporté, sassché dong que je
fus aventhier à Linde, Mad: la Comtes: aitois fort étonné que je ne
jouaÿ avec vous, je luÿ dis qui fallaist avoir permission, elle disaÿ
Mad: Leonis m’à fais demander á l’Elect: et j la repondus positivement
quelle pouvaÿ bien faire venir ses jouors, hiair avang que de resevoir
la vostre, ji su par oberg qui avois veus M. Weÿ à Linde que S: Alt:
vous l’aves dis a vous maime, le Preince Ernest august me dist avec
ses mos, que M. l’Elect: vous avois dis, vous vous ennujé Mad: jl faux
faire venir vos jouors, j l’auraÿ depandu de vous, si jl vous l’avois
dis de la sorte, mais Mad: je fus bien soulagé, can je lus la vostre,
aux vous me parlié de sait affaire, j’aÿ fais ma moralle, qui ais de
ne me jamais plus énborté sur des vapors, mes ma divine, pourié vous
poin nous laisser venir, afein que j’ aÿe la joÿ de vous regarder et
que mes sieux et mon coeur puisse apprendre des vostres comment je
suis avec os, et si vostre passion aÿ telle comme vous me l’ecrivie la
vostre d ihair aÿ scharmont, an suis si tousché que je me san plus
enflamée que j’amais. vous dite que vous ne voje personne, cela aÿ le
plus obligan du monde, mais vous vojes autang plus le Ref: ses qui me
fais craindre que vous vous acoutumeraÿ pos à pos à ses médiocres
carraisses et jl vous émbrasseras si souven que je more de schagrein
dÿ sonjer solement, pour lamour de vous maime, ne vous ÿ accoutumes
pas, sonje toujours de qu’elle mainere j vous traite, vous qui merites
tous les manieres honeste, obligant et respectouose, mais je vois le
defos daustruis es je ne vois poin que sait en cela que je suis le
plus criminel, vous m’aves dis vous maime que le Re: en ... en de
temps n’avois pas eus les maniere si disobligante que moÿ, je more dÿ
sonjer, que je suis malhoros de vous aimer si tendremens et que saite
passion si éxtraordinare, me rans si odieux, ne sonjé plux aux passé
je vous en conjure, adieux, adieux, helas adieux.
5
je suis bien à plaindre, et mon malhor me persecuste tros pour pouvoir
l’endurer plus longtemps, les laistres d’yair nous donne poin
d’esperanse que le Ref: puisse partis, et san se depar je ne puis ni
dois vous voir, qu’elle cruelle destiné, oh malhor insuportable appres
des schoque si terrible poje éncor respiré, la vie me devien
insuportable, je ne puis, ni ne dois plus aistre aux monde, car qu’i
ferage sans vous voir, j’ay eus auxjourduis dos malhor dong le dernie
me paraist à présang le plus cruel mes le premié pos devenir le plus
terrible, je me suis brulje ave nostre vieux bon homme, et Gor aussÿ,
et comme jl vous à dis, si je redisaÿ a sos de qui S. Alt: aÿ mal
contemps, jls seraÿs bien étonné, san ma passion je saÿ le partis que
j’aÿ à prandre, mais ma schere comme je vous aÿ promis de ne rien
faire san vostre consentemens, je vos vous en faire pars auxparavang,
mon dessein aÿ de luÿ ecrire, et luÿ dire que j’aistois for fasché que
mon devoir mavoit éngagé dans unne dispute, avec la personne du monde
que j’honore le plus, mais comme j’avois pris garde aux mos qu’il
m’avois dist jÿ aÿ observé qu’il disaÿt (si je redisaÿ à tous sos de
qui nostre maistre aÿ mal contemps, j lian auraÿ beaucoup de detrompé,
je crus que vost: Exce^{ḷḷ} ne le prandras pas mal, si je luy priaÿ
d’avoir la bonté de m’avertis soux main, si j’aÿ assaÿ de malhor à
deplair à Monsg: L’Elector, afein que je puisse prandre mon partis,
car jusques ici, je lay servis que par affection, et sans aucun
intaeraÿ, aÿ si j’avois le malhor d’aistre mis mal dang son Esprit, jl
me serais impossible de le plus servir) voila a pos praÿ se que je
vousdraÿ luÿ mander, saschong vostre avis, je pos vous assurer que
j’aÿ veus positivement dans son émportement que cela s’adraissait à
moÿ, j’admire ma passianse, et je ne puis pas comprandre comme j’aÿ
fais pour me possedé, car j’avois forsouvang en beausche de luÿ dire,
se que je vos luÿ ecrire; Le segon malhor aÿ bien plus schagrinang,
j’aÿ veus vos fenaistres auxvertes, le Ref: sortais de vostre
garderobe san vous j voir, quois que j’aÿ parlé assaÿ hos, passé et
repassé, mais rien lon j vojaÿ ame vivante, je crois comme j laistois
tars vous fute deja sche la Romaine je seraÿ inconsolable, si je
n’avois l’ésperanse à vous voir se soir à 6 hors a quois suje reduis,
je conte pour le plus grans bonhor du monde à vous voir de mille pas,
Effectivement jl me seras dunne grande consolation, si je puis avoir
se plaisir; seluÿ de vous écrire m’ais bien schaire, et ji ne donneraÿ
pas pour un Rauxjomme, je crains que ma Diabolique destinée, m’en
priveras, say seraÿt pour maschevée, je vous conjure prenes si bien
vos messure que cela ne nous pos manquer, vous saves, j’aispaire par
vous maime que lon ne saurais vivre san cela, helas pourquios ne suje
pas Reden aux Hortanse tandis que vous aites la niporte si vous me
haisié, j’auraÿ pourtang la joÿ de voir selle que j’adore; sai nostre
passion qui nouis éloinje lun de laustre, san mon amour, je seraÿ
partous aux vous aites, mes puis que je vous aime, je suis en meschang
credis l’on me regarde pas, l’on mauxblie, mais n’importe, q’on me
crage aux née je m’en fercheraÿs pas.
6
dimanje:
auÿ Mad: je soufriraÿ pour vous, puisque vous me l’ordonnes, mais can
serage assay horos de me voir aux poin aux j’aspire, sait éntre vos
bras que je vos dire, mais can aurage saite satisfaction, je pair tous
l’ésperanse, car de la maniere que cela vas, je m’én pos pas flatté,
j’én pair lespris et si je vous écris, san rime ni raison, ne vous en
prenes pas à moÿ, say, le desespoir aux je me trouve, si vous ne croje
pas je vous prie de regarde ses poils que j’aÿ fais tire de ma taiste
se matein, je ne pos pas vous assurer qu’elle me song venus saite
nuis, mais je pos vous juré qui lia 8 jours, qui li en avois pas,
croje moÿ que mon desespoir ay grans, et que mon schagrein ait
extraime, je demore pour l’amour de vous, j’hasarde honor reputation
et émbisiong, car puis que je ne vas pas en campanje, qu’es que lon
dira de moÿ, et pourquois aise que je l’hasarde, saÿ pour ne vous poin
voire, je suis venus a saite éxtremité, qu’il faux que le veinque aux
que je mors, emploÿe dong vos forse auxprais le Gro: sais qui pos nous
sauver uniquement aÿ j’appelle sas veincre, je vos absolument vostre
ordre, se que je dois faire, demorer à Hanno. de la sorté ait inauÿ,
car appres trois semaine vous iraÿ avec le Gron. que ferage allors
dans un lieux aux vous naite pas, je vous prie d’ÿ faire reflextion,
et appres cela ordonnes, je suis prait à vous montrer avec mon
obeïssansse que ma passion n’écouste poin de raisong. vous vojes à
quois vous m’aves reduit, car je vous sacrifie mon Ambition qui aÿ la
solle schose, que j’usques ici j’avois conservé, vojes aux vas ma
passion, j’ugé dans quelle aitas je me trouve, ne me rouiné pas de
fons en comble, saÿe plus abitios que mois, et éncourages un amang qui
n’én à plus. je vous feray pitié si vous connaissié bien les
schagreins qui m’acable. je vois bien le vostre aÿ ses qui me tue, car
quois que nous sajons bien énsemble, nous laisong pas que d’avoir du
schagrein, aÿ voila un mal san remaide; la solle consolation aÿ de
jouer avec vous, mes le plaisir de vous regarder mais poin permis car
tantos, la =shwarß gesicht= tanstos l’innossang tantos un
austre des filjes vien nous observé, tous cela aÿ pour en mourir,
consolé moÿ je vous en conjure, aux je me desespaire et ma
desesparation pouraÿ m’énporter à me servir des remaide indigne d’un
honest homme, vous m’attendes bien, mais mad. cant on aÿ dans le
Labourint comme je suis, jl nia blus d’honnesté et plus de confianse,
j laÿ bong de fenir aux je m’énporteray davantaje.
7
a 1 hor de nuit
Le bon homme aÿ revenus de la conferanse et ma faÿ ranvojer les
Dragons de lordonanse sans ordre, saÿ pourquois je crois que nous
raisterons éncor saite semainne et comme je vas demain diner sché luÿ
je sauray qu’elque schose, dong je vous feraÿ aussitos pars
énattandang prepare vous a éxecuter se que vous trouveraÿ ici jointe;
_l’Électrice_ a etté a _linde_ faire _promener Comtesse Platen_, Le
Comte de Stenbock que vous aves veus ici j lia 7 ans voulais faire la
reveranse, comme aussi le Comte Delagardy, je laÿ mennay la, et je
trouvaÿ la bonne Piesse, _eschoie_, et le _fahr_ qui _coulai_ de tous
costé, _elle_ fus si decontenansé de voir arrivé tans d’éstrangé,
qu’elle fus toust a fais confus, le partis qu’elle pris aitois le
meiljor, car elle se _retira_, aussitos, pour se remaistre en _ordre_,
j lia bien de la malisse à _l’Électrice_, et elle pos pas se vanier
mieux. Sonjes je vous en conjure à _venir_ et crojaÿ que san vous
_voir_, sait aistre morte, et je m’étonne comme mong destein m’aist si
cruel a me laisser sur vire tous ses malhors, mais si je ne vous _vois
bintos_ j nia ni guerre ni danger que je n’alje scherscher pour
abrejer mes jours malhoros; je more de honte de naistre pas mors déjà,
comment cela sacordetil de vous aimer eperduement, sans vous _voir_ ni
san vous parler, et vivre encor, je crois que mon _foutus_ destein, me
preserve, pour me schagriné davantage; vous pouves sol me tiré de ma
desperation, _venez vite_ me consoler, aux je ferais un cous de
desespoir dong je me repantiraÿ de ma vie, car la vie que je maine
m’aist insuportable, je la haÿ a la mors, j’en suis las, et ne le pos
plus suporté; je vousdraÿ que la foudre ecrasa tous sos qui énpesche à
nous _voir_, et à joindre nos fos, pardonne à mon amportement que la
tros violante passion me cause, jl me semble, que si je ne _dois_ voir
se que _jaime_, j laÿ juste de ne poin voir le jour, je seraÿ capable
dans se moment, a Masacre Paire, Maire, Frere, et soeur, si je crojais
q’os m’émpesche de _voir_ mon _anje_. Leonis que ta bosté me couste
des tourments, tong scharme des schagreins, _venez_ me faire
_auxblier_, tous mes mos, tu le pos, par tais émbrassades, par taÿs
caraisses, et jlia que tois dans le monde capable de cela. je vous
_attang_ auvec la plus grande _impatians_ du _monde_, et ne souffres
que je dise, que vous aites promte _a partir_, et _mang_ à _revenir_
aux L’amour vous _appemme_, j’auraÿ pourtang tor si je me plainjaÿ _du
depart_, car j laistois _tendre_ et seinsaire, mais je vous conjure,
donne mois pas l’occasion de me pleindre, du dernié adieux je
tenbrasse mille aÿ Mille fois. _Mlle. de Knesebeck_ aÿ la meljore
personne du monde, je vous prie de lui dire, l’estimme que j’aÿ pour
elle je la salue avec vostre permission.
8
Atlenbourg 13^{me}
Le 12^{me} j’aÿ fais se que j’aÿ fais les austres jours, sait a dire
boire manjé, et visité les poste, le 13^{me} de maime; M. le Duck de
Zelle aÿ venus nous visiter, vous vojé que je puis aisement faire mes
journos, je crois qu’il vous schoquerong gaire, car rien n’ay plus
innossang, et sos de Hanno: seraÿ de maime amoin que d’aller souper
avec les fammes ne vous deplust, se que je m’engage de laisser aussÿ,
vous assuran que saÿ la moindre éprove que je vous donneraÿ, puis que
je m’en passeraÿ fort aisement, san que vous l’ordones. Dieu volje que
je puisse vous monstres par ma condouite, que tous mes penses, tous
mes pas, ne se fong que pour vous, mais helas vous aves tans
d’jnjustice, que vous ne le voules pas voire, j’aÿ mon malhor, et saÿ
se qui me perdra un jour opres de vous. j’aÿ resu la 3^{me} Lestre
daté le 5^{me} d’ans, 8 jours appres selle marqué 4, je ne conprans
pas dous vien se delaÿ, mais je say bien, qui laÿ danjeros qu’elle
demore si lon temps en schemein. je ne suis pas satisfais de vous et
la meschante oppinion que vous aves de moÿ comme si je vous neglijaÿ,
me schoque beaucoup, je sonje nouit aÿ jour qu’a vous, il me vien poin
d’austre pensé dan l’ésprit, et sepandans, je vous oblie je vous
neglige, je souis un inconstang, aise que je merite ses titres sajes
en le juge vous maime. pouves vous m’accuser de ne vous plus aimer,
aitil passible que s’aÿ Leonis qui le croist et qui me reproche,
grandieux que vous aite plain d’injustice, et que vous me faite gran
tor, je vous aimes à la follie, je vous adore san égale, ma passion
surpasse tous les autres et sepandans vous douté de tous cela, vostre
coeur parle gaire en ma favor, j’aÿ raison de me plaindre de luÿ, saÿ
se coeur Barbare qui dois parlé pour, et saÿ luÿ qui m’accuse, je laÿ
veus tendre pour mois mais pos à pos tous sette tendresse ait évanouÿ,
ne revindratil poin à luÿ maime, faiste luÿ des reprosches de ma par;
Le mien vous assure unne éternelle attachement, jl vous jure qui vous
sera constang, et pourvos que vous dainje à sonjer à louis tous les 24
hores unnefois, j laÿ Contemps, meritil vostre souvenir je crois que
sÿ, mais sait à vous d’en juger. Si j’aÿ jamais le malhor de ne vous
plus aimer (qui ait un chose impossible) vostre souhaÿ me punira par,
car je vous jure, que je ne schergeraÿ plus de fidellite, et quois que
selle d’apresan mais plus schaire que ma vie, j’en vousdraÿ jamais
d’austre, souvene vous se q’un sertain Espanjol à dis, je ne vos pas
m’éncanaliser, j’apelle cela éncanaliser si je quitaÿ le plus parfait
objaÿ de l’univair pour qu’elque austre, la qu’elle ne poura jamais se
comparer en la ...
9
vendredis à 8 hor du soir
dans se moment je vien de resevoir unne lestre trais grande et comme
je le demande de _Princesse électorale_ je naÿ pas eus le loisir de la
lire, crainte que la poste ne par, et san vous assurer qu’elle joÿ
elle ma faite can je laÿ resu; Le bon homme vas demain à _Engsen_, à
son retour je sauraÿ ma destinée, se que je feraÿ dabor savoir a
_Princesse électorale_; je ne fais que des vos pour ne poin marscher
afein que je puisse émbrasser selle que j’adore, et pour la quelle je
moureraÿ mille aÿ millefois Croje de mois que je vous adore de la
maniere la plus violante du monde, plust aux siel davoir les aucasion
à vous le bein monstre, je n’obliraÿ pas un moment, pour vous en bien
persuader, quelle satisfaction seraÿ la mienne si par mon obeissanse
je pouraÿ vous monstrer combien je vous aistime, et quelle plaisir je
prans à aistre vostre éternelle Esclave adieux mon incomparable Leonis
que je te Baiseraÿ petiste.
K.
10
Samdÿ.
j lait aisé à juger avec qu’elle satisfaction j’aÿ leus vostre
tres-scharmente lestre, jl me la vallaÿ telle pour me tirer unpos de
la profonde reverie aux mes malhors, et _labsense_ ma plonjé, elle aÿt
grande tendre et comme je la souhaite, n’en écrives poin de plus
petiste, cela vous dois soulager, et je vous jure qu’a mois aussÿ,
vous ne les sauries faire assaÿ amples Vostre passion m’ais si
agreable, que j’aÿ aucun plaisir dans _labsanse_ que de la voire
peinte sur du papié, je conserve vos lestres comme la schose du monde
la plus pressiose puis qu’elle me consolle de tous mes disgraces; j
vojan que vous jure de maimér, à maistre fidaille, et a me jamais
abandonner, que poje souhaiter plus de vous, vous voje dong que je
suis tous à fais contemps de vous, je vous conjure de l’aistre aussi
de mois et de me poin inputer que vous ne reseves pas regoulierement
tous les poste de mes lestres, j’aÿ injoré un jour qui aÿ le
_dimansche_, mais comme j’an suis informé mon éxactitude vous feras
connaistre que j’aÿ pesché fauxte de le savoir mieux, et la neglijance
me vien pas des schagreins que j’aÿ, sait allors que je sonje le plus
a vous car vous me serves de consolation et le plaisir de penser à
vous surpasse tous austres plaisirs que je connaisse Jdolo mio, can
aurage la joÿ de te tenir íntre mes bras, n’aisse pas pour desesperer
un Catong, que de voir que vous pouves _venir_, si _Prince Max_ ne
l’anpeschaÿ pas, mais quois que l’anvie de vous _voir_, me fist passer
ma jalousie et que je vous priai, de venir combien de temps pourage
aistre avec vous, postaitre que dos jours et appraÿ je vous voiraÿ
parmis des jans qui nous haisse, et d’austre qui volle sinsinuer, ne
croje pas mon Ange que ma jalousie, me vien de la movaise oppinion que
j’ay de vous, se seraÿ tros criminelle mais elle me vien de la
violanse de ma passion, ainsi je me flatte que vous m’excuseraÿ
toujours can saite follie me prans; que ne vous doige poin que vous
prené tang de paine à me guerir de tous mes soupsons vos journos me
console, vostre sermang me fait auxblié tous que j’avois dans la
servelle, ha que ne _suige auxprai_ de _vous_ je me jaiteraÿ à vos
pié, vous remersier de tous le soin que vous prenes à me randre horos
et contemps, je suis persuadé de vostre bonne intasion, je ne doute
pas de vostre fidailite, et je vois tres bien que si vous gouvernie la
fortunne, tans d’inconvenian n’arriveraÿ pas comme je pouraÿ
postaistre recevoir ordre de marcher à Lunen: mande mois si je ne puis
passer a _Celle_, san donner de lombrage si _vous ni aitte pas_ la
bien seanse le demande, mais apresan je ne saÿ se que je dois faire La
reponse de la Boulle, ayt assaÿ pican et elle merite bien unne
reponse, dans la quelle jl ne faux pas éparnier la _musique_. je ne
saÿ si je me trompe mais en relisang 11^{me} lestre je ne le trouve
pas si tandre ni si sainsaire que la 10^{me} mande mois si je me
trompe, la 10^{me} aÿ scharmente elle marque unne veritable passion
que vous aves eus en l’écrivang, pour lamour de mois, saje toujous de
la sorte, et me faite poin apersevoir de la froidor, que je fais pour
le merité, dite le mois, afein que je me puisse excuser. aise
postaistre que vous trouve pas tendre que je vous prie pas de _venir_,
mais songes se qui m’émpesche de le faire si vous le voules pourtang
je vous en priraÿ mais je seraÿ postaistre 2 jour ici et puis vostre
voisein aura le schang libre jl vous à aimé, ai maime jl vous a pas
étté indifferang, je le crains toujour quois qui laÿ gaire à craindre,
mais jl soufit qui la étté sur un pié for famillié avec vous, pour
avoir juste raison de craindre son impertinanse, et maime jl seraÿ
faschos, de voir un homme aupraÿ de vous, qui pourait avoir 20
petistrous par aux jl vous pouraÿ voir, austre que vous ne saurie dire
un most qu’il ne puisse entendre, mais tous ses raisons ne son pas
soufisang, et si j’avois l’ésperanse à demorer je vous conjureraÿ
toujour de _venir_ dans l’ésperanse que vous trouveraÿ le mojein de
vous en defaire, car san cela je ne pouraÿ vous voire, puisqu’il seraÿ
toujour en gaÿt à Espioner. Puis que je ne puis vous abandonner saÿ
pourquois je refuse tous les avantage qui se presante, je pretans vous
faire voir par la mon attachement et saÿ la mon unique but pour quois
je vous fais voire les lestres que lon m’écrivois de tous costé, crojé
pourtan caucunne avantage aÿ capable à me faire quiter ici tandis que
vous auraÿ de la bonté pour mois; je connaÿ le pouvoir d’unne _maire_
que lon aime, et can selle vous donne loccasion jl fauxtaistre aussi
saje pour pouvoir resister, mon san se remus, can je pense que la
vostre seraÿ capable, pour se vanjer de _Prince électoral_ que vous le
_fisie coqus_ et cant jl me vien dans la taiste, si jamais vous faisié
ses caraisses, à qu’elcaustre qu’a moÿ tous mon sang se tourne dans
mes vaines et je ne puis demorer sur la plasse, tans que saite pensé
me donne de linquiettude, ah bondieux si je vous vojaÿs émbrasser
qu’elqun avec autang de passion _que vous_ me _lavez_ faite, et
_monter_ à _scheval_ avec la maime énvie, je ne vos jamais voir dieux
si je n’en devein pas fous, tenes en l’écrivang ma main me tramble aÿ
j’aÿ de la painne à poursuivre. schangon de matiere, les amis don je
vous aÿ parlé song Busch et hammerstain, l’aurié vous bien crus, se
sont os qui on mis _Prince électoral_ tous les histoire de mon jos en
taiste, mais ’aÿ écrit aux premié unne lestre, qui luÿ feras bien
connaistre sa foseté je me flatte de reschef puis que _Duchesse de
Celle_ et _Duc de Celle_ se songt accomodé, faite dong de vostre
mieuxÿ La _gaire_ ne durera pas si longtemps que cela _rouinerai_ le
_paix_, saÿ pourquois saite excuse ne pos longtemps passer pour unne
defaite, vojes si vous tiendraÿ vostre parole, puis que vous me
promaité que vous moureraÿ plusto, que de n’aistre pas _unis avec
mois_, continue dans ses santiments, et vous me rande la vie, vous
souije assaÿ schaire, que vous serié capable a tenir se que vous maves
promis, si cela aÿ, je vous jure éncor unnefois par les astres, que
rien aux monde m’éloinjeras de vous, par le lestre _ici jointe vous_
verreraÿ comme de nouvos, lon schersche à me persuader d’Épouser la
Filje de M. Bielke, mais ma réponse à étté, que je moureraÿ plusto de
fein que de le faire et que je le priaÿ for, de me plus parlé de
mariage, car cela nous pouraÿ bruljer ensemble je me flatte que vous
seraÿ contente de ma resolution; puisque nous vojang si pos
d’apparanse à nous _voir_, il faux sonjer à des expedian, _vous le
trouveraÿ sur se biljaÿt_, je crois que cela se pouras, pour vos que
je ne parte pas, et que je vous feraÿ savoir entre ici et se temps la;
si vous voules attendre jusques à ce que _Prince Max_ sannuis, je ne
vous _voirai_ de longtemps, car cant j laÿt avec _l’Électrice_ et sa
maigre divinité, j laÿ comptemps comme un Roÿ, je n’auraÿ pas crus que
se margos m’auraÿ donné tang de schagrein, comme jl faÿ, je vousdraÿ
qui fust aux _fong_ de la _hongrie_, jl me donneraÿ plus des mos de
coeur comme jl faÿ presantement. Lon ne sauraÿ plus obligament, parlé
comme vous le faiste sur le schapistre de mourir de fein, mais croje
vous que quois qu’il meseraÿ dunne grande consolation de vous voir
toujour a mon costé, que je vousdraÿ vous antrenner dans la misaire,
non non ne le croje pas, vous deves vivre horos et comptemps
enattandans que je scherge qu’elque mors gloriose, pour abrejer mes
jours malhoros, et mourir _lament_ de _Princesse électorale_.
j’aispaire que vous auraÿ resu les dos lestres dong je vous ay parlée,
si non mande le mois, vous me feraÿ plus l’injustice de croire que
qu’elque consideration dans le monde me post detascher de vous, l’avos
ici desus vous feras voir que je moureraÿs avec mon Amour, comment
pouraitong vous quiter, car tans plus que lon vous connais tan plus
que lon vous adore, lon decouvre tous les jours des nouvelles merites,
et vostre passion aÿ sol capable à me faire plustos tranjer la taiste
que de vous abandonner, pour jamais; j’aÿ de la honte de mon pos
d’exactitude, je vous en demande pardong, saite unne foste que je vous
prie de ne point attribuer à la neglijance mes aux pos de memoir que
j’ay, mais ma divinne Leonis, avoué à vostre tour que mes lestres son
bien plus grande, et que san vous en avoir avertis, vous les aurié pas
fais si émple, schaqun à son paquaÿ, ainsi je consantiraÿ jamais que
vostre passion aÿ plus grande que la mienne, aÿ je seraÿ inconsolable
si je ne vous en avais pas donner plus des marques essansielle, car
vous pourié croire que la _vanité_, puis que vous _aite preincess_,
ferait que je m’attasche, non je vous jure si vous aitié _filie_ du
_bouro_, et que vous eusié les merites que vous possedes à presang, je
vous aimeraÿ, avec autang d’ardor, vous me trouveraÿ gaire delicas,
mais je me flatte que vous trouveraÿ mes santimens tendres; onon des
dieux continues, dans les santiments aux je vous vois, si ma disgrasse
me voulaÿ pouser si loin, que vous eusie de l’aversion pour mois, je
me donneraÿ assurement un cous de pistolaÿ ...
11
Quo que j’avois pris la resolution de vous ecrir demain, et de vous
repondre émplement sur vois lettre que j’aÿ reçu à la fois, du 13^{me}
14^{me} et 15^{me} je me vois privé de se plaisir, par la resolution
que le Roy à pris, d’ataquer demain l’armée de Franse, la quelle aÿt à
2 hors de nous, le lieux se nomme Engein; Dans tout austre temps sette
nouvelle m’auraÿ donné de la joÿ, mais je vous avoue qu’a lors qui laÿ
elle me chagrinne, je suis aimée de vous l’unique objaÿ que j’aÿ
trouvé dinje d’aimer, je me suis poin trompé dans mon opinion de
croire que vous possedié, toute les Belle calité, que lon puisse
trouver aux monde, mais ma chaire je dois hasarder la vie, et
postaitre vous revoire jamais, à paine aije sus que vous aitié
innossante, et que je vous aÿ soupsonné en fos, que je vous dois
postaitre jamais plus revoir, j’aÿ hasardé ma vie sant fois, par
sottise aux par geté de coeur, et je me connaÿ assaÿ, que je saÿ que
lamors ma jamais éffrajé, mais ma divinité se que me rans poultrong aÿ
la crainte de ne vous plus revoire, adieux dong émable
jllÿdojllÿrojllÿadieuxjllÿ, que je suis a plaindre, et je suis
pourtang horos, mais je ne pos profiter de mong bonheur. ne croje
pourtang poin que vous aves un galang poltrong, non ma chaire, puis
qu’il faut aller aux combat, je mÿ comporteraÿ comme j faux, et si je
pos, j’aispaire de mi sinjaler; mais mon coeur permaitemoÿ, de vous
faire unne priaire la quelle aÿ, que si mon destein me vost assaÿ de
mal, d’aistre éstroppié, d’un bras, aux d’unne jambe, ne m’oblie poin,
et ajé unpos de bonté pour un miserable qui, à fais son unique plaisir
de vous aimer, non ma chaire ne l’oblie pas, sait un homme qui à eus
un veritable attaschemens pour vous, et qui l’auras tous le reste de
sa vie, quoÿ qu’estropié, mais sieux qui out aité charmé par les
vostres, ne les vairerongs postaire plus, je ne pos penser en cela,
sans verser des larmes, ah que je profite bien pos, d’aistre aimé de
vous, et que vous me causé bien des tourmens. jl sonne 12 hors; aux
closjé de Halle; lon apporte des balles poudre, et maisches saÿ le
prologue pour la saine que nous devons jouer demain, jl faux me rendre
à mon devoir, adieux emable enfang, ah que je suis à plaindre du cang
de Halle le 23^{me}
12
mais Maistresse m’aurais émpesché de sonjer à vous, aux Dieux est il
possible, que vous croje cela, et si je vous avois poin écris de tous
(quo que celci est la 4^{me} lettrere) vous devries jamais avoir eus
telle penses, ce postil que vous croje que j’aime quel aut̂re que
vous, non je vous proteste qu’apres vous je n’aimeraÿ jamais plus, il
ne seras pas for difficile de tenir parolle, car appres con vous à
addorer, post on trouver d’aut̂re Famme jolie, vous vous faite tors,
decroire telle schose, et comment pourie vous faire une comparaison de
vous et les autres et se post il c’apres avoir aimé une Deessé, lon
pusse regarder les Mortels, non énverité je suis de tros bong gous, et
je ne suis poin de ses jang qui voilje s’encanailjser; je vous addore
scharmante brunetté, et je moureray avec ses sentiment, si vous
m’oblije pas, je vous jure que je vous aimeraÿ toute ma vie je n’atten
plus de vos lettres, parceque, je pretemps d’aistre bientos aupres de
vous, et mon unique occupation allors seras de vous montre, que je
vous aime à la follie, et que rien m’ay plus schaire que vos grace,
adieux, le 3^{me}/23.
13
Crainte de ne vous pouvoir parler je prens la liberte à vous montre
mong schagring du malheur, qui vous est arrive Dieux sait que mon
coeur me la predit, mais mon companjon na schamais voulu attendre, quo
que je luÿ en aÿ pries, mais par comble de malheur jl faux que
j’éttande que mon amÿ intime à eus le plaisir avec son faschos
conpanjoin à vous éntretenir, jl me semble que j’ay beaucoup de
raisong de me plaindre des Dieuxs, puisquil sont assay injuste de
m’oter tous les mojengs à vous rendre service et én meme temps le
Donne, en main à sos de qui j’ay le plus à craindre, depuis cet
axcidemps je me suis mis en teste, des étranje schose, et je suis
assay sos de croire que l’axcidemps arrivé, hier, cet un prognostique
de mon malheur, et que cela sois le meme homme qui me coseras tous ses
schagrings cela feras que je le feraÿ observer de plus pres, à mon
absence et si j’attang la moindre schose, crojé moy en honesthomme que
je vous reverrerai jamais, et que j’vaÿ plustos scherjé le fong de la
Laplende, que de parraistre devang ses sieux qui mon scharmée. je
deteste mon companjong, car sen cela j’auray éus le plaisir de vous
servir, aux lieux que je vois cette joÿ dans le sains d’un homme, que
j’abhorre, et qui est assay impertinang de me le venir conter luy
meme, m’apprenang dans l’étas aux vous aviéz étté, vot̂re
deshabiljemen, sans cornette les schevos pandus sur votre inconparable
sain, aux Dieux je ne pos plus écrire de raje.
14
En faisang reflextion sur la miserable condiction dans la quelle je me
trouvois lon mapporte la vot̂re pos attendu de moy, ma joy estois si
grande que j’ay oblijé d’avoir du mal, en me lensang sur la lettre
comme si rien me manques vous avez tous fais ce que je souhaites à
vous voir faire, jl reste dong à moy à vous remercier de vos bontée,
et a vous bien persuader de ma fidellite
Jo ti saro fedele,
Ne mai ti tradiro.
Se ben mi sei crudel,
sempre t’adorero;
si vous m’en croje pas, je suis prest à abandonner Mere, Parang, Amy,
Biens, et la Patrie, pour vous en mieux persuader, et il dependera que
de vous, si je dois faire le vojage que vous saves bien, mon malheros
étas me fournit une bonne excuse, je pouray faire le malade bien
longtemps, si vous aite d’acor avec moy je vous prie à me le mander
car je prendray mes messure ladesu, say la plus grande éprove que je
puis vous donner à présan, acceptele dong, et rende moy par la horos
car le bien de vous voire surpasse de beaucoup à Lembition que jay de
faire ma fortune, je n’an sauraÿ trouver de plus considerable et seluy
de vous posseder may si jaire que je ne fais plus de reflextion sur
tous les autres. Vous avez par vot̂re lettre tellement purifié mon
coeur que le moindre soupsong de jallosie ni reste pas, l’empressement
que vous me temoinje pour savoir l’état de ma senté, me persuade assaÿ
que vous maime pour contenter à vot̂re desir je vous diray que je
soufre éxtremement sepandang la douleur de ne vous voir poin surpasse
en beaucoup, selle de la schutte, je pouray me porter mieux en 4 jour,
mais si vous accepté ma proposition, je garderay éncor 10 jour la
chambre cela n’émpescheras pas qu’ossitos que je pouray marscher je
pouray vous embrasser aux lieux connue; pour avoir de vos nouvelles,
je crois que le plus sur mojen, est q’un de mes jangs (sur le quelle
je pos me fier)....
15
Un autre que moy vous metteray sur l’éprove pour voire, si votre amour
vous pouseray si loin que de venir sche moy, mais moy je vous aime
trops pour vous pouvoir voire dans set hasar, et votre offre me sufit,
cepandan pour ne poin perdre l’occasion de vous voire (puisque j’aÿ si
pos de temps à rester avec vous) je viendray se soir sche vous, si
vous j consente, et jattang de vous leur du rendevous, si vous trouve
bong que je parraisse à la cour je le feray, mais sans cela poin. La
joÿ de vous revoir me fais oublier tous les schagrins que ma maladie
ma attiré, je suis aureste assay contemps de vous, sepandang je ne pos
oublier le pos d’opposition que vous faitte aux sujet de mon vojage,
ajan une bonne éxcuse pour men dedire, je ne say se que j’an dois
juger, Dieux volje solement que cette absence ne soy funeste pour moy.
Vous m’accusé que je vous aime pas assaÿ, comment pouve vous aistre si
injuste, mais je passeray se poin sans j repondre saschan bien que
vous aitte tros persuade de ma passion, qui est la plus pure que
jamais à étté, et qui dureras tandis que je viveray, je vous l’ay
contesté souven en prosse, permaite que je le fasse pour le presang en
vers.
=So lang mein herz noch ohten spüret
Wiel ich _votre non_ lieben,
Solange sich mein blut noch rüret
Bleibt sie mir darrein geschriben,
Und sol mit meines läbens lauf
Bey mir die liebe nicht hören auf.=
a 6 hors mon homme seras devang la schambre de la bonne bonne amÿ.
16
Le 1^{mer} de septemb.
Pardonnes si le schagrein et le desespoir m’a fais faire la foste à ne
vous point écrire depuis dos jour cant on aÿ dans l’état aux je souis
lon ne saÿ se que lon fais. je commenseraÿ par vous dire que j’aÿ
schangé dos schifres dans nostre Clée, qui ay, j, se marque 31/ i, se
marque 35, u, se marque 53, v, se marque 53, v, se marque 54/ je vous
d’opserver sesÿ; Appraÿ cela je vous diraÿ que vous aves marqué dos
lestres, 10^{me} ainsy que la 14^{me} devraes aistrÿ la 15^{me} mais
continues solement apresan, car j lia poin d’austre mal, que la
segonde, aux premiere 10^{me} auray peus se perdre san que lon eus
seus, solement, que lon en eus perdue unne. J’aÿ éncor à vous dire,
que je vous aÿ écrit dos lestres, adraissé, à 131, que j’aÿ crus à
_Celle_, jl faux savoir si vous les aves reseus; 3 lestres ont été
adraissé, aux _maistre de poste de Celle_ qui son daté le 20^{me} et
aÿ la 9^{me} lestre, le 26^{me} et aÿ la 12^{me} lestre elle aÿ de
_consequense_ le 30^{me} et ay la 14^{me} lestre; j laÿ bong aussÿ de
regarder si vous aves la 13^{me} lestre, je vous prie manques pas à me
repondre ici desu, vous pouves tous voir par la souite car je souis
bien sure que j’aÿ ette exacte saite fois ici. Vous seraÿ surpris de
me voire faire des reflextions pareilje, dans l’état aux je souis, mes
ma schere nous avons tant des malhors, qu’il ne faux pas s’en faire
sois maime; j’aÿ resu la vostre daté le 26^{me} mais vous saves quelle
accidans m’ayt arrivé, en prenan unne boutelje pour laustre, je vous
laÿ mandé dans mes presedantes je vois pourtang, dans vos daté 28^{me}
29^{me} et la 30^{me} se que vous m’aves voulus dire dans la 26^{me},
j’ay unne joÿ tres grande de vous savoir, hor _de crainte_ et je me
vos du mal d’aistre cause, de vostre inquiettude, qui a contribué
_beaucous a votre mal_; presantements que vous aites _hor de crainte_
j’aispaire que _la fievre vous quitera aussi_; Que je vous plain
d’avoir tant soufer, _sis hors l’axaÿ_ je ne comprans pas comme _vous
aves asay_ de _forse_ à _m’ecrire_ éncor, je le reconnaÿ comme je
dois, et je souis persuadé que l’amour vous, en rang; mes a quelle
poin vous souige point obligé pour se marque de vostre tendraisse,
j’amais j’obliraÿ des telles bonté. Si mes _lestres_ avois assaÿ de
_forse_ à _soulajer vos mos_; je feraÿs en sorte que vous _en eusie_,
tous _les hores_, mes je prans se compliment pour un aiffaÿ de vostre
bonté, sepandans je pos vous jurer que les vostres me consolle
beaucoup, et san les trois derniés daté 28^{me} 29^{me} et 30^{me} je
seraÿ aux tombos à lheur qui laÿ. Se seraÿ la plus grande sottise
appraÿ tous que je pouraÿ faire, car quois que cela seraÿ tendre, je
vous perdraÿ; et vous dite forbien dans unne des vostre qu’elle
desespoir de ne se poin voir pour jamais, vivons dons énsembles,
aimons nous éternellement et jurong nous de nouvos, unne constance à
ne jamais finir, et qu’aparÿ le trepas si nous avon le sang, que cela
dois durer aussÿ; Pour vivre énsemble prenes tous les soins
imaginable, à vous _conserver_, sonjes que mon repos en depans; Si
vostre _mal continue_, j laÿ seure que je deviendraÿ fous. La fievre
rainje beaucoup ici, nous avons praÿ de 200 malades, de nos troupes
mes domestique le devienne un appraÿ l’austre, j’aÿ etté obligé,
d’anvojer mon valaÿ de chambre à Zelle, les austres sont à Lunenb: si
cela continue, le tous viendra à moÿ aussÿ.
17
Le 3^{me}
jaÿ pensé tumber en apoplexie can j’aÿ auver vostre lestre, san voir
vostre mains j’aispairaÿ d’attendre _que vous vous porterie mieux_, et
vous faite tous le contraire, j’ay crus du comensemens, que _saitais
fais avec vous_ ne croje pas que je souis fasché que cela ne soÿ de
vostre main, bien loin de la, je vous conjure de continuer, de la
sorte car je ne vos absoluments pas, que vous vous _fa .. ge_. je vous
plein autang q’un ... tendre aÿ passionée, le pos faire, faut il que
le plus parfaist objaÿ de l’univair soufre _si cruellament_, Dieuxs
pour quois aites vous si injuste, mes mon coeur, je saÿ pourquois, _se
malhor tarrive_, pour me randre plus malhoros, le destein te _rang
mallade_, lon _te fais suffrir_ pour me crucifier, L’on j reusit car
on pos pas, m’envojer un plus grans malhors vous m’ordonnes de me poin
_inquietter_, jl faudrois vous gaire aimer, pour ne le pas aistre à la
mors; je souis a tous moments à _genous_ faire _des veux_ pour vostre
éntiere _retablissements_, je me flatte qua la fein on aura pitié de
mois, mes vos son tros devoste, pour ne pas aistre éxhosé, Dieux volje
que _cla sois bintos_ que vous seray _quite ... vos mos_ et moÿ de mes
_crain ... s_ et de mon _inquetude_ avec qu’elle joÿ vous
embrasserage, can j’auraÿ selouis de vous voir je ne saÿ can je le
pouraÿs, mes mon dessien aÿ de _faire en sorte comme si un acsai de
fievre me prenais_, je diraÿ os bon homme, que je vousdraÿ bien allé
pour _tros jour_ à 317 pour éviter que la fievre n’aye poin de prise,
sait a dire prendre des remaides, aux Lieux de demorer à 317 je
_prandray la poste_ et je _voleray_ à _Celle_, je pourais aistre _dos
nuis avec vous_ quelle joÿ qu’elle satisfaction je pouraÿs aistre à
vos pié les beinger de mes larmes, vous voiraÿs dans qu’elle éttas
pitojable, _votre mal ma mis_; Mes je me flatte postaistre envein, car
avan que je pouraÿ _juer_ se _role_ jl faux premierements que le bon
homme se porte mieux ... depans encor de la fortunne de la 9 ... je
n’aÿ rien de bong à Esperer, La rage le desespoir, le schagrein
l’inquiettude la Passions, tous ses schoses énsemble font un aifaÿ sur
moÿ, que je souis comme ses jans que lon voist à Amsterdam dans le
=Dulhaus=, Dieux sait qu’elle feins que cela auras; Les maladie
hogmante de jour en jour, mon vieux Lieute C: et dos Lietenang le song
devenus aujourdoÿ, je ne saÿ comments j’an éschappe, sait un miracle
car avec tous les schagreins, qui m’abastes je le devraÿs avoir;
adieux mon Ange je ne pouis vous Mander davantage, l’expraÿ qui m’a
été envojé, du bon homme par, crojes que vous aves un amang, qui prang
tang de ... r à tous se qui vous tousche que vous le ... ie faire vous
maimes, j laÿ seinsaire vous adore, et à autang de Respect pour vous
que qui que se soit; je merite toute vostre tendraisse, et tous les
soins oblijan que vous aves pour mois, si je ne vous donne pas assaÿ
d’assuranses, de ma passion, et de ma fidelité, se n’aÿ pas ma fostre,
saÿ que j’en aÿ pas l’occasion; je vous annueraÿ avec mes
protestations, car je le repaiste dans tous mes lestres, je me flatte
que vous aite comme mois je ne les sauraÿ trop attendre et tous vos
lestres fusetelles ramplis daustre chose elles me seray toujo ... ...
reable et plus que comme si j liavois rien.
18
Je suis bien aise, que vous aites unnefois contemps de moÿ, mais jl me
semble que cela vous rejouis poin car vous me donne toujours des
mattiere, à vous faire des reprojes; et par la vous m’oté la joy
d’aistre satisfait de vous, vous vous plainjé que vostre passion vous
trouble vostre repos, je le vos croire mes saite passion vous tient
pas tang aux coeur, que vous retranjeraÿ les moindre plaisirs pour
cela, non non sait a moÿ a me blaindre, ma passion me trouble poin
solement, mais me desespaire, Dieux comme je fie les éndrois aux je
saÿ que les divertissemens song, je vousdraÿ bien vous voir à la Porte
de Brusels, aux de Gens sans j maistre le pie, plustos de faire cela
vous m’abandonnerie, et dis austre galang, vous trouve vostre conduite
bonne, moÿ aussÿ, mais je seraÿ hors deséspoir que la mienne ne fus
pas meljor je suis bien aise que vous ne s’ajé, tombé malade, jen
aurais etté inconsolable, quoÿ que je ne suis poin contente de vous,
vous aves étté contente de ma lettre, j’en aÿ de la joÿ, vous j aves
veus les santimens de mon coeur, sans faintes; je vous remersie bien,
humblement, que vous me promaistes, de ne poin donner vostre portraÿ,
à la personne connue Pourquoÿ me flatté vous tang dans vos lettres,
can vous sonjes si pos a me tenir vos promess, vous m’assurés que rien
vous seras dificille et que vous feraÿ tous pour me plaire, saÿ for
bien dis mes for mal tenus; helas vous me dite flattong nous le temps
nous poura randre horos, mais saschés que le temps me rendra le plus
malhoros de tous les hommes, je naÿ poin la hardiesse à vous dire se
que je saÿ deja, mais ma chaire je crois, que lon moblijera a vous
quiter, je ne pos finir saite lettre, de schagrein, tristesse et
collaire adieux, ne me haijsé dumoin pas, car sur mon dieux je ne le
merite en fason du monde.
19
14^{me}.
Assurement san la vostre du 12^{me} le Bastement de Coeur que 127
m’avois causé, mauraÿt aschevé, mais Pour mon bonhor, je laÿ resu dans
le temps que mon coeur allais craiver, et comme j’ÿ vois que sa
nouvelle aÿ traÿ fose, je commense aussi à me remaistre, jl me disaÿ
pour tres assuré, que _votre fievre_ vous aves, _repris_, assurement
je n’auraÿ peus passer la nouit, avec saite inquiettude san mourir, et
alor que je vous écris, j’aÿ encor lohs de la Raine d’hongrie sur le
née, je crois pourtang que cela se passera, je me san Pourtang
alterré, et éschofé, si cela se passe pas la nouit je me seinjeraÿ
pour prevenir le mal, qui pouraÿ m’en arriver; M. de sporque Mourera
selon tous les apparance encor aujourdouis, j’aÿ 3 Captaine, 5
Lieutenans, et 4 Enseinges mal à lamors, plus de 300, fantasein aÿ
Dragons, de nos troupes sol, son sur les dans, sait un air infecté,
les plus sain j deviene malade, toustefois je me flatte de ne le poin
devenir _vous saschang, hor daffaire_. Vous auraÿ veus par ma lestre
daté le 12^{me} combien je souis contemps de vous, ne prene pas mal
que je vous aÿ prié de me marquer dos mos par vostre main, je savois
que vous vous portié unpos mieux san cela je ne l’auraÿ pas fais, mais
mon incomparable coeur vous en faite tros, car vous m’écrives dos
foiljes éntieres, se que je vous prie très instament de ne poin faire
plus, ni plustos que vous aites tout à fais bien. Le _sieje_ de
_Scharleroi_ feras que _Prince électoral_ seras pas si tos ici, gran
Dieux fais que se _sieje_ nous _delivre_ des _faschos_. Lon dis pour
sertein que les affaires s’acomode, mais les ordres que lon donne pour
soinjer les malades, me fong trambler de pur, que nous quiteron pas
sitos se poste; je souis agité du maime desespoir que vous, de passer
ma vie avec des jans pour les quelles j’aÿ unne aversion et de la
passer si pos avec selle que j’adore, sepandans vous aites plus à
plaindre car je pos forsouvang m’en dispensér, et vous poin, austre
les _embrasades_ que vous aites obligé à essujer, jl me semble si
j’aÿtais obligé a soufrir la maime schose, je ne pouraÿ m’énpescher de
vosmir tous les fois que cela m’ariveraÿt, ah qu’elle horor de
_caraisser_ se que lon hait mortellement, je crois fortement que le
pourgatoire ne donne poin tans de tourments, que des pareiljes
_caraisses_. si j laÿ vraÿ que _Électeur de Hanovre_ vas pas a 308, je
pouraÿ bein j venir, mes nous pouvons pas prendre des mesures avang,
que lon sasche, se que deviendra _Prince électoral la Dujais d’Hanovre
n’arrivera_, que _ver la fein du mois_ qui _vient_ et allors _Prince
électoral_ sera deja de retour, et les _schases_ finÿ. Dieux volje
solement que nous les comension bientos, et que _vous_ fusies _en etas
de vous rendre_. Je vous plains que vous _aites_ tan _maigri_ mes
(avec vostre permission) je trouve redicule, et absourde, la question
que vous me faite, si je n’aimes en vous que vostre bosté je vous le
pardonneraj mes vous aites persuadé, que se n’aÿ pas solement cela que
j’adore, se son vos merites vostre humor, je vous avoue que de vous
voire belle cela aÿ scharmang pour la veus, mes je vous proteste que
fusie vous laide comme Mad: Kopstein, je vous aimeraÿ pas un brein de
moin; du degous pour vous, ah postong faire unne question pareile à
selle ici, à un amang qui vous aime tendrement, non non Leonis vous
n’aite pas persuadé de ma sainsaire passion, que fostil que je fasse
pour vous en bien conveincre je n’auraÿ du repos, que j’usques à se
que je sache que vous laite toust à fais; croje vous q’unne passion
pareilje à la mienne, saÿ formée sur unne schose si passaschaire que
la bosté, quois que vous en aje beaucoup, et plus coqunne de vostre
sexe, je vous pos dire que se n’ay pas elles qui ma mis dans l’estas
aux je souis, j laÿ vraÿ que la Bosté que vous possedé, mas énflame,
et sans elles je n’auraÿ postaire pas étté si huros que je souis, mes
se qui ma randu comme je souis saÿ vostre ésprit, vostre seinserité,
vos maniere de vivre, et a lafein saÿ saite ame si bien née, et si
juste, la quelle prodouit en vous unne dousor non pareilje, unne
jenerosité sans égale, de la Clemanse, au dela de l’imagination, se
son saÿs vertues qui mon mis dans saite aimable Esclavage dans la
qu’elle je me fois à sait hors, et dans la quelle je pretans mourir
aussÿ. En verité Leonis vous me schagrines beaucoup, avec vos
questions, vous crainjes que je deviendrays invidelle à la plus grande
Boté du siecle, et à la vertue maime, pour qu’elque gose de
_preinsaises_ qui n’aurong poin d’austre merite que selle de _venir de
Paris_ encore unne fois, je vois que tros que vous n’aite pas éncor
bien persuadé de mon amour, je me flatte qu’a la fein je vous en
donneraÿ tans de marques que vous n’en saurie plus douster. Pour
prendre des messures juste jl faux se parler, nous avon du temps
jusques à _la fein_ du _moi_ qui _viens_ et avang se temps nous avons
point à craindre le _retour_ de _Prince électoral_ et de _la Dujaiÿse_
vous entames encor des _preinsai_ crojes vous postaitre que j’aime
tans la nouvosté, le schangementes, et les jans qui vienne de _Paris_
comme vous, vous vous trompes beaucoup, je porte mes schaines avec
beaucoup de plaisir, et je ne les janjeraÿ pas, pour le Raujome du
grand mogol. La lestre de la Lieutenan Colonelle ay for sotte mes la
personne aÿt assaÿ resonable, elle à randus un for galant homme aux
baÿ bas, de grande Calité, fort amouros, jl sapelle le marquis de
Spinosa, saÿt un des galans de se paÿ la; mais pouis que je vous aÿ
énvojes unne tres sotte lestre, je le recompenseraÿs par unne qui aÿ
forbien écrit; si elle n’aitois écrit d’un livre, on la doist, admirer
particoulierement venan de saite personne, mes sasche qu’elle se
trouve mot en mot dans un livre, sepandans elle ne laisse pas, que
d’aistre tourné assaÿ aprospos, je vous prie de me la ranvojé, je vous
l’envois parse que jè crois que cela vous divertiras adieux.
20
je vois que le plaisir que je maitait fais à vous émbrasser s’évanuit
entieremens puisque l’incomode à paru si brusquement, je vous avoue
que se visaje m’a bien deplus can je lay appersu, un cous de foudre
m’auray pas plus pus surprendre, mais jl faux qui lÿ aÿe toujor des
faschos visajes qui empesche, un doux éntretien comme celuÿ que nous
devien croir, selong tous épparance devray aître, ouÿ j’an nay eus
l’idé si remplis de joÿ, que je naÿ pus dormir toute la nuit, mais
helas tout est vanuis, et il faux que je passe la seconde nuit sans
dormir, et avec du jagrein aux lieux que la premiere me rejouissay, j
laÿ sur qu’a moin que vous n’aje la bonté de me consoler, je me
beinjeray dans mes larmes, consolé moy dong divine bosté, et soulajes
un homme qui se mor pour vous, et qui est si éntesté de vos merite que
la servelle luy en tourne.
Pour unné joué merveilje
je brule d’un fos si beaux
que ma raison ma conseilje
De l’aimer jusques aux tombos
Voila ma maxime, et vous me le vairreraÿ éxecuter éxactement, ma plus
grande satexfaction seras de vous montrer, que la mort sol est
sollement capable d’éfasser mon amour. mais pour l’amour de Dieux
sonjes à la divise, rien d’inpure mallume, adieux.
21
à 6 heurs.
je ne sauraÿ partir dici sans vous remersier, de l’ambaras aux vous
maves tiré, assurement j’aitois un homme fricassé sans la conversation
d’hier aux soir, je pars aussi contemps, q’un homme qui laisse ce qui
addore, le pos faire, mais se qui me consolle, ces que je suis bien
persuadé de vôtre amitié, et que mon absance me fais poin de tors,
j’ay lame si reposé que je suis tout autre que je naÿs étté; je vous
prie, poin de tait à tet, avec personne, particulierment avec M. R: je
sauraÿ tout, car j’ay des bons amÿ ici que vous soupsonne poin. adieux
Bella dea, sonjé autang à moy que je sonje à vous, je vous émbrasse
les jenous un million de fois, et suis eternellement vôtre esclave.
22
ce 25 aoust
4 septembre
Je prens tant de plaisir a vous entretenir que dabord que jai un
moment de liberté je lemploȳe a vous assurer de ma tendresse je vous
aȳ escrit hier mais jl me semble que ie ne vous aȳ pas assez marqué
linquietude ou je suis sur ce que vous me dites je nen aȳ pas dormi
toute la nuit j aȳ repassé toute mes actions et plus ie mexamine et
moins je deuine ce que vous pouuez auoir contre moi il est seur que
vous deuez estre content de ma conduite ma passion la regle et cela
suffit je vous conjure encore une fois de me mander tout le plus tost
que vous pourrez ce que ce peut estre jl me sera fort aisé de me
justifier puis que ie naȳ jamais pense qua vous plaire et je vous
feraȳ auec plaisir tous les sermens les plus affreus sur mon jnnocence
mais je vous demande jnstamment de me dire qui sont ceus qui vous
disent de semblables Calomnies jls ont sans doute leurs raisons pour
nous brouiller et selon toutes les aparences ils nen demeureront pas
la soȳez persuadé je vous en conjure que je suis jncapable de rien
faire qui vous déplaise mes manieres vous lont fait voir jusques icȳ
et jen feraȳ encore plus a lauenir je suis au desespoir de ne pouuoir
vous faire connoistre au tant que ie le voudrois mon attachement pour
vous les occasions me manque et point la volonté et je ne seraȳ point
contente que ie naȳe fait voir a toute la terre que vous me tenez lieu
de grandeurs de plaisirs et de tous les agremens du monde le seul que
je souhaitte est celuj de posseder vostre coeur je nen demande point
dautre et ce seul bonheur me rendra toujours tous les autres
jndifferens je suis persuadée que si jestois a han. on me feroit bien
des histoires de vous mais je me fie trop a vous pour croire
legerement ce que lon me pourroit dire faites en de mesme et croȳez
fortement que rien nest capable de me faire changer je suis dans un
chagrin mortel on dit quil sest donné un combat depuis peu et je ne
saȳ encore ce qui en est je tremble que vous ne vous exposiez sans
necessité et quil ne vous soit arriué quelque accident conseruez vous
je vous en conjure sil vous reste encore quelque tendresse moȳ que
deuiendrois je si japrenois que vous fussiez blessé ie croȳ que ien
mourois.
23
ce 2 septembre
12
Il estoit si tard quand ie vous aȳ escrit que ie naj peu repondre a
tout ce que uous me dites jaȳ releu plusieurs fois vostre lettre cest
un mélange de tendresse et dairs railleurs que ie trouue fort plaisant
et jl me parroist quelque mine que uous fassiez que mon uoȳage ne uous
plaist point uous auez cependant tous les torts du monde car selon
toutes les aparances ie repartiraj dicȳ sans auoir ueu une personne
raisonable et je le souhaitte de tout mon coeur. Je ne croȳ pas aller
a la foire de jllifrancjllifortjlli et ie ne dirai pas un mot pour ȳ
contribuer il me semble que cela uous doit persuader que ie ne cherche
pas le monde et que ie suis jncapable de songer aus plaisirs quand ie
ne uous uoȳ point jespere partir dicȳ en quinze jours le peda. a pris
aujourdhui cette resolution ie men retourne auec elle trouuer le
grondeur et je me rendrai à Han. un peu auant le retour du Reformeur
ie ne saurois encore uous dire rien de positif pour ce qui regarde le
_jlligörjlli_ ie ne croj pourtant pas ȳ aller car la saison sera trop
auancée pour que le Reformeur en puisse estre et je me flatte pourueu
que rien ne vous retienne ou vous estes que ie pourraȳ vous voir
bientost je jugerai de uostre tendresse par uostre empressement mais
je uous conjure de prendre si bien uos mesures que ie uous uoje en
particulier la premiere fois. Jl me seroit jmpossible de soustenir
uostre ueue en public et mon transport me trahiroit, on dit que les
françois pourroient nous enleuer aisément cela fait que ie souhaitte
fort de men aller car je naȳmerois point du tout a estre prise et ie
ueus uous conseruer uostre conqueste je suis charmée de uostre Careme
et je uous en fais tous les remerciemens que uous meritez jen suis
surprise et je ne mȳ attendois point cest en quoi la chose est plus
obligeante jl nȳ a point de sentinelle au monde que uous deuiez
craindre et le prisonnier doit Conter sur la prison qui sera toujours
ouuerte pour luý et fermée pour toute la terre cest dequoi ie uous
réponds et dune passion qui seruira dexemple ie ueus uous en persuader
malgré que uous en aȳez et que ie ne trouue de bonheur nÿ de
satisfaction qua vous aimer et la Estre aimée uous me paroissez si peu
seur de cette uerité que ien suis sensiblement touchée dites moÿ ce
quil faut faire pour que uous nen puissiez plus douter il nȳ a rien
que ie ne fasse auec joȳe pour vous faire uoir que vous me tenez lieu
de toutes choses et que tous mes desirs et mon ambition sont bornez a
uous plaire sil ne faut que cela pour vous rendre heureus vous lestes
plus que personne du monde car ie ne ueus viure que pour uous seul et
ie renonce auec plaisir a toute la terre pour nestre jamais qua uous.
24
ce 13 septembre
23
au lieu de lextresme plaisir que me donnent toutes uos lettres celle
que Jaý receue ce soir ma percé le cœur Lon ne peut rien jmaginer de
plus offensant que ce que uous mescriuez ie ne le repeteraȳ point ie
croȳ que uous uous en souuiendrez bien encore et ie donnerois tout
au monde pour pouuoir loublier par quel endroit de ma uie aȳ je peu
meriter lopinion que uous me tesmoignez auoir de moȳ si ie croyois ȳ
auvoir donné Lieu ie uoudrois estre morte mais plus ie mexamine et
plus ie me trouve esloignée de pareils sentimens et graces a dieu je
me sens le coeur aussi noble que ie le dois auoir ie ne ueus plus
uous rien dire sur ce suiet ie pourrois me facher et ie hais fort
laigreur mais pour repondre aus quatre points qui uous ȳ tiennent si
fort ie suis bien trompée si ie ne uous aȳ mandé ȳ que
jliisparrjllii a esté a L. et si je ne laȳ point fait cest
assurément par oublȳ et par ce que ie naȳ pas trouué quil ualust la
peine que ie me souuinsse de luj. je puis uous faire tous les
sermens quil uous plaira quil nȳ a aucune raison que celle la et de
plus ie ne luj aÿ pas dit deus mots pour la joye que uous me
reprochez dauoir eue de trouuer jliiguljlljdenjllyleujlii icȳ ie ne
uous ȳ repondrez point car cest une opinion ridicule, et rien au
monde n’est si mal jmaginé a lesgard de la foire ie uous assure que
ie naȳ pas dit un mot pour ȳ aller mais comme ie suis de bonne foȳ
ie ueus bien uous _’auouer_ et pour mon nouuel amant uous estes fou
de uous jnquieter pour luj car jl est loin dicȳ et selon toutes les
aparences ie ne le uerraȳ point et ses soeurs nȳ personne du monde
ne me feront jamais faire aucune demarche contre la tendresse dont
jaȳ le coeur si rempli ie uous aȳ déia mandé que ie suis persuadée
quil ne uiendra point a han. mais si cela arriuoit pourueu que ie
sois plus contente de uous que ie ne la suis ce soir ie brutaliseraȳ
plustost que de soufrir ces uisites ie suis bien sotte de uous
rendre raison sur toutes uos uisions uous qui en auez peu sur tout
ce qui me regarde et qui mauez desesperée par uos tre belle lettre
jl est uraȳ que uous uoulez ensuitte reparer uostre faute mais cela
ne suffit point et ie ne suis pas contente car ie ueus uostre estime
et uous ne temoignez pas en auoir pour moȳ, la Confidente en a receu
hier une de laimé jlliketjllilerjlli qui lui escrit par lordre du
jlljlandjlljgrajlliuejlli pour faire ses complimens a Leonisse puis
que uous uoulez lappeller ainsi et pour lassurer quil fera son
possible pour la uoir icȳ ou a la foire ie ne croȳ pourtant pas que
cela se puisse par ce que nous partons demain et lon nȳ sera quun
seul jour ie uous escriraȳ dabor, que ie seraȳ arriuée et ie uous
rendrai un conte sincere et fidelle de tout ie ne uous diraj rien de
tendre pour ce soir car uous ne le meritez point ie crains bien que
ie nauraj pas la mesme force demain et que ie ne me souuiendrai plus
de ma colere car Jai furieusement du tendre pour uous et quoi que ie
ne uous le dise point ie sens bien que ie uous aime auec une passion
qui neut iamais desgale.
25
fra ce 14/24
je suis ici depuis deus heures le peda. a esté descendre chez la p.
jllitajllirenjllitejlli ou ie naý ueu que de soste figures de la nous
auons esté a la foire ou ie naý pas ueu une personne de qualité la
Marionette est icȳ et sa belle soeur ie ne les uerraȳ que demain dont
ie suis bien aise car ie pourraȳ me reposer dont jaȳ grand besoin
naȳant pas fermé loeil toute la nuit un aȳ passé la moitié a uous
escrire et lautre a me chagriner sur ce bel endroit de uostre lettre,
ie nous prie bien fort de ne me plus donner de pareils suiets dennuý
car ie suis fort delicate sur le chapitre dont il est question hors ce
uilain endroit que ie ne saurois oublier et qui gaste tout uostre
lettre est charmante et rien nest si dous que tout ce que uous me
dites. raccomodez cette affaire si uous uoulez estre bien auec moȳ car
elle me tient fort au coeur le mien est si rempli de uous que quoi que
jaȳe suiet de men plaindre ie ne saurois mempecher de uous dire que ie
me suis faite une uiolence horrible hier au soir pour ne uous point
parler de ma tendresse jamais on nen a tant eu et jamais lon a moin
merité de reproches que ie le fais uous estes le plus jnjuste de tous
les hommes dauoir la moindre défiance sur ce qui me regarde je suis
trop ueritablement auous pour que uous aȳez rien a craindre toute mes
actions uous en persuaderont car jl est certain que ma passion pour
uous ua jusqua lexces je uous conjure destre bien persuadé de cette
uerité et quil nȳ a rien au monde que ie ne fasse pour uous faire uoir
que ie suis plus a uous qua moi mesme iespere que ie ne uerraȳ nȳ le
Land. nȳ personne et ie le souhaitte de tout mon coeur si uous trouuez
quelque chose qui ne nous plaise point dans ce que ie uous aȳ escrit
hier nen accusez que le dépit ou uous mauez mise. Il a esté jusqua me
faire pleurer et tous les charmes de vostre lettre nont peu me faire
pardonner larticle ofensant soȳez en repos sur ma conduite elle sera
diuine ie uous en repons et pour le Riual.
26
au nom de dieu menagez vous ma uie est unie a la vostre jl me vient
mille pensée desesperante dans lesprit et je suis accablée de douleur
jaurois peine a vous parler dautre chose jaȳ tout loisir de nourrir
mon chagrin et je suis auec une veritable joȳe dans cette solitude Jai
oublié hier a vous rendre graces de ce que vous me dites au suiet de
la boule rien nest si obligeant je consens a cette condition quelle
deuienne ma riuale car je vous auoue que jaime le triomphe et quil est
fort de mon goust adieu rien nest capable de me faire changer ie suis
née pour vous aimer vous estes ma seule passion je nen aȳ jamais en
auant de vous Connoistre et je mourraȳ en vous aȳmant plus que lon na
jamais aime.
27
mecredi 24.
Il faut vous rendre conte de ce que jaȳ fait hier jai esté tout le
jour seule il est venu un envoȳé du maistre de ce lieu faire
compliment au peda. il sest si fort embarassé dans sa harangue que iaȳ
eu peine a mempecher den rire jl en a fait un aussi au coeur gauche et
sen est allé dabord lon sest promené a pied au retour lon a soupé et
je me suis entretenue auec la Confidente cest le seul plaisir que jaȳe
car nous parlons toujours de vous.
28
Quo que je vous aÿ ecrit hier aux soir je ne pos m’empescher, de vous
dire que j’aÿ passé la plus meschante nuit du monde, j’ay sonjé a vous
mais je vous aÿ veus infidelle, voila le sonje, il me semblais, que je
vous avois prie de ne poin voir un sertain grant homme, et que malgre
vos promesse vous lavie fais entré ché vous pour luÿ dire adieux, j’en
fus avertis, ne pouvan énduré cette infidelité, je feinjis d’avoir une
lettre de Mad: vot̂re maire pour vous donner j’entraÿ prusquement dans
vostre schambre, et je vis le spectacle le plus affros du monde, ces
grans M. vous tenais émbrassé, et que pis aÿ, vous aitié sol dans
vostre schambre. vous faisie unpos la vasché contre vostre adonus en
luÿ disant qui laitois impertinent, je voulus aussi me retire mais
vous m’apellaté, je fus ravis de cela parce que cela me donna lieux de
vous dire en oreilje que vous aitié la plus ingrate de tous les dames,
et que ce seraÿ la dernierefois que je vous parleraÿ, en éffaÿ je fus
trouver M. de Pude, pour luÿ prier de m’envojer en Hongrie, ce qu’il
fit. je vous demande pardong du sonje criminel, mais je me croirais
bien plus criminel si je vous en avertissaÿ poin, ne croje pas que je
l’invante non j lay surmondieux vraÿ, pourlamour de tous ce qui vous
aÿ le plus schaire, aje soin de me fortifier l’esprit, et tiremoÿ de
ma crainte, j’ay por que ce sonje saÿ qu’elque pressage funeste, et
qui ne vos dire rien de bong. Il seraÿ injuste q’un tendre amour
m’attiras des infidellites, je ne l’éspaire pas car pourquoÿ
voudrievous abandonner un coeur qui vous adore, et qui vous jure de
vous aistre fidelle, si des telles vos vous pove attascher uniquemens
à moÿ, je vous proteste devan Dieux, que jamais je vous serraÿ
infidelle, et que je vous aimeray toute ma vie avec la maime passion
que je fais astor. Can j’auray l’honnor de vous éntretenir de la
debeausche faite hier vous riraÿ bien, la baronne si aÿ sinjales et
les grande barbe suedoise, on faite le meljor ... du monde, elle a
tens aites fro ... os que la planjer de song tei ... turel, à commensé
à paraistre se qui à fais le plus plaisans spectacle de monde; Elle ma
demande pourquoÿ je me divertissaÿ poin je luÿ respondis que j’aitois
venus faire ma cour à M. Bil. et non pour me divertir, en me quitans
elle ma donné le non de traiter, surquoÿ je louÿ ai repliqué, que je
ne laistas pas encor mais que je le pouraÿ bien devenir. M. le Duck, a
joué à l’homber hier au soir sches Elle, voila le Diable, je finiraÿ
en vous prians de vous preparer à me tirer de l’inquiettudes aux je
suis, et de me croire, inviolablement attasches à vous et à tous sos
qui vous regarde, je vous émbrasse de tous mon coeur, et je paise un
milion defois vostre portrais, adieux.
29
venes sur un vendredis au soir ici, et attandes que l’Elector vient
ici, si lon oste pas _Prince Max_ vous vous pouves retourner, et cela
vous servira de pretexte aupraÿ _Duc de Celle_ et _Prince électoral_
mande mois si vous agrees, ma pense, si vous le pouves faire faite que
je vous vois car franjement je ne puis plus vivre de la sorte, pour la
mour de mois de vous faite que je vous vois et que je vous embrasse,
car san saite satisfaction la vie may rien.
30
La joÿ de voir le Ref: partÿ a étté interrompu par le schagrein de
vous voir malade, j’aispaire pourtang que cela ne sera pas grans
schose, car san cela je n’en pouraÿ dormir toute la nouit, j’aispaire
a vous émbrasser demain aux soir, j’attemps le sinjal ordinaire, et le
meschang temps m’enpescheras pas de gouter du plaisir, de vos
scharmantes émbrassades, amoin que vous me l’ordonnié austrement je me
flatte du contraire et j’aispaire que vostre émpressement reponderas
aux mien; si vous ne sorte pas demain, sisi souffira pour vous assuré
que les momens me durerong des siecles, et que le temps que je suis
éloinjé de vous sont sos que je posse inutilement dans le monde et que
je suis prait a venir demain aux lieux connus, j’áttemps le sinjal et
je suis vostre tres-obeissant valet.
31
Lon ne pos aistre plus contemps de vous que je le suis vos mamire
obligante d’hiair, vostre tres-schere lestre, enfein tous me scharme,
je commense à revivre, et la journé d’hiaire et unne de sos quil fos
que je marque dans mon livre; pour bien en profiter je vous prie que
je vous vois se soir, j’attendraÿ le sinjal avec bien de l’impatiance
car je mor d’anvie de vous temoinger ma joÿ elle ait axsaissive, et ne
se post exprimer, pour lamour de vous de moÿ, et de tous se qui vous
aÿ schaire, continue _de la_ sorte, vous pouraÿ allors me persuader
que je n’aÿ rien à craindre, que je seraÿ toujour horos et contemps,
voila le plaisir de l’amour, son la les scharmes d’un attaschement
seinsaire et veritable; L’avos du Grond: me donne encor beaucoup
d’ésperanse tasché de l’attendrir, vous le pouraÿ si vous voules, mais
il faux vous j appliquer, et bien prendre vostre temps saye avec cela
persuadé, que si le siel me destinne le bonhor de vous posseder, que
j’auraÿ les maniere tous austre, que vous vous les immaginée, et je
vous jure que je le regleraÿ sur les vostre, ajouté fois a set avos
car j laÿ seinsaire et par d’un amme san fosseté, et san finesse;
Comme le temps aÿ bos je me flatte à vous voir a la volerie,
j’aispaire de vous j trouver tendre, et contemps adieux jusque la,
vous me diraÿ bien un petit mos, du quel je pos voir que vous accorde
ma priaire.
32
le 2^{me}
Vous me faite mourir can vous faite des complimens, parseque vous ne
me reponde poin sur tous les poin des miennes je vous aÿ prié de ne
poin écrire de tous, et à me fair solement savoir par _Mlle. von dem
Knesebeck l’etas de votre santé_ je le repaite éncor ici, et vous
conjure de ne le poin faire si cela vous donne la moindre fatigue, jl
soufit pourvos que vous me marques dos mos, affein que je voje saite
devinne écriture la quelle aÿ capable a bannir tous les craintes que
je me forme. La resolution que je dois prendre selong l’avis de tous
mes amis, me mait à l’hasar, que can _joray quité_, je feraÿ resonner
tous le monde, et postaistre me feraitong dire par un troisiemme, que
_lon souhaite_, que _je me retire_, que deviendrage allors, crojé moy
quil fos penser a toust avan que de prandre unne ferme resolution, la
schose m’aÿ de tros grande consequence; _Duc de Hanovre_ trouvera
mille jans comme _Königsmarck_ mais je me flate que _Princesse
héréditaire_ n’én trouveras jamais qui sois si fidelle, et que aime
avec plus d’ardor que moÿ, L’exaÿ de ma passion vas à la follie, helas
ma très schaire vous merites bien d’autres que _Königsmarck_, je souis
tres persuadé que si lon vous devraÿ avoir donné un galang selong vos
merite, je n’auraÿ pas eus le bonhor d’aistre vostre Esclave, mais si
qu’elcun d’unné passion Extraordinaire d’une constanse sans Egalle
auraÿ dus aistre vostre galang j lay juste que se soÿ mois, car je le
desputeraÿs non pas oh Mortels, mais aux dieux maime, et je leur defie
d’en faire un qui m’égalise; Que les sermans on daifaÿ cant on aÿ dans
l’estas, _aux vous aites_, jamais je naÿs etté plus contemps de vous,
jamais je vous aÿ plus crus, qu’a presang, vous m’aimeraÿ dong toujour
jan pos aistre assuré, car vous me iuré que tan que je vous aimeraÿ,
vous feraÿ demaime je vous aimeraÿ touste ma vie, et vous me jures la
maime schose, que poje plus pretandre, tous mes vos sont éxhausé, je
souis l’homme du monde le plus horos; _gerisse_ vous, et je pos aistre
aux comble de may joÿ, je souis poin contemps, que vous preferais á
m’ecrire, plus qu’a prendre du repos, je vous conjure sonjes à
_prendre vostre repos_, et pouis à vostre _amang_. Que je vos du mal à
vostre coeur, de son mauvaÿ gous, vous quiter pour venir sché moÿ, jl
ne connais pas la diferance, laisse cela aux mien, jl faux pas
schanger en mal mes en bien. Vostre resit me fait tramblé, et je
crains que _la fievre_ laustre _accidans_ ne vous _abate tang_ que
vous _ne saurie vous remaitre si tos_. je ne saÿ mon coeur me dis que
vous _aite hor de danje_ je naÿ plus tans d’inquiettude que j’aÿ eus
du comensements, je pran cela pour un traÿ bon sienge, dumoin je m’én
flatte et je souhaite ardaments que cela soit einsÿ, j’espaire que mes
vos sont éxhausé, et qu’a lor qui laÿ vous vous _portes mieux_. La
resolution que vous aves prisse, de prandre _se que je vous avois
laise_ aÿ _grande_, je vous avoue que si je l’avois seus auparavang,
j’an auraÿ tramblé, mais comme toust aÿ bien allé, je souis enrepos, j
lia que le schagrein, _daitre caus_ que vous _soufres bien plus_ et si
vous vous _trouvie astor plus mal_ je serais inconsolable. je souis
obligé d’avouer que les marques de vostre tendraise surpasse à presan
beaucoup les miennes rien nay si touschang, que se que vous m’écrives
... de _devenir malade_ je ne trouveraÿ pas _locasiong_ à vous faire
voire combien de tendraisse j’aÿ pour vous. Atil possible que _Duc de
Hanovre_ soit assaÿ _baite de vous avoir refuser la pose_ je feray
plustos, mourir 20 _feltmarescho_ que de _refuser_ unne fois à
_Princesse héréditaire_ pareilje schose. Quois que _Prince
héréditaire_ ne _revienne_ pas si tos et sur les ordres que lon avois
devulgué con avois envojé, nous somme pourtang _deja dans le mois_ de
_septembre et la campanjeay bintos finnis_ faite reflextion la desu
adieux.
33
se tienne à 8 heure du soir aupres la porte de la grande salle, aux la
Pr: à cutume de jouer, jla poura recevoir la en toute sureté, puisque
personne j passe, Demain éstang le Dimange.
34
j lÿ sera à leur sudite ne doute pas de sa fidellite. Adieux
inconparable Deesse je vous donne le bonsoir, et souhaite que vous
sonjé autang à moy comme je fais à vous, appres avoir relus éncor une
fois votre lettre, je m’endormiray, avec l’esperane de songer d’autre
schose que de vous. je vous émbrasse un Million de fois, et suis votre
tres-obeissant ser.
CORRESPONDENCE OF SOPHIA DOROTHEA
AND COUNT KÖNIGSMARCK
F 3
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[_Spring of 1692._]
What sufferings one has to bear when it is necessary to separate from
you! All the torments in the world cannot cause such suffering! But I
recover from my trouble, since you are of opinion that I ought not to
have any feeling of jealousy. I must avow to you that it is difficult
to feel none when one is far away from the object one adores. But, my
angel, you have made me so many promises of behaving well that I place
confidence in you; and I can assure you that at the present moment I
am free from jealousy, but not without feeling troubled; and your
departure troubles me more than ever. I cannot understand what is to
become of me in the end; I well know that I cannot always be in sight
of you, and yet I feel [only] too much that I cannot separate from
you. See in what condition your beautiful eyes have put me. I send you
a copy of the letter of which I spoke to you, word for word like the
original; and I ask your pardon for the scrawling hand of which I have
made use; I had it copied by my page, who does not know what he
writes.
M. Gor brought me a complimentary message from the Duchess of
Eisenach;[197] she sent word to me that, though I had avoided speaking
to her, she would show that she takes more thought of me than I take
of her. I will swear to you that not only did this compliment give me
no pleasure, but, on the contrary, it vexes me that she ordered it to
be delivered to me. I have not left my room all to-day, and I think
that I shall do the same thing to-morrow. Let me know, by way of
consolation, how you are faring and when you will return. I shall die
with vexation and trouble if I do not see you soon. Good-bye, my
beloved heart; think of your faithful lover, and do not forget him [?]
among all this crowd of people. Once more, adieu!
_Thursday, at 12 o’clock after midnight._
My pain in the chest continues, but I have had no fever....
-----
Footnote 197:
Amalia, Duchess of Saxe-Eisenach, a born Princess of Nassau-Dietz. Cf.
as to her visit to Celle in March 1692, Colt _ap._ Wilkins, p.
163.—Königsmarck mentions a “M. de Goritz” as a brother-officer in the
Flemish campaign, ib. pp. 216, 232; he appears to be identical with
Count Frederick von Schlitz-Goertz, who afterwards became Marshal of
the Court and President of the Chamber, and, after accompanying George
I to England, died as Prime Minister at Hanover. See Vehse, _Gesch. d.
Höfe d. Hauses Braunschweig_, Part I. pp. 116, 187, and Part II. p.
10.
-----
F 6
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_Sunday [Spring of 1692]._
Yes, Madam, I will suffer for your sake, as you command me to do so;
but when shall I be fortunate enough to find myself at the point to
which I aspire—I mean in your arms? But when shall I have this
satisfaction? I lose all hope, for in the way in which things go on, I
cannot flatter myself that it will come about. My mind gives way over
it all, and, if I write to you without rime or reason, do not find
fault with me on that account—it is [because of] the despair to which
I find myself reduced. If you disbelieve me, I beg you to look at
these [gray] hairs which I had pulled out of my head this morning: I
cannot declare to you that they turned last night; but I can swear to
you that a week ago I had none. Believe me that my despair is great,
and that my trouble is extreme. I stay on for the love of you; I risk
honour, reputation, and ambition; for, since I do not join in the
campaign, what will they say of me; and why do I risk this, without
seeing you after all? I have reached this extremity that I must either
conquer [?] or die. Use therefore your force [influence] with the
_Gro[ndeur]_; it is he who alone can save us, and I call this to
conquer. I absolutely must have your commands as to what I am to do.
To stay on in this way at Han[over] is out of the question; for after
three weeks you will go [away] with the _Gron[deur]_. What shall I
then do in a place from which you are absent? I beg you to reflect on
that, and after that give your commands; I am ready to show you by my
obedience that my love does not listen to reason. You see to what
state you have reduced me, for I sacrifice to you my ambition, which
is the single thing that up to this time I had preserved. See to what
length my passion goes; judge in what state I find myself; do not ruin
me utterly—be more ambitious than I am, and encourage a lover who no
longer has any [ambition]! You would pity me if you quite understood
the troubles that oppress me. I see clearly that it is your trouble
which is killing me; for although we actually are together we never
have anything but trouble; and this is an ill beyond cure. The only
consolation is to play [cards] with you; but the pleasure of looking
at you is never allowed me; for at one time the _Schwartz gesicht_
[black face], at another the Innocent One, at another some one else
among the maids [of honour], comes to watch us. All this is enough to
make me die of it. Console me, I entreat you, or I shall despair; and
my despair may drive me to seek remedies unworthy of a man of honour.
You wait for me, certainly; but, Madam, when one is in the Labyrinth
as I am, honour and trust come to an end. It is well to come to a
close, or I shall be still more enraged.
F 1
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
On the Brockhausen journey.[198]
_Tuesday [1 June 1692]._
The Hereditary Princess is very impatient to know whether Königsmarck
has arrived safely. Many things have happened which the Hereditary
Princess has written on a quite clean half-sheet. I cannot console
myself for having lost Königsmarck so soon; this makes his absence a
thousand times harder to bear. I am worn out to the point of being
unable to keep up any longer. The excess of enjoyment and the sorrow
at seeing no more what I love reduce me to this condition. How hard it
is to take oneself away from you! You are the most amiable of men. The
more one sees you the more charm one finds in you. How happy I am to
be loved by you, and how well I know all my happiness! All my bliss
depends on the continuance of this tender affection. If I am deprived
of it, I no longer wish to live. You take the place of everything else
for me, and I care nothing for the whole of the world besides. I wish
that you may be as pleased with me as I am with you. You have
enchanted me, and I feel fonder of you than ever. Be you the same, and
nothing will be wanting to my happiness. I need not tell you that all
the actions of my life shall declare my attachment to you; for you
must be convinced of this, and time will show you that I do not wish
to live except for you. The Hereditary Princess leaves to-morrow.
I have instructed 220 to send me your letter by [way of] Nienb[urg].
-----
Footnote 198:
_Voyage de Brockhausen_ may mean ‘during the journey from’ or ‘to
Brockhausen.’ This and the following letters appear to belong to the
dates here assigned to them; but it is possible that they belong to
June 1693. The Princess left Hanover for Brockhausen on June 21, 1692,
see Wilkins, p. 180; as to her movements to and from that place in
June 1693, see ib. pp. 256-76. After a careful consideration of dates,
as well as of the general contents of the letters, I have come to the
conclusion that the 1692 date is the more probable. Brockhausen, or
Bruchhausen, was a country-seat of the Duke of Celle, situate, like
the town of Nienburg, mentioned at the end of this letter, in the
division of the old countship of Hoya, which had from the middle of
the sixteenth century onwards belonged to the Celle branch of the
House of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Brockhausen is about 18 miles N.W. of
Celle.
-----
F 2
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
Brockhausen,
_Thursday, June 22nd {1692}_.
The Hereditary Princess arrived yesterday evening. She is pleased with
the Duchess of Celle. I have no doubt but that she will do everything
that one wishes. The Duke of Celle is far more difficult [to manage].
I have as yet heard nothing of you, which makes me very sad. I flatter
myself, however, that nothing has happened, inasmuch as I have heard
nothing. The Duke of Hanover goes on Monday to Hanover. This
resolution was taken yesterday; if I had known it sooner, I should not
have started, and I might have been able to see you for some days
more. I am convinced that he waited on purpose, and this truly vexes
me; for I hate worse than death whatever seeks to separate me from
you. It is a great unhappiness to have to pass one’s life as I now
pass mine. I cannot, however, see the end of my woes. Yesterday I had
a thousand thoughts in the chaise which drove me into despair. I could
not think of waiting a whole month before seeing you without mortal
grief; all the measures which I must take ... me. I cannot do without
you; I do not care to see anybody in the world except you; yet I do
not see you; and at every moment I have to be deprived of [the sight
of you]. I can no longer exist in this constraint, it drives me to
despair; my passion increases day by day; I do not know what you have
done to me, but you bewitched me the last time that I saw you, and I
have never loved you with so much ardour as I do. It is certain that
you will [completely] turn my head. Yesterday I wrote a song, and this
makes it clear to me that love works miracles. I cannot keep myself
from telling you my song; it goes to the air ‘_Dans mon malheur_’:
‘Without my ... I loathe all company:[199]
He is my only bliss, my sole content,
The one enchantment of this life to me,
On whom the wishes of my heart are spent.’
It is my heart and nothing else that speaks; I hope that I shall go
further, and as time goes on I shall be able to prove it to you. The
Duke of Celle [or the Hereditary Prince][199] goes on Tuesday to
Celle; for this reason do not write to me any more lest I be not there
[?]. The Duchess of Celle has promised 2000 dollars if the Hereditary
Prince does not return; this redoubles my friendship. The Hereditary
Princess spoke yesterday at Luisburg[200] to 110; he sought for an
opportunity for it. It was to exhort him not to give any chance to his
enemies, and above all to be on his guard against Countess Platen. The
Hereditary Princess begged him particularly to let her know about
anything which concerned her. He promised her to do so. I am not aware
whether all this does not concern Königsmarck. I cannot speak to you
except about the grief which it is to me to be so far away from you.
Do not console yourself for my absence, I entreat you, and have no
enjoyment when I am not with you. Great God, what a charm and what a
delight to be always with you; the more one sees you, the more one
finds you superior to all men in the world. I occupy my whole time
with the charming remembrance of the last time when I saw you; it will
never quit my memory. Ah, my dear child, how tenderly you are loved,
and how insupportable it is to me not to see you! I am about to go to
bed; I hope that my dreams will figure you to me as charming as you
are. If I did not think I should see you while asleep, I should not
care to sleep at all; for as soon as I am awake you take up all my
thoughts, and there is nothing that is pleasant to me in my life but
the time which I pass in thinking of you. Good-night, most amiable of
men; you are adored by me, and so you will be all my life. Good-bye,
once more—why am I not in your arms?—I shall die of this!
-----
Footnote 199:
Cipher uncertain.
Footnote 200:
A country-seat, not very far from Brockhausen, belonging to the Duke
of Hanover, where his Court seems to have been in the earlier as well
as in the later part of this summer. Cf. Colt, _ap._ Wilkins, p. 215,
_note_.
-----
On Wednesday the Hereditary Princess appeared at table and spoke to 110,
then to the Field-Ma[rshal].[201] She arrived late. Prince Max received
her and shook hands with her; she said very little to him. The Duke of
Celle came into the room; Prince Max did not come in at all; the Duchess
of Celle had gone to bring her in, and came back late for she did not
find the Hereditary Princess. Supper was afterwards served. The
Hereditary Princess, the Duchess of Celle, and the Duke of Celle, were
together, quite by themselves. The Duchess of Celle took the Hereditary
Princess to her rooms, and nobody entered them.
-----
Footnote 201:
Field-Marshal Henry von Podewils (1615-96) commanded the Hanoverian
troops in the campaign of 1688, and also in the demonstration of 1693.
-----
F 12
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA.]
The 3_rd_
——————
23_rd_[202] [1692?]
My Mistresses are supposed to have prevented me from thinking of you?
God, is it possible that you should believe this; and, even had I not
written to you about everything (though this is letter No. 4) you ought
never to have harboured such a thought. Is it possible that you should
believe that I love anyone but yourself? No, I protest to you that after
you I shall never love again. It will not be very difficult to keep my
promise, for after one has adored you is it possible to think any other
woman pretty? You wrong yourself by believing such a thing; and how
could you draw a comparison between yourself and the others; and is it
possible that after having loved a Goddess, one could bestow a look upon
Mortals? No, in truth, I have too good taste for that, and I am not one
of those people who wish to make themselves common. I adore you,
charming brunette, and I shall die with this feeling. If you do not
forget me, I swear to you that I shall love you all my life. I expect no
more letters from you, because I intend to be soon in your company, and
my sole occupation will then be to prove to you, that I love you to
distraction, and that nothing is so dear to me as your person. Adieu!
-----
Footnote 202:
The above dating is incomprehensible; ‘the 3rd’ may possibly be a slip
of the pen for ‘the 13th.’ There is nothing in the letter to give any
satisfactory clue to the time of writing.
-----
F 18
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[_July 1692_, from the Camp.]
I am very well pleased that you are for once satisfied with me; but it
seems to me that this does not delight you, for you are always supplying
me with matter for reproaching you; and thus you deprive me of the joy
of being satisfied with you. You complain that your love interferes with
your rest; I am willing to believe it, but this love does not touch your
heart so deeply that you would cut off the slightest pleasures for its
sake. No, no; it is for me to complain: my passion not only troubles me,
but brings me to despair. Oh, God! how I [hate] the places where I know
the amusements are going on; I should much like to see you at the Gate
of Brussels[203] or of Ghent[?] without appearing there myself; rather
than do this you would abandon me and ten other _galans_. You find your
conduct correct; so do I; but I should be beyond despair if mine were
not still more so. I am very well pleased that you have not fallen ill;
it would have left me inconsolable. Although I am not satisfied with
you, you were satisfied with my letter; this fills me with joy; you find
there the unfeigned sentiments of my heart; I thank you very humbly that
you promise me not to give your portrait to the person we know of. Why
do you flatter me so much in your letters, when you think so little of
keeping your promises to me? You assure me that nothing will be
difficult for you, and that you will do everything to please me; this is
very well said, but very ill kept. Alas! you say to me, let us trust
that time will be able to make us happy; but know that time will make me
the most unhappy of mankind. I have not the audacity to say to you what
I already know; but, my dear, I believe that they will force me to leave
you. I cannot finish this letter, what with trouble, sorrow, and anger.
Adieu; do not, at all events, hate me; for, I swear by my God, I do not
deserve it in [any] way on earth.
-----
Footnote 203:
In July 1692 Königsmarck appears to have paid a visit from the Camp to
Brussels, see the Princess’s letter _ap._ Wilkins, p. 197. (Of the old
gates of Brussels the Porte de Hal now alone remains.)
-----
F 11
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
From the Camp at Hall _[August] 2nd-3rd {1692}_.[204]
Although I had resolved to write to you to-morrow and to reply at length
to the letters of the 13th[205], 14th and 15th, which I received from
you at the same time, I find myself deprived of this pleasure by the
resolution which the King has taken to attack to-morrow the French army,
which is two hours distance from us; the place is called Enghien. At any
other time this news would have delighted me; but I confess to you at
the present moment it troubles me. I am loved by you, the only object
that I have found worth loving. I have not deceived myself in my belief
that you possess all the fine qualities to be found in the world; but,
my dear, I must risk my life, and perhaps never see you again. Hardly
was I made aware that you were innocent, and that I falsely suspected
you, when I am perhaps never to see you again. I have risked my life a
hundred times, by way of folly or high spirits, and I knew myself
sufficiently to be sure that death never terrified me. But, my divinity,
that which makes me a coward is the fear of not seeing you again. Adieu
then, amiable Doro, adieu; how much I am to be pitied—and yet I am
fortunate, but I cannot take advantage of my good fortune. Do not,
however, think that you have a coward admirer; no, my dear, since to
battle I must go, I will behave there as is right, and, if I can, I hope
to distinguish myself. But, my heart, permit me to make a request to
you, namely, that, if my fate is so unkind to me as to leave me crippled
by the loss of an arm, or a leg, do not forget me, and have a little
pity for a poor fellow who has let it be his only pleasure to love you;
no, my dear, do not forget him: he is a man who has been really and
truly attached to you, and will remain so for the remainder of his life,
although a cripple; my eyes which have been charmed by yours, will
perhaps never see them any more. I cannot think of that, without
shedding tears. Ah, how little advantage I have from being loved by you,
and of how many torments you are the cause to me! It is striking twelve
from the Hall[206] clock tower; they are bringing in cannon-balls,
powder, and matches; it is the prelude to the scene which we have to
play to-morrow; I must betake myself to my duty; adieu, beloved child!
Ah, how I am to be pitied!
-----
Footnote 204:
This letter is dated ‘the 23rd,’ but August 3rd, O.S., was the date of
the battle of Steenkirk, on the eve of which this letter seems to have
been written. I have adopted a very ingenious conjecture, which I can
hardly describe as warranted by the transcript, but which may
nevertheless be correct.
Footnote 205:
See the Princess’s letter of July 13th _ap._ Wilkins, pp. 193-6.
Footnote 206:
A small town between Brussels and Enghien. Compare Wilkins, pp. 208
sqq.
-----
F 22
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Wiesbaden], _August 25th/September 4th {1692}_.[207]
I take so much pleasure in conversing with you that, so soon as I have a
moment of liberty, I employ it to assure you of my affection. I wrote to
you yesterday, but it seems to me that I did not sufficiently insist to
you on the disquiet in which I am about what you tell me. It prevented
me from sleeping all the night. I reviewed all my actions, and, the more
I examine myself, the less I can guess what you can have against me. It
is certain that you ought to be content with my conduct; it is ruled by
my affection, and this is sufficient. I entreat you once more to let me
know as soon as you are able what it can be. It will be very easy for me
to justify myself, since I have never thought of anything but pleasing
you, and I will with pleasure take all the most horrid oaths to you as
to my innocence; but I urgently ask of you to inform me who are they
that tell you such calumnies. No doubt they have their reasons for
making a quarrel between us, and according to all appearances they will
not stop there. Be persuaded, I entreat you, that I am incapable of
doing anything that could displease you. My behaviour has shown you this
up to the present time, and I will do even more in the same way in the
future. I am in despair not to be able to make you perceive as much as I
should like to do my affection for you. The opportunities are wanting to
me, but not the will; and I shall not be happy until I have made the
whole earth see that for me you take the place of the grandeurs and
pleasures of the world and of all its charms. The only one which I
desire is that of possessing your heart; I demand no other, and this one
happiness will always make me indifferent to all others. I am convinced
that if I were at Han[over], I should be told plenty of stories against
you; but I trust you too much to listen easily to what I might be told.
Do you act in the same way, and believe firmly that nothing is capable
of making me change! I am in mortal trouble. They say that an engagement
was fought a short time since, and I do not yet know the rights of it. I
tremble lest you should expose yourself without need, and that some
accident should have befallen you. Take care of yourself, I entreat you,
if there remains in you any affection [for] me. What would become of me
if I were to learn that you were wounded? I think I should die of it.
-----
Footnote 207:
Cf. Wilkins, pp. 233 sqq.
-----
F 32
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_[September] 2nd {1692}_.
You make me [wish to] die when you pay me compliments. Since you do not
reply to me on all the points of my letters, I have begged you not to
write at all, and simply to let me know through Fräulein von dem
Knesebeck the state of your health. I repeat it again here, and entreat
you not to do it if it causes you the slightest fatigue. It is
sufficient that you should write me two words, so that I may see that
divine handwriting which is able to banish all the fears that I imagine
to myself. The resolution which I must take, according to the opinion of
all my friends, exposes me to the risk that, when I shall have taken my
leave, I shall set all the world arguing about it; and perhaps I might
be told through a third party that it is desired that I should retire.
What will then become of me? Believe me that it is necessary to think of
everything before taking a fixed resolution. The matter is of too great
importance to me. The Duke of Hanover will find a thousand people like
Königsmarck, but I trust that the Hereditary Princess will never find
anyone who is so faithful and who loves her with more ardour than
myself. My passion is so beyond bounds as to rise to madness. Alas! my
dearest, you deserve [lovers] far better than Königsmarck. I am quite
convinced that if they had given you an admirer according to your
deserts, I should not have had the honour of being your Slave; but if
some one with an extraordinary affection and an unequalled constancy was
to have been your admirer, it is right and just that this should be
myself; for I would dispute the place not with Mortals, but with the
Gods themselves, and I defy them to create anyone to equal me. What an
effect vows have when one is in the condition in which you are; never
have I been more satisfied with you, never did I believe you more
implicitly, than at present. You will, then, always love me, I may rest
assured of it, for you swear to me that, so long as I shall love you,
you will do the same. I shall love you all my life, and you vow the same
thing to me; what more can I desire?—all my wishes are fulfilled, I am
the happiest man in the world; recover your health, and I can be at the
height of my bliss. I am not pleased to find that you prefer writing to
me to taking your rest; I entreat you, think first of taking your rest,
and then of your lover. How angry I am with your heart for its bad
taste, to leave you in order to come to me; it does not know the
difference; leave that to mine, one ought not to change for the worse,
but for the better. Your account makes me tremble, and I fear lest the
fever [and] the other accident tire you out so much that you will not be
able to recover as quickly [as you ought]. I do not know, my heart tells
me you are out of danger; I am no longer so much disquieted as I was at
the beginning. I take that for a very good sign; at least I hope it is,
and I ardently wish that it may be so; I hope that my prayers are
granted, and that at the present moment you are better. The resolution
that you have taken, to take what I had left you, is great; I avow to
you that, if I had known it beforehand, it would have made me tremble;
but, since everything has gone off well, I am at rest; and there is only
the trouble of being the cause of so much more suffering on your part,
and, if you found yourself still worse, I should be inconsolable. I am
obliged to confess that the marks of your affection greatly surpass mine
at present; nothing could be so touching as what you write to me ... of
falling ill. I shall not find an opportunity of enabling you to see how
great an affection I have for you. Is it possible that the Duke of
Hanover is stupid enough to have refused you the appointment? I would
rather put twenty field-marshals to death than once refuse such a favour
to the Hereditary Princess. Although the Hereditary Prince does not
return so soon and in response to the orders which it was made known had
been sent, we are in any case already in the month of September, and the
campaign will soon be at an end. Reflect on that! Adieu!
F 23
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Wiesbaden], _September 2nd/12th {1692}_.
It was so late when I wrote to you that I could not reply to all that
you told me. I reread your letter several times; it is a mixture of love
and raillery which I find very pleasing; and it seems to me, whatever
countenance you may assume, that my journey does not find favour with
you. Yet you are altogether as wrong as possible; for, according to all
appearances, I shall go away again from this place without having seen
any reasonable person, and I desire it with all my heart. I do not think
of going to Frankfort fair, and I shall not say a word to help to bring
this about. It seems to me that this ought to convince you that I am not
in quest of society, and that I am incapable of thinking of pleasures
when I do not see you. I hope to leave this place in a fortnight. The
Peda[gogue] has to-day taken this resolution. I return with her to join
the _Grondeur_; and I shall proceed to Han[over] a little before the
return of the Reformer. I cannot yet tell you anything positive about
what concerns the Göhrde;[208] I do not, however, think that I shall go
there, for the season is too advanced for the Reformer to be able to be
there, and I hope that, provided that nothing keeps you where you
are,[209] I shall soon be able to see you. I shall judge of your
affection by your eagerness, but I entreat you to take your measures so
well that I may see you in private on the first occasion. It would be
impossible for me to bear seeing you in public, and my transport [of
delight] would betray me. They say that the French could easily carry us
off. This makes me wish very much to get away, for I should not at all
like to be taken prisoner, and I wish to keep your conquest safe for
you. I am delighted with your [present?],[210] and I offer you all the
thanks for it which you deserve. It took me by surprise and I did not
expect it at all, which makes the thing all the more obliging. There is
no sentinel in the world that you ought to fear, and the prisoner may
reckon on the prison which will always be open to him and closed to all
the rest of the world. As to this you may depend on me, and as to a love
which will serve as a model; I wish to convince you of it, although you
have some of it, and that I find no happiness or satisfaction except in
loving you and in being loved. You seem to me so little certain of this
truth that I am sensibly affected by it. Tell me what should be done so
that you should be unable to doubt it any more; there is nothing that I
would not joyfully do in order to make you see that for me you take the
place of everything else, and that all my desires and my ambition are
confined to pleasing you. If nothing but this is needed to render you
happy, you are more so than any person in the world, for I do not desire
to live but for you alone, and I renounce with pleasure the whole world,
in order never to belong to anyone but yourself.
-----
Footnote 208:
George Lewis’ favourite hunting-box near Lüneburg, in the eastern
corner of the principality. There is a picture of it at Herrenhausen,
with a meeting of the hunt in face of the _château_.
Footnote 209:
In camp in Flanders.
Footnote 210:
The significance of the word _carême_ in this passage is obscure. Its
ordinary meaning ‘lent, fasting’ gives no sense. Dr. Braunholtz
informs me that the word may also mean ‘a collection of lent-sermons’;
but, as he observes, this was not a very likely gift in the
circumstances. And a ‘lenten gift’ of any kind seems out of season in
September.
-----
F 24
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Wiesbaden], _September 13th/23rd {1692}_.
Instead of the extreme pleasure which all your letters afford to me,
that which I received this evening has pierced my heart. One could not
think of anything that could hurt one more than what you write to me. I
shall not repeat it; I believe that you will remember it still very
well, and I would give everything in the world to be able to forget it.
By what passage of my life can I have deserved the opinion which you
show you have of me? If I thought to have given cause for it, I should
wish to be dead; but, the more I examine myself, the more I find myself
far removed from such sentiments, and, thanks be to God, I feel my heart
as noble as it ought to be. I wish to say nothing further to you on this
subject; I might lose my temper, and I very much hate harshness. But, to
reply to the four points on which you continue to harp. I am very much
deceived if I did not tell you that Sparr has been at L.,[211] and, if I
did not do so, it was certainly because I forgot to do so and because I
did not think that he was worth the trouble of my remembering him. I can
swear to you all the oaths you please that there is no reason besides
this; moreover, I did not say two words to him [about] the joy which you
reproach me for having felt at finding Guldenleu[212] here. I shall not
reply to you on the subject, for it is a ridiculous notion, and nothing
in the world could be so ill-imagined with regard to the Fair. I assure
you that I did not say a word in order to go there; but as I am quite
sincere I am prepared to _confess to you that I was not vexed about it_;
and, as to my new lover, you are mad to disquiet yourself about him; for
he is far away from here, and according to all appearances I shall not
see him; and [neither] his sisters nor anybody in the world will ever
make me take any step against the affection which so fills my heart. I
have already told you that I am convinced that he is not coming to
Han[over]; but, if this should happen, provided that I am better pleased
with you than I am this evening, I shall treat [him] with absolute
rudeness rather than allow his visits. I am very foolish to give a
reasonable explanation in reply to all your fancies—[to] you who are so
far from reasonable as to anything that concerns me, and who have driven
me to despair by your fine letter. It is true that you mean afterwards
to repair your fault; but this is not sufficient, and I am not well
pleased, for I desire your esteem, and you do not show that you have any
for me. The _Confidante_ yesterday received [a letter] from the beloved
Ketler,[213] who writes to her by order of the Landgrave[214] to offer
his compliments to Leonisse, since you wish to call her by that name,
and to assure her that he will do what is in his power to see her here
or at the Fair. I do not, however, think that this is possible, because
we take our departure to-morrow, and one will only be there for a single
day. I shall not write to you till I shall have arrived, and I shall
give you a sincere and faithful account of all. I shall say nothing
affectionate to you this evening, for you do not deserve it; I am afraid
that I shall not have the same strength of mind to-morrow, and that I
shall have forgotten my anger, for I am furiously fond of you, and,
although I do not tell you about it, I nevertheless feel that I love you
with a passion of which there never was the like.
-----
Footnote 211:
I cannot offer any conjecture as to the identity of Sparr. He may have
been a descendant of the celebrated Brandenburg Field-Marshal von
Sparr. ‘L.’ may of course be Luisburg.
Footnote 212:
‘Guldenleu,’ if that be the true reading of the MS. (Wilkins, p. 229,
spells the name ‘Guldenlon’), might conceivably mean Ulric Christian
Gyldenlöve, the natural brother of Charles XII.
Footnote 213:
The Kettelers of Harkotten were Hanoverian Barons. (The famous Bishop
of Mainz was a scion of this family.)
Footnote 214:
The Landgrave is no doubt Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Cassel, of whom
the Duchess of Orleans speaks as her cousin. His mother, the
Landgravine Hedwig Sophia, was a daughter of the Elector George
William of Brandenburg and his wife Elizabeth Charlotte, sister of the
Elector Palatine Frederick V.
-----
F 25
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
Fra[nkfort], _14th/24th [September 1692]_.
I have been here during the last two hours. The Peda[gogue] alighted at
the house of the P[rincess] of Tarente,[215] where I saw nothing but
silly faces. From there we went to the Fair, where I saw nobody of
quality. The Marionette is here, and her sister-in-law. I shall not see
them till to-morrow, with which I am well pleased, for I shall be able
to take a rest, of which I have great need, not having closed an eye all
the night. I spent half of it in writing to you, and the other in
worrying myself about the fine passage in your letter. I beg you very
particularly not to give me any further such subjects of annoyance, for
I am very touchy on the subject in question. Except that wicked passage
which I cannot forget and which spoils all, your letter is charming, and
nothing is more delightful than all that you say to me. Put this matter
to rights, if you wish to be on good terms with me, for it goes very
near to my heart. Mine is so full of you that, although I have reason to
complain of you, I cannot bring myself not to mention to you that
yesterday evening I had to make a terribly violent effort in order to
keep silence to you about my affection. Never did one feel so much of
it, and never did one less deserve reproaches than in my case. You are
the most unjust of mankind to have the slightest mistrust as to what
concerns me. I am too veritably yours that you should have anything to
fear. All my actions should convince you of it, for it is certain that
my passion for you exceeds all bounds. I entreat you to be fully
convinced of this truth, and that there is nothing in the world which I
would not do to make you see that I am more yours than my own. I hope
that I shall not see either the Land[grave] or anybody, and I wish it
with my whole heart. If you find anything which does not please you in
what I wrote to you yesterday, lay all the blame on the vexation which
you caused to me. It was enough to make me cry, and all the charms of
your letter could not induce me to forgive the offending passage. Rest
tranquil as to my behaviour. It shall be divine, I promise you for
myself and for the Rival.
-----
Footnote 215:
Princess Emily of Hesse-Cassel, sister of Landgrave William VI,
married Henry Charles, Prince of Tarente, and died in 1693. As to the
‘Marionette’, see the Introduction to this Appendix.
-----
F 26
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Ebsdorf,[216] _September 1692_.][217]
In the name of God, take care of yourself! My life is united to yours. A
thousand desperate thoughts come into my mind, and I am crushed with
grief; I should find it difficult to speak to you of anything else. I
have plenty of leisure for nursing my trouble, and it is with a real joy
that I find myself in this solitude. I forgot yesterday to return you my
thanks for what you tell me about _la Boule_. Nothing could be so
polite; I consent, on this condition, that she becomes my rival, for I
confess to you that I love a triumph, and that it is very much to my
taste. Adieu, nothing is capable of making me change. I was born for
loving you; you are my sole passion; I never had one before I knew you,
and I shall die loving you more than anyone has ever loved.
-----
Footnote 216:
Ebsdorf, a hunting-box of the Duke of Hanover, about fifteen miles
from Lüneburg.
Footnote 217:
Cf. Wilkins, p. 233.
-----
F 27
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK]
[Ebsdorf,] _Wednesday, the 24th [September 1692]_.
I ought to give you an account of my doings of yesterday. I was alone
all day. Then arrived some one sent from the master of this place to pay
his respects to the Peda[gogue]. He got into such difficulties in his
speech that I could scarcely stop myself from laughing at it. He also
made a speech to the _Cœur Gauche_, and then took his departure. Then
there was a promenade on foot, and on our return there was supper, and I
had a conversation with the _Confidante_. This is the only pleasure I
have, for we always talk about you.
F 28
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _November 1692_.]
Although I wrote to you yesterday evening, I cannot stop myself from
telling you that I have spent the worst night in the world; I dreamt
of you, but I beheld you faithless to me. I dreamt as follows: It
seemed to me that I had requested you not to see a certain great
man, and that, notwithstanding your promise, you had appointed him
to pay you a visit so as to say good-bye to him. I was informed of
it, and, not being able to endure this faithlessness, I pretended to
have a letter from Madame your mother to hand to you. I entered your
room abruptly, and saw the most horrible sight in the world: that
great gentleman held you in his arms, and, what is worse, you were
alone in your room. You pretended a little to be annoyed with your
Adonis, telling him that he was impertinent. In my turn, I wished to
withdraw, but you called out to me. I was delighted with this,
because it gave me a chance of whispering into your ear that you
were the most ungrateful of all ladies, and that this would be the
last time that I should speak to you. In fact, I went to find out M.
de Pude [Podewils] in order to beg him to send me to Hungary,[218]
which he did. I beg your pardon for this criminal dream; but I
should think myself very much more criminal if I did not let you
know of it. Do not think that I am inventing; no, by my God, it is a
true tale. For the love of all that is dearest to you, take care to
restore my peace of mind, and free me from my fear. I am afraid that
this dream may be some melancholy presage, and something that bodes
no good. It would be unjust that a tender affection should be
requited by infidelities; I hope it may not be so; for why should
you wish to desert a heart that adores you, and that swears to be
faithful to you? If such vows can attach you solely to me, I protest
to you before God, that never will I be unfaithful to you, and that
I will love you all my life with the same passion that I do [at
present]. When I shall have the honour of amusing you with an
account of yesterday’s debauch, you will laugh a good deal. The
Baroness[219] [_sic_] distinguished herself on the occasion, and the
big Swedish beard[s] made the best effect in the world; she was so
much ... that her natural colour began to appear beneath, which
produced the most diverting spectacle in the world. She asked me why
I did not amuse myself; I answered that I had come to pay my court
to M. [Bielke][220] and not to amuse myself. In leaving me she
called me a traitor; whereupon I replied that I was not one yet, but
might very possibly become one. M. le Duc played at ombre yesterday
evening with her. That is the very Devil! I will conclude by asking
you to prepare yourself to rescue me from the disquietude in which I
am, and to believe me inviolably attached to you and to all those
who have a regard for you. I embrace you from my very heart, and I
kiss your portrait a million times. Farewell!
-----
Footnote 218:
The Imperial campaigns in Hungary were still in progress, and, by
the _Kurtractat_ of 1692, Ernest Augustus and his brother were
under the obligation of keeping up a military force there till the
end of the war.
Footnote 219:
The ‘Baroness’—unidentifiable—not the ‘Countess’; though Countess
Platen was famed as an expert in the art of painting, and was even
said to have invented a mysterious pigment called ‘white rouge.’
Footnote 220:
The letters ‘Bil’ in the original no doubt stand for ‘Bielke.’ See
note to F 10, below. ‘M. le Duc’ is clearly the Duke of Celle.
-----
F 29
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _December 1692_.]
Come here some Friday evening, and wait till the Elector[221] comes
here. If Prince Max cannot be got rid of, you can go back, and that
will serve you as a pretext with the Duke of Celle and the Electoral
Prince. Tell me if you agree with my notion; if you can do it,
arrange so that I may see you, for, frankly, I cannot go on living
in this way; for the love of me [and] of you arrange for me to see
you and to embrace you, for without this satisfaction life is worth
nothing to me.
F 30
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _December 1692_.]
The joy of finding the Ref[ormer] departed was broken by the trouble
of finding you ill; I hope, however, that it will not be of
consequence; for otherwise I shall not be able to sleep all night
because of it. I hope to embrace you to-morrow evening; I await the
ordinary signal; and the bad weather shall not prevent me from
tasting the delight of your charming kisses; unless indeed you give
me other orders. I hope for the contrary, and I trust that your
eagerness will respond to mine. If you do not go out to-morrow, this
will suffice to assure you that the moments will seem like centuries
to me, and that the times during which I am away from you are those
which I pass to no purpose whatever; and that I am ready to come
to-morrow to the well-known place. I await the signal and am your
very obedient servant.
F 31
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _December 1692_.]
One could not be better pleased with you than I am. Your obliging
ways of yesterday, your very dear letter, in a word everything,
charms me; I begin to revive, and yesterday is one of those days
which I ought to mark in my book. In order to take full advantage of
it, I beg that I may see you this evening; I shall await the signal
with great impatience, for I die with desire to prove to you my
joy—it is beyond all bounds, and cannot express itself. For the love
of you, of myself, and of everything that is dear to you, continue
in the same way; you will then be able to persuade me that I have
nothing to fear, that I shall always be happy and contented—that is
the pleasure of love, those are the charms of an attachment that is
sincere and genuine. The avowal of the _Grond[eur]_ further gives me
much hope—seek to soften him, you will be able to do it if you try;
but you must take pains about it, and choose your time well. Be
withal convinced that, if Heaven destines me the joy of having you
for my own, my ways will be quite different from what you have
imagined to yourself, and I swear to you that I shall regulate them
according to yours. Put faith in this avowal, for it is sincere, and
springs from a soul without guile and without finesse; as the
weather is fine, I hope to see you in the [falconry] [?].[222] I
hope to find you there loving and happy. Farewell till then; you
will, I feel sure, say a little word to me, from which I can
perceive that you grant my prayer.
-----
Footnote 221:
Of Hanover (on the point of becoming such).
Footnote 222:
I cannot be sure about the ‘falconry.’ The list of the Elector’s
household in 1696, ap. Malortie, _Der Hannoversche Hof unter d.
Kürfürsten Ernst August_, &c., p. 40, includes one ‘bird-catcher,’
and one ‘ortolan-catcher.’
-----
F 33
[FROM SOPHIA DOROTHEA TO KÖNIGSMARCK][223]
[Hanover, _December 1692_ (?)]
Let [him] be at 8 o’clock in the evening near the door of the great
hall, where the Pr[incess] is accustomed to play cards; he will be
able to meet her there in safety, since nobody passes there,
to-morrow being Sunday.
-----
Footnote 223:
What is here printed as two letters (F 33 and F 34) runs on
without break in the Berlin manuscript. It is, however, difficult
to believe that the earlier portion is not distinct from the
latter, and that the former was not written by ‘_la Confidante_,’
and the latter by Königsmarck; and I have therefore, though with
diffidence, ventured on the arrangement in the text. It must not
be supposed that these two letters refer to the assignation which
led to the catastrophe of the amour between Sophia Dorothea and
Königsmarck. The day of Königsmarck’s disappearance was, no doubt,
a Sunday, and the place in which, according to tradition, he was
struck down dead was by the door of the _Rittersaal_, in the
_Leineschloss_ at Hanover. But apart from the fact that, according
to Rüdiger’s statement (Cramer, vol. i. p. 69), Königsmarck did
not leave his lodgings till between 9 and 10 p.m., the body of the
letters in the Lund and in the Berlin collection appear to belong
to an earlier date than that at which Königsmarck quitted the
Hanoverian service (probably about the spring of 1694): and it can
hardly be supposed that these two specially incriminating letters
were left by the Secretary Hildebrandt to be seized, and that they
found their way to Berlin with a series of which they formed no
integral part. The Princess, it may be added, was in the habit of
playing cards in the Grand Hall as early as 1691 (cf. Wilkins, p.
145).
-----
F 34
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _December 1692_ (?)]
He will be there at the above-mentioned hour; do not doubt of his
fidelity. Adieu, incomparable Goddess; I wish you good evening,
and desire that your dreams may be as full of me as mine are of
you. After having once more reread your letter, I shall go to
sleep, with the hope of dreaming of [nothing] else than you. I
embrace you a Million times, and am your very obedient ser[vant].
-----
Footnote 224:
Near Celle.
-----
F 9
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_Friday, 8 o’clock at evening. [Summer, 1693.]_
This moment I have received a very long letter, and one of the
kind I like from the Electoral Princess. I have not had leisure to
read it, lest the post should leave, and without assuring you what
joy it gave me when I received it; _le bonhomme_ goes to-morrow to
Engsen[224]; on his return I shall know my fate, which I shall at
once make known to the Electoral Princess. I am continually
offering up vows that I may not have to set out on the march, so
that I may be able to embrace her whom I love, and for whom I am
ready to die a thousand and a thousand times. Believe me that I
adore you in the most violent way in the world. Would to Heaven I
might have occasion to prove it to you! I shall not forget for a
moment, in order to convince you of it. What satisfaction it will
be to me if by my obedience I shall be able to show you how deep a
regard I have for you and what pleasure I take in being your slave
for ever. Adieu, my incomparable Leonisse; how I will kiss thee,
my little one.[225]—K.
-----
Footnote 225:
_Ma petite._ For Königsmarck’s use of the same term of endearment,
cf. Wilkins, p. 162.
-----
F7
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_One o’clock in the night. [Summer of 1693.]_
The _bonhomme_ has returned from his conference, and made me
dismiss the orderlies without commands. This is what leads me to
suppose that we shall still remain [here] during the present week;
and, as I am to dine with him to-morrow, I shall have some further
information, which I will at once communicate to you. In the
meantime, make ready to carry out what follows. The Duchess has
been to Linde,[226] to get rid of Countess Platen. Count de
Stenbock, whom you saw here seven years ago, wished to pay his
respects, and Count de La Gardie also.[227] I took them there, and
I found the good Plesse[?][228] at a stand [?], and the paint
running down everywhere—she was so overcome at seeing such a
number of strangers arrive that she was quite confused. She chose
the wiser part, for she withdrew at once, to put herself to rights
again. There is a good deal of malicious wit in the Electress, and
she could not have revenged herself better. Think of coming, I
entreat you; and believe that without seeing you is to be dead,
and I marvel that my fate should have been so cruel to me as to
let me survive all its misfortunes; but, if I do not see you soon,
there is no war nor danger which I will not seek in order to
shorten my unhappy life. I die with shame at not being dead
already. How does it agree with my loving you to distraction that
I neither see you nor speak to you, and yet survive! I believe
that my confounded fate preserves me in order to trouble me all
the more. You alone can rescue me from my despair; come quickly to
console me, or I shall commit some desperate act which I shall
regret all my life, for the life I lead is unbearable; I hate it
like death, I am tired out with it and can no longer bear it; I
wish that the lightning would destroy all those who prevent us
from seeing one another and joining our flames. Pardon the rage
which my too violent passion calls forth in me: it seems to me
that, if I must not see what I love, it is right that I should not
see the light of day. At this moment I should be capable of
sacrificing Father, Mother, Brother, and Sister, if I thought that
they prevented me from seeing my angel. Leonisse, what torments
your beauty costs me, to what trouble your charms give rise! Come
and make me forget all my woes; thou canst do it, by thy embraces,
by thy caresses; and there is no one in the world capable of this
but thyself. I await you with the greatest impatience in the
world; and do not allow me to say that you are quick to depart,
while ... to return where love calls [?] you. I should however be
in the wrong, if I complained of our parting, for it was loving
and sincere; but I beseech you, do not give me reason to complain
of a last parting. Farewell! I kiss you a thousand, thousand
times. Mlle. de Knesebeck is the best person in the world; I beg
you to tell her of my regard for her. I ask, with your permission,
to be remembered to her.
-----
Footnote 226:
See note to F 4 below.
Footnote 227:
Count Magnus Stenbock, afterwards renowned as a Swedish general
under Charles XII, and sympathetically remembered for his tragic
death, entered the Dutch service as a volunteer in 1690. The Count
de La Gardie mentioned here may be Pontus Frederick who died in
1693. Stenbock was connected by descent with the de La Gardies; a
Countess Stenbock, born de La Gardie, was with Aurora von
Königsmarck immediately after her brother’s death. The two Counts
are mentioned as likely to come to Celle in July 1693, _ap._
Wilkins, p. 288.
Footnote 228:
‘The good Plesse’ must have been the lady of General Pless,
formerly in the Danish service, like many other members of his
family, which was of ancient Brunswick descent.
-----
F 10
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover], _Saturday, [July 1693]_.
It is easy to suppose with what satisfaction I have read your very
charming letter. This satisfaction was due to me, in order to take
me a little out of the deep reverie into which my misfortunes and
our separation have plunged me. Your letter is long, loving, and
as I desire it to be; do not write any more short letters; this
ought to relieve you, and I swear to you that for me also you
cannot make them long enough. Your love is so agreeable to me that
I have no pleasure while away from you but to see that love
depicted on paper. I preserve your letters as the most precious
things in the world, because they console me for all the disgrace
I have to undergo; as I see in them that you swear to love me, to
be faithful to me, and never to abandon me—and what more can I
desire from you? You see, then, that I am thoroughly well pleased
with you; I conjure you to be the same with me, and not to impute
it to me that you do not receive my letters regularly by every
post. I did not know one day which was Sunday; but, since I am now
informed of it, my exactness will show you that I sinned because I
knew no better; and my negligence was due to the trouble which is
upon me. It is then that I think most of you, for you serve as a
consolation to me, and the pleasure of thinking of you surpasses
all others that I know. _Idolo mio_, when shall I have the joy of
holding thee in my arms? Is it not enough to make a Cato despair,
to see that you can come if Prince Max did not prevent it[229];
but, although the wish to see you took away my jealousy and I
begged you to come, how long shall I be able to be with you,
perhaps only two days, and then I shall see you among people who
hate us, and others who wish to insinuate themselves. Do not
believe, my Angel, that my jealousy springs from any bad opinion I
have of you: this would be too criminal—it springs from the
violence of my love; so I flatter myself that you will always make
excuses for me when this madness takes hold of me. What do I not
owe you for taking so much pains to ease me of all my suspicions!
Your diaries console me; your vow makes me forget all that I had
in my brain. Ah! why am I not by your side! I would throw myself
at your feet, to thank you for all the care you take to render me
happy and contented. I am convinced of your good intentions; I
have no doubt of your fidelity; and I see very well that if you
ruled fate, so many worries would not occur. As I may perhaps
receive orders to march to Lunen [Lüneburg?], tell me if I may not
go to Celle, without giving umbrage. If you are not there,
politeness demands it; but at present I do not know what I ought
to do. The answer of the Electress of Brandenburg[230] is amusing
enough, and well deserves an answer, in which the music ought not
to be spared. I do not know whether I am mistaken, but, on
rereading letter No. 11, I do not find it so sincere as No. 10;
tell me if I am mistaken; No. 10 is charming—it shows the real
passion which you felt in writing it. For the love of me, be
always like that, and do not let me perceive any coldness. What
have I done to deserve it; tell me, so that I may exculpate
myself. Is it perhaps that you do not think it loving that I do
not ask you to come? But remember what it is that prevents me from
doing so. If, however, you desire it, I will beg you to come; but
I shall be perhaps two days here; and then your neighbour will
have a free field. He has loved you, and, indeed, he has not been
indifferent to you. I am always afraid of him, though there is
hardly anything to be afraid of in him; but it is sufficient that
he has been on a very familiar footing with you, for me to have
good reason for fearing his impertinence, and it would even be
annoying to see a man about you who might find twenty little holes
through which he might see you, besides that you would not be able
to say a single word without his hearing it. But all these reasons
are not enough; and, if I had hopes of staying, I would
nevertheless entreat you to come, in the hope that you would find
out a way to get rid of him; for, apart from this, I shall not be
able to see you, since he will always be looking out for spying
[upon you]. Inasmuch as I cannot give you up, I for this reason
refuse all the advantages which present themselves; I intend to
make you see from this how attached I am to you, and this is my
sole reason why I make you look at the letters which were written
to me on all sides. Believe, all the same, that no advantage is
capable of making me leave this place so long as you will be kind
to me. I know the power of a mother whom one loves, and when she
gives you an opportunity, you ought to be prudent enough to resist
it. My blood curdles, when I think that your [mother] would be
capable, in order to take vengeance on the Electoral Prince, of
letting you make a _cocu_ of him; and when this comes into my
head, if you ever thus caressed anyone but myself, all my blood
flows back in my veins, and I cannot rest still, so long as this
thought keeps me unquiet. Ah! good God! if I saw you kiss anyone
with the same passion with which you have kissed me, and ride on
horseback with the same pleasure—may I never see God if it would
not drive me mad! Why, in writing it my hand trembles, and I find
it difficult to go on. Let us change the subject. The friends of
whom I spoke to you, Bussche and Hammerstein[231], could you have
believed it, it is they who have put into the head of the
Electoral Prince all the stories about my [game]. But I have
written a letter to the first, which will make him see his
falseness very clearly. I am in hopes, moreover, since the Duchess
of Celle and the Duke of Celle have come to an agreement;
therefore do your best. The war will not last so long as to ruin
the country[232]; that is why this [excuse] cannot long be
accounted a defeat. See if you will keep your promise; for you
promised me that you would die sooner than not be united to me;
continue in this way of thinking, and you will restore my life to
me. Am I dear enough to you for you to keep the promise you made
to me? If this is so, I swear to you once more by the stars, that
nothing in the world shall separate me from you. By the letter
_enclosed_ you will see how they are once more trying to persuade
me to Marry the Daughter of M. Bielke[233]; but my answer was,
that I would rather die of hunger than do it; and that I begged
him particularly not to speak to me any more of marriage, for this
might cause a quarrel between us. I flatter myself that you will
be pleased with my resolution. Since we have so little chance of
seeing each other, we must think of expedients. _You will find it
in this note_; I think that it can be managed, provided I do not
go away and that I let you know between the present time and that.
If you wish to wait till Prince Max is tired, I shall not see you
for a long time; for when he is with the Electress and his thin
divinity[234], he is as happy as a King. I should not have thought
that this magpie would have caused me so much sorrow as he does; I
wish he were in the heart of Hungary, he would no longer cause me
so much heart-ache as he does at present. One could not speak more
kindly than you do on the subject of dying of hunger; but do you
believe that, although it would be a great consolation to me to
see you always at my side, I should like to drag you down into
misery? No, no, do not believe it! You must live happy and
contented, while I seek some glorious death, to put an end to my
unfortunate life and die the lover of the Electoral Princess. I
hope that you have received the two letters about which I spoke to
you; if not, tell me; you will no longer do me the injustice of
believing that any consideration in the world could detach me from
you; my protestation on this subject will make you see that I
shall die with my Love. How could one forsake you, for the more
one knows you the more one adores you; one discovers every day new
merits [in you]; and your love alone is capable of making me
prefer to have my head cut off rather than abandon you for ever. I
am ashamed of my want of exactness; I beg your pardon for it; it
is a fault which I entreat you not to attribute to my negligence
but to my shortness of memory. But, my divine Leonisse,
acknowledge in your turn that my letters are much the longest; and
that, had I not told you of it, you would not have made [yours] so
large. So each has his due; hence I shall never concede that your
love is greater than mine, and I should be inconsolable if I had
not given you more substantial proofs of it; for you might believe
that vanity, since you are a princess, is the cause of my
attachment. No; I swear to you that if you were the hangman’s
daughter, and if you possessed the attractions which are actually
yours, I should love you with as much ardour. You will think me
not very polite; but I flatter myself that you will find my
feelings tender and true; in the name of the Gods, continue in the
sentiments in which I find you now! If any disgrace were to drive
me so far that you conceived a dislike for me, I should certainly
send a pistol-shot through my brain....
-----
Footnote 229:
Prince Maximilian, who excited Königsmarck’s jealousy so strongly,
was staying at Brockhausen in June 1692 after his catastrophe at
Hanover (cf. Wilkins, p. 136), Königsmarck being at Hanover. In
June 1693 Maximilian was lodged at Luisburg, in rooms next to the
Princess (cf. Wilkins, p. 259). In July 1693 he was at
Herrenhausen (ib. p. 286). The letter, with its references to the
contiguity of Prince Maximilian’s rooms, and to the Duchess of
Celle’s encouragement of him, seems to belong to the later date.
Footnote 230:
Sophia Charlotte.
Footnote 231:
Probably Christian William von dem Bussche, who became
Adjutant-General of the Elector George Lewis, and died as a
general in 1711. George Christopher von Hammerstein was
Adjutant-General to the Hereditary (Electoral) Prince.
Footnote 232:
The war, begun in 1688 by the French invasion of the Palatinate,
lasted till the conclusion of the Peace of Ryswyk in 1697.
Footnote 233:
Count Niels Bielke, the well-known Swedish politician (afterwards
governor of Swedish Pomerania), seems already at this time as
Swedish envoy to have furthered the French interest, with which he
remained identified. See Colt _ap._ Wilkins, p. 176.
Footnote 234:
Can this have been Melusina von der Schulenburg?
-----
F 16
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_September 1st_ [1693, from the Camp].
Pardon me, if sorrow and despair has made me commit the fault of
not writing to you for two days. When one is in the state in which
I am, one does not know what one is doing. I will begin by telling
you that I have changed two ciphers in our key, namely, j means
31, i means 35, u means 53, v means 54. I [beg] you to note this.
Next, I must tell you that you have marked two letters No. 10, so
that No. 14 ought to be No. 15. But just continue for the present,
for there is no other harm done, [except] that the second or first
No. 10 might have been lost without one’s having known at all that
one had been lost. I must further tell you that I wrote to you two
letters addressed to 131, whom I supposed to be at Celle; you must
let me know whether you have received them. Three letters were
addressed to the postmaster at Celle, which are dated the 20th,
and [this] is letter No. 9; the 26th, and [this] is letter No.
12—this one is of consequence; the 30th, and [this] is letter No.
14. It would also be well to see whether you have letter No. 13. I
beg you to reply to me without fail as to this. You can see
everything by the way in which they follow on one another; for I
am quite sure that I have been exact on this occasion. You will be
surprised to find me making such reflexions, in the condition in
which I am; but, my dear, we have had so many misfortunes, that
one must not create any more for oneself. I received yours dated
the 26th; but you know what accident happened to me in mistaking
one bottle for another. I told you about it in my preceding
letters; I see, however, in yours dated the 28th, 29th and 30th
what you meant to say to me in [that dated] the 26th. It is a
great joy to me to know you free from fear, and I am angry with
myself for having been the cause of your disquiet, which has
contributed greatly to your illness.[235] At present, now that you
are free from fear, I hope that the fever will leave you also. How
I pity you for having suffered so much—[a] six hours of fever. I
do not understand how you have strength enough still to write to
me. I am as grateful as I ought to be; and I am convinced that it
is love which gives you strength; but to what extent am I not
obliged by this mark of your affection? Never shall I forget such
favours. If my letters had force enough to comfort you in your
sufferings, I would arrange for you to have one every hour; but I
take this compliment to be an effect of your kindness. However, I
can swear to you that your letters are a great consolation to me,
and without the three last of them, dated 28th, 29th and 30th, I
should be in my grave at this very moment. It would after all be
the greatest folly I could commit, for, though it would be a sign
of affection, I should lose you; and, [as] you say very well in
one of yours, what despair never to see each other again for ever!
Let us then live on, together, love each other everlastingly, and
swear to each other afresh a constancy which shall never end; and
that [after?] death, if we have sense enough, this may likewise
endure. In order that we may live together, take all imaginable
pains to preserve yourself; remember that my quiet of mind depends
on it: if your illness continues, I am quite sure that I shall go
mad. The fever prevails a great deal here; we have nearly 200 on
the sick-list among our troops; my servants fall sick one after
the other. I have been obliged to send my valet de chambre to
Celle; the others are at Lüneb[urg]; if this continues, my turn
[?] will come too.
-----
Footnote 235:
Cf. Wilkins, pp. 313 sqq.
-----
F 17
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_The 3rd_ [_September 1693_, from the Camp].
I thought I should have an apoplectic fit when I opened your
letter, without seeing your handwriting. I hoped to hear that you
were better, and you are doing quite the contrary. I believed at
the beginning that it was all over with you. Do not suppose that I
am annoyed that it is not in your handwriting—far from that, I
entreat you to continue in the same way, for I am absolutely
against your fatiguing yourself. I pity you as much as an
affectionate and tender ... can do so—must the most perfect object
in the universe suffer so cruelly? Ye gods, why are you so unjust?
But, my heart, I know why this misfortune comes to you[236]—it is
to render me more unhappy that destiny causes you to fall ill; you
are made to suffer in order that I may be crucified. And the design
succeeds, for no one could send me a greater misfortune. You order
me not to disquiet myself—it would be necessary not to love you, in
order not to be at the point of death. Every moment I am on my
knees to offer up prayer for your complete recovery; I flatter
myself that in the end I shall find pity—my prayers are too devout
not to find acceptance. May God grant that you may speedily be
relieved of your sufferings and I of my fears and of my anxiety!
With what joy shall I embrace you, when I shall have that of seeing
you. I do not know when this will be possible to me; but my design
is to make pretence of an access of fever happening to me; I shall
say to the _bonhomme_ that I should like to go for three days to
317, to avoid the fever taking hold of me, that is to say, to take
some remedies. Instead of staying at 317, I shall take the post and
fly to Celle. I should be able to be two nights with you—what joy,
what satisfaction! I should be able to be at your feet, to bathe
them with my tears: you would see into how pitiable a state your
illness had driven me. But perhaps I am indulging these hopes in
vain; for before I can play this part it is in the first instance
necessary that the _bonhomme_ should be in better health ...
depends further on the future of the 9 [?] ... I have nothing good
to Hope for; rage, despair, trouble, disquietude, Love—all these
things together have such an effect on me that I am like those
people one sees at Amsterdam in the madhouse. God knows what the
end of all this will be. The sickness spreads from day to day; my
old Lieutenant-C[olonel] and two Lieutenants have fallen [ill]
to-day; I do not know how I shall escape it; it is a miracle, for
with all the troubles that oppress me I ought to catch it.
Farewell, my Angel, I can tell you no more. The express that was
sent to me by the _bonhomme_ by [?] thought that you have a lover,
who takes so much [interest] in everything that concerns you that
you ... do yourself [?]; he is sincere [and] adores you, and has as
much Respect for you as anyone in the world; I deserve all your
affection and all the kind interest you take in me. If I do not
give you assurances enough of my love and fidelity, it is not my
fault—it is that I have no opportunity for doing so; I should weary
you with my protestations, for I repeat them in all my letters. I
fancy that you are like myself. I cannot wait for them too long,
and all your letters, were they filled with anything else, would be
to me always agreeable and more so than if there were nothing in
them.
F 8
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
Atlenburg, _the 13th [of September, 1693]_.[237]
On the twelfth I did what I do on all other days: that is to say,
drink, eat, and go the rounds; the same on the thirteenth. The
Duke of Celle came to call on us. You see that I can keep my
diaries without difficulty; I do not think they will annoy you at
all, for nothing could be more innocent, and those from Hanover
will be of the same sort, at least if my going to sup with ladies
does not displease you. But I promise to leave this alone also,
assuring you that it is the very slightest proof I can offer you,
inasmuch as I shall be pleased to do without it, even if you send
no orders to stop it. Would to God I could show you by my conduct,
that all my thoughts, all my acts are only done for you; but,
alas! you are so unjust that you refuse to perceive this. I hate
my bad fortune, and it is this which one day will ruin me with
you. I have received the letter No. 3 dated the 5th, within eight
days after that marked 4; I cannot understand whence arises this
delay; but I well know that it is dangerous that the letter should
be so long on its way. I am not satisfied with you, and the unkind
opinion you have of me as if I neglected you hurts me very much; I
think only of you night and day; no other thought enters my mind;
and yet, I am [supposed to] forget you, to neglect you. I am
inconstant—do I really deserve these designations; be you the
judge yourself! Can you accuse me of no longer loving you? Is it
possible that it is Leonisse who believes this and reproaches me
with it! Great God! how full of injustice you are, and how great a
wrong you do me! I love you to madness; I adore you beyond
compare; my love surpasses all others—and yet you have doubts of
all this; your heart does not speak in my favour. I have reason
for complaining of it—that barbarous heart, which ought to plead
for me, instead of being my accuser. I have known it kind to me;
but little by little all that affection has vanished. Will not
your heart recover itself? reproach it on my part; my heart
promises an eternal attachment, it swears constancy to you, and,
provided that you deign to think of it once in every twenty-four
hours, it is content. Does it deserve to be remembered by you? I
think it does, but it is for you to judge the case. If I am ever
unfortunate enough to love you no longer (which is an
impossibility), your wish will be no punishment to me [??], for I
swear to you that I shall never seek any other faithful
attachment, and, though the present one is dearer to me than my
life, I should never wish for another. Remember what a certain
Spaniard said: ‘I do not wish to make myself common’—I call it to
make myself common if I were to quit the most perfect object of
the universe for some other, who could never compare herself as to
....
-----
Footnote 236:
The familiar second person singular is employed in this and the
next two lines.
Footnote 237:
Atlenburg (mis-spelt ‘Altenburg’ _ap._ Wilkins, p. 314) must be
Artlenburg, in the part of the duchy of Saxe-Lauenburg on the left
bank of the Elbe.
-----
F 19
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_The 14th_ [_of September, 1693._ From the Camp].
Most assuredly, without yours of the 12th the Beating of my Heart,
of which 127 had been the cause, would have made an end of me,
but, most fortunately for me, I received it at the time when my
heart was about to burst; and, as I see from it that the news is
quite false, I also begin to recover myself. He told me, as quite
certain, that your fever had seized you again. Assuredly I should
not, with this disquiet, have been able to pass the night alive;
and now while I am writing to you I still have the Queen of
Hungary Water[238] on my nose. I think, however, that this will
pass away; but I feel very much upset and exhausted; if this does
not go away in the night, I shall bleed myself to prevent any evil
consequences that might overtake me. M. de Sporck[239] will,
according to all appearances, die before the day is over; I have 3
Captains, 5 Lieutenants and 4 Ensigns sick to death, more than 300
foot-soldiers and dragoons, of our troops only, are quite down; it
is an infected air, the healthiest sicken in it; all the same, I
hope not to fall sick, knowing you to be out of the wood. You will
have seen from my letter dated the 12th how well satisfied I am
with you; do not be offended that I begged you to [write] me two
words with your own hand; I knew that you were a little better;
otherwise I should not have done it; but, my best beloved heart,
you have done too much, for you have written me two entire pages;
I beg you very particularly not to do this any more, nor until you
are quite well again. The siege of Charleroi[240] will prevent the
Electoral Prince from being here so soon; great God, may this
siege deliver us from troublesome people! It is said for certain
that things are settling down; but the orders that are given for
taking care of the sick make me tremble with fear that we shall
not so soon quit this post. I am agitated by the same despair as
you are, to have to pass my life with people for whom I feel an
aversion, and to be allowed to pass so little time with her whom I
adore. However, you are more to be pitied, for I can very often
get free of it, and you not, besides the embraces which you are
obliged to undergo. It seems to me that, if I had to suffer the
same sort of thing, I could not prevent myself from being sick
every time it should happen to me. Ah, how horrible to caress what
one hates mortally; I firmly believe that purgatory does not
inflict so many torments as do caresses of that sort. If it is
true that the Elector of Hanover is not going to 308, I might well
come there; but we cannot take our measures before it is known
what will become of the Electoral Prince. The Duchess of
Hanover[241] will not arrive till towards the end of next month;
and then the Electoral Prince will have returned, and the hunting
will be over. May God only grant that we begin it soon, and that
you are able to put in an appearance. I pity you for having grown
so thin; but (with your permission) I find the question which you
put to me ridiculous and absurd. If I loved nothing in you but
your beauty I would forgive it you; but you are convinced that it
is not only this which I adore—it is your merits, your [sweet]
temper.[242] I confess to you that to see you beautiful charms the
eyes; but I protest to you that, were you ugly like Madame
Kopstein,[243] I should not love you a whit the less. Tired of
you? Ah, is it possible to ask such a question as this of a lover
who loves you dearly! No, no, Leonisse, you are not convinced of
my sincere affection. What must I do to bring the conviction of it
home to you? I shall never be at rest, till I know that you are
quite convinced of it. Do you believe that an affection like mine
arose out of anything so transitory as beauty? Although you have
much of it, and more than any one else of your sex, I can tell you
that it is not your beauty which has put me into the condition in
which I am. It is true that the beauty which you possess set me on
fire, and that without it I should perhaps not have been as happy
as I am; but that which has made me as I am is your _esprit_, your
sincerity, your way of living, and, finally, it is your soul, so
high-bred and so well-balanced, which produces in you a sweetness
beyond compare, an unequalled generosity, with clemency beyond all
imagination. It is these virtues which have placed me in the dear
slavery in which I find myself at this moment, and in which I also
mean to die. In truth, Leonisse, you trouble me greatly with your
questions; you fear that I shall become unfaithful to the greatest
Beauty of the age, and to virtue itself, for some unfledged
princesses[244] without any other merit but that of having been to
Paris. Once more, I see only too well that you are not well
convinced of my love; I hope that in the end I shall give you so
many signs of it that you will no longer be able to doubt it. To
take the proper steps it is necessary that we should speak to each
other; we have time up to the end of the coming month [?], and
before this time we need not fear the return of the Electoral
Prince, and of the Duchess. You still attack [me about] princesses
[?]. Do you perhaps think that I am so fond as you are yourself of
novelty, of change, and of people who come from Paris? You are
quite mistaken: I wear my chains with very great pleasure, and
would not change them for the Kingdom of the Great Mogul. The
letter of the Lieutenant-Colonel is very silly, but the person is
reasonable enough; she has inspired a strong affection in a very
brave man, of high rank, in the Low Countries, whose name is the
Marquis of Spinosa.[245] He is one of the fine gentlemen
[_galans_] of that country. But since I have sent you a very silly
letter, I shall make up for it by one that is very well written;
if it were not written out of a book, we ought to admire it
particularly as coming from this person; but let me tell you that
she found it word for word in a book. However, it must be allowed
that it is phrased very suitably. I beg you to send it back to me;
I send it you because I think it will amuse you. Adieu.
-----
Footnote 238:
This old-fashioned toilet-water has hardly gone quite out of use.
Its name is said to have been derived from the fact that the
original formula of the compound (of which the chief ingredient is
rosemary) was presented by a hermit to a queen of Hungary. In his
rapturous letter _ap._ Wilkins, p. 155, Königsmarck begs Sophia
Dorothea to have _de l’eau de la reine d’Hongrie_ in readiness.
Footnote 239:
A member of the ancient family von Spörcken, which possessed
numerous estates in Lüneburg, and from which sprang Field-Marshal
von Spörcken. He was born in 1698, and his mother was a sister of
Field-Marshal von der Schulenburg.
Footnote 240:
The siege of Charleroi by Vauban began on September 15, 1693, and
ended with the capture of the place on October 11.
Footnote 241:
_Sic_ in text (‘_la Dujais d’Hanovre_’ and, lower down, ‘_la
Dujaiÿse_,’ Königsmarck’s spelling), though the date of the letter
admits of no doubt.
Footnote 242:
The remainder of this letter was misplaced in the Berlin copy.
Footnote 243:
Probably the wife of Court-Marshal von Koppenstein.
Footnote 244:
_Gosses de princesses_ in the original. I owe the following
reference to Dr. Braunholtz: _Dans le jargon des voyous, une_
gosse, _une_ gosseline, _c’est une fillette de quinze à seize
ans_.... (L. Rigaud, _Dictionnaire d’argot moderne_, n.e., 1888).
Footnote 245:
I am unable to identify this nobleman. The spelling Espinosa seems
the more common.
-----
F 4
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
_Thursday {1693}_.
I needed your letter to sustain me in the despair which had fallen
upon me. This is what comes of acting openly, and if you had not
spoken to me of ... I believe that I could not have held out a day
longer. However, I controlled myself excellently; and I wished in
the first instance to know what you would say to me; so I did not
give way to my anger. Let me tell you then that I was the day
before yesterday at Linde.[246] Mme. la Comtesse was greatly
astonished that I did not play with you. I said to her that this
required permission; she said, Mme. Léonisse made the Elector ask
me; and he replied positively that she might summon her players.
Yesterday, before receiving your letter, I was told by Oberg who
had seen M. Weyhe at Linde, that his Highness had said it to
yourself.[247] Prince Ernest Augustus said to me in these words,
that the Elector had said to you, ‘You are bored, Madam; you ought
to summon your players.’ It would have depended on yourself, if he
had spoken to you in this way. But, Madam, I was greatly relieved
when I read your letter, in which you write to me about this
matter. I have drawn my moral, which is never begin to fly into a
passion about vapours. But, my divine creature, could you not
[contrive to] let [me] come, in order that I might have the joy of
gazing upon you, and that my eyes and my heart might learn from
yours how I stand with them, and whether your love is such as you
wrote to me. Your letter of yesterday is charming; it touched me
so that I feel more on fire than ever. You write that you see
nobody; nothing could be more obliging; but you see the Reformer
all the more; which makes me fear that you will accustom yourself
little by little to his mediocre caresses, and he will kiss you so
often that I die with trouble only to think of it. For the love of
yourself, do not accustom yourself to it; always remember the way
in which he treats you—you who deserve all proper, obliging and
respectful ways. But I see the defects of another man, and I do
not see that it is in this that I am the most criminal. You have
told me yourself that the Re[former] ... [at times?] was not so
unpleasant in his ways as myself. I die to think of it. How
unfortunate I am to love you so tenderly, and that this excessive
passion makes me so odious. Think no more of the past, I beseech
you. Adieu, adieu, alas, adieu!
-----
Footnote 246:
Linde or Linden, an estate in the immediate vicinity of Hanover,
purchased in 1688 by Count Platen, who built in its fine gardens a
_château_, frequently mentioned as ‘_la cour de Linden_.’
Footnote 247:
The Obergs were an ancient noble family, whose estates lay in the
bishopric of Hildesheim and elsewhere. A Privy-Councillor von
Oberg is mentioned _ap._ Malortie, _u. s._ pp. 193, 194. Christian
Lewis von Oberg, a general of much distinction in the Hanoverian
service, was not born till 1689. The Obergs were afterwards raised
to the rank of Counts.—The von der Weyhe mentioned in the text was
probably the same who afterwards became a General, and married the
widowed Frau von dem Bussche, Countess Platen’s sister.
-----
F 5
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[1693.]
I am much to be pitied, and my ill-fortune persecutes me too much
for me to be able to bear it any longer. Yesterday’s letters give
us no hope that the Ref[ormer] may take his departure; and until
he has gone I cannot and ought not to see you. What a cruel
destiny! oh, insupportable misfortune! Can I still breathe after
such heavy blows; life becomes insupportable to me; I cannot, nor
ought I to, remain any longer in the world, for what can I do in
it without seeing you! I have to-day had two unfortunate
experiences, of which at present the second seems to me the most
cruel, but the first may prove the most terrible. I have fallen
out with our old _bonhomme_, and with Gor too; and, as he told
you, if I were to repeat it to those with whom his Highness is
displeased, they would be much astonished. Apart from my passion
[for you], I know what course I have to take; but, my dear, as I
have promised you to do nothing without your consent, I wish to
let you know about it beforehand. My intention is to write to him,
and to say to him that I was very much annoyed that duty had
involved me in a dispute with the person in the world whom I
honour most; but, as I had carefully taken note of the words he
addressed to me, I had observed at the time that he said [that] if
I repeated [it] to all those whom our master holds in contempt,
there would be many who would be undeceived; I thought that your
Excellency would not be offended, if I asked you to be good enough
to inform me privately, whether I am unfortunate enough to have
displeased Monseigneur the Elector—in order that I might shape my
course accordingly. For hitherto I had served him from affection
only, and without any interested motive; and, if I was unfortunate
enough to have incurred his disfavour, it would be impossible for
me to serve him any longer.[248] This was, in substance, what I
wished to say to him, being aware of your opinion. I can assure
you that I positively perceived that his rage directed itself
against me. I am surprised at my own patience, and I cannot
understand how I managed to control myself, for I had it very
often on the tip of my tongue to say to him what I intend to write
to him. The second misfortune troubles me a great deal more. I saw
your windows open; the Ref[ormer] came out of your dressing-room;
without [my] seeing you there, though I raised my voice tolerably
high, and passed and repassed; but there was nothing—one could not
see a living soul there. I suppose that, as it was late, you were
already in the room of the _Romaine_. I should be inconsolable, if
I had not the hope of seeing you this evening at 6 o’clock. To
what am I reduced! I count it the greatest good fortune in the
world to see you a thousand feet off. In good truth, it will be a
great consolation to me if I can have this pleasure. That of
writing to you is very dear to me, and I would not give it up for
a Kingdom. I fear that my Diabolical destiny will deprive me of
it; this would be my finishing stroke. I conjure you, take your
measures so well that we may not miss this joy. You know, I hope,
through your own self that one would not be able to live without
this. Alas! why am I not Reden or Hortense[249]; so long as you
are there, it matters not if you were to hate me. I shall,
however, have the joy of seeing her whom I adore; it is our love
which takes the one far away from the other; without my love, I
should be wherever you are; but because I love you I am in bad
repute, I am disregarded, I am forgotten. But never mind; let them
spit in my face, I will not take offence at it.
-----
Footnote 248:
The meaning of this passage is hopelessly obscured in the original
by the wild use of brackets, and by a reckless interchange between
_oratio obliqua_ and _directa_, and the second and third persons.
Footnote 249:
Von Reden was Chamberlain to the Electress Sophia. ‘Hortense’ is
the Abbé Hortensio Mauro, mentioned in Chapter III. In her
letters, the Electress often refers to him as ‘Ortence.’
-----
F 13
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _latter part of 1693_].[250]
In fear of not being able to speak to you, I take the liberty of
expressing to you my concern at the misfortune which has happened
to you. God knows that my heart forewarned me of it; but my
companion was never willing to wait, although I begged him to do
so; but, by way of climax to my ill luck, I have to wait till my
intimate friend has had the pleasure with his troublesome
companion of an interview with you; it seems to me that I have
great reason to complain of the Gods, as they are unjust enough to
deprive me of all means of being serviceable to you, while at the
same time they furnish such means to those from whom I have most
to fear. Since this accident strange things have come into my
head, and I am foolish enough to believe that the accident which
happened yesterday is a prognostic of my ill luck, and that this
is the same man who will be the cause of all these troubles to me.
The result will be that I shall have him watched as closely as
possible while I am away, and, if I hear the slightest thing,
believe me as a man of honour that I will never see you again, and
that I would rather seek out the innermost parts of Lapland than
appear before those eyes which [once] enchanted me. I detest my
companion, for without this I should have had the pleasure of
serving you, instead of my seeing this joy in the breast of a man
whom I abhor, and who is impertinent enough to come and tell me of
it himself, informing me of the condition in which you were, your
_déshabillement_, without a cap, your hair loose over your
incomparable bosom. O God, I am too furious to write any more.
-----
Footnote 250:
This and the following two letters might belong to the spring of
1692; but I think that they may with more probability be assigned
to the latter part of 1693.
-----
F 14
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _latter part of 1693_.]
While I was reflecting on the miserable state in which I found
myself they brought me your letter, which I had little expected.
My joy was so great that I forgot my sufferings, throwing myself
on the letter as if nothing were wanting to me. You have done
everything that I wished to see you do; it therefore only remains
for me to thank you for your kindness, and to give you every
assurance of my fidelity:
_Io ti saro fedele,
Ne mai ti tradiro.
Se ben mi sei crudel,
Sempre t’adorero._
If you do not believe me, I am ready to abandon Mother, Kinsfolk,
Friends, Possessions and Country, the better to convince you of
it; and it will only depend on you whether I shall take the
journey of which you are well aware. My unhappy condition
furnishes me with a good excuse; I shall be able to pretend
illness for a long time. If you agree with me, I beg you to let me
know; for I will take my measures accordingly; it is the greatest
proof [of my affection] which I can offer you at present; so pray
accept it, and thus make me happy; for the satisfaction of seeing
you far surpasses the ambition which I have of making my fortune.
I could not find any greater [good fortune], and that of
possessing you is so dear to me that I do not any longer meditate
on any of the others. By your letter you have so purified my heart
that there no longer remains in it the slightest suspicion of
jealousy; the eagerness which you show to know the state of my
health sufficiently convinces me that you love me. To meet your
wish, I will tell you that I suffer extremely; yet the pain of not
seeing you greatly exceeds that of my fall. I expect to be better
in four days; but if you accept my proposition, I shall keep my
room for ten days longer. This will not prevent me, so soon as I
shall be able to walk, from being able to embrace you in the
well-known locality; to have news of you, I believe that the
safest way is for one of my people (in whom I am able to place
confidence)....
F 15
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _latter part of 1693_.]
Anyone but myself would put you to the proof, to see whether your
love will carry you so far as to come to me; but, as for me, I
love you too much to be able to expose you to this risk, and your
offer is sufficient for me. However, in order not to lose the
occasion of seeing you (since I have so little time for remaining
with you) I will come to you this evening, if you consent; and I
shall wait to hear from you the hour of the _rendez-vous_. If you
think it well that I should appear at court, I will do so, but not
otherwise. The joy of seeing you again makes me forget all the
trouble that my illness has brought upon me; for the rest, I am
well enough pleased with you; I cannot, however, forget how little
opposition you have to offer on the subject of my journey, having
a good excuse for dissuading me from it; I do not know at what
judgment to arrive on the subject.[251] Only, may God grant that
this absence may not prove of deadly import to me! You accuse me
of not loving you enough; how can you be so unjust, but I will
pass over this point without reply, knowing well that you are too
fully convinced of my love, which is the purest that ever existed,
and which will last so long as I live. I have often protested this
to you in prose; permit me on the present occasion to do it in
verse:
While breath within my heart remains, Beloved is _votre nom_ by
me; So long as blood runs in my veins, It shall retain the mark of
thee; And with the current of my days, Love shall remain with me
always.
At 6 o’clock my man shall be in front of the room of the _bonne,
bonne amie_.[252]
-----
Footnote 251:
The reference seems to be to his intention to quit the Hanoverian
service.
Footnote 252:
Fräulein von dem Knesebeck.
-----
F 20
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _latter part of 1693_.][253]
I perceive the pleasure that I had taken in embracing you vanishes
entirely since the Troublesome One has appeared so suddenly. I
confess to you that this countenance displeased me very much so
soon as I perceived it; a thunderclap could not have surprised me
more. But it is fated that there should always be disagreeable
faces to prevent a tender meeting like that which all appearances
allowed us to think ours was to be. Yes, my idea of it was so full
of joy that I could not sleep all the night; but alas! all is
vanished, and I have to pass a second night without sleeping, and
with grief instead of the joy with which the first filled me; it
is certain that, unless you are so kind as to console me, I shall
bathe in my tears. Console me then, divine beauty, and comfort a
man who is dying for you, and who is so set upon your charms that
his head turns:
For a toy [?] of charming beauty
Such flame me doth consume,
That to love her is reason and duty,
Till I am laid in my tomb.
Such is my maxim, and you shall see me carry it out exactly; my
greatest satisfaction shall be to prove to you that only death is
alone capable of extinguishing my love. But, for the love of God,
think of the motto, ‘Nothing impure inflames me’;[254] adieu!
-----
Footnote 253:
This and the following letter ought possibly to be dated in the
spring of 1692; but I think the date assigned the more probable
one.
Footnote 254:
The seal on some of Königsmarck’s letters in the Lund
Correspondence represents a flaming heart on an altar, the sun
shining down upon it, with the circumscription, _Rien d’impure
m’allume_. Wilkins, p. 123.
-----
F 21
[FROM KÖNIGSMARCK TO SOPHIA DOROTHEA]
[Hanover, _latter part of 1693_] _6 o’clock_.
I cannot go away from here without thanking you for having rescued
me from such a difficulty. Surely I was a lost man without
yesterday evening’s conversation. I go away as happy as a man can
do who leaves behind what he adores; but what consoles me is that
I am well assured of your friendship, and that my absence does me
no harm; my soul is so at ease that I am quite a different man
from what I was before. I beg of you, no _tête-à-têtes_—not with
anybody, in particular with M. R.[255] I shall know everything,
for I have good friends here whom you do not in the least suspect.
Adieu, _Bella dea_, think of me as much as I think of you. I kiss
your knees a thousand times, and am eternally your slave.
-----
Footnote 255:
I cannot guess at ‘M. R.’ Prince Maximilian’s second name was
William.
-----
APPENDIX C
NOTE ON THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION IN SCOTLAND, AS IT AFFECTED THE
HANOVERIAN SUCCESSION
The Church of Scotland was, in the main, well affected to the Union
and the consequences which it entailed as regards the Succession.
But the friends of the House of Hanover had to guard against two
distinct sources of weakness within the Establishment itself.
(I) Episcopacy in Scotland had never been more than a compromise,
even in the districts where it had not been violently opposed. The
best instance of this is Aberdeenshire, where protests against the
government of Charles II are late in date and are confined to verbal
expressions of sympathy with the persecuted Presbyterians. But the
_Records of the Exercise_ [Presbytery] _of Alford_ (New Spalding
Club, 1897), dealing with the period 1662-1688, show clearly enough
that the episcopal function was ordination, and that the government
and, in many respects, the public worship of the Church was
Presbyterian. The effect of this was that, at the Revolution,
Episcopal clergymen were permitted to remain in their parishes on
condition of their taking the oath to William and Mary, although
they were forbidden to take part in Presbyteries, Synods, or
Assemblies. The tendency was for such men to conform to Presbytery,
but they formed a distinct ‘left wing.’ They were most numerous in
the north-east, and they were well represented in the Universities.
Both the Universities of Aberdeen, for example, were Jacobite in
sympathy. The result was that many ministers shared in, and urged
their people to join, the ’15. They were deposed in 1716, and the
Universities were ‘purged’ by the Commission of 1717.
(2) A section of the more robust Presbyterians in the Church
sympathised with their brethren who had declined to accept the
Revolution Settlement, and their feeling was accentuated by a gross
breach of faith on the part of the British Parliament—the passing of
the Patronage Act of 1712, which disturbed the Church for more than
a century and a half. So strong was this tendency that, as late as
1745, the Provincial Synod of Moray considered it necessary to
inform George II that ‘with pleasure we reflect that very few of the
people who hold communion with us have joined those enemies of your
Majesty’s crown and government.’ (Allardyce, _Jacobite Papers_.)
Episcopalian Jacobitism within the Church practically disappears in
1716, and the clergy, as represented in ecclesiastical and academic
records, were devotedly loyal to George I and II, from that date.
Outside the Church we have a body who were not Dissenters in the
English sense, for they approved of the constitution of the Church,
but objected to the establishment of Episcopacy in England, and the
toleration of Dissenters in Scotland. They were the men who had
suffered most in the ‘killing time,’ and their only associations
with the functions of government were connected with Grierson of
Lagg and Bloody Mackenzie. They considered it possible that James
Stewart might be turned from the error of his ways, and take the
Covenant as Charles II had done. Their attitude, in fact, was
precisely similar to that of their predecessors, who had crowned
Charles II after fighting against Charles I. They declined to
acknowledge the Revolution Settlement and the Union. They spoke of
Queen Anne as ‘that wicked Jezabel the pretended Queen,’ and ‘the
late woman.’ But even when they had little hope of the Pretender’s
conversion, they protested against ‘the Prince of Hanover, who hath
been bred and brought up in the Luthren religion, which is not only
different from but even in many things contrar unto that purity in
doctrine, reformation, and religion we in these nations had attained
unto.’ (_Protestation against the Union._)
The Episcopalians, the largest section of Protestant Dissenters,
were, almost without exception, High Tories. They had suffered for
refusing the oath to William and Mary, and had undergone some
trifling inconveniences as the defeated and unpopular party. The
rising of 1715 was, therefore, very largely supported by
Episcopalians, who found themselves ranged along with extreme
Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. The religious aspect of the ’15
and the ’45 has never been satisfactorily examined. Mr. Blaikie
said, not long since, that the ‘45 was much more Presbyterian than
is commonly imagined. I hope he will work out the subject.
R. S. RAIT.
INDEX
Act for the further Security of the Protestant Succession, 370
Act of Precedence, 404, 406
Act of Security (1704), 372-3
Act of Settlement (1701), 7, 225 _note_, 321-2
Act of Union (1707), 373, 392
Addison, 388-9;
cited, 335 _note_
Adolphus John, Prince, 108-9
Alexander VII, Pope, 162
Amalia, Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel, 97
Amalia, Raugravine (niece of Sophia), 102, 371
Amalia von Solms, Princess of Orange, 43, 56, 82
Anna Eleonora, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 115
Anna Maria, Duchess of Savoy, 225 _and note_, 301, 321
Anne, Queen (wife of James I), 13
Anne, Queen of England, suggested marriage of, with George Lewis,
189;
Bill of Rights (1689) as affecting, 217;
birth of her son the Duke of Gloucester, 219;
political intrigue (1700), 312;
attitude towards Sophia and relations with her, 363, 366 _and
notes_—9, 386-7, 390-1, 394, 396, 403, 404 _note_ 173, 408,
410;
attitude towards Hanoverian Succession, 366, 368-9, 391, 396,
409, 412-13;
towards her half-brother James, 369, 372, 392-3, 408;
proposed visit of Sophia to England opposed by, 370, 386;
death of her husband, 395;
ministerial crisis (1710), 396-8;
relations with Augustus II, King of Poland, 404 _note_ 173;
illness (1713), 414, 415;
speech at opening of Parliament (Feb. 1714), 416-17;
attack of erysipelas (Mar. 1714), 437 _note_;
letter to Sophia (Apr. 1714), 421-2;
attitude towards affair of delayed Parliamentary writ for
Electoral Prince, 419, 426;
letters to Hanover on the subject, 428-31;
dismisses Oxford, 437;
last illness, 437;
appoints Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer, 438;
death, 436, 438;
political incapacity, 368-9, 387;
Toryism, 368;
otherwise mentioned, 8, 293 _note_, 305, 307-8, 344, 347, 365,
389 _note_
Anne of Gonzaga (Princess Palatine), marriage and career of, 66-8;
schemes of, 126, 129, 166, 175, 176
Antony Ulric, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, ambition and career
of, 146-7;
conversion to Roman Catholicism, 176;
marriage scheme for his son, 185;
romance by, regarding Sophia Dorothea, 192 _and note_, 239 _and
note_, 283 _note_;
opposition regarding Hanoverian Electorate, 235-8;
_Mesopotamian Shepherdess_ by, 333 _note_; mentioned, 201, 203
Arcy, Marquis de, 193
Arundel, Lord, 71 _note_
Assing, Rosemunde von, 343 _note_
Attainder and Abjuration Acts (1702), 364-5
Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 145
Augustus II, King of Poland, 404 _and note_ 173
Augustus the Strong. _See_ Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony
Augustus Frederick, Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 185, 189
Austria, Bavarian treaty with (1628), 48
Aveiro, Duke of, 106
Bahr, von, 282
Balati, Abbé, 164 _note_, 194
Bannier, Colonel, 278
Barclay, Robert, 122
Bard. _See_ Bellmont
Bayle, 300
Behmen, Jacob, 343
Bellmont (Bellamont), Lady (Francesca Bard), 103, 375 _note_
Benedicta Henrietta (niece of Sophia), 69, 128, 166, 167
Berkeley, Earl of, 440
Berner, E., cited, 188 _note_
Bernhard of Weimar, Duke, 50, 60, 71
Bernstorff, Baron Andreas Gottlieb von, relations of, with de
Robethon, 378;
accompanies George Lewis to
England, 442;
estimate of, 376-7;
otherwise mentioned, 185, 276, 351-2, 411
Berwick, Duke of, 321, 400, 409, 413;
communication from, to Prince James quoted, 420
Bill of Rights (1689), 5, 7, 216-20
Blanche, Electress Palatine, 17
Blanche, Queen, 128
Bohemia:
Frederick V elected king of, 31;
deposed, 36-7
Heirship to, question as to, 21 _and note_ 8, 29-31
Böhme, Jacob, 34 _note_
Bolingbroke, —, attitude of, towards Bothmer, 405 _and note_ 175;
policy of, 410;
rivalry with Oxford, 418, 428, 434;
misses his opportunity, 437-8;
cited, 442;
otherwise mentioned, 408, 413, 415, 416, 422, 426, 429
Boncour, de, 214
Borkowski cited, 313 _note_
Bossuet, 348
Bothmer, Hans Caspar von, Hanoverian envoy extraordinary in London,
399, 400-2;
mission to England on Sophia’s death, 433-4;
activities on Queen Anne’s death, 439 _and note_;
estimate of, 378-9;
otherwise mentioned, 313, 351, 362 _note_, 397, 404, 412, 419,
427, 438
Boufleurs, Marshal, 228
Bouillon, Duke of, 67
Boyer, 429
Brandenburg:
Hanover, alliance with, 235-6, 289
Prussian kingdom, absorption into, 289
Brauns, Baron, 381
Brinon, Mme. de, 175, 177 _note_, 336;
efforts of, to convert Sophia to Roman Catholicism, 348-9
Brisson, Mme. de, 135
Bromley, Secretary, 415
Brunswick, origin of Duchy of, 144
Buckingham, Duke of (1629), 46
Buckingham, — (1705), 387
Bülow, Minister von, 276
Bunbury, Selina, cited, 12 _note_
Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, action of, on Bill of Rights, 218;
Sophia’s correspondence with, 342;
her estimate of book by, 334;
cited, 214-15, 323-4, 386-7;
quoted, 312
Bussche, Frau von dem. _See_ Weyhe, Mme. von
Bussche, Major-General von dem, 248
Calixtus (theologian), 153
Camerarius, Ludwig, 45, 94
Carleton, Sir D. (Viscount Dorchester), 44
Carlisle, Earl of, 369
Caroline Matilda (daughter of George III), 280 _note_ 112
Caroline of Ansbach. _See_ Wilhelmina Caroline
Carray (? Carr), Lady, 86
Cartignano, Count of, 15-16
Catharine d’Orléans, 129
Celle, Duchess of. _See_ Eleonora
Celle, Duke of. _See_ George William
Chapman, Rev. Alexander, 25 _note_
Charbonnier, 328
Charles, Duke of Lorraine, 195
Charles, Elector Palatine (nephew of Sophia), 8, 99, 101 _and
note_, 230
Charles, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, 214
Charles I, King of England, foreign policy of, 46-7;
internal policy, 372 _note_;
acknowledges Charles Lewis as Elector Palatine, 59;
efforts for Palatine House, 71 _note_;
execution of, 83
Charles II, King of England, rumour of projected marriage of, with
Sophía, 82-5;
relations with Sophía at the Hague, 84-5;
with his aunt Elizabeth, 137-8 _and note_ 59;
with Sophia during his reign, 209;
death of, 210;
otherwise mentioned, 8, 11, 114, 137 _note_ 59, 167, 183 _note_
Charles II, King of Spain, 178, 317
Charles III, King of Spain, 400
Charles VI, Emperor, 348
Charles X Gustavus, King of Sweden, 108
Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, 15
Charles Lewis, Elector Palatine (brother of Sophia), birth of, 26;
Sophia’s relations with, 57;
visit to England (1635), 59;
armed attempt on the Palatinate, 59-60;
imprisoned by Richelieu, 60;
renews attempt for the Palatinate, 60-1;
suggestion of assuming British Crown, 61-2 _notes_;
residence in England, 62;
relations with his brother Philip, 80;
position under Peace of Westphalia, 83;
efforts for his subjects, 88-9 _and note_;
relations with his mother, 93-4, 138, 140-1;
quarrel with Rupert, 94-6 _and note_;
marriage (1650), 97;
domestic difficulties, 96-102;
relations with Ferdinand III, 107;
Sophia’s wedding (1658), 114;
marriage of his daughter (1671), 89, 175;
death of, 8, 196;
characteristics of, 56-9;
love of his country, learning and liberal-mindedness of, 90-2;
cited, 333;
otherwise mentioned, 52 _note_, 68, 122, 133, 137 _note_ 59, 138,
163
Charles Lewis, Raugrave (nephew of Sophia), 249
Charles Maurice (nephew of Sophia), 102
Charles Philip, Prince (son of Sophia), 171, 202, 222, 224, 228
Charlotte Elizabeth, Electress Palatine (sister-in-law of Sophia),
conjugal difficulties and troubles of, 96-102, 116;
characteristics of, 98, 104;
attitude towards Sophia, 108
Charlotte Felicitas, Duchess of Modena (grandniece of Sophia), 167
Charlotte Sophia, Princess of Courland, 103 _and note_
Chéruel, M., cited, 67
Chevreau, Urban, 176 _and note_;
cited, 336
Christian, Count of Anhalt, 19, 29-30
Christian, Duke of Brunswick, 42 _and note_ 22
Christian, Prince (son of Sophia), birth of, 171;
at French Court (1687-9), 206;
attitude towards George Lewis’ accession, 288;
death of, 202-3, 339 _note_ 139
Christian of Halberstadt, 45-7, 145
Christian IV, King of Denmark, 47
Christian V, King of Denmark, 234, 236
Christian Lewis, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 150-1, 162, 170
Christina, Queen of Sweden, 50 _note_, 59, 73, 77 _note_, 162, 335
Clarendon, Earl of (Lord Cornbury), 434 _and note_, 440
Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, 104;
quoted, 65
Clement XI, Pope, 322-3, 363, 388 _note_
Clifford, H., cited, 41 _note_
Cocceius, Prof. Johannes, 118
Collins, Anthony, 342
Colt, Lady, Sophia’s correspondence with, 221 _note_ 92, 428 _note_
Colt, Sir William Dutton, 221 _and notes_, 222;
despatches of, cited, 257
Combe Abbey, 12 _and note_–14
Conway, Lord, 44
Conway, Sir Edward, 35-6
Cowper, Lord, 423
Craggs, Secretary, 439
Craven, Earl of, armed attack by, on the Palatinate, 59;
imprisonment and ransom, 60, 63;
devotion to Elizabeth of Bohemia, 77-8, 137;
correspondence with Sophia, 211;
mission to Hanover after passing of Bill of Rights, 219;
otherwise mentioned, 77 _note_ 39, 81 _note_, 86, 117 _note_,
140, 365
Cresset, James, envoy at Lüneburg Courts, 222-3;
marriage of, 222 _note_;
cited, 274, 280 _note_ 113, 286, 288 _note_;
otherwise mentioned, 319, 367, 370-1, 375
Danckelmann, Eberhard von, 203, 296-7
Dartmouth, Lord, 212
Dawes, Archbishop, 415
Degenfeld, Louisa von, 58, 98-102
Della Rota, 45
Denmark:
Danish War (1625-6), 47
Jealousy of, towards Sweden, 45
Lauenburg Succession question, 224-5, 237, 271
Descartes, correspondence of, with Elizabeth (sister of Sophia),
72-3 _and note_, 83-4;
death of, 105
Devonshire, Duke of, 404
Digby, John, 14, 41
Doebner, Dr. R., cited, 183
Dohna, Achatius von, 31
Dohna, Alexander von, 313 _note_
Doncaster, Lord (Earl of Carlisle), 44
Donne, 44
Dormer, Jane, 41 _note_
Dorothea, Electress of Brandenburg, 151
Dorset, Earl of, 439-40
Dover, Lord, cited, 188 _note_
Dudley (son of Prince Rupert), 103
Dutton, Sir W. D., cited, 253-4
Edward (brother of Sophia), conversion of, to Roman Catholicism, 9,
67;
at Heidelberg, 69 _note_, 105;
career of, 66-9 _and note_;
Charles Lewis’ allowance to, 94;
relations with Louisa Hollandina, 126-7;
Elizabeth’s bequest to, 141 _note_ 63
Eleonora d’Olbreuze (Mme. de Harburg, Countess of Wilhelmsburg),
Duchess of Celle, connexion of, with George William, Duke of
Celle, 168-71, 180-1, 184-6, 193;
styled Mme. de Harburg, 170;
jealousy against, 182 _note_ 76;
created Countess of Wilhelmsburg, 184;
honoured by Empress Eleonora, 185;
marriage with Duke of Celle, 186;
subsequent honours, 187;
attitude towards her daughter, 240, 282;
Sophia’s attitude towards, 168, 170, 187, 192, 240, 310, 337;
urges William III to decided course anent Hanoverian Succession,
308-9;
relations with Sophia on the subject, 310;
death of, 282;
otherwise mentioned, 221, 288, 377
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (mother of Sophia):
Career, chronological sequence of:
Childhood at Combe Abbey, 12;
Roman Catholic plot regarding, 13;
youth, 22;
marriage, 12, 14, 23;
life at Heidelberg, 24-9;
birth of two sons and eldest daughter, 26;
attitude towards Bohemian Kingship question, 32-3;
at Prague, 34-7;
birth of third son, Rupert, 35;
flight from Prague, 37;
in Silesia, 37;
in Brandenburg, 38-9;
birth of fifth child, Maurice, 39;
at Berlin, 39;
at Wolfenbüttel, 40;
in the Netherlands, 40;
exile of, 2, 5, 6, 44;
loss of infant son Lewis (1624), 53;
of eldest son (1629), 25, 53;
of infant daughter Charlotte (1630), 53;
attitude towards Swedish Royal Family, 50 _note_;
towards Charles I of England (1644), 62 _note_ 30;
on departure of Louisa Hollandina (1658), 126-7;
visit to England (1661), 137-9;
death, 140, 142
Characteristics of:
Beauty, 43
Frivolity, 57
High spirit, 43
Self-consciousness, 29
Soldier-sympathy, power of attracting, 43
Vigour of mind and body, 52
Children, her own, attitude towards, 34, 54, 65 _note_ 33, 68
_note_, 78, 80-1;
their attitude towards her, 56-7, 141 _note_;
attitude towards children in general, 136
Debts of, 29, 56, 76, 93-4, 138
Family of, fate of, 8-9
Letters of, quoted, 50 _note_, 52 _note_
Portrait of, in C.C.C., Cambs., 25 _note_
Pursuits and interests of, 24, 25, 33, 52, 54, 57
Titles of: Queen of Bohemia, 52 _and note_;
Queen of Hearts, 41 _note_;
the King’s only sister, 52 _note_
Will of, 131, 141 _note_ 63
otherwise mentioned, 75, 86, 336 _note_
Elizabeth, Princess (sister of Sophia), birth of, 26;
childhood, 34, 39;
career, 9, 70-1;
relations with her mother, 57, 80-1;
affected by King Charles’ execution, 83;
visits to Heidelberg, 92, 105;
with Electress Charlotte, 116-17;
at Cassel, 117;
Abbess of Herford, 118-25;
death of, 125, 196;
inscription on tomb of, 125 _note_;
characteristics of, 70-3;
match-making propensities of, 70, 103;
mentioned, 141 _note_ 63
Elizabeth Charlotte (aunt of Sophia), 39
Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans (niece of Sophia), birth
of, 99;
with her aunt (1656-63), 99, 172;
nature of upbringing of, 244;
visit to her grandmother, 136, 157;
trip to Holland with her aunt, 157;
recalled to Heidelberg (1663), 173-4;
conversion of, to Roman Catholicism, 8, 68, 89, 174-7;
marriage, 89, 174-7;
subsequent career of, 178-9;
on Maximilian William, 204 _note_ 88;
on Ernest Augustus, 205, 206 _note_;
good offices for Christian and Ernest Augustus, 205-6;
attitude towards Sophia Dorothea, 248, 249;
Königsmarck affair, 279;
on George Augustus’ succession prospects, 206 _and note_, 441
_note_ 192;
characteristics of, 59;
lifelong attitude towards Sophia, 151 _note_, 173, 377;
Stewart sympathies of, 393;
cited, 33, 108, 132-5, 159 _note_, 333, 393;
quoted, 151 _note_, 176, 332 _note_ 134, 336;
Sophia’s correspondence with, 10, 414;
nature and value of her own correspondence, 179-80;
correspondence cited and quoted, 177, 188 _note_, 191, 192, 234,
244 _note_;
otherwise mentioned, 135, 213, 240 _note_, 243, 283, 337, 339-40,
380
Elizabeth Louisa, Countess Palatine, Abbess of Herford, 117
Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (husband of Sophia):
Career, chronological sequence of:
First visit to Heidelberg, 107;
early acquaintance with Sophia, 107;
second visit to Heidelberg, 110;
George William’s arrangement in favour of, 112-13, 154-5, 181;
marriage with Sophia, 114;
intimacy with George William, 156;
jealousy of him, 157-8;
Bishop of Osnabrück, 158-9;
assists the United Provinces, 167;
operations against Sweden, 168;
conjugal infidelities of, 190-1 _and note_;
victory at Conz, 183;
attitude towards Sophia Dorothea, 247, 253-4;
at the defence of Frankfort (1689), 228;
proposal of, regarding conversion to Church of Rome, 232, 348;
Swedish treaty (1691), 263;
attainment of Electorate (1692), 222-3, 228-34;
investiture, 234-5;
last journey to Italy (1684), 247-8;
attitude towards the British Revolution, 212, 215;
adherence to Grand Alliance (1692), 267;
ill-health (1694), 245-6;
action in Königsmarck affair, 274-5;
Lauenburg claims (1694), 237;
last illness, 224, 286-7;
death, 212-13, 224, 238, 276, 287, 296
Dynastic policy of, 184, 193-4
Energy of, 163
Extravagance of, 198, 330
Estimate of, 156
Political attitude towards his wife, 241, 340
mentioned, 266
Ernest Augustus, Prince (son of Sophia), birth of, 171, 205;
devotion to his eldest brother, 205, 271;
at French Court (1687-9), 206;
remains in Hanover (1714), 441;
succeeds to Bishopric of Osnabrück, 441 _and note_ 193;
death of, 207;
estimate of, 206
Ernest Lewis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, 240 _note_
Estrées, Angélique d’, 128
Eugene, Prince, 425
Evelyn quoted, 56;
cited, 261 _note_
Falaiseau, 351
Feder cited, 114
Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria, 30-31
Ferdinand II, Emperor, 107 _note_, 161
Ferdinand III, Emperor, 60, 107
Ferdinand IV, King of the Romans, 107-8
Ferrar, Nicolas, 24
Fischer, Prof. Kuno, cited, 331;
quoted, 340
Foley, Paul, 218
Fraiser, Sir Peter, 380
France:
Grand Alliance against. _See_ Grand Alliance
Hanoverian Succession recognised by, 405, 408
Huguenot persecutions in, 177 _note_
Palatinate’s troubles from (Orleans War), 90, 178
Partition Treaty (First) with England (1698), 307
Partition Treaty (Second) with England, 310, 317-18
Peace with, proposal of (1711), 400-1, 403, 407;
accomplished, 409
Savoy’s adhesion to (1696), 302
Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, 154
Frederick, Prince of Wales (great-grandson of Sophia), 359-60
Frederick III, Elector of Brandenburg. _See_ Frederick I, King of
Prussia
Frederick I, Elector Palatine, 181 _note_
Frederick II, Elector Palatine, 16 _note_, 21 _note_ 9
Frederick III, Elector Palatine, 16 _note_, 18, 40
Frederick IV, Elector Palatine, 17, 19
Frederick V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia (father of
Sophia), visit of, to England (1612), 21 _and note_ 8, 22;
marriage, 12;
difficulties as to court precedence, 27-8;
approves league with Savoy, 26;
elected King of Bohemia, 31;
deposed, 36-7;
under ban of the Empire, 38, 41;
secret visit to Palatinate (1627), 48;
meets Gustavus Adolphus (1632), 49;
death of, 50;
characteristics of, 20, 37;
devotion to his wife, 52-3;
estimate of, by Wotton, 27
Frederick I, King of Prussia (Frederick III, Elector of
Brandenburg), marriage of, to Sophia Charlotte, 203, 207, 292;
succeeds his father as Elector, 294;
concerts measures against Louis XIV, 227;
efforts regarding Hanoverian Electorate, 234-5, 238;
leagues of alliance with Ernest Augustus, 235-6;
at Cleves (1696), 303;
intrigue with Countess von Wartenberg, 299, 357;
coronation (1701), 289, 300;
relations with George Lewis, 358 _note_;
otherwise mentioned, 302, 330 _note_ 133, 341, 343
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 258
Frederick Augustus (Augustus the Strong), Elector of Saxony, King
of Poland, 237, 261, 272, 278, 289
Frederick Augustus, Prince (son of Sophia), birth of, 157;
jealousy of his elder brother, 201;
death of, 202, 221-2, 224, 228;
estimate of, 171, 172
Frederick Henry, Prince (brother of Sophia), birth of, 26;
marriages projected for, 45, 46;
death of, 25, 26, 53
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, 21 _note_ 8, 40, 43, 55
Frederick Ulric, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 145
Frederick William (the Great), Elector of Brandenburg, sentiments
of, towards Sophia’s sister Elizabeth, 71, 72, 117;
efforts regarding _Wildfangsstreit_, 89 _note_;
marriage with Dowager Duchess Dorothea, 151;
attitude towards Hanoverian Court, 203;
favours William of Orange, 214;
on creation of ninth Electorate, 229-30;
opposes Duke John Frederick, 163
Frederick William I, King of Prussia (grandson of Sophia), birth
of, 294;
childhood, 299;
William III’s attitude towards (1700), 312-14, 317;
education, 313 _note_;
marriage with granddaughter of Sophia, 249, 284, 346 _note_ 145;
relations with George Lewis, 435
Fuchs, Paul von, 199, 227;
cited, 338
Gabor, Bethlen, 47
Gargan (secretary to Sophia) cited, 310
Garnett, Dr. Richard, cited, 251 _note_
Gaultier, Abbé, cited, 415, 426
Geerds, Dr. Robert, cited, 259 _note_
Gentz, 353
George I, King of England. _See_ George Lewis
George II, King of England. _See_ George Augustus
George III, King of England, correspondence with Copenhagen
destroyed by order of, 280 _note_ 112;
letters of Sophia destroyed by order of, 393;
kindliness of, to Stewart family, 394 _note_
George IV, King of England, 394 _note_
George, Duke of Lüneburg, 148
George, Prince of Denmark, 189, 318, 337;
death of, 395
George Augustus, King George II of England (grandson of Sophia),
birth of, 195, 247;
his father’s attitude towards, 284, 441;
at Göhrde, 307;
Queen Anne’s opposition to his visiting England, 370;
marriage of, 359;
relations with his wife, 288, 359;
receives the Garter, 388, 404 _note_ 172;
created Duke of Cambridge, 388;
precedence for, 404;
suggestion of sending, over to England (1713), 418, 419, 422-3;
delay in transmission of Parliamentary writ for, 423-7;
Queen Anne’s letter to, 429, 431;
rumoured suggestion of passing over, in the English Succession,
206 _and note_, 441 _note_ 192;
characteristics of, 362;
attitude towards his mother, 284 _and note_;
domestic language of, as British sovereign, 55;
otherwise mentioned, 280, 299, 312
George Frederick of Waldeck, 163
George Lewis, King George I of England (son of Sophia):
Career, chronological sequence of:
Birth, 157;
victory at Conz (1675), 183;
visit to England (1680-1), 189, 210;
proposed match with Sophia Dorothea, 190 _note_ 79, 191-4;
the marriage, 194-5, 231, 239-41;
military exploits, 195;
at the defence of Frankfort, 228;
estrangement from his wife, 246, 249, 252-4;
campaigning against Turks, 248;
recreating at Florence and Naples, 248;
infidelity to his wife, 250;
relations with Melusina von der Schulenburg (Duchess of
Kendal), 251 _and note_;
the Königsmarck affair, 282-4;
divorce, 276;
succeeds his father as Elector, 289;
repulses Antony Ulric’s attack on Hanover, 238;
meets William III at Göhrde (1698), 307;
receives the Garter, 325;
strong position of (1705), 376;
relations with Frederick I of Prussia, 358 _note_;
expresses his views on residence in England, 391;
commands army of the Lower Rhine (1707), 395;
envoy of, admitted to Electoral College (1708), 238, 395;
on dismissal of Sunderland, 396-7;
refuses to oust Marlborough in supreme command, 398-9;
against proposed peace with France, 401, 403, 407;
instructions to von Schütz the younger, 413;
reply to Queen Anne’s letter (May, 1714), 422-3, 427;
affair of the delayed writ, 426-7;
death of his mother, 433-4;
has fresh instrument of Regency prepared, 435;
in friendly relations with German princes, 435;
accession of, as King George I of England, 439;
proclamation as king, 10;
leaves Hanover, 440;
sails for England, 442;
coronation, 443;
death, 206-7
Characteristics of:
Courage and military capacity, 242
Cynicism, 283 _note_
Firmness and impassivity, 355, 443
Loyalty, 242
Reserve, 171, 242
Self-restraint, 443
Sincerity, 242, 444
Stolidity, 195, 242
Court of, as Elector, tone of, 339 _note_ 138
Domestic language of, as British sovereign, 55
Herrenhausen gardens arranged to suit taste of, 328
Relations with:
Anne, Queen, 368, 369
Ernest Augustus (his youngest brother), 205, 271
Marlborough, Duke of, 375-6, 384, 398
Sophia (his mother), 171, 244 _and note_, 288, 340, 355
Sophia Charlotte (his sister), 297
Succession question, attitude towards, 309, 319, 323;
(1705), 379-80;
(1713-14), 412-13, 418-19, 423
otherwise mentioned, 110, 194 _note_, 352, 366 _note_ 157, 389
_note_, 393, 402, 441 _note_ 192
George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (later of Celle), visit
of, to Heidelberg (1656), 109-10;
suitor for Sophia, 110;
breaks off his engagement, 111;
renunciation in favour of his younger brother, 112-13, 154-5,
181, 231;
his brother’s jealousy, 157-8;
difficulties made by John Frederick as to succession, 162-3;
assists the United Provinces, 167;
operations against Sweden, 168;
connexion with Eleonora d’Olbreuze, 168-71, 180-1, 185-6;
marriage with her, 186;
court of, 182 _note_ 75;
favours William of Orange, 214;
the Königsmarck affair, 275-6, 280 _and note_ 113, 281;
conference with William III at Göhrde, 307;
meeting with William III at the Loo (1700), 311, 312;
later interview with him (1701), 362;
death of, 376;
estimate of, 151-3;
otherwise mentioned, 150, 201, 303, 305, 309, 319, 366 _note_ 157
George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 38, 71
Giusti, Tommaso, 329
Gloucester, Duke of (son of Princess Anne), birth of, 219;
delicacy of, 308-9;
death of, 311
Godolphin, Earl of, 217, 369, 382, 399, 402
Goedeke, 439-40
Göhrde, the, 307 _and note_
Gondomar, Count, 24
Gourville, de, 166, 182, 292;
cited, 337, 345
Grana, Dossa, 329
Grand Alliance:
Conclusion of, 228
Hanoverian adhesion to, 222, 267
Savoy’s adhesion to (1695), 302;
abandonment of (1696), 225, 302
Saxony’s adhesion to, solicited, 221 _and note_ 93
Green, Mrs. Everett, work of, cited, 257, 265 _note_
Grote, Count Otto von, 233-6
Grote, Baron Thomas von, mission of, to London (1712), 405-6, 408;
death of, 411;
cited, 335;
mentioned, 352
Guelfs, German branch of, 143-5;
Leibniz’ History of, 243, 354
Gustavus (brother of Sophia), 53-4
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landing of, in Pomerania, 11,
49;
death of, 50;
mentioned, 45, 148
Gustavus II Adolphus, King of Sweden, 15
Gwynne, Sir Roland, 384, 390
Halberstadt, 42 _and note_ 21
Halifax, Lord (Charles Montagu), 388 and note–9, 391, 404 _note_
172
Hamilton, Duke of, 84
Hammerstein, George Christopher von, 110, 115
Handel, 412 _note_
Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 386
Hanover, House of:
Alliance of, with Brandenburg and Saxony, 232-3
Electorate conferred on, 222-3, 228, 234;
investiture, 234-5;
introduction of envoy to Electoral College, 236-9, 395
Rise of, 7, 10
Strong position of (1705), 376
Succession of, to British Crown:
Significance of, to Britons, 3-4
Settlement of. _See_ Act of Settlement
Hanover, Leine Palace at, 247 _note_, 281
Harburg, Mme. de. _See_ Eleonora, Duchess of Celle
Harcourt, Lord, 423-5
Harding, Rev. Dick, 77
Hardwicke, Lord, 315
Harington, Lord and Lady, 12-13, 22, 24
Harley, Robert. _See_ Oxford
Harley, Thomas, missions of, to Hanover, 404, 407, 410, 421-2, 426,
427
Harling, Frau von, 173, 280, 291, 299
Harrington, James, 81 _note_
Hartlip, S., quoted, 117 _note_
Haversham, Lord, 383
Hedwig, Princess of Denmark, 107 _note_
Hedwig Sophia, Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel, 72, 117
Hedwig Sophia, Landgravine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 103
Hedwig Sophia, Princess, 301
Heidelberg Castle, 17-18
Heidelberg Catechism, 25
Heidelberg University, 18
Heiland, Hiskias Eleazar, 101
Helmont, Francis Mercurius von, 332 _and note_ 134
Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (daughter of Charles I), 8, 175, 225
Henrietta Maria, Princess (sister of Sophia), characteristics and
career of, 74-5;
marriage of, 52 _note_, 106;
death of, 9, 116
Henrietta Maria, Queen, 81, 130
Henry, Count of Nassau. _See_ Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
Henry, Duke of Bouillon, 20
Henry, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 145
Henry, Prince (son of Charles I), 7-8
Henry, Prince of Wales (son of James I), 7, 22
Henry of Dannenberg, 181 _note_
Henry the Lion, 143
Henry Casimir of Nassau-Dietz, 189
Henry Frederick, Prince (brother of Sophia), 26
Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 145
Herbert, Colonel, quoted, 218
Herbert of Cherbury, Lord, 44
Hereford, Lord, 395
Herford, 118-19
Herrenhausen, 327-9
Hervey, Lord, cited, 284 _note_
Hoffmann, memoranda of, cited, 424-5
Holstenius, 153-4
Hompesch, General, 304
Hoorn, Anna Maria van, 122
Howard, Mrs. Charles, 395
Howe, Brigadier-General Emmanuel Scroope, 141 _note_ 63, 392 _and
note_ 168
Hughes, Margaret, 103, 392 _note_ 168
Hutton, Dr., 397
Ibberville, despatches of, cited, 416 _note_
Ilten, Jobst von, 234, 237, 279, 313
Innocent X, Pope, 154
Innocent XI, Pope, 198 _note_
Innocent XII, Pope, 234, 322
Jambonneau, M. de, 69 _note_
James I, King of England (grandfather of Sophia), European
ambitions of, 14-16;
family pride of, 26-7;
attitude towards Bohemian Kingship question, 32, 36;
negotiations with Mansfeld and Halberstadt, 45-6;
otherwise mentioned, 13, 39, 41
James II, King of England (cousin of Sophia), accession of, 210;
relations with Sophia, 210-11, 317;
abdication of, 5;
hopes of regaining his kingdom, 303;
refuses aid towards securing Polish throne, 303 _note_;
Pope Clement XI’s letter to, 323;
death of, 363;
otherwise mentioned, 8, 139, 394 _note_
James, Prince of Wales (son of James II), birth of, 211;
calumnious doubts regarding, 211-12;
recognised by Louis XIV as king, 363;
Anne’s attitude towards, 369, 372, 392-3, 408;
letter to Pope Clement XI on coming of age, 388 _note_;
expedition to Scotland, 394;
rumours as to succession of, 402;
Berwick’s communication to (1712), 409;
Hanoverian protest against residence of, in Lorraine, 413, 422;
scheme for bringing over to England and Anglicanism (1713-14),
413, 415-16;
Berwick’s communication to (1714), quoted, 420;
proclamation against (July, 1714), 436;
otherwise mentioned, 8, 306, 315-16, 381, 400, 413
James, B. B., cited, 121 _note_
Jeffreys, Lord, 365
John Casimir, Administrator, 19
John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, disposition of his
father regarding, 150;
conversion of, to Roman Catholicism (1651), 153-4;
quarrel regarding Succession, 112, 162-3;
French sympathies and tastes of, 111, 165, 287;
Herrenhausen Palace begun by (1665), 327;
Leibniz engaged by, as librarian, 164-5, 197, 233, 354;
Electorate desired by, 165, 229;
career of, at Hanover, 164-5, 197;
marriage of, 166;
death of, 165, 180, 193;
estimate of, 112, 167
John George IV, Elector of Saxony, 237, 358
John Sobiesky, King of Poland, 303 _note_
Joseph I, Emperor (King of the Romans), 198 _note_, 231, 400
Kendal, Duchess of (Melusina der Schulenburg), 246 _note_, 251-2,
442
Keppel (Earl of Albemarle), 302, 304
Kielmannsegg, Baron von, 250-1
Kielmannsegg, Baroness von, 330 _note_ 133, 440, 442
Killigrew, Tom, 76 _and note_
King, Major-General (Lord Eythin), 60
Klopp, cited, 417 _note_
Knesebeck, Eleonora von dem, 237, 239 _note_, 264, 272, 273, 277,
284
Köcher, Prof. Adolf, cited, 240 _note_, 259 _note_
Königsmarck, Count von, 259 _note_
Königsmarck, Aurora von, 237, 255-6, 261-2, 278
Königsmarck, Count Charles John von, 260-1
Königsmarck, Count Philip Christopher von, 254-81, App. B
Kreyenberg, von, 399, 411, 426, 438
Kufstein, Count, 63
La Manoelinière, Susan de, 191 _note_
Labadie and Labadists, 119-21, 343 _note_
Lassaye, Marquis de, 248-9
Lauderdale, Duke of, 84
Lauenburg Duchy claim, 225, 232, 237, 271
L’Hermitage, 411
Leibniz, position of, as librarian at Hanover, 164-5, 197, 233,
354;
expresses views on Electoral position, 229;
varied activities at Hanover, 354;
President of the Berlin Society of Sciences (1700), 298;
_Théodicée_ (1710), 290, 354-5;
political influence on the decline, 352, 397;
epigram on Queen Anne, 411;
Abbess Elizabeth’s correspondence with, 124;
Sophia’s friendship with, 9, 288, 327, 331, 350, 351, 354-6;
her correspondence with him cited, 204, 215, 216, 311, 344, 347,
381, 419, 424, 427, 432;
Sophia Charlotte the pupil of, 207;
her friendship with, 290, 297-8 _and note_, 356;
Caroline of Ansbach’s friendship with, 356, 358;
views and activities on the English Succession question, 305,
308, 309, 311, 319-20, 323, 350-2, 374-5, 384, 412;
philosophy of, 334;
estimate of, 353;
cited, 102, 114, 274, 389;
quoted, 341, 343, 344, 345-6;
otherwise mentioned, 153, 195, 212, 223, 227, 279, 300, 343
_note_, 364, 392, 396, 398, 402, 407, 431
Leopold, Emperor, 184, 211, 222, 233
L’Epinay, Colonel de, 78-80
Lewenhaupt, Count Axel, 261
Lewenhaupt, Countess, 255
Lewis Philip (son of Louisa Juliana), 39
Lexington, Lord, 224-5
Limbach, President von, 233, 238-9
Lippe-Bückeburg, Countess Johanna von der, 430 _and note:_ 186, 432
Lodensteyners, 118
Longueville, Mme. de, cited, 79
Lösenius, 29
Loretto, 161
Louis II, Elector Palatine, 17
Louis XIV, King of France, courtesy of, towards Sophia, 178, 291-2;
Orleans War, 227;
attitude towards suggested re-marriage of William III, 301;
offers James II aid towards securing Polish throne, 303 _note_;
Peace of Ryswyk and relations with William III, 306;
First Partition Treaty (1698), 307;
attitude towards Act of Settlement, 321;
recognises James Prince of Wales as King, 363;
lukewarm in his support, 416;
secret offers of assistance to Queen Anne, 435;
otherwise mentioned, 129, 165, 182, 188 _note_, 278
Louis Philip (uncle of Sophia), regent of Palatinate, 50
Louisa, Raugravine (niece of Sophia), Sophia’s correspondence with,
cited, 286, 305, 317, 367;
companionship with Sophia, 430;
position of, at Hanover, 102
Louisa Charlotte, Duchess of Courland (cousin of Sophia), 38
Louisa Dorothea, Electoral Princess of Brandenburg (granddaughter
of Sophia), 302, 304
Louisa Henrietta, Electress, 72, 105
Louisa Hollandina, characteristics and career of, 73-4, 81;
Montrose’s project of marriage with, 84;
conversion of, to Roman Catholicism (1658), 9, 66, 68, 126-7;
in France, 127, 129-31;
Abbess of Maubuisson, 131-5;
death of, 135;
mentioned, 125
Louisa Juliana, Electress (grandmother of Sophia), retirement of,
from Heidelberg, 28;
on Bohemian Kingship question, 32;
Frederick’s children entrusted to, 34, 39;
religious fervour of, 19-20;
death of, 61;
otherwise mentioned, 20 _note_, 49
Lowther, Sir John, 218
Lucia, Countess of Bedford, 12 _note_
Lüneburg, House of, 148 (_see also names of Dukes of
Brunswick-Lüneburg_)
Luttrell cited, 325
Macaulay cited, 217 _note_
Maccioni, Valerio, Bishop of Morocco, 164 _and note_
Macclesfield, Earl of (1701), 324 _and note_
Macpherson cited, 411 _note_
Maintenon, Mme. de, 179, 337
Malebranche, 124
Mansfeld, 41-2, 45-7
Maria Anne (niece of Sophia), 128
Maria Eleonora, Queen-Dowager of Sweden, 50 _note_
Maria Eleonora (wife of Regent Louis Philip), 50
Maria-Elizabeth, Duchess of Holstein-Gottorp, 359
Maria Elizabeth, Princess, of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, 126-7
Marie of Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, 68
Marlborough, Duke of, in favour with Queen Anne, 369, 382;
relations with Elector George Lewis, 375-6, 384, 398;
visits to Hanover (1704 and 1705), 375, 384;
on the Gwynne letter, 390-1;
overthrow of, 397-9;
copies of Anne’s letters sent from Hanover to, 430 _and note_
185;
double dealing of, 435;
otherwise mentioned, 283, 425, 437
Mary of Orange, Queen of England, marriage of, 209;
attitude towards her father, 213;
relations with Sophia, 213, 222, 224;
Bill of Rights as affecting, 217;
death of, 224, 301;
otherwise mentioned, 8, 81, 82, 84, 214
Mary Beatrice, Queen (wife of James II), 213
Matilda (wife of Henry the Lion), 143
Matthias, Emperor, 30
Maubuisson, Abbey of, 127-9
Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse, 19, 20, 97
Maurice, Prince (brother of Sophia), birth of, 39;
in the British Civil War, 61, 63-4;
death of, 9;
characteristics of, 65-6
Maurice, Raugrave, 330 _note_ 132
Maurice of Orange (Nassau), Stadholder, 28, 32, 40, 43, 53, 56
Mauro, Abbate Hortensio, 164 _note_, 198
Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, 30, 32, 36, 41, 45
Maximilian Emmanuel, Elector of Bavaria, 300
Maximilian William, Prince (son of Sophia), birth of, 171;
early piety of, 204 _note_ 87;
protest and revolt against principle of primogeniture, 202-3,
252-3;
arrest of, 203;
release and subsequent career, 204;
conversion of, to Roman Catholicism, 204;
attitude towards George Lewis’ accession, 288-9;
estimate of, 204;
otherwise mentioned, 267, 332 _note_ 134, 340, 341
Mazarin, Cardinal, 67
Melville, Lewis, cited, 246 _note_
Metternich, von, 234
Meysenbug, Clara Elizabeth von. _See_ Platen, Baroness von
Meysenbug, Marie von. _See_ Weyhe
Meysenbug family, 190 _note_ 80
Mohun, Lord, 324
Molanus, Abbot Gerhard Wolter, career and estimate of, 346 _and
note_ 146;
quoted, 334-5;
mentioned, 343 _note_, 356
Moltke, von (Master of the Hunt at Hanover), 203-4, 252
Molyneux cited, 430
Montrose, Marquess of, 84
More, Dr. Henry, 117 _note_
Morton, Albertus, 29
Naturalisation Act (1705), 385-6, 388, 390
Netherlands, United Provinces of the:
Bishop of Münster’s attack on (1655-6), 167
Brunswick-Lüneburg, treaty with, 223
Elizabeth of Bohemia’s exile in, 2, 5, 6, 40, 44
English Succession, agreement as to, 388, 438
French invasion of (1672), 183
Nicholas, Secretary, 109
Nördlingen, battle of, 51, 59
Nottingham, Earl of, 423
Olbreuze, Mlle. d’. _See_ Eleonora, Duchess of Celle
Orleans, Duchess of. _See_ Elizabeth Charlotte
Orleans, Duke of (brother of Louis XIV), 175, 177
Orleans, Duke of (son of Elizabeth Charlotte), 177-8
Orleans War (1688-90), 90, 178, 227
Ormonde, 383, 401, 403, 420
Osnabrück, _See_ of:
English rumour as to, 348 _note_
Ernest Augustus (husband of Sophia), Bishop of, 157-8
Ernest Augustus (son of Sophia), Bishop of, 441 _and note_ 193
Lüneburg right regarding, 149, 192-3
Secular principality, proposed conversion into, 184
Otto the Child, 144
Oxford, Earl of (Robert Harley), attitude of, towards Bothmer, 405;
pronouncement of, against Hanoverian Succession, 415;
double-dealing of, 417;
rivalry with Bolingbroke, 418, 428, 434;
professes devotion to House of Hanover, 421, 429;
vacillation of, 436;
dismissed from office, 437;
policy of, 401-2;
estimate of, 396-7, 409;
otherwise mentioned, 370, 382, 406, 408, 413
Oxsordre, Mme. d’, 126
Paczkowski, Dr., 259 _note_
Palatinate:
Condition of (1627-32), 48-9;
(1633-4), 50-1;
(1635-44), 51, 60;
(1650), 88-9;
(1674-80), 89-90
Orleans War (1688-90), 90, 178, 227
_Wildfangsstreit_, 89 _note_
Palatine House, history of, and position in seventeenth century, 16
and note-17
Palmblad, Professor, 265 _note_
Penn, William, 122;
quoted, 123-4
Pepys quoted, 139
Peter the Great, Tsar, 191, 335
Peterborough, Earl of, 391
Philip, King of Spain (grandson of Louis XIV), 318, 363
Philip, Prince (brother of Sophia), career of, 80;
quarrel with de l’Epinay, 79;
death of, 9;
mentioned, 68
Platen, Count Ernest Augustus von, jealous of Colt, 221;
Hanoverian plenipotentiary at Augsburg, 231;
cited, 313;
otherwise mentioned, 248, 352, 367
Platen, Countess von (Clara Elizabeth von Meysenbug), mistress of
Elector Ernest Augustus, 190-1, 246;
opera-house built for, 199 _note_;
Königsmarck affair, 268-70, 272, 278, 280-1;
otherwise mentioned, 246 _note_, 248, 250, 262
Platen, Sophia Charlotte von. _See_ Kielmannsegg
Pless, Frau von, 28-9, 54
Podewils, Marshal von, 271
Poley, Edmund, 375 _note_
Polwarth, Lord, 426 _and note_
Portland, Earl of, 304, 365 _and note_
Quakers, 122 _and note_
Quarles, Francis, 24
Queensberry, Duke of, 373
Quirini zu Lynar, Count Rochus, 328, 329 _note_ 131
Rait, R. S., on religious condition of Scotland, App. C
Rammingen, Pawel von, 94
Rantzau, Count Christopher von, 153
Ranuccio II, Duke of Parma, 112
Regency Act (1706), 387-8;
Oxford’s proposed revision of, 417
Rheenen property, 56 _and note_, 96 _and note_
Richelieu, Cardinal, 60
Rivers, Earl, 397-8, 402-3
Robethon, Jean de, 351-2, 398, 406, 442;
estimate of, 377-8;
cited, 418, 426-7
Rochester, Earl of, 382 _and note_, 386
Roe, Sir Thomas, 60;
services of, to Queen of Bohemia, 44;
cited, 42, 62
Roxburghe, Earl of, 373
Rudolf Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 146
Rudolfine, Mme., 147
Rupert, Prince (brother of the Electress), birth of, 35;
visit to England (1635), 59, 62;
captured at Vlotho, 60, 63;
in the British Civil War, 61, 63-4;
buccaneering exploits, 65;
quarrel with Charles Lewis, 94-6 _and note_;
visits to Heidelberg, 99-100, 104-5;
connexion with Francesca Bard, 103, 375 _note_;
position in England, 139-40;
death of, 9, 140;
characteristics of, 64
Rupert III, Elector Palatine, 16
Rupert ‘England’ (son of Elector Palatine Louis II), 17
Ruperta (niece of Sophia), 103, 141 _note_ 62, 392 _note_ 168
Rusdorf, 45, 48
Saint-Simon cited, 134
Salomon, Dr., cited, 387 _note_, 405 _note_ 175, 410 _note_, 411
_note_, 416 _note_, 417 _note_, 419 _note_
Sandys, Dr., 325
Sartorio, 327
Saxony, compact of, with Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 237
Say and Sele, Lord, 324
Schism Act, 436
Schlitz-Görz, Baron von, 442
Schönberg (Schombergh), Hans Meinhard von, 28
Schulenburg, General von der, 415, 419
Schulenburg, Melusina von der. _See_ Kendal, Duchess of
Schurmann, Anna Maria von, 120
Schütz, Baron von (son of Celle Chancellor), Hanoverian resident in
London, 319, 352, 366;
correspondence with Sophia, 183 _note_;
quoted, 293 _note_, 347;
cited, 319 _note_, 339 _note_ 125, 383, 385 _note_;
death of, 399
Schütz, Baron George William Helwig Sinold von (grandson of Celle
Chancellor), 412, 423-6
Schütz, Baron Lewis Justus von, distinguished services of, to Duke
of Celle, 183, 185-6;
estimate of, 185, 376-7
Scotland:
Act of Security (1704), 372-3
Act of Union (1707), 373, 392
Anti-English feeling in, as affecting Hanoverian Succession
question, 372-3, App. C
Assistance from, to the Palatinate, 50, 51 _note_
Scultetus, Abraham, 24-5, 35
Selz, Baron von, 137 _note_ 59
Seymour, Edward, 364
Shrewsbury, —, 438
Sichel cited, 437 _note_
Siegen, Ludwig von, 64 _note_
Sigismund, Prince of Transylvania, 75
Sintzendorf, Countess von, 240 _note_
Smith, L. Pearsall, cited, 36 _note_
Solms. _See_ Amalia von Solms
Somers, 402
Somerset, Duke of, 424
Sophia, Electress of Hanover (earlier Duchess of
Brunswick-Lüneburg):
Appearance of, 75-6
Career, chronological sequence of:
Birth, 11, 52, 53;
childhood at Leyden, 54-5;
at the Hague, 55, 56, 69-70, 73;
upbringing and education, 25, 224, 331;
services to her eldest sister, 73;
rumour of projected marriage with Prince Charles of England,
82-5;
starts for Heidelberg, 86;
life with her brother Charles Lewis, 87, 96-8, 103-7;
attitude towards him, 57;
matrimonial prospects, 106-12;
attack of small-pox, 106;
accepts Duke Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 112;
marriage, 114;
companionship of ‘Liselotte,’ 99, 172-3;
at Hanover, 156;
difficulties with George William, 157;
visit to her mother at the Hague (1659), 136, 157;
birth of George Lewis, 157;
of Frederick Augustus, 157;
last meeting with her mother (1661), 137;
visit to Italy (1664), 161;
John Frederick’s _coup_, 162-3;
friendly relations with Roman Catholic dignitaries, 164 _note_;
at Osnabrück and Iburg, 158-9, 167-8;
affair of Mlle. Eleonora d’Olbreuze, 168-70;
Celle Succession question, 180, 185-7;
infidelities of her husband, 190-1 _and note_;
visit to Herford, 121;
interest in British affairs, 209;
visit to Maubuisson (1679), 135, 178;
visit to her niece Elizabeth Charlotte, 178;
attitude towards proposed match between George Lewis and Sophia
Dorothea, 190 _note_ 79, 191-2;
towards Countess of Wilhelmsburg (Eleonora d’Olbreuze), 192-4;
visit to French Court with her daughter (1679), 207, 291-2;
visit to Queen of Denmark (1680), 150;
last visit to Herford, 124;
death of her eldest sister and of her eldest brother (1680),
196;
life at Hanover, 197-200;
marriage of her eldest son (1682), 194-5, 240;
marriage of her daughter (1684), 207-8;
on William III’s accession, 215-16;
activity regarding the English Succession question (1689), 216,
218;
Bill of Rights (1689), 216, 218-20;
death of her son Charles Philip, 202;
investiture of her husband with Electorate (1692), 235;
Königsmarck affair, 245, 253, 268, 269, 278, 280 _and note_ 2,
285;
visit to Wiesbaden (1694), 224;
visit to the Loo (1696), 301, 303;
illness and death of her husband, 286-8;
accession of George Lewis, 289;
attitude towards Sophia Dorothea at Ahlden, 277, 284-5;
attitude towards the English Succession question (1698),
309-11, 314-17, 319-20, 323;
relations with Duchess of Celle on the subject, 310;
alleged ‘Jacobite letter,’ 315-16;
visit to Aix-la-Chapelle (1700), 300;
conference with William III at the Loo (1700), 300, 312;
meeting with William III at the Hague, 317;
Act of Settlement (1701), 321-2;
receives copy of Act of Settlement, 324-6;
relations with Queen Anne at latter’s accession, 366 _and note_
2-9, 371;
proposed visit to England opposed by Queen Anne, 370;
continued activities regarding the Succession question (1703),
374;
death of her son Christian (1703), 202-3, 339 _note_ 139;
Scottish Act of Security (1703-4), 372-3;
death of her daughter (1705), 356-8;
Tory attempt to bring her to England, 380, 382-3, 386-7;
naturalisation as English subject, 385 _and note_;
embassy of Lord Halifax with Naturalisation and Regency Acts
(1706), 388-91;
Act of Union (1707), 373-4;
ministerial crisis in England (1710), 396, 398;
attitude towards the Succession question (1711), 402;
visit of Thomas Harley (1712), 404, 407;
severe illness (Nov. 1713), 414;
Anne’s letter to (Apr. 1714), 421-2;
instructions to von Schütz regarding Parliamentary writ for
Electoral Prince, 423-7;
reply to Anne’s letter, 422-3, 427;
Anne’s letter on the writ affair, 428-31;
death, 428, 430-2;
obsequies, 433
Characteristics of:
Alertness of mind, 96, 341
Artistic capacity, 329-30
Coarseness, 58
Critical insight and true vision, 56, 333
Curiosity, intellectual, 331
Cynicism, 161, 336
Dignity, 2
Discretion and prudence, 2, 104
Enthusiasm, dislike of, 342
_Finesse_, intellectual, 211
Frankness and straightforwardness, 211, 245, 336
Freedom of spirit, 4
Geniality and affability, 270, 338
High spirit, 106 Hospitality, 338
Humour, sense of, 5, 58, 74, 290, 335, 338, 413
Kindliness of heart, 58
Maternal affection, 171-2, 201
Open-mindedness, 338 Reasonableness, 341
Religious feeling, 339 _note_ 139, 345;
opinions, 343-8, 350;
attitude towards Church of Rome, 348-9
Self-control, 4, 58
Sincerity, 2, 157, 245 Tact, 157, 338
Vivacity, 5, 74, 75
Walking, fondness for, 328-9, 360
Wit, 335-6
Coffin of, inscription on, 1
Correspondence of:
Cited, 167, 257, 372 _note_
Estimate of, 336
Quoted, 207, 321 _note_
Correspondence of, with:
Balati, Abbé, cited, 194
Bothmer, von, cited, 362 _note_
Brinon, Mme. de, quoted, 350
Burnet cited, 323-4, 342, 386
Canterbury, Archbishop of, cited, 386
Charles Lewis cited, 20 _note_
Colt, Lady, 221 _note_ 2, 428 _note_
Court of St. Germains, destruction of, 393
Craven, Earl of, 211
Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, 10, 179-80, 414;
cited, 303 _note_
George William, 186
James II, 211
Leibniz cited, 204, 215, 216, 311, 344, 347, 381, 419, 424,
427, 432
Louisa, Raugravine, cited, 305, 317
Maccioni, 164 _note_
Portland, Earl of, quoted, 365 _note_
Schütz, von (the elder), 183 _note_;
quoted, 293 _note_, 374;
cited, 319 _note_, 339 _note_ 139, 383, 385 _note_
Schütz, von (the younger), 423-4 _and note_, 425
Sophia Charlotte, destruction of, 357
Strafford cited, 410
William III cited, 220
Estimate of, by Sir W. D. Colt, 253
Health of, 360
Income for, proposal as to, 362, 366, 368, 413, 422
Literary tastes of, 332-5
_Memoirs_ of:
Circumstances of compilation of, 196
Cited, 5, 53, 73, 74, 82, 87, 113, 169, 187
Political influence of, 241, 340-1
Relations with:
Anne, Queen, 363, 366 _and note_–9, 371, 386–7, 390-1, 394,
396, 403, 404 _note_ 2, 410
Caroline of Ansbach, 348, 359, 377
Charles II, 209
Charles Lewis, 57
Eleonora of Celle, 168, 170, 187, 192, 240, 310, 337
Elizabeth of Bohemia (her mother), 56-7, 136, 141 _note_
Ernest Augustus (her husband), 241, 340
George Lewis, 244 _and note_, 288, 340, 355
James II, 210-13, 216
Leibniz, 9, 288, 327, 331, 350, 351, 354-6
Marlborough, 375, 384
Mary of Orange, 213, 222, 224
Nephews and nieces, 87, 102, 249, 339
Sophia Charlotte, 171, 207, 230, 290, 294, 356-7
Sophia Dorothea, 195, 240, 243, 248, 268, 284-5
von Bernstorff, 377
William of Orange, 210, 215-16, 219-22
Succession question, attitude towards, 216, 218, 309-11, 314-17,
319-20, 323, 374, 402, 418-19;
views regarding right of succession, 389
Tories, attitude towards, and relations with, 383, 387 _and
note_, 399, 403, 418
Whigs, attitude towards, and relations with, 380-1, 387 _and
note_, 395, 399, 403, 418
otherwise mentioned, 25, 72, 176, 177, 226
Sophia, Princess (daughter of James I), 11-12
Sophia of Nassau-Dietz cited, 42
Sophia Amalia, Queen of Denmark, 149-50
Sophia Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg, later Queen of Prussia
(daughter of Sophia), birth of, 171;
childhood, 207;
education, 291;
visit to French Court (1679), 207, 291-2;
marriage (1684), 38, 203, 207-8, 293;
sympathy with Maximilian, 289;
birth of eldest son, 294;
life and interests at Berlin and Brandenburg, 294-5;
at Lützenburg, 295-6;
family troubles, 298-9;
consulted by Sophia Dorothea (1692), 269;
visit to the Loo (1696), 301, 303;
visit to Aix-la-Chapelle, Brussels, and Holland (1700), 300;
conference at the Loo, 300, 312;
meeting with William III at the Hague, 317;
death of, 356-8;
characteristics of, 171, 290-1, 295;
indifference to politics, 230, 293-4;
religious views, 346;
her support of Leibniz, 355;
relations with her mother, 171, 207, 230, 290, 294, 356-7;
otherwise mentioned, 213, 313 _note_, 371 _note_
Sophia Dorothea, Electoral Princess, later Duchess of Ahlden
(daughter-in-law of Sophia), birth of, 171;
upbringing, 243-4;
wealth, 181;
suggested naturalisation in France, 182 _and note_ 2;
question of legitimation and marriage, 185;
suitors, 189;
proposed match with George Lewis, 190 _note_ 1, 191-4;
the marriage, 194-5, 231, 239-41;
estrangement from her husband, 246, 249, 252-4;
Court life, 247;
in Rome, 248;
alleged intrigue with de Lassaye, 248-9;
relations with Königsmarck, 254-9, 262-78, App. B;
repairs to her parents at Brockhausen, 273;
at Ahlden, 275-6;
divorce, 276;
von Bernstorff’s attitude in the affair, 377;
subsequent life, 281-2;
death, 283-4;
estimate of, 240;
romance by Antony Ulric regarding, 192 _and note_, 239 _and
note_, 283;
mentioned, 7
Sophia Dorothea, Queen of Prussia (granddaughter of Sophia), birth
of, 195, 249;
marriage, 195, 249, 284;
marriage-treaty, 346 _note_ 2;
attitude towards her mother, 280, 284;
at Göhrde, 307
Southwell, 304
Spain:
Charles I’s peace with (1630), 48
James I’s negotiations with, 46
Succession question, 310, 318
Spanheim, Ezechiel, 333;
cited, 20 _note_, 190 _note_ 1
Spinola, 36
Spinoza, 176 _note_ 1
Spittler cited, 113 _note_;
quoted, 331
Stamford, Lord, 366 _note_ 2
Steffani, Agostino, 198 _and note_
Steinghens, 415
Stepney, George, 225, 319-20, 371;
cited, 304;
his letter to Sophia (1700), 314-15
Stewart, House of:
Depression of, 6
Hanoverian sympathy with, 210-13, 216, 393-4 _and note_
Strafford, Earl of, 349, 403, 410, 414, 419, 422, 438
Sturmer, H. H., cited, 169 _note_
Suireau, Marie (Mère des Anges), 129
Sunderland, Earl of, 396-7, 402
Sutton, Anne, 28
Sweden:
Danish jealousy of, 45
Ernest Augustus’ operations against (1666), 168
Imperial war against (1675), 184
Tallard, Count, 307
Taranto, Princess of, 97, 168
Tavernier, 199
Thynne, Thomas, murder of, 260-1
Tilly, 47
Toland, Sophia Charlotte’s
attitude towards, 295;
visit to Hanover (1701), 324;
Sophia’s attitude towards, 342, 367-8, 380-1;
her repartee to, 336;
cited, 325, 329, 339 _note_ 1, 348 _note_, 362
Torcy, de, 405, 415, 420
Treaties:
Austro-Bavarian (1628), 48
Brandenburg and Hanover, between, 235-6, 289
Britain and France, between. _See subheading_ Partition Treaty
Britain and Netherlands, between (1654), 93
Britain and Netherlands, between, as to Hanoverian Succession,
388, 438
Brunswick-Lüneburg and Britain, between, 223
Brunswick-Lüneburg and Netherlands, between (1692), 223
Brunswick-Lüneburg and Sweden, between (1691), 263
Electoral compact (1692), 233
Grand Alliance. _See that title_
Nürnberg settlement, 93, 95, 96
Partition Treaty between England and France—First (1698), 307;
Second, 310, 317-18
Prague, Peace of (1634), 51, 145, 148
Ryswyk, Peace of (1697), 306
Utrecht, Peace of (1713), 407-8, 412
Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 45, 83, 97, 146, 149, 192, 229
Trumbull, Sir William, 304
Tunbridge, Lord, 324
Turenne, Marshal, 67, 80, 183
Tweeddale, Marquis of, 373
Tyndall, Humphrey, Dean of Ely, 21 _note_ 1
Vane, Sir Harry, 61
Velasco, Don Alonso de, 21
Vere, Sir Horace, 41
Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, 225, 301-2, 321 _and note_
Villiers, Lady Mary, 46
Wallenstein, 47
Waller, Sir William, 104
Walpole, Horace, cited, 260, 280-1
Walpole, Sir Robert, 281
Ward, Nathaniel, 63
Wartenberg, Cardinal Francis William von, 158
Wartenberg, Countess von, 299-300, 357
Wartenberg, Kolbe von, 299
Weber, O., cited, 405 _note_ 1
Weston, Sir Richard, 35-6
Weyhe, General von, 246
Weyhe, Mme. von (Marie von Meysenbug, Frau von dem Bussche), 242,
246 _and note:f103#_, 248
Wharton, Lord, 385
Wilhelmina (great-granddaughter of Sophia), 298-9
Wilhelmina Caroline of Ansbach, Queen (wife of George II),
childhood of, 358;
marriage, 359;
influence with her husband, 288;
birth of eldest son, 359;
relations with Sophia, 348, 359, 377;
otherwise mentioned, 280-1, 355, 395, 429, 431, 441
Wilhelmsburg, Countess of. _See_ Eleonora
Wilkins, W. H., cited, 246 _note_, 257, 258 _note_, 265 _note_, 280
_note_ 112
William II, Prince of Orange, 57
William III, Prince of Orange (King William III of England),
marriage of, 209;
visit to Hanover (1680), 209-10;
on James II’s accession, 210;
relations with Sophia, 210, 213, 215-16, 219-22;
expedition to England, 212, 214-15;
Bill of Rights (1689) as affecting, 217;
correspondence with Sophia on Bill of Rights, 219-20;
appealed to regarding Lauenburg claims, 237-8;
Succession policy, 225-6;
attitude towards the Savoy Succession, 225, 301;
death of his wife, 224, 301;
suggestions as to re-marriage, 301-4, 312;
the Assassination Plot (1696), 302;
ill-health, 303, 311;
visit to Cleves, 304 _and note_;
attitude towards admission of Elector of Hanover to Electoral
College, 305;
secret negotiation with France, 306;
First Partition Treaty with France (1698), 307;
conference at Göhrde with George William of Celle (1698), 307;
interview with Duchess of Celle regarding English Succession
question, 308-9;
relations with Sophia on the question, 309-10, 314, 317;
attitude towards Electoral Prince of Brandenburg (1700), 312-14,
317;
at the Hague with the two Electresses, 317;
relations with his Parliament, 310;
meeting with Duke George William and Prince George Augustus at
the Loo (1701), 362;
death of, 365;
title of, to British Crown, 8;
otherwise mentioned, 102, 110, 153, 163, 189, 190 _note_ 1, 193,
300, 344, 369, 378, 385 _note_
William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, 97
Wimbledon, Lord, 47
Winchelsea, Lord, 337, 367
Withypol (Wittepole), Lady, 86
Wladislaw IV, King of Poland, 70-1 _and note_
Woods, Mrs., cited, 262 _note_
Worthington, Dr., 117 _note_
Wotton, Sir Henry, visit of, to Heidelberg Court, 26-8 _and note_;
mission to Vienna, 35-6;
devotion to Queen of Bohemia, 43-4;
cited, 52 _note_;
mentioned, 15, 161
THE END
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCHESTER
LONDON AND ETON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Appendix B contains a series of letters in French. The editor
comments (p. #447): “The spelling of the words in the Letters, the
way in which those words are run into one another...have ... been
left as they stand in the transcript.” With that approach, with
three exceptions (obvious transpositions of letters), no corrections
have been made.
Likewise, there are frequent quotations from contemporary sources,
and any deviations from our standard spellings are left untouched,
but noted here: mesages (44.23), l’esperane 495.6, contrar (552.8).
At 10.11, there is an error. the Electress Sophia died in 1714 not
1712, two months before Britain’s Queen Anne died and Sophia’s son
George became George I of England.
In the Index, references to a note on a given page, may include the
original note number (e.g., ‘323 _note_ 1’) should there be more
than one. In those cases the original number is changed to the
resequenced number.
The Index entry on p. 101 for Charles (Elector Palatine does not
exist. . Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been
corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and
line in the original. or, if in a note, to the page, note and line
within the note.
2.26 of militant Protestan[t]ism Inserted.
71.15 the hand of [his/her] elder sister Replaced.
140.15 the Round Tow[n/er] at Windsor Castle Replaced.
188.4 in her _[ç/c]i-devant_ lover Replaced.
319.19 at the Court of St. James.[’] Removed,
371.159.2 May 27th, 1[9/7]02 Replaced.
401.18 no warrant for either as[s]umption; Inserted.
460.10 je soufri[ar/ra]ÿ pour vous Transposed.
461.16 des remaide indi[ng/gn]e d’un honest homme Transposed.
466.15 comme je pouraÿ postai[ts/st]re recevoir Transposed.
503.30 for its sake[.] Added,
522.6 obedient servant’ser[vant].[1] Removed,
spurious.
540.1.1 in the immediate vi[nc/cin]ity Replaced.
563.14 40[1/4] _note_ Replaced.
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