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CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

Caroline,
Princess of Wales.

Walter L. Colls, Ph. Sc.

Caroline the Illustrious
Queen-Consort of George II. and
sometime Queen-Regent

A Study of her Life and Time

BY
W. H. WILKINS, M.A., F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF “THE LOVE OF AN UNCROWNED QUEEN”

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1901

TO
THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK

La beauté est le partage des uns, l’intelligence celui des autres; la réunion de ces dons ne se rencontre que chez certains mortels favorisés des dieux.

Leibniz to Queen Caroline.

PREFACE.

It is characteristic of the way in which historians have neglected the House of Hanover that no life with any claim to completeness has yet been written of Caroline of Ansbach, Queen-Consort of George the Second, and four times Queen-Regent. Yet she was by far the greatest of our Queens-Consort, and wielded more authority over political affairs than any of our Queens-Regnant with the exception of Elizabeth, and, in quite another sense, Victoria. The ten years of George the Second’s reign until her death would be more properly called “The Reign of Queen Caroline,” since for that period Caroline governed England with Walpole. And during those years the great principles of civil and religious liberty, which were then bound up with the maintenance of the Hanoverian dynasty, were firmly established in England.

Therefore no apology is needed for attempting to portray the life of this remarkable princess, and endeavouring to give some idea of the influence which she exercised in her day and upon her generation. The latter part of Caroline’s life is covered to some extent by Lord Hervey’s Memoirs, and we get glimpses of her also in Horace Walpole’s works and in contemporary letters. But Lord Hervey’s Memoirs do not begin until Caroline became Queen, and though he enjoyed exceptional facilities of observation, he wrote with an obvious bias, and often imputed to the Queen motives and sentiments which were his rather than hers, and used her as the mouthpiece of his own prejudices and personal animosities.

Of Queen Caroline’s life before she came to England nothing, or comparatively nothing, has hitherto been known,[1] and very little has been written of the difficult part which she played as Princess of Wales throughout the reign of George the First. On Caroline’s early years this book may claim to throw fresh light. By kind permission of the Prussian authorities I am able to publish sundry documents from the Hanoverian Archives which have never before been given to the world, more especially those which pertain to the betrothal and marriage of the princess. The hitherto unpublished despatches of Poley, Howe and D’Alais, English envoys at Hanover, 1705–14, give fresh information concerning the Hanoverian Court at that period, and the despatches of Bromley, Harley and Clarendon, written during the eventful year 1714, show the strained relations which existed between Queen Anne and her Hanoverian cousins on the eve of the Elector of Hanover’s accession to the English throne.

In order to make this book as complete as possible I have visited Ansbach, where Caroline was born, Berlin, the scene of her girlhood, and Hanover, where she spent her early married years. I have searched the Archives in all these places, and have further examined the records in the State Paper Office, London, and the Manuscript Department of the British Museum. A list of these, and of other authorities quoted herein, published and unpublished, will be found at the end of this book.

In The Love of an Uncrowned Queen (Sophie Dorothea of Celle, Consort of George the First) I gave a description of the Courts of Hanover and Celle until the death of the first Elector of Hanover, Ernest Augustus. This book continues those studies of the Court of Hanover at a later period. It brings the Electoral family over to England and sketches the Courts of George the First and George the Second until the death of Queen Caroline. The influence which Caroline wielded throughout that troublous time, and the part she played in maintaining the Hanoverian dynasty upon the throne of England, have never been fully recognised. George the First and George the Second were not popular princes; it would be idle to pretend that they were. But Caroline’s gracious and dignified personality, her lofty ideals and pure life did much to counteract the unpopularity of her husband and father-in-law, and redeem the early Georgian era from utter grossness. She was rightly called by her contemporaries “The Illustrious”. If this book helps to do tardy justice to the memory of a great Queen and good woman it will not have been written in vain.

W. H. WILKINS.

FOOTNOTE TO PREFACE:

[1] Dr. A. W. Ward’s sketch of Caroline of Ansbach in the Dictionary of National Biography contains some facts concerning this period of her life, but they are necessarily brief.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

BOOK I.
ELECTORAL PRINCESS OF HANOVER.

CHAPTER I.
ANSBACH AND ITS MARGRAVES. 1683–1696.

Wilhelmina Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, known to history as “Caroline of Ansbach,” Queen-Consort of King George the Second of Great Britain and Ireland, and sometime Queen-Regent, was born in the palace of Ansbach, a little town in South Germany, on March 1st, 1683. It was a year memorable in the annals of English history as the one in which Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney were brought to the block, who by their blood strengthened the long struggle against the Stuarts which culminated in the accession of the House of Hanover. The same year, seven months later, on October 30th, the ill-fated Sophie Dorothea of Celle, consort of George the First, gave birth to a son at Hanover, George Augustus, who twenty-two years later was destined to take Caroline of Ansbach to wife, and in fulness of time to ascend the throne of England.

The Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach were far from wealthy, but the palace wherein the little princess first opened her eyes to the light was one of the finest in Germany, quite out of proportion to the fortunes of the petty principality. It was a vast building, four storeys high, built in the form of a square, with a cloistered court-yard, and an ornate façade to the west. Yet large as it was, it did not suit the splendour-loving Margraves of later generations, and the palace as it stands to-day, with its twenty-two state apartments, each more magnificent than the other, is a veritable treasure-house of baroque and rococo art. Some of the interior decoration is very florid and in doubtful taste; the ceiling of the great hall, for instance, depicts the apotheosis of the Margrave Karl the Wild; the four corners respectively represent the feast of the Bacchante, music, painting and architecture, and in the centre is a colossal figure of the Margrave, in classical attire, clasping Venus in his arms. The dining-hall is also gorgeous, with imitation marbles, crystal chandeliers, and a gilded gallery, wherefrom the minstrels were wont to discourse sweet music to the diners. The porcelain saloon, the walls lined with exquisite porcelain, is a gem of its kind, and the picture gallery contains many portraits of the Hohenzollerns. But the most interesting room is that known as “Queen Caroline’s apartment,” in which the future Queen of England was born; it was occupied by her during her visits to Ansbach until her marriage. This room is left much as it was in Caroline’s day, and a canopy of faded green silk still marks the place where the bed stood in which she was born.

The town of Ansbach has changed but little since the seventeenth century, far less than the palace, which successive Margraves have improved almost out of recognition. Unlike Würzburg and Nuremberg, cities comparatively near, Ansbach has not progressed; it has rather gone backward, for since the last Margrave, Alexander, sold his heritage in 1791, there has not been a court at Ansbach.[2] A sign of its vanished glories may be seen in the principal hotel of the place, formerly the residence of the Court Chamberlain, a fine house with frescoed ceilings, wide oak staircase, and spacious court-yard. The Hofgarten remains the same, a large park, with a double avenue of limes and oaks, beneath which Caroline must often have played when a girl. The high-pitched roofs and narrow irregular streets of the town still breathe the spirit of mediævalism, but the old-time glory has departed from Ansbach, and the wave of modern progress has scarcely touched it. The little town, surrounded with low-lying meadows, wears an aspect inexpressibly dreary and forsaken.

The honest burghers of Ansbach, who took a personal interest in the domestic affairs of their Margraves, feeling that as they prospered they would prosper with them, could not, in their most ambitious moments, have imagined the exalted destiny which awaited the little princess who was born in the palace on that March morning. The princesses of Ansbach had not in the past made brilliant alliances, and there is no record of any one of them having married into a royal house. They were content to wed the margraves, the burgraves, the landgraves, and the princelets who offered themselves, to bear them children, and to die, without contributing any particular brilliancy to the history of their house.

The margravate of Ansbach was one of the petty German princedoms which had succeeded in weathering the storm and stress of the Middle Ages. At the time of Caroline’s birth, any importance Ansbach might have possessed to the outer world arose from its connection with the Brandenburgs and Hohenzollerns, of which connection the later Margraves of Ansbach were alternately proud and jealous. Ansbach can, with reason, claim to be the cradle of the Hohenzollern kingdom. For nearly five hundred years (from 1331 to 1806) the princedom of Ansbach belonged to the Hohenzollerns, and a succession of the greatest events of Prussian history arose from the union of Prussia and Brandenburg and the margravate of Ansbach. It is not certain how, or when, the link began. But out of the mist of ages emerges the fact, that when the Burgrave Frederick V. divided his possessions into the Oberland and Unterland, or Highlands and Lowlands, Ansbach was raised to the dignity of capital of the Lowland princedom, and a castle was built. The Margrave Albert the Great, a son of the Elector Frederick the First of Brandenburg, set up his court at Ansbach, decreeing that it should remain the seat of government for all time. Albert the Great’s court was more splendid and princely than any in Germany; he enlarged the already beautiful castle, he kept much company and held brilliant tournaments, and he founded the famous order of the Knights of the Swan. The high altar, elaborately carved and painted, of the old Gothic church of St. Gumbertus in Ansbach remains to this day a monument of his munificence, and on the walls of the chancel are the escutcheons of the Knights of the Swan, and from the roof hang down the tattered banners of the Margraves.

The succeeding Margraves do not call for any special notice; after the fashion of German princes of that time, they spent most of their days in hunting, and their nights in carousing. They were distinguished from their neighbours only by their more peaceful proclivities. Two names come to us out of oblivion, George the Pious, who introduced the Reformation into Franconia, and George Frederick, who was guardian to the mad Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia, and who consequently managed Prussian affairs from Ansbach. With his death in 1602 the elder branch of the Margraves expired.

Caroline’s father, the Margrave John Frederick, was of the younger branch, and succeeded to the margravate in 1667. John Frederick was a worthy man, who confined his ambitions solely to promoting the prosperity of his princedom, and concerned himself with little outside it. When his first wife died, he married secondly, and rather late in life, Eleanor Erdmuthe Louisa, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, a princess many years his junior, by whom he had two children, a son, William Frederick, and a daughter, Caroline, the subject of this book. There is a picture of Caroline’s parents in one of the state rooms of the castle, which depicts her father as a full-faced, portly man, with a brown wig, clasping the hand of a plump, highly-coloured young woman, with auburn hair, and large blue eyes. It is easy to see that Caroline derived her good looks from her mother. Her father died in 1686, and was succeeded by his son, George Frederick, who was the offspring of the first marriage.

THE CASTLE OF ANSBACH.

As the Margrave George Frederick was a lad of fourteen years of age at the time of his father’s death, the Elector Frederick the Third of Brandenburg acted as his guardian, and for the next seven years Ansbach was under the rule of a minor. As the minor was her stepson, who had never shown any affection for his stepmother or her children, the position of the widowed Margravine Eleanor was not a pleasant one. She was friendly with the Elector and Electress of Brandenburg, and looked to them for support, and on the eve of her stepson’s majority she went to Berlin on a long visit, taking with her the little Princess Caroline, and leaving behind at Ansbach her son, William Frederick, who was heir-presumptive to the margravate. The visit was eventful, for during it Eleanor became betrothed to the Elector of Saxony, John George the Fourth.

The betrothal arose directly out of the newly formed alliance between the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony. At the time of his meeting with the young Margravine Eleanor the Elector of Saxony was only twenty-five years of age. Nature had endowed him with considerable talents and great bodily strength, though a blow on the head had weakened his mental powers, and his manhood did not fulfil the promise of his youth. Before he succeeded to the electorate of Saxony he had conceived a violent passion for Magdalen Sybil von Röohlitz, the daughter of a colonel of the Saxon guard, a brunette of surpassing beauty, but so ignorant that her mother had to write her love letters for her. Magdalen gained complete sway over the young Elector, and she, in her turn, was the tool of her ambitious and intriguing mother. The Elector endowed his favourite with great wealth, gave her a palace and lands, surrounded her with a little court, and honoured her as though she were his consort. The high Saxon officials refused to bow down to the mistress, more especially as she was said to be in the pay of the Emperor of Austria, whereas the popular policy in Saxony at that time was to lean towards Brandenburg.

The Elector of Brandenburg and his consort the Electress Sophie Charlotte came to Torgau in 1692 to strengthen the alliance between the electorates. The two Electors formed a new order to commemorate the entente, which was called the “Order of the Golden Bracelet”. The Saxon Ministers hoped by this friendship to draw their Elector from the toils of his mistress and of Austria, and they persuaded him to pay a return visit to the Court of Berlin. While there the Elector of Saxony met the young widow the Margravine Eleanor, and became betrothed to her, to the great joy of the Elector and Electress of Brandenburg. The wedding was arranged to take place a little later at Leipzig, and for a time everything went smoothly; it seemed that the power of the mistress was broken, and she would have to retire. But when the Elector of Brandenburg and the Electress Sophie Charlotte accompanied the Margravine Eleanor to Leipzig for the wedding, they found the Elector of Saxony in quite another frame of mind, and he insulted his future wife by receiving her in company with his mistress. The negotiations had to begin all over again, but after a great deal of unpleasantness and many delays, the Elector of Saxony married, very ungraciously and manifestly under protest, the unfortunate Eleanor.

The Elector of Saxony’s dislike to his wife, and his reluctance to live with her, had been so marked even before marriage, that many wondered why the Margravine was so foolish as to enter upon a union which held out so slender a promise of happiness. But in truth she had not much choice; she had very little dower, she was anxious to find a home for herself and her daughter Caroline, and she was largely dependent on the Elector of Brandenburg’s goodwill; she was, in short, the puppet of a political intrigue. She returned with the Elector of Saxony to Dresden, where her troubles immediately began. The mistress had now been promoted to the rank of a countess. The Electress’s interests were with Brandenburg, and the Countess’s with Vienna, and, apart from their domestic rivalries, their political differences soon led to friction. The Elector openly slighted and neglected his wife, and things went from bad to worse at the Saxon Court; so much so, that the state of morals and manners threatened to culminate in open bigamy. The Countess von Röohlitz, prompted by her mother, declared her intention of becoming the wife of the Elector though he was married already, and though she could not take the title of Electress, and the Elector supported her in this extraordinary demand. He gave her a written promise of marriage, and caused pamphlets to be circulated in defence of polygamy. It was vain for the Electress to protest; her life was in danger, attempts were made to poison her, and at last she was compelled to withdraw from the Court of Dresden to the dower-house of Pretsch, taking her daughter Caroline with her. The mistress had won all along the line, but in the supreme hour of her triumph she was struck down by small-pox and died after a brief illness. The Elector, who was half-crazed with grief, would not leave her bedside during the whole of her illness. He, too, caught the disease, and died eleven days later. He was succeeded by his brother, Augustus Frederick, better known as “Augustus the Strong,” and Eleanor became the Electress-dowager of Saxony.

In the autumn of the same year (1694) the Elector and Electress of Brandenburg paid a visit to the Electress Eleanor, whose health had broken down, and assured her of their support and affection, as indeed they ought to have done, considering that they were largely the cause of her troubles. At the same time the Elector and Electress promised to look after the interests of the little Princess Caroline, and to treat her as though she were their own daughter.

The next two years were spent by the young princess with her mother at Pretsch. It was a beautiful spot, surrounded by woods and looking down the fertile valley of the Elbe, and hard by was the little town of Wittenberg, one of the cradles of the Reformation. Luther and Melancthon lived at Wittenberg; their houses are still shown, and it was here that Luther publicly burned the Papal bull; an oak tree marks the spot. Caroline must often have visited Wittenberg; she was about twelve years of age at this time, and advanced beyond her years, and it may be that much of the sturdy Protestantism of her later life was due to her early associations with the home of Luther and Melanchthon.

In 1696 Caroline was left an orphan by the death of her mother, and was placed under the care of her guardians, the Elector and Electress of Brandenburg, at Berlin.

FOOTNOTE TO BOOK I, CHAPTER I:

[2] The last of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, was born at Ansbach in 1736. He was the nephew of Queen Caroline, and married first a princess of Saxe-Coburg, and secondly the Countess of Craven (née Lady Elizabeth Berkeley), who called herself the “Margravine of Ansbach and Princess Berkeley”. Having no heirs he sold his Margravate to the King of Prussia in 1791, and came to live in England with his second wife. He bought Brandenburg House, and was very beneficent and fond of sport, being well known on the turf. He died at a ripe old age in the reign of George IV. In 1806 Ansbach was transferred by Napoleon from Prussia to Bavaria, an act which was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and with Bavaria it has since remained. Occasionally some members of the Bavarian royal family visit Ansbach and stay at the palace, but it has long ceased to be a princely residence.

CHAPTER II.
THE COURT OF BERLIN. 1696–1705.

The Court of Berlin, where Caroline was to spend the most impressionable years of her life, was queened over at this time by one of the most intellectual and gifted princesses in Europe. Sophie Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg, who in 1701, on her husband’s assumption of the regal dignity, became first Queen of Prussia, was the daughter of that remarkable woman, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and granddaughter of the gifted and beautiful Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James the First of England. These three princesses—grandmother, mother and daughter—formed a trinity of wonderful women.

Like her mother and grandmother, Sophie Charlotte inherited many traits from her Stuart ancestors; Mary’s wit and passion, James the First’s love of metaphysical and theological disputations, were reproduced in her, and she possessed to no small degree the beauty, dignity and personal charm characteristic of the race, which even the infusion of sluggish German blood could not mar. Her mother had carefully trained her with a view to her making a great match some day; she was an accomplished musician, and a great linguist, speaking French, English and Italian as fluently as her native tongue, perhaps more so. She had read much and widely, an unusual thing among German princesses of that age. Sophie Charlotte’s religious education was hardly on a level with her secular one, as the Electress Sophia, in accordance with her policy of making all considerations subservient to her daughter’s future advancement, decided to bring her up with an open mind in matters of religion and in the profession of no faith, so that she might be eligible to marry the most promising prince who presented himself, whether he were Catholic or Protestant. As a courtly biographer put it: “She (Sophie Charlotte) refrained from any open confession of faith until her marriage, for reasons of prudence and state, because only then would she be able to judge which religion would suit best her condition of life”.

Despite this theological complaisance, several eligible matches projected with Roman Catholic princes fell through, and the young princess’s religion was finally settled on the Protestant side, for when the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, son of the Great Elector, came forward as a suitor, Sophia eagerly accepted him for her daughter, notwithstanding that he was a widower, twelve years older than his bride, deformed, and of anything but an amiable reputation. These drawbacks were trifles compared with the fact that he was heir to the most powerful electorate of North Germany. The wedding took place at Hanover in September, 1684, and the bride and bridegroom made their state entry into Berlin two months afterwards. A few years later Sophie Charlotte gave birth to a son, Frederick William, who was destined to become the second King of Prussia and the father of Frederick the Great. Four years later the Great Elector died; and with her husband’s accession she became the reigning Electress of Brandenburg and later Queen of Prussia.

The salient points of Sophie Charlotte’s character now made themselves manifest. The Court of Berlin was a brilliant one, and modelled on that of the King of France, for the King of Prussia refused to dispense with any detail of pomp or ceremony, holding, like the Grand Monarque, that a splendid and stately court was the outward and visible sign of a prince’s power and greatness. He had a passion for display, and would spend hours debating the most trivial points of court etiquette. This was weariness of the soul to the Queen, for she cared nothing for the pomp and circumstance of sovereignty. She was careful to discharge her ceremonial duties, but she did so in the spirit of magnificent indifference. “Leibniz talked to me to-day of the infinitely little,” she wrote once to her friend and confidante, Marie von Pöllnitz. “Mon Dieu, as if I did not know enough about that.” The young Queen had arrived at a great position, but her heart was empty; she tolerated her husband, but she felt towards him nothing warmer than a half-contemptuous liking. The King, on his part, was proud of his beautiful and talented consort, though he was rather afraid of her. It would have been easy for Sophie Charlotte, had she been so minded, to have gained great influence over her husband, and to have governed Brandenburg and Prussia through him, but though her intellect was masculine in its calibre, unlike her mother, she had no love of domination, and cared not to meddle with affairs of state. These things were to her but vanity, and she preferred rather to live a life of intellectual contemplation and philosophic calm; the scientific discoveries of Newton were more to her than kingdoms, and the latest theory of Leibniz than all the pomp and circumstance of the court.

The King made her a present of the château of Lützenburg, later called after her Charlottenburg, just outside Berlin, and here she was able to gratify her love of art and beautiful things to the utmost. The gardens were laid out after the plan of Versailles, by Le Nôtre, with terraces, statues and fountains. Magnificent pictures, beautiful carpets, rarest furniture of inlaid ebony and ivory, porcelain and crystal, were stored in this lordly pleasure-house, and made it a palace of luxury and art. The King thought nothing too costly or magnificent for his Queen, though he did not follow her in her literary and philosophic bent, and Lützenburg became famous throughout Europe, not only for its splendour, for there were many palaces more splendid, but because it was the chosen home of its beautiful mistress, and the meeting-place of all the talents. At Lützenburg, surrounded by a special circle of intellectual friends, the Queen enjoyed the free interchange of ideas, and discussed all things without restraint; wit and talent, and not wealth and rank, gave the entrée there. At Lützenburg she held receptions on certain evenings in the week, and on these occasions all trammels of court etiquette were laid aside, and everything was conducted without ostentation or ceremony. Intellectual conversations, the reading of great books, learned discussions, and, for occasional relaxation, music and theatricals, often kept the company late into the night at Lützenburg, and it frequently happened that some of the courtiers went straight from one of the Queen’s entertainments to attend the King’s levée, for he rose at four o’clock in the morning. To these reunions came not only the most beautiful and gifted ladies of the court, but learned men from every country in Europe, philosophers, theologians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, representatives of literature, science and art, besides a number of French refugees, who did not appear at court in the ordinary way. Since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Berlin had become a rallying-place for Huguenots, many of them men of intellectual eminence and noble birth, who were banished from their native land. They were made especially welcome at Lützenburg, where everything was French rather than German. At Sophie Charlotte’s reunions French only was spoken, and so elegant were the appointments, so perfect was the taste, so refined and courteous were the manners, so brilliant the wit and conversation, that one of the most celebrated of the Huguenot nobility declared that he felt himself once again at Versailles, and asked whether the Queen of Prussia could really speak German.

To Lützenburg came the eloquent Huguenot preacher, Beausobre; Vota, the celebrated Jesuit and Roman Catholic controversialist; Toland, the English freethinker; Papendorf, the historian; Handel, the great musician, when he was a boy; and last and among the greatest, the famous Leibniz. Hither came often, too, on many a long visit, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, “the merry débonnaire princess of Germany,” who, like her daughter, delighted in theological polemics, and philosophic speculations. Sophie Charlotte’s principles were exceedingly liberal, so much so that she became known as “the Republican Queen,” and her early religious training, or rather the lack of it, was very noticeable in the trend of thought she gave to her gatherings. She would take nothing for granted, she submitted everything to the tribunal of reason; her eager and active spirit was always seeking to know the truth, even “the why of the why,” as Leibniz grumbled once. Her mother, the Electress Sophia, would seem to have been a rationalist, with a strong dash of Calvinism. Sophie Charlotte went a step farther; she was nothing of a Calvinist, but rather leant to the theories of Descartes. “My mother is a clever woman, but a bad Christian,” said her son once, and that was true if he meant a dogmatic Christian, though Leibniz had a theory for reconciling Christianity and reason, which especially commended itself to her. She took a keen interest in theological polemics, and whenever any clever Jesuit came her way, she delighted in nothing so much as to get him to expound his views, and then put up one of her chaplains to answer him. In this way she set the Jesuit Vota disputing with the Protestant Brensenius, and the orthodox Huguenot Beausobre with the freethinking sceptic Toland. Nor were these arguments confined to theological subjects; scientific, philosophic and social questions—everything, in short, came within the debatable ground, and on one occasion we hear of a long and animated argument on the question whether marriage was, or was not, ordained for the procreation of children! The Queen presided over all these intellectual tournaments, throwing in a suggestion here or raising a doubt there; she was always able to draw the best out of every one, and thanks to her tact and amiability, the disputes on thorny questions were invariably conducted without unpleasantness.

LÜTZENBURG (CHARLOTTENBURG).

This was the home in which Caroline spent the greater part of nine years, and we have dwelt upon it because the impressions she received and the opinions she formed at Lützenburg, during her girlhood influenced her in after years. The King of Prussia was Caroline’s guardian, and after her mother’s death, Sophie Charlotte assumed a mother’s place to the little princess, who had now become an orphan and friendless indeed. Her step-brother was ruling at Ansbach, and Caroline was not very welcome there; indeed she was looked upon rather as an encumbrance than otherwise, and the only thing to be done was to marry her off as quickly as possible. There seems to have been some idea of betrothing her, when she was a mere child, to the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, but she could hardly have been in love with him, as Horace Walpole relates, for the Duke married some one else when Caroline was only thirteen years of age.

Sophie Charlotte caused her adopted daughter to be thoroughly educated, and carefully trained in the accomplishments necessary to her position. Caroline’s quickness and natural ability early made themselves manifest. Sophie Charlotte had no daughter of her own, and her heart went out to the young Princess of Ansbach, who returned her love fourfold, and looked up to her with something akin to adoration. Her admiration led to a remarkable likeness between the two in speech and gesture; nor did the likeness end here. Caroline was early admitted to the reunions at Lützenburg, and permitted to listen to the frank and free discussions which took place there. Such a training, though it might shake her beliefs, could not fail to sharpen her wits and enlarge her knowledge, and there is abundant evidence to show that in later life she adopted Sophie Charlotte’s views, not only in ethics and philosophy, but in conduct and morals. But she was more practical and less transcendental than the Queen of Prussia, and, like the Electress Sophia, she loved power, and took a keen interest in political affairs.

In this manner Caroline’s girlhood passed. We may picture her walking up and down the garden walks and terraces of Lützenburg hearing Leibniz expound his philosophy, or sitting with the Queen of Prussia on her favourite seat under the limes discussing with her “the why of the why”. She was the Queen’s constant companion and joy, and when, as it sometimes happened, she was obliged to leave Berlin for a while to pay a visit to her brother at Ansbach, Sophie Charlotte declared she found Lützenburg “a desert”.

Leibniz, Sophie Charlotte’s chosen guide, philosopher and friend, is worthy of more than passing notice, since his influence over the Princess Caroline was second only to that of the Queen of Prussia herself. In Caroline’s youth, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a prominent figure at Berlin, whither he frequently journeyed from Hanover. He was one of the most learned men of his time, almost equally eminent as a philosopher, mathematician and man of affairs. He was born in 1646 at Leipzig, and after a distinguished university career at Jena and Altdorf, he entered the service of the Elector-Archbishop of Mainz, and, as he possessed the pen of a ready writer, he was employed by him to advance his schemes. The Archbishop later sent him to Paris, nominally with a scheme he had evolved for the re-conquest of Egypt, really with the hope of distracting Louis the Fourteenth’s attention from German affairs, so that Leibniz went in a dual capacity, as a diplomatist and as an author. In Paris the young philosopher became acquainted with Arnauld and Malebranche. From Paris he went to London, where he met Newton, Oldenburg and Boyle. His intimacy with these distinguished men stimulated his interest in mathematics. In 1676, when he was thirty years of age, Leibniz quitted the service of Mainz and entered that of Hanover. For the next forty years his headquarters were at Hanover, where he had charge of the archives, and worked also at politics, labouring unceasingly with his pen to promote the aggrandisement of the House of Hanover, especially to obtain for it the electoral dignity. Leibniz’s work threw him much in contact with the Electress Sophia, with whom he became a trusted and confidential friend, and whose wide views were largely coloured by his liberal philosophy.

Leibniz had a positive passion for work, and in these, the most active years of his life, he not only laboured at political affairs, but worked hard at philosophy and mathematics, turning out book after book with amazing rapidity. At the suggestion of the Electress Sophia, he concerned himself with theology too, and strove at one time to promote the reunion of the Catholic and Protestant creeds, his principal correspondent being Bossuet. The English Act of Parliament, vesting the succession to the throne of England in the Electress Sophia and the heirs of her body, being Protestant, put a summary stop to these labours. Henceforth there was no more coquetting with Roman Catholicism at Hanover. The Electress Sophia, Calvinist though she was, affected to manifest an interest in the Church of England, and especially favoured the English Protestant Nonconformists.

To consult archives for his history of the Brunswick-Lüneburg family, which he had been commanded to write, Leibniz travelled to Munich, Vienna, Rome and other cities. At Rome, the Pope, impressed by his great learning and controversial ability, offered him the custodianship of the Vatican library, if he would become a Roman Catholic, but Leibniz declined the offer. Apart from the fact that it involved submission to the Roman Church, it did not offer him a sufficiently wide field for his ambition. It is impossible to withhold some pity from this great scholar. He was one of those who put their trust in princes; he was greedy of money, honours and worldly fame; he loved the atmosphere of courts, and to have the ear of those who sit in high places, and so he deliberately prostituted his giant brain to writing panegyrics of the princes of paltry dukedoms, when he might have employed it to working out some of the greatest problems that interest mankind.

His worldly prospects at this time largely depended on the Queen of Prussia. Sophie Charlotte had known him at Hanover, and she invited him to Lützenburg. Through his influence she induced the King of Prussia to found the Academy of Science in Berlin, and to make Leibniz its first president. At his suggestion also, similar societies were founded in St. Petersburg, Dresden and Vienna, under the immediate patronage of the reigning monarchs, who were thus able to pose as patrons of the arts and sciences. Leibniz received honours from all of them, and the Emperor created him a baron of the empire.

Leibniz often met the Princess of Ansbach at the Queen of Prussia’s reunions, and he noted how high she stood in the favour of his royal mistress. He became attracted to her by her wit and conversation, which were unusual in a princess of her years. He spoke of her in glowing terms to the Electress Sophia, who later made acquaintance with the young princess at Berlin, and she, too, was charmed with her talents and beauty. Leibniz, who was much at Berlin in those days, kept his venerable mistress at Hanover acquainted with the movements of the princess. We find him, for instance, writing to tell the Electress that Caroline had returned to Berlin after a brief visit to Ansbach, and of the Queen’s pleasure at seeing her again. The Electress Sophia replied from Herrenhausen, desiring him to assure Caroline of her affection, and adding, “If it depended on me, I would have her kidnapped, and keep her always here”. This seems to show that, even at this early date, Sophia had it in her mind that she would like Caroline to marry her grandson, George Augustus.

In the autumn of 1704 the Electress Sophia paid a long visit to her beloved daughter, and spent two months with her at Lützenburg. The King of Prussia had great respect for his mother-in-law; she agreed with him in his love of pageantry, and, like him, was a great stickler for points of etiquette. But she had a larger mind, and was not content with the mere show of sovereignty: she loved the substance—domination and power. The Queen of Prussia received her mother with every demonstration of joy, and the festivities of Lützenburg were set going in her honour. Leibniz and Beausobre were there, and many intellectual tournaments took place. The Princess Caroline was there too, whom Sophia observed with especial interest. Caroline was now in her twenty-first year, and had blossomed into lovely womanhood; her features were regular, she had abundant fair hair, large blue eyes, a tall and supple figure and a stately bearing. The fame of her beauty and high qualities had travelled through Europe. True she was dowerless, the orphan daughter of a petty prince of no importance, but her guardian was the King of Prussia, and she was known to be the adopted daughter of his Queen. Thus it came about that her hand was sought by some of the most powerful princes in Europe, notably by the Archduke Charles, titular King of Spain, and heir to the Emperor, whom he later succeeded. The idea of this marriage had long been in the air, but in 1704 it took definite shape, and the Elector Palatine, who was interested in the matter from political reasons, solicited Caroline’s hand for the Archduke. Negotiations were proceeding while the Electress Sophia was at Lützenburg. We find Leibniz writing from there:—

“Apparently the Electress remains here until November, and will stay as long as the Queen is here. Two young princesses, the hereditary Princess of Cassel and the Princess of Ansbach, are also here, and I heard them sing the other night, a little divertimento musicale, the latter taking the part of ‘Night,’ the former that of ‘Aurora,’ the equinox adjusting the difference. The Princess of Cassel sings very tunefully; the Princess of Ansbach has a wonderful voice. Every one predicts the Spanish crown for her, but she deserves something surer than that crown is at present, though it may become more important; besides, the King of Spain (the Archduke) is an amiable prince.”[3]

The predictions were a little premature, for the Archduke’s wooing did not progress satisfactorily. As Leibniz said, the prospects of the Spanish crown were somewhat unsettled, though they were sufficiently dazzling to tempt a less ambitious princess than Caroline, and she was always ambitious. Her heart was free, but if it had not been, she had well learned the lesson that hearts are the last things to be taken into account in state marriages. A more serious difficulty arose in the matter of religion. In order to marry the titular King of Spain it was necessary for Caroline to become a Roman Catholic, and this she could not make up her mind to do. Perhaps she had inherited the Protestant spirit of her famous ancestor, George the Pious; perhaps the influences of Wittenberg were strong upon her. She was certainly influenced by the liberal views of the Queen of Prussia and the arguments she had heard at the reunions at Lützenburg. She was all for liberty of conscience in matters of faith, and shrank from embracing a positive religion, and of all religions Roman Catholicism is the most positive. Besides, it would seem that, though indifferent to most forms of religion, she really disliked Roman Catholicism, and all through her life she was consistent in her objection to it. Her guardian, the King of Prussia, though a Protestant himself, could not sympathise with her scruples. In his view young princesses should adapt their religion to political exigencies, and so he made light of her objections, and urged her to marry the King of Spain. Her adopted mother, Sophie Charlotte, maintained a neutral attitude: she was loath to part with her, but she refused to express an opinion either way. But the Electress Sophia, who was nothing if not Protestant, since her English prospects were wholly dependent on her Protestantism, greatly desired Caroline as a wife for her grandson, George Augustus, and did all she could to influence her against the match. She writes from Lützenburg: “Our beautiful Princess of Ansbach has not yet resolved to change her religion. If she remains firm the marriage will not take place.”[4]

Meanwhile Caroline, perhaps with an idea of gaining time, or forced into it, consented to receive the Jesuit priest Urban, and allow him to argue with her. The Electress Sophia again writes: “The dear Princess of Ansbach is being sadly worried. She has resolved to do nothing against her conscience, but Urban is very able, and can easily overcome the stupid Lutheran priests here. If I had my way, she would not be worried like this, and our court would be happy. But it seems that it is not God’s will that I should be happy with her; we at Hanover shall hardly find any one better.”[5] The result of these interviews was uncertain, for the Electress Sophia writes a few days later: “First the Princess of Ansbach says ‘Yes’ and then ‘No’. First she says we Protestants have no valid priests, then that Catholics are idolatrous and accursed, and then again that our religion is the better. What the result will be I do not know. The Princess is shortly leaving here, and so it must be either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. When Urban comes to see the Princess the Bible lies between them on the table, and they argue at length. Of course, the Jesuit, who has studied more, argues her down, and then the Princess weeps.”[6]

The young Princess’s tears lend a touch of pathos to this picture. Be it remembered that she was absolutely alone, poor, orphaned, dependent on the favour of her guardians, one of whom was strongly in favour of this match. If she consented, she would violate her conscience, it is true, but she would gain honour, riches and power, all of which she ardently desired. The powerful pressure of the King of Prussia, the most persuasive arguments of the Jesuit, and the subtle promptings of self-interest and ambition were all brought to bear on her. It says much for Caroline’s strength of character that she did not yield, and shows that she was of no common mould. That she refused definitely is shown by the following letter which the Electress Sophia wrote on her return to Hanover to Leibniz, whom she had left behind her at Lützenburg: “Most people here applaud the Princess of Ansbach’s decision, and I have told the Duke of Celle that he deserves her for his grandson. I think the Prince (George Augustus) likes the idea also, for in talking with him about her, he said, ‘I am very glad that you desire her for me’. Count Platen (the Prime Minister), to whom I mentioned the matter, is not opposed, but does not wish it so much.”[7]

Leibniz had something to do with Caroline’s decision, and he drafted the letter for her in which she declined further negotiations. The King of Prussia was angry, and roundly cursed Hanoverian interference, as he called it; indeed, he made things so uncomfortable that Caroline thought it advisable to leave Berlin for Ansbach until her guardian should become more amiable. Her step-brother was dead, and her own brother was now Margrave. From Ansbach we find her writing to Leibniz at Berlin:—

“I received your letter with the greatest pleasure, and am glad to think that I still retain your friendship and your remembrance. I much desire to show my gratitude for all the kindness you paid me at Lützenburg. I am delighted to hear from you that the Queen and the court regret my departure, but I am sad not to have the happiness of paying my devoirs to our incomparable Queen. I pray you on the next occasion assure her of my deep respect. I do not think the King of Spain is troubling himself any more about me. On the contrary, they are incensed at my disinclination to follow the advice of Father Urban. Every post brings me letters from that kind priest. I really think his persuasions contributed materially to the uncertainty I felt during those three months, from which I am now quite recovered. The Electress (Sophia) does me too much honour in remembering me; she has no more devoted servant than myself, and I understand her pleasure in having the Crown Prince (of Prussia) at Hanover.”[8]

The Crown Prince of Prussia, Frederick William, had spent a good deal of time at the Hanoverian Court when a boy. His grandmother, the Electress Sophia, had wished to educate him at Hanover with her other grandson, George Augustus, but Frederick William was of a quarrelsome disposition, and pummelled George Augustus so unmercifully that they had to be separated. Their hatred for one another lasted through life. Frederick William was a headstrong and violent youth, with ungovernable passions; even when a boy it was dangerous to thwart him in any way. The boy was father to the man. As the Crown Prince grew up, his mother had occasion to reproach him again and again for his unenviable qualities, among which avarice, rudeness and lack of consideration for others were prominent.

The Queen of Prussia would have liked Caroline as a wife for her son, but the King had other and more ambitious views. He was not, however, opposed to the idea, in case all his other plans fell through. Neither Caroline nor the Crown Prince had any inclination for each other, and the scheme never took any definite shape, though it might have done so had the Queen lived. Meanwhile it was resolved to send Frederick William on a tour of foreign travel, in the hope that a greater knowledge of the world would improve his manners and morals. The Queen felt the parting keenly, for she truly loved her son (her only child), and though indifferent about other matters, she was keenly practical in anything that concerned his interest. After he had gone there was found a sheet of notepaper on her writing-table at Lützenburg, on which she had drawn a heart and underneath had written the date and the words “Il est parti”.

It is probable that this parting preyed upon the Queen of Prussia’s health, which was never strong, and made her more anxious to visit her mother. In January, 1705, she set out for Hanover, notwithstanding the opposition of the King and the severity of the weather. The long journey was too much for her. At Magdeburg she broke down, and had to take to her bed; but she rallied, and again took the road. After she had reached Hanover she seemed to conquer her illness, a tumour in the throat, by sheer force of will. In a few days, however, dangerous symptoms developed, and she became rapidly worse. Doctors were called in, and it was soon recognised that there was no hope left.

When the news was broken to the Queen, with the greatest composure and without any fear of death she resigned herself to the inevitable. Her death-bed belongs to history. A great deal of conflicting testimony has gathered around her last hours, but probably the account given by Frederick the Great, who had exceptional opportunities of knowing the truth, is a correct one. The French chaplain at Hanover, de la Bergerie, came to offer his ministrations, but she said to him: “Let me die without quarrelling with you. For twenty years I have devoted earnest study to religious questions; you can tell me nothing that I do not know already, and I die in peace.” To her lady-in-waiting she exclaimed: “What a useless fuss and ceremony they will make over this poor body”; and when she saw that she was in tears, she said, “Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?” And again: “Do not pity me. I am at last going to satisfy my curiosity about the origin of things, which even Leibniz could never explain to me, to understand space, infinity, being and nothingness; and as for the King, my husband—well, I shall afford him the opportunity of giving me a magnificent funeral, and displaying all the pomp he loves so much.” Her aged mother, broken down with grief, was ill in an adjoining room, and unable to come to her; but to her brothers, George Louis (afterwards George the First, King of England) and Ernest Augustus, she bade an affectionate farewell. The pastor reminded her tritely that kings and queens were mortal equally with other men. She answered, “Je le sais bien,” and with a sigh expired.

SOPHIA CHARLOTTE, QUEEN OF PRUSSIA.

From the Original Portrait by Wiedman.

Sophie Charlotte was in her thirty-seventh year when she died, and at her death a great light went out. She would have been a remarkable woman under any conditions; she was doubly remarkable when we remember her time and her environment. In her large brain and generous sympathies, her love of art and letters, and her desire to raise the intellectual life of those around her the first Queen of Prussia strongly resembled one of her successors who has recently passed away—the late Empress Frederick. She resembled her also in that during her lifetime she was often misrepresented and misunderstood, and her great qualities of head and heart were not fully appreciated until after her death.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER II:

[3] Leibniz to State Minister du Cros, Lützenburg, 25th October, 1704.

[4] The Electress Sophia to the Raugravine Louise, Lützenburg, 21st October, 1704.

[5] The Electress Sophia to the Raugravine Louise, Lützenburg, 27th October, 1704.

[6] The Electress Sophia to the Raugravine Louise, Lützenburg, 1st November, 1704.

[7] The Electress Sophia to Leibniz, Hanover, 22nd November, 1704.

[8] Princess Caroline of Ansbach to Leibniz, Ansbach, 28th December, 1704.

CHAPTER III.
THE WOOING OF THE PRINCESS. 1705.

The Queen of Prussia’s death was one of the great sorrows of Caroline’s life. She was at Ansbach when Sophie Charlotte died, slowly recovering from a low fever. The sad news from Hanover plunged her into the deepest grief, and seriously hindered her convalescence. Leibniz, who had also lost his best friend in the Queen, wrote to Caroline to express his grief and sympathy; he also took this opportunity to explain his views on the Divine scheme of things.

“Your Serene Highness,” he writes, “having often done me the honour at Lützenburg of listening to my views on true piety, will allow me here to revert to them briefly.

“I am persuaded, not by light conjecture, that everything is ruled by a Being, whose power is supreme, and whose knowledge infinite and perfect. If, in this present state, we could understand the Divine scheme of things, we should see that everything is ordered for the best, not only generally but individually, for those who have a true love of God and confidence in His goodness. The teachings of Scripture conform to reason when they say that all things work together for good to those who love God. Thus perfect love is consummated in the joy of finding perfection in the object beloved, and this is felt by those who recognise Divine perfection in all that it pleases God to do. If we had the power now to realise the marvellous beauty and harmony of things, we should reduce happiness to a science, and live in a state of perpetual blessedness. But since this beauty is hidden from our eyes, and we see around us a thousand sights that shock us, and cause temptation to the weak and ignorant, our love of God and our trust in His goodness are founded on faith, not yet lost in sight or verified by the senses.

“Herein, madam, may be found, broadly speaking, the three cardinal virtues of Christianity: faith, hope and love. Herein, too, may be found the essence of the piety which Christ taught—trust in the Supreme Reason, even where our reason fails without Divine grace to grasp its working, and although there may seem to be little reason in it. I have often discussed these broad principles with the late Queen. She understood them well, and her wonderful insight enabled her to realise much that I was unable to explain. This resignation, this trust, this merging of a tranquil soul in its God, showed itself in all her words and actions to the last moment of her life.”[9]

Caroline’s answer to this letter shows that she had not yet arrived at the heights of Leibniz’s philosophy: “Heaven,” she says, “jealous of our happiness, has taken away from us our adored and adorable Queen. The calamity has overwhelmed me with grief and sickness, and it is only the hope that I may soon follow her that consoles me. I pity you from the bottom of my heart, for her loss to you is irreparable. I pray the good God to add to the Electress Sophia’s life the years that the Queen might have lived, and I beseech you to express my devotion to her.”[10]

To add to Caroline’s troubles, the Elector Palatine showed signs at this time of reviving his favourite project of marrying her to the King of Spain, notwithstanding her definite refusal the year before. He probably thought, as the death of Queen Sophie Charlotte had materially affected for the worse the position and prospects of her ward, that the young Princess could now be induced to reconsider her decision. The King of Prussia was of this opinion too, and his tone became threatening and peremptory; he had no objection to keeping Caroline as a possible bride for his son in the last resort, but it would suit his political schemes better to see her married to the future Emperor. But Caroline found an unexpected ally in her brother, the young Margrave of Ansbach, who resented, as much as he dared, the interference of the King of Prussia, and told his sister that she was not to do violence to her convictions, and that she might make her home with him as long as she pleased. Thus fortified, Caroline stood firm in her resistance, though by so doing she refused the most brilliant match in Europe.

With the spring things grew brighter; Caroline could not mourn for ever, and thanks to a strong constitution, youth and health asserted themselves, and she quite recovered her beauty and her vivacity. The Ansbach burghers knew all about her refusal of the future Emperor, and they honoured her for her courage and firmness, and were proud of their beautiful young princess, whom the greatest prince in Europe had sued in vain. Caroline interested herself in many schemes of usefulness in her brother’s principality, and went in and out among the people displaying those rare social gifts which stood her in good stead in later years. Perhaps this was the happiest period of her life, and though she was at Ansbach only for a short time, she always retained an affection for the place of her birth, and an interest in the fortunes of her family. Yet she must have felt the contrast between quiet little Ansbach and the brilliant circle at Berlin; her energetic and ambitious temperament was not one which could have long remained content with an equivocal position in a petty German Court, and she must have wondered what the future had in store for her.

Caroline was not destined to regret her refusal of the Imperial diadem. “Providence,” as Addison put it later, “kept a reward in store for such exalted virtue;” and her “pious firmness,” as Burnet unctuously called her rejection of the future Emperor, “was not to go unrequited, even in this life”.[11] In June, the fairest month of all the year at little Ansbach, when the trim palace garden was full of roses, and the lime trees in the Hofgarten were in fragrant bloom, the Electoral Prince George Augustus of Hanover came to see and woo the beautiful princess like the Prince Charming in the fairy tale. George Augustus was not exactly a Prince Charming either in appearance or character, but at this time he passed muster. He was a few months younger than Caroline, and though he was short in stature, he was well set up, and had inherited some of his mother’s beauty, especially her large almond-shaped eyes. The court painters depict him as by no means an ill-looking youth, and the court scribes, after the manner of their kind, described him as a prince of the highest qualities, with a grace of bearing and charm of manner. Flatterers as well as detractors unite in declaring him to be possessed of physical courage, as daring and impulsive, and often prompted by his heart. George Augustus had his defects, as we shall see later; they developed as the years went on, but they were not on the surface now, and it was only the surface that the young Princess saw.

The wooing of Caroline was full of romance and mystery; even the bare record of it, as related in the state papers and despatches of the day, cannot altogether keep these elements out. The Elector George of Hanover determined that his son should visit Ansbach in disguise, and, under a feigned name, see and converse with the Princess, so that he might find out if he could love her, if she were likely to love him, and whether she was really so beautiful and charming as rumour had described her. The Elector knew by bitter experience the misery of a state marriage between an ill-assorted husband and wife, and he determined to spare his son a similar fate. Extraordinary care was taken to preserve the Prince’s incognito, and to prevent his mission being known before everything was settled. There was an additional reason for this secrecy, as the King of Prussia would certainly try to prevent the marriage if he got to know of it in time.

Prince George Augustus rode out of Hanover at night, no one knew whither, but his absence from the court was soon remarked, and the quidnuncs were all agog. The English Envoy at Hanover, Poley, writes home as follows:—

“Our Electoral Prince went out of town at about twelve o’clock at night, attended only by the Baron von Eltz (who had formerly been his governor and is one of these Ministers) and one valet-de-chambre. This journey is a mystery of which I know nothing, but it seems probable that he will make use of the Princess of Hesse’s passing through Celle to view incognito a Princess of that family who is thought to come with her. There is a Princess of Saxe-Zeith, also, said to be the most beautiful in Germany.... In what concerns the Prince’s own inclination in this business, his Highness hath not hitherto appeared so much concerned for the character and beauty of any young lady he hath account of, as the Princess of Ansbach. The mystery of this journey at least will soon be discovered. There is in this court a real desire of marrying the prince very soon.”[12]

Meanwhile George Augustus, in accordance with the Elector’s plan, had arrived at Ansbach. He professed to be a young Hanoverian noble travelling for pleasure, who expected to meet at Nuremberg some travelling companions from Westphalia, but as they had failed to appear, he found Nuremberg dull, and came on to Ansbach to see the town and visit its court. He and his companion, Baron von Eltz, presented introductions from Count Platen, the Hanoverian Prime Minister, commending them to the good offices of the Margrave. They were received at the palace and treated with all hospitality; they were invited to supper, and joined the circle afterwards at music and cards. George Augustus, in the guise of a Hanoverian nobleman, was presented to the Princess Caroline, and conversed with her for some time. According to his subsequent declarations he was so much charmed with her that he fell in love at first sight. She far exceeded all that rumour had declared. It may be presumed that he kept his ardour in check, and Caroline had no idea who he was. But whether she had an inkling or not, she betrayed no sign, and played her part to perfection. After a few days’ sojourn at Ansbach the young prince departed, apparently to Nuremberg to meet his friends, in reality to hasten back to Hanover to tell his father that he was very much in love. Here again we quote Poley:—

“The Prince Electoral is returned and gone to Herrenhausen. He was about two hours with the Elector alone, and the Elector’s appearing afterwards in good humour at table makes it to be imagined that there hath nothing happened but what he is well pleased with. Some with whom I am acquainted are positively of opinion that his Highness hath been at Ansbach, and that he declared his design himself in person, and hath been very well received, and that we shall soon see some effects of it; others think it is a Princess of Hesse.”[13]

But no explanation of the Prince’s expedition was forthcoming, and the Elector went off to Pyrmont to take the waters, leaving the Hanoverian Court in mystification. The secret was well kept; even the Electress Sophia was not informed, notwithstanding that this was her darling scheme. The Elector had contempt for women’s discretion; he often declared that he could not trust a woman’s tongue, and he knew that his mother was a constant correspondent with the greatest gossip in Europe, her niece, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans.

Matters being thus far advanced at Hanover, Eltz was again despatched to Ansbach. “He hath disappeared secretly,” writes the lynx-eyed Poley, who was still much mystified. When Eltz returned to Ansbach, he kept up his disguise and told the Margrave that he had just returned from Nuremberg, where he had left his young friend. The Elector of Hanover’s secret instructions to Eltz, and the Envoy’s letters to the Elector (preserved in the Hanoverian archives) explain what followed, and the whole of the negotiations at Ansbach. It will be well to quote them in full:—

The Elector of Hanover to Privy Councillor von Eltz.

“Hanover, June 17th, 1705.

“Whereas, it is already known to our trusty Envoy, that our son, the Electoral Prince, has seen the Princess of Ansbach, and is seized with such an affection and desire for her, that he is most eager to marry her without delay: We therefore should gladly rejoice to see such a union take place, and hope that the Princess may be equally favourably disposed. It is necessary, however, that her inclinations be assured first of all, and, should she consent to this alliance, it is our wish that the marriage contracts may be agreed upon without unnecessary delay.

“We therefore instruct our Envoy to betake himself, secretly and incognito, to the Court of Ansbach. On arriving there he must feign surprise that his friends from Westphalia, who had arranged to meet him at Nuremberg on their way to Italy, had not yet arrived. Moreover, he must say that the young friend who had accompanied him the last time he was at Ansbach having been unexpectedly called home, he, our Envoy, found the time of waiting so long at Nuremberg that he returned to Ansbach, and would consider it a special favour if he might be allowed to pass a few more days at that Court.

“Having made this explanation, our Envoy should seek an opportunity of conversing alone with the Princess, and should say to her privately, when no one else is within hearing, that he had matters of importance to bring before her notice, and certain proposals to make, which he hoped would not prove disagreeable to her. He must therefore beg her to name a convenient time and opportunity to grant him an interview alone, but in such a manner as to cause no comment. He should also ask her, particularly, not to confide to any one the request he had made, the more especially because the Princess would subsequently see that the matter was of so delicate a nature as to require absolute secrecy for the present.

“When our Envoy is admitted to the Princess, he must explain to her that the young friend who accompanied him on his last visit to the Court of Ansbach was our son, the Electoral Prince, who had been so much impressed with the reports of the Princess’s incomparable beauty and mental attributes that he arranged to appear incognito, and have the honour of seeing and speaking with the Princess without her knowing his electoral rank and station. As he had succeeded in doing this, and had found that the reports were more than verified, our son is so charmed and delighted with her that he would consider it the height of good fortune to obtain her for his wife, and has asked our permission to seek this end. As we, the Elector, have always held the Princess in highest esteem and repute, we are not a little rejoiced to hear that our son cherished these sentiments towards her, and we should be even more glad if he could attain the object of his mission.

“Our Envoy must then declare to the Princess who he himself is, and by whose authority he has come, and he must sound her as to whether she be free from all other engagements, and if so he must discover if her heart be inclined towards our son. Our Envoy, however, must mention, but not in such a way as to suggest that the Princess of Ansbach is a pis aller for our son, that this matter would have been broached sooner on our side, if negotiations for our son’s marriage had not been going on in Sweden, as was perhaps known in Ansbach, the result of which had necessarily to be awaited. Besides we had previously to make sure whether the Princess of Ansbach was likely to entertain the King of Spain’s suit.

“If the Princess should reply that she is engaged to another, or if she should behave in such a way as to lead our Envoy to suppose that she was desirous of avoiding the proposal of marriage from our son, our Envoy is charged to beg the Princess not to make the slightest mention of the matter to any one, and, under pretext that he has received news that his travelling companions have at last reached Nuremberg, he is to take leave of the Court of Ansbach, and return hither at once as secretly as he left.

“But should the Princess, in answer to our Envoy’s proposition, declare, as we hope she will, that she is free from any other matrimonial engagement, and is inclined to an alliance with our House, our Envoy will inquire of the Princess, first, whether she would agree to his having an audience with her brother, the Margrave, and then, on behalf of our son, he will ask her hand in marriage. Also, because this matter must be formally dealt with, and a contract of marriage drawn up, he must find out what trustees, persons well disposed towards the marriage, he shall ask the Margrave to nominate, or whether the Princess would prefer herself to nominate them. The Princess will probably require time to consider the matter, in which case our Envoy will request her to think over the question by herself. Should the Princess delay in coming to a decision, our Envoy, in the most polite and delicate manner possible, will remind her that he must guard in every way against the Princess having any kind of communication with the Court of Berlin until such time as this project of marriage is so far established as to prevent any possibility of its being upset; and to this end our Envoy will most strongly urge that only trustworthy persons favourably disposed towards this marriage be employed in the drawing up of the contract. Our Envoy will point out that any communication on this subject with the Court of Berlin would only create difficulties and loss of time. Our Envoy knows full well that the sooner our son is married the better. It is, therefore, most important to prevent any whisper reaching Berlin, and to keep in ignorance all those persons who would surely speak against this marriage, and seek to delay it, in the hope of eventually preventing it altogether. Our Envoy can suggest to the Princess that an explanation could easily be given to the Court of Berlin later (with apologies for not having acquainted it before), to the effect that she was so hard pressed by our Envoy for a decision, she could not well refrain from accepting at once, the more especially as it was an offer she had no reason to refuse. Her brother, the Margrave, could say that he knew nothing of the matter until the Princess announced that she had chosen our son.”

Privy Councillor von Eltz to the Elector of Hanover.

“Ansbach, June 23rd, 1705.

“On arriving here yesterday evening I went at once to the Court, and was presented to the Margrave and her Highness the Princess, under the name of ‘Steding,’ by Court Marshal von Gerleheim. I was most graciously received by them both. The Princess commanded me to be shown to her private apartments, and gave me audience in her own chamber. There was no one else present, except at first Fräulein von Genninggen, who stood discreetly apart, and with her back turned to us; she afterwards, at my suggestion, left the room. I then took the opportunity to carry out the mission with which I had been graciously entrusted by your Electoral Highness. I asked first whether her Highness was free of all other matrimonial engagements, and in that event whether she was favourably disposed to the Electoral Prince’s suit?

“Her Highness at first seemed to be surprised and agitated. But she soon composed herself, and said that I could rest assured that she was entirely free from any engagements, as the negotiations between herself and the King of Spain had been completely broken off. Nevertheless, she added, my proposition came to her very unexpectedly, as (I quote her own words) ‘she had never flattered herself that any one in Hanover had so much as thought about her’. That they should have done so, she could only ascribe to the will of God and the goodness of your Electoral Highness, and she hoped that you would not find yourself deceived in the favourable opinion you had formed of her from what others had told you. This much, at least, she would admit, that she would infinitely prefer an alliance with your Electoral House to any other; and she considered it particular good fortune to be able to form fresh and congenial ties to compensate for the loss she had suffered by the death of the high-souled Queen of Prussia, and of her own step-brother. In the meantime, as she was absolutely dependent on her brother, the present Margrave, she could not formally give her consent to my proposal until she had spoken with him on the subject. But she did not doubt that he would consider your Electoral Highness’s request in a favourable light, and would willingly give his consent in all things as she wished.

“Having expressed my profound thanks to her Highness for her favourable reception of my proposal, I then strongly urged upon her the most absolute secrecy, especially with regard to the too early announcement of this betrothal to the Court of Berlin. Her Highness at once declared that this was the very request she herself had been on the point of making to me, as the King of Prussia took upon himself to such an extent to command her to do this, that and the other, that her brother and she were obliged to be very circumspect, and to be careful of everything they said and did. Her brother, the Margrave, would most certainly be discreet, and the Princess was glad that Privy Councillor von Breidow was even now going to Berlin to represent the Court of Ansbach at the funeral of the late Queen.[14] Her Highness also undertook to inquire of her brother what settlements she should ask for, and who should be entrusted with the drawing up of the marriage contract, at the same time remarking that she had complete trust in Councillor von Voit, who, although he had originally advised her to accept the proposal of the King of Spain, yet, when she could not make up her mind to change her religion, had not turned against her, and was still her friend, and deeply attached to her brother. In conclusion, her Highness said that it would be best for me to retain the name of Steding for the present, and to come to Court in that name whenever I wished to drive out with her. Thereupon, so as not to create remark by too long an interview, and also to be able to expedite this despatch, I returned to my lodging at once. Tomorrow I shall repair to Court again and learn what his Highness the Margrave has to say, whereupon I shall not fail to send my report.”

Privy Councillor von Eltz to the Elector of Hanover.

“Ansbach, June 25th, 1705.

“As the Princess of Ansbach promised, and as I mentioned in my despatch of the day before yesterday, her Highness made known my mission to her brother, the Margrave, the same evening, and received his consent, which he gave with great pleasure. They thereupon sent a joint message by an express courier to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt begging him to be good enough to repair hither without delay; the Princess asked the Landgrave to come in order that he might be an adviser to her and her brother, and help to determine the question of her appanage and her settlements. These will probably be easily settled. There is not likely to be any difference between the Princess and her brother on the question of settlements, except that he wishes to give up to her everything left to her by the will of the deceased Margrave, and she declines to accept so much from him.

“Meanwhile, though my credentials have not yet arrived, acting on the Princess’s advice, I had a special audience with the Margrave, and thanked him for his favourable reply, urging at the same time despatch in the matter. Further, I asked that Councillor Voit might act as one of the trustees. To all these requests he replied most politely, and assured me that he considered your Electoral Highness’s request as an honour to his House and a piece of good fortune to his family, and he was deeply obliged to your Electoral Highness for it, and would endeavour at all times to show your Electoral Highness devotion and respect.

“Court Councillor Serverit, who is here, and who was private secretary to the late Margrave, and is still intimate with the Princess, received a letter yesterday from Court Councillor Metsch, wherein he says he has been summoned by both the Emperor and the Elector Palatine, who have commissioned him to make a final representation on behalf of the King of Spain, and he therefore must earnestly request Court Councillor Serverit to repair to some place, such as Nuremberg, where he could meet and confer with him. But her Highness, the Princess, ordered Court Councillor Serverit to reply by special courier to Court Councillor Metsch that it was not worth his trouble to journey to Nuremberg or anywhere else, as she held firmly to the resolution she had already formed, all the more as the matter was no longer res integra. Thus your Electoral Highness has chosen the right moment to send me here, not only on account of this message, but also because of the absence of Privy Councillor von Breidow; and if only the courier will bring me the necessary instructions and authorisation from your Electoral Highness with regard to the marriage contract, as everything is in readiness, the matter can be settled at once. I also hope that the Princess will not long delay her departure from Ansbach, and will not break her journey to Hanover anywhere but at Eisenach. It is true she told Councillor Voit, when at my suggestion he mentioned to her that I was pressed for time, that she had no coaches or appanage ready, and the Councillor also gave me to understand that the Margrave would need time to make proper arrangements for the journey. But I, on the other hand, pointed out that your Electoral Highness cared for none of these things, and needed nothing else but to see the Princess in person, and hoped as soon as possible to receive her. Whereupon the Councillor assured me that her Highness would not take it amiss if I pressed the matter somewhat urgently, and that he would do all in his power to help me. I now only await the courier.... I have so much good to tell concerning the Princess’s merits, beauty, understanding and manner that your Electoral Highness will take a real and sincere pleasure in hearing it.”[15]

The courier from Hanover duly arrived at Ansbach bringing the Elector’s warrant, which gave Eltz full powers to arrange the marriage contract and settle the matter of the impending alliance between “our well-beloved son, George Augustus, Duke and Electoral Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and our well-beloved Princess Wilhelmina Caroline, Princess of Brandenburg in Prussia, of Magdeburg, Stettin and Pomerania, of Casuben and Wenden, also Duchess of Crossen in Silesia, Electress of Nuremberg, Princess of Halberstadt, Minden and Cannin, and Countess of Hohenzollern, etc., etc.,” as Caroline was grandiloquently described. Her long string of titles contrasted with her lack of dowry, for she brought to her future consort nothing but her beauty and her talents, which, however, were more than enough.

QUEEN CAROLINE’S ROOM IN THE CASTLE OF ANSBACH.

The preliminaries being settled, Count Platen was told by the Elector, who was still at Pyrmont, to acquaint the Electress Dowager with what had been done. The Electress expressed her surprise that “the whole matter had been kept secret from her,” but she was so overjoyed at the realisation of her hopes that she waived her resentment at the lack of courtesy with which she had been treated.[16] As the “Heiress of Great Britain” the marriage of her grandson, who was in the direct line of succession to the English throne, was a matter in which she had certainly a right to be consulted. But as it all turned out exactly as she would have wished, she put aside her chagrin and prepared to give the bride a hearty welcome.

The betrothal soon became an open secret, and the Duke of Celle, George Augustus’s maternal grandfather, was formally acquainted with the good news, and came to Hanover to offer his congratulations. Poley adds the following significant note: “During the Duke of Celle’s being here, the Duchess of Celle goes to stay with her daughter, and probably to acquaint her with her son’s marriage”.[17] This daughter was the unfortunate wife of the Elector, Sophie Dorothea, the family skeleton of the House of Hanover, whom her husband had put away and kept a prisoner at Ahlden. This was the only notification of the marriage made to her, and she was not allowed to send a letter to her son or to his future wife.

A few days later the good news was publicly proclaimed. Poley writes: “On Sunday, the 26th, just before dinner, the Elector declared that there was concluded a treaty of marriage between his son the Electoral Prince and the Princess of Ansbach, and the Prince received the compliments of the court upon it, and at dinner there were many healths drunk to his good success. So that the mystery is now at an end which hath hitherto been concealed with so much care.... The Prince’s clothes are now making, and the comedians have an order to be in readiness to act their best plays, of which they have already given in a list, though it is thought the mourning for the Emperor may delay the wedding some weeks longer if the Prince’s impatience does not make him willing to hasten it. The Electress told me on Sunday night that the Elector had left the Prince entirely to his own choice, and the Electress herself hath a very great kindness for her, and since her last visit to Berlin, the Princess of Ansbach hath been always talked of at this court as the most agreeable Princess in Germany.”[18]

After this there was no long delay, and everything was done to hasten forward the marriage. The Princess of Ansbach only asked for time to make necessary preparations for departure, and agreed to waive all unnecessary ceremony. At Hanover it was settled that the Electoral Prince and Princess should have the apartments in the Leine Schloss formerly occupied by Sophie Dorothea of Celle when Electoral Princess, and the same household and establishment allotted to them—“nothing very great,” remarks Poley.

The air was full of wedding preparations when the rejoicing was suddenly marred by the death of the aged Duke of Celle, who died of a chill caught hunting. The Princess of Ansbach, accompanied by her brother, the Margrave, had actually started on her journey to Hanover when the news of this untoward event reached her, and the Electoral Prince had gone to meet her half-way. As all arrangements were completed for the wedding, and delays were dangerous owing to the jealousy of the Courts of Vienna and Berlin, it was decided to suspend the mourning for the Duke of Celle for a few days, and to celebrate the marriage on the arrival of the bride.

George Augustus and Caroline were married quietly on September 2nd, 1705, in the chapel of the palace of Hanover. The only account of the marriage is to be found in Poley’s despatch: “The Princess of Ansbach and the Margrave, her brother, arrived here, and were received with all the expressions of kindness and respect that could be desired. The marriage was solemnised the same evening after her coming, and yesterday there was a ball, and in the evening there will be a comedy for her entertainment, and there are the greatest appearances of entire satisfaction on all sides. The Court left off their mourning, and has appeared these three days in all the finery which the occasion requires, and the Marquess of Hertford, Mr. Newport, Mr. Onslow, Mr. Austin, and some other English gentlemen, who are come hither to have their share of the diversions, have made no small part of the show.”[19] Thus early did Caroline make the acquaintance of representatives of the English nation over which, with her husband, she was one day to reign.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER III:

[9] Leibniz to the Princess Caroline of Ansbach, Hanover, 18th March, 1705.

[10] Letter of Princess Caroline to Leibniz, Ansbach, 2nd April, 1705.

[11] Gay, in his Epistle to a Lady, also alludes to this incident:—

“The pomp of titles easy faith might shake,

She scorned an empire, for religion’s sake”

[12] Poley’s Despatch, Hanover, 9th June, 1705.

[13] Poley’s Despatch, Hanover, 19th June, 1705.

[14] The Queen of Prussia was not buried until six months after her death, and her funeral, as she had anticipated, was conducted on a scale of great magnificence. Von Breidow was an Ansbach official in the pay of Prussia.

[15] These documents (in German) are preserved in the Royal Archives at Hanover. They have never before been published.

[16] An account of this interview is given in a letter from the Count von Platen to the Elector of Hanover; Hanover, 9th July, 1705 (Hanover Archives.)

[17] Poley’s Despatch, Hanover, 21st July, 1705.

[18] Poley’s Despatch, Hanover, 28th July, 1705.

[19] Poley’s Despatch, 4th September, 1705.

CHAPTER IV.
THE COURT OF HANOVER. 1705–1706.

The Court of Hanover at the time of Caroline’s marriage was one of the principal courts of North Germany, not equal in importance to that of Berlin, or in splendour to that of Dresden, but second to no others. During the reign of the first Elector, Ernest Augustus, and his consort, the Electress Sophia, Hanover had gained materially in power and importance. The town became the resort of wealthy nobles, who had before divided their attentions between Hamburg and Brunswick. Handsome public buildings and new houses sprang up on every side, and outside the walls, especially towards Herrenhausen, the borders of the city were extending. Few of the houses were large, for the wealthy Hanoverian nobility resided for the most part at their castles in the country, and only came to the capital now and then for the carnival or the opera, which was one of the best in Germany, or to pay their respects to the Elector.

The Hanover of that day, after the model of German mediæval cities, was a town with walls and gates. The old town within the walls was composed of rough narrow streets, and timbered, gabled houses with high sloping roofs. Some of these old houses, such as Leibnizhaus, a sandstone building of the seventeenth century, still remain, and so do the old brick Markt Kirche, the Rathhaus, and other quaint buildings characteristic of mediæval Germany; they make it easy to conjure up the everyday life of the old Hanoverian burghers.

Caroline found that Hanover was a more important place than Ansbach, and everything was on a larger scale. For instance, it possessed three palaces instead of one, the small Alte Palais, since Sophie Dorothea’s disgrace seldom used, the Leine Schloss, a huge barrack of a palace on the banks of the Leine, and last, but not least, Herrenhausen, about two miles without the walls, approached by a magnificent double avenue of limes. The grounds of Herrenhausen were designed in imitation of Versailles, and, though the palace itself was plain and unpretending, the beauty of the place consisted in its great park, full of magnificent limes, elms, chestnuts and maples, and in its garden, one hundred and twenty acres in extent, laid out in the old French style with terraces, statues and fountains, and fenced about with maze-like hedges of clipped hornbeam. The Electress Sophia loved Herrenhausen greatly, though since her widowhood she had been relegated to one wing of it by her son the Elector. He would not permit her any share in the government of the electorate, and she had therefore ample time to devote herself to her philosophic studies. But she also employed her active mind in looking after her English affairs, in which she was deeply interested. The fact that she was in the direct line of the English succession attracted to Herrenhausen many English people of note, and it became a rallying-point of those who favoured the Hanoverian succession.

The Electress Sophia was the widow of Ernest Augustus, first Elector of Hanover. She was a great princess in every sense of the word, and with her husband had raised Hanover from a petty dukedom to the rank of an electorate. She was the granddaughter of King James the First of England; the daughter of the Princess Elizabeth of England, Queen of Bohemia; the sister of Prince Rupert, who had fought for the royal cause throughout the great rebellion; the niece of Charles the First, and first cousin to Charles the Second and to James the Second, the old King who had lately died in exile at St. Germains.[20] By Act of Parliament the succession to the throne of England was vested in the Electress Sophia and the heirs male of her body being Protestant, and according to this Act the only life between her and the British crown was that of the reigning Queen, Anne, who was childless and in bad health. Sophia was inordinately proud of her English ancestry, and though she had never been in England, or had seen any of her English relatives since Charles the Second mounted the throne of his ancestors, she was much more English than German in her habits, tastes and inclinations. She had unbounded admiration for “her country,” as she called it, and its people; she spoke the language perfectly, and kept herself well acquainted with events in England. She even tried to understand the English Constitution, though here, it must be admitted, she was sometimes at fault. She had her mother’s soaring ambition: “I care not when I die,” said she, “if on my tomb it be written that I was Queen of England”. In her immediate circle she loved to be called “the Princess of Wales,” though, of course, she had no right to the title, and she frequently spoke of herself by the designation which was afterwards inscribed upon her tomb, “The heiress of Great Britain”.

When Caroline came to Hanover, this wonderful old princess, though over seventy years of age, was in full possession of her physical and mental faculties. Her step was firm, her bearing erect, and there was scarcely a wrinkle on her face, or a tooth out of her head. She read and corresponded widely, and spoke and wrote in five languages, each one perfectly. Notwithstanding her many sorrows (she had lost four sons and her dearly-loved daughter), vexations and deprivations, she maintained a cheerful and lively disposition, largely due to a perfect digestion, which even a course of solid German dinners—for she was a hearty eater and drinker—could not upset. One of her rules was never to eat nor walk alone, and she imputed her sound health largely to her love of company and outdoor exercise. Like her illustrious descendant, Queen Victoria, she never passed a day without spending many hours in the open air; she sometimes drove, but more often walked for two or three hours in the gardens of Herrenhausen, pacing up and down the interminable paths, and talking the whole time in French or English to her companions. In this way she gave audience to many Englishmen of note, from the great Marlborough downwards, and it is on record that she tired out many of them.

Her eldest son, George Louis (later George the First of England), who succeeded his father, Ernest Augustus, as Elector of Hanover in 1698, was in all respects different to his mother, who had inherited many characteristics of the Stuarts. He in no wise resembled them; he seemed to have harked back to some remote German ancestor, for, while his father, Ernest Augustus, was a handsome, genial, pleasure-loving prince, with a courtly air, and a genius for intrigue, the Elector George was ungraceful in person and gesture, reserved and uncouth in speech, and coarse and unrefined in taste. He was profligate, and penurious even in his profligacy. Unlike his mother, he had no learning, and unlike his father, he had no manners. On the other hand he was straightforward; he never told a lie, at least an unnecessary one; he had a horror of intrigue and double-dealing, and he had great personal courage, as he had proved on many a hard-fought field. His enemies said that he was absolutely devoid of human affection, but he had a sincere liking for his sister, Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, and a good deal of affection for his daughter, and what proved to be a lasting regard for his unlovely mistress, Ermengarda Melusina Schulemburg. The care he took that his son should make a love match also shows him to have possessed some heart. But few found this out; most were repelled by his harsh manner.

The Electress Sophia was not happy in her children; “none of them ever showed the respect they ought to have done,” writes her niece, Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans. Of all her seven children, only three were now living: George the Elector, who disliked her; Maximilian, a Jacobite and Roman Catholic, in exile and open rebellion against his brother; and Ernest Augustus, the youngest of them all. Of her grandson, George Augustus, we have already spoken, and he, too, frequently treated her with disrespect. There remained his sister, the Princess Sophie Dorothea, a young princess of beauty and promise, whose matrimonial prospects were engaging the attention of the old Electress.

Such was the electoral family of Hanover which Caroline had now joined. There was one other member of it, poor Sophie Dorothea of Celle, consort of the Elector, but she was thrust out of sight, divorced, disgraced, imprisoned, and now entering on the eleventh year of her dreary captivity in the castle of Ahlden, some twenty miles from Hanover. Caroline had doubtless heard of the black business in the old Leine Schloss that July night, 1694, when Königsmarck mysteriously disappeared coming from the Princess’s chamber, for the scandal had been discussed in every court in Europe. But there is nothing to show that she expressed any opinion on the guilt or innocence of her unhappy mother-in-law, whether she took her husband’s view, who regarded his mother as the victim of the Elector’s tyranny, or the view of the Electress Sophia, who could find no words bad enough to condemn her. Caroline was much too discreet to stir the embers of that old family feud, or to mention a name which was not so much as whispered at Herrenhausen. But one thing may be noted in her favour; she showed many courtesies to the imprisoned Princess’s mother, the aged Duchess of Celle, who, since her husband’s death, had been forced to quit the castle of Celle, and now lived in retirement at Wienhausen. The favour of George Augustus and Caroline protected the Duchess of Celle from open insult, but history is silent as to whether the Duchess attempted to act as a means of communication between them and her imprisoned daughter.

Caroline’s bright and refined presence was sorely needed at the Hanoverian Court, which had changed for the worse since George had assumed the electoral diadem. Under the rule of the pleasure-loving Ernest Augustus and his cheerful spouse Sophia, their court had been one of the gayest in Germany, and splendid out of proportion to the importance of the electorate. The Elector George kept his court too; he maintained the opera and dined in public, after the manner of Louis the Fourteenth, but he was as penurious as Ernest Augustus had been extravagant, and he cut down every unnecessary penny. The Duchess of Orleans, who cordially disliked all the Hanoverian family except her aunt, the Electress Sophia, writes about this time: “It is not to be wondered at that the gaiety that used to be at Hanover has departed; the Elector is so cold that he turns everything into ice—his father and uncle were not like him”.

This was a prejudiced view, for the Court of Hanover was still gay, though its gaiety had lost in wit and gained in coarseness since the accession of the Elector George. A sample of its pleasures is afforded in the following description, written by Leibniz, of a fête given at Hanover a year or two before Caroline’s marriage.[21] The entertainment was modelled on Trimalchio’s banquet, and suggests a parallel with the grossest pleasures of Nero and imperial Rome. Leibniz writes:—

“A fête was given at this Court recently and represented the famous banquet described by Petronius.[22] The part of our modern Trimalchio was played by the Raugrave, and that of his wife, Fortunata, by Fräulein von Pöllnitz, who managed everything as did Fortunata of old in the house of her Trimalchio. Couches were arranged round the table for the guests. The trophies displayed of Trimalchio’s arms were composed of empty bottles, and there were very many devices, recording his fine qualities, especially his courage and wit. As the guests entered the banqueting hall, a slave called out, ‘Advance in order,’ as in ancient time, and they took their places on the couches set apart for them. Eumolpus (Mauro) recited verses in praise of the great Trimalchio, who presently arrived carried on a litter, and preceded by a chorus of singers and musicians, including huntsmen blowing horns, drummers and slaves, all making a great noise. As the procession advanced, Trimalchio’s praises were sung after the following fashion:—

À la cour comme à l’armée

On connait sa renommée;

Il ne craint point les bâtards,

Ni de Bacchus ni de Mars.

“After the procession had made several turns round the hall, Trimalchio was placed on his couch, and began to eat and drink, cordially inviting his guests to follow his example. His chief carver was called Monsieur Coupé, so that by calling out ‘Coupé’ he could name him, and at the same time command him to carve, like the carver Carpus in Petronius, to whom his master called Carpe, which means much the same as coupez. In imitation, too, a pea-hen was brought in sitting on her nest full of eggs, which Trimalchio first declared were half-hatched, but on examination proved to contain delicious ortolans. Little children carried in pies, and birds flew out from them, and were caught again by the fowlers. An ass was led in bearing a load of olives. Several other extraordinary dishes enlivened the banquet and surprised the spectators; everything was copied strictly from the Roman original. There was even a charger, with viands representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and Trimalchio gave utterance to some very amusing astrology. Fortunata had to be called several times before she would sit down to table—everything depended on her. Trimalchio being in an erudite mood, had the catalogue of his burlesque library brought to him, and, as the names of the books were read out, he quoted the finest passages, and criticised them. The only wine was Falerno, and Trimalchio, who naturally preferred Hungarian to any other, controlled himself out of respect to his guests. It is true, as regards his personal necessities, he put no constraint upon himself.... Finally, after moralising on happiness and the vanity of things in general, he sent for his will and read it aloud; in it he left orders how he was to be buried, and what monument was to be erected to his memory. He also announced what legacies he would leave, some of them very funny, and he freed his slaves, who during the reading of the will were grimacing and howling in lamentable fashion. During the banquet he granted full liberty to Bacchus, pretending to be proud of having even the gods in his power. Some of the slaves donned caps, the sign of liberty. When their master drank these same slaves imitated the noise of the cannon, or rather of Jove’s thunder....

“But in the midst of these festivities the Goddess of Discord cast down her apple. A quarrel forthwith arose between Trimalchio and Fortunata, whereupon he threw a goblet at her head, and there ensued a battle royal. At last peace was restored, and everything ended harmoniously. The procession, with the singers, dancers, horns, drums and other instruments of music, closed the banquet as it had been opened. And to say nothing of Fortunata, Trimalchio certainly surpassed himself.”

The fact that such a revel as this could take place under princely patronage shows the grossness of the age in general and Hanover in particular. But a good deal of the coarseness at the Hanoverian Court was due to the fact that it was, at this time, reigned over by mistresses who had not the saving grace of refinement. The Electress Sophia was old, and her taste for court entertainments had dulled, and even if it had not, the Elector was too jealous to permit her to take the lead. His daughter, Sophie Dorothea, was too young to have any influence. The advent of the Electoral Princess supplied the elements that were lacking, beauty and grace, and a sense of personal dignity and virtue.

GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE AT THE TIME OF THEIR MARRIAGE.

Caroline was in every way fitted to queen it over a much larger court than Hanover. Like her adopted mother, the Queen of Prussia, Caroline’s intellect was lofty, and she scorned as “paltry” many of the things in which the princesses of her time were most interested. The minutiæ of court etiquette, scandal, dress, needlework and display did not appeal to her; some of these things were all very well as means to an end, but with Caroline emphatically they were not the end. Her natural inclination was all towards serious things; politics and the love of power were with her a passion. She had little opportunity of indulging her taste in this respect at Hanover, for the Elector gave no woman a chance of meddling in politics at his court, and her husband, the Electoral Prince, professed to be of the same mind. So Caroline had for years to conceal the qualities which later made her a stateswoman, and the consummate skill with which she did so proved her to be an actress and diplomatist of no mean order. She had more liberty to follow her literary and philosophical bent, for both the Elector and his son hated books, were indifferent to religion, and treated philosophers and their theories with open contempt; these questions were all very well for women and bookmen, but they could not be expected to occupy their lofty minds with such trifles. Caroline, therefore, and the Electress Sophia, who was even more learned than her daughter-in-law, were able to indulge their tastes in this respect with comparative freedom, and they enjoyed many hours discussing philosophy with Leibniz or arguing on religious questions with learned divines. They kept themselves well abreast of the intellectual thought of the time, and even tried in some small way to hold reunions at Herrenhausen, after the model of those at Charlottenburg, but in this Caroline had to exercise a good deal of discretion, for her husband, like the Elector, though grossly illiterate, was jealous lest his wife’s learning should seem to be superior to his own. Much of Caroline’s reading had to be done in secret, and the discussions in which she delighted were carried on in the privacy of the Electress Sophia’s apartments.

Within the first few years of her marriage Caroline found that she had need of all her philosophy, natural or acquired, whether derived from Leibniz or inherent in herself, to accommodate herself to the whims and humours of her fantastic little husband. She quickly discovered the faults and foibles of his character, she was soon made aware of his meanness, his shallowness and his petty vanity, of his absurd love of boasting, his fitful and choleric temper, and his incontinence. George Augustus had inherited the bad qualities of both his parents, and the good qualities of neither, for he had not his father’s straightforwardness, nor his mother’s generous impulses. He was a contemptible character, but his wife never manifested any contempt for him; her conduct indeed was a model of all that a wife’s should be—from the man’s point of view. The little prince would rail at her, contradict her, snub her, dash his wig on the ground, strut up and down the room, red and angry, shouting at the top of his voice, but, unlike her mother-in-law, Sophie Dorothea, Caroline never answered her husband; she was always submissive, always dutiful, always the patient Griselda. The result justified her wisdom. George Augustus became genuinely attached to his wife, and she preserved his affection and kept her influence over him. Shortly after her marriage she was attacked by small-pox; it did not seriously impair her beauty, but for many days her life was in danger. Her husband was beside himself with anxiety; he never left her chamber day or night, and caught the disease from her, thus risking his life for hers. Caroline never forgot this proof of his devotion. She was shrewd enough to see from the beginning, what so many wives in equal or less exalted positions fail to see, that her interests and her husband’s interests were identical, and that as he prospered she would prosper with him, and, on the other hand, everything which hurt him or his prospects would react on her too. She realised that she could only reach worldly greatness through him, and ambition coloured all her life. The rôle of the injured wife would do her no good, either in her husband’s eyes or in those of the world, so she never played the part, though in all truth he early gave her cause enough. Her life was witness of the love she bore him, a love that was quite unaccountable. From the first moment of her married life to the last, she was absolutely devoted to him; his friends were her friends and his enemies her enemies.

Caroline was soon called upon to take sides in the quarrel between the Electoral Prince and the Elector, which as the years went by became intensified in bitterness. As to the origin of this unnatural feud it is impossible to speak with certainty; some have found it in the elder George’s cruel treatment of his wife, Sophie Dorothea, which the son was said to have strongly resented. This may be partly true, for though the young Prince was only a boy when his mother was first imprisoned, he was old enough to have loved her, and he had sufficient understanding to sympathise with her wrongs, as her daughter did. Besides, he often visited his maternal grandparents at Celle, and though the old Duke was neutral, the Duchess warmly espoused her daughter’s cause, and hated George Louis and his mother, Sophia, who were her worst enemies. She may have instilled some of these sentiments into her grandson, for his treatment of his grandmother, the Electress Sophia, left much to be desired, though she was devoted to him, and always ready to plot with him against his father. All these currents of emotion, and cross-currents of jealousy and hatred were in full flood at the Hanoverian Court when Caroline arrived there, and she must have found it exceedingly difficult to steer a straight course among them. She at once decided to throw in her lot with her husband, and to make his cause hers. She soon, therefore, came to be viewed with disfavour by her father-in-law.

In all matters, except those which militated against her husband’s interests, Caroline endeavoured to please the Elector. George openly maintained three mistresses, and he expected that the Electoral Princess should receive them and treat them with courtesy. Caroline raised no difficulties on this score, and made the best of the peculiar circumstances she found around her. The subject is not a pleasant one, but it is impossible to give a true picture of the Hanoverian Court and ignore the existence of these women, for they influenced considerably the trend of affairs, and occupied positions only second to the princesses of the electoral family.

Of the Elector’s favourites, Ermengarda Melusina Schulemburg was the oldest, and the most accredited. She was descended from the elder branch of the ancient but impoverished house of Schulemburg; her father had held high office in the Court of Berlin, her brother found a similar place in the service of the Venetian Republic. Melusina having no dower and no great charm, except her youth, made her way to Hanover about 1690, in the hope of improving her fortunes, honourably or dishonourably as chance offered. Melusina attracted the attention of George Louis, Prince of Hanover, as he was then called. He made her an allowance, and procured for her a post at court as maid of honour (save the mark) to his mother, the Electress Sophia. Schulemburg’s appearance was the signal for furious quarrels between George Louis and his unhappy consort, who, though she detested her husband, was jealous of his amours. But her protests were useless, and only served to irritate the situation. After Sophie Dorothea’s divorce, Schulemburg lived with George Louis to all intents and purposes as his wife, and when he succeeded to the electorate, her position became the more influential. It was not easy to understand how she maintained her sway; it was certainly not by her person. She was very tall, and in her youth had some good looks of the passive German type, but as the years went by she lost the few pretexts to beauty that she possessed. Her figure became extremely thin, in consequence of small-pox she lost all her hair, and was not only marked on the face but wore an ugly wig. She sought to mend these defects by painting and ruddling her face, which only made them worse; her taste in dress was atrocious. Schulemburg was a stupid woman, with a narrow range of vision, and her dominant passion was avarice; but she was undoubtedly attached to her protector, and remained faithful to him—not that any one ever tempted her fidelity. She had an equable temper, and she was no mischief maker. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says of her: “She was so much of his (George’s) own temper that I do not wonder at the engagement between them. She was duller than himself, and consequently did not find out that he was so.”

As the years went by Schulemburg’s ascendency was threatened by another and even less attractive lady, Kielmansegge, née Platen, whom the Elector had elevated to a similar position. Her mother, the Countess Platen, wife of the Prime Minister, had been for years mistress of his father, Ernest Augustus. She had destined her daughter for a similar position, but at first it seemed that her plans were foiled by the young countess contracting a passion for the son of a Hamburg merchant named Kielmansegge, whom she married under circumstances that gave rise to scandal. After her mother’s death she separated from her husband, returned to Hanover, and gave herself up to pleasure. She was exceedingly extravagant in her personal tastes, and soon squandered the sum of £40,000 left her by her mother. She was of a sociable disposition, and having many admirers was not disposed to be unkind to any. George Augustus, who hated her, declared that she intrigued with every man in Hanover, and this being reported to her, she sought an audience of the Electoral Princess, and denied the imputation, producing, as a proof of her virtue, a certificate of moral character signed by her husband, whom she had now deserted. Caroline laughed, and told her “it was indeed a bad reputation which rendered such a certificate necessary”. Kielmansegge was clever, and a good conversationalist, and she maintained her somewhat precarious hold over the Elector by amusing him. She had more wit and cunning than Schulemburg, but her morals were worse, and her appearance was equally unattractive, though in another way. Her wig was black, whereas Schulemburg’s was red, and she was of enormous and unwieldy bulk, whereas Schulemburg was lean to emaciation. Schulemburg had to heighten her charms by rouge; Kielmansegge, on the other hand, was naturally so highly coloured that she sought to tone down her complexion by copious dressings of powder; the effect in either case was equally unlovely. The Electress Sophia mocked at them both, and had nicknames for them both; Schulemburg she called “The tall malkin,” and used to ask the courtiers what her son could see in her. Kielmansegge she dubbed “The fat hen”.

There remained yet another of these ladies—the beautiful Countess Platen, a sister-in-law of Madame Kielmansegge, and wife of Count Platen the younger. The family of Platen seem to have formed a sort of hereditary hierarchy of shame. When the young countess first appeared at court after her marriage, in the height of her beauty, the Elector took little notice of her. And as the Elector’s favour was counted a great honour among the Hanoverian ladies, Countess Platen was deeply mortified at this ignoring of her charms. She determined on a bold stroke of policy—she sought an audience of his Highness, and with tears in her eyes besought him not to treat her so rudely. The astonished Elector declared that he was ignorant of having done anything of the kind, and added gallantly that she was the most beautiful woman at his court. “If that be true, sir,” replied the countess, weeping, “why do you pass all your time with Schulemburg, while I hardly receive the honour of a glance from you?” The gallant George promised to mend his manners, and soon came to visit her so frequently that her husband, objecting to the intimacy, separated from her, and left her wholly to the Elector. The Countess Platen was the best loved of all the Elector’s favourites, but, like Kielmansegge, she was not faithful to him. Among the Englishmen who came to Hanover about this time was the younger Craggs, son of James Craggs, a Whig place-hunter of the baser sort. According to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the elder Craggs had been at one time footman to the Duchess of Norfolk, and was employed by her in an intrigue she had with King James the Second. He acquitted himself with so much secrecy and discretion that the duchess recommended him to the Duke of Marlborough, who employed him for purposes of political and other intrigues. Thus, by trading on the secrets of the great and wealthy, Craggs at length acquired a fortune and entered parliament. His son James Craggs was an exceeding strong, good-looking youth, with great assurance and easy manners, though Lady Mary declares that “there was a coarseness in his face and shape that had more the air of a porter than a gentleman”. But coarseness was no drawback at the Court of Hanover, and the Countess Platen soon became enamoured of the well-favoured young Englishman, and introduced him to the notice of the Elector, who, ignorant or careless of the intrigue, showed him a good deal of favour, and promised him a good appointment if ever he became King of England. George amply redeemed this promise later, and young Craggs was one of the few Englishmen admitted to his private circle.

Since the passing of the Act of Succession in 1700 under King William, and Lord Macclesfield’s mission to Hanover in 1701, when he presented a copy of the Act to the Electress Sophia, and since the recognition by Anne of the status quo on her accession in 1702, the English prospects of the electoral family had sensibly improved, and the Hanoverian succession had quitted the region of abstract theories to enter the realm of practical politics. The time-servers in England showed their sensible appreciation of this by turning their attention from St. Germains to Hanover. Marlborough, the arch time-server of them all, was at Hanover at the end of 1704, and Prince Ernest Augustus, the youngest son of the Electress Sophia, had fought under him in one of his campaigns. Marlborough was said at one time to have entertained the project of marrying his third daughter to the Electoral Prince as a return for his powerful aid to the electoral family, but the scheme fell through, if it were ever seriously considered. It might have been, for Marlborough’s support was very valuable. Party feeling ran very high in England, and there was a strong Jacobite faction which heavily discounted the prospects of the Hanoverian succession. At the beginning of her reign, Anne, apprehensive that the Jacobites might become too powerful and shake her position on the throne, to which her title was none too sure, leant, or appeared to lean, in the direction of Hanover. The question was complicated, too, by the fact that the Scottish Parliament had rejected the Bill for the Hanoverian succession with every mark of contempt, and had passed a measure which seemed to settle the succession of the Scottish crown upon the Duke of Hamilton. At least, it excluded the House of Hanover as aliens, and for a time there was the anomaly that though the Electress Sophia might have succeeded to the throne of England, she could not have worn the crown of Scotland, and the kingdoms would again have become divided. It was largely to end these complications that the Act of Union between England and Scotland was brought forward, and one of its most important clauses was that the succession of the crown of Scotland, like that of England, should be vested in the Electress Sophia, and her heirs, being Protestant, a clause which was hotly debated. An Act was also passed to naturalise the electoral family.

Elated by these successes, the next move of the Whigs was to suggest to the Electress Sophia that she should come over to England on a visit, in order that the people might see “the heiress of Great Britain,” and so strengthen their affection to her person. If she could not come, they suggested that her son or her grandson should take her place. The Electress Sophia would gladly have visited England with the Electoral Prince and the Electoral Princess, but she was far too shrewd to make the journey at the bidding of a faction, and, while expressing her willingness, she stipulated that the invitation must come from the Queen herself. That invitation was never given, for Anne had a positive horror of seeing her Hanoverian successors in England during her lifetime. She declared that their presence would be like exposing her coffin to her view before she was dead. The electoral family were very well to use as pawns to check the moves of the Jacobites, but to see them in London would be more unpleasant to her than the arrival of James himself. The Whigs, despite the Queen’s opposition, were determined to bring them over if possible, and they talked of giving the old Electress, should she come, an escort into London of fifty thousand men, as a warning to the Queen, whose leanings towards her brother they suspected, not to play fast and loose with the Protestant succession. The Whig agent at Hanover was instructed to sound the Elector, but, to his credit be it said, George would have nothing whatever to do with the scheme. He hated intrigues of all kinds, and cared very little about the English succession, except as an influence to help his beloved electorate. He felt that he could never be sure of England, and he was too practical to miss the substance for the shadow.

Hanover was certainly a substantial possession. It became the fashion later in England to deride it as an unimportant electorate, and George as a petty German prince. But for years before George the First ascended the throne of England, Hanover had been gradually increasing in influence, and was a factor to be reckoned with in the great political issues of western and northern Europe. William of Orange recognised its importance, Louis the Fourteenth made frequent overtures to it, and the Emperor sought to conciliate it.[23] By the death of his uncle, the Duke of Celle, George became the ruler of all the Brunswick-Lüneburg dominions, and gained considerably in wealth and influence. He had not his mother’s ambition, and he was loath to imperil his prosperous and loyal electorate and an assured position for an insecure title to a throne beset with dangers and difficulties. He shared with Europe the belief that the English were a fickle and revolutionary people. Within living memory they had risen in rebellion, beheaded their king and established a republic. Then they had forsaken the republic and restored the monarchy. In the following reign they had had a revolution, driven their king into exile, and brought over a Dutch prince to reign over them. Undoubtedly they were not to be trusted, and what they might do in the future no one could say.

At the time of Caroline’s marriage the English prospects of the electoral family were bright. Though the visit to England was for the moment postponed, Anne was compelled to temporise, for the Whigs carried everything before them. Poley the English envoy was recalled, and Howe, who was in favour with the Whigs, was sent over to Hanover in his place. The Electress was given to think that the invitation would shortly come, and Caroline thought the same. All things English were in high favour at Hanover at this time. Howe celebrated the Queen’s birthday by a dance, which was honoured not only by George Augustus and Caroline, but also by the Electress Sophia. Howe writes:—

“The Queen’s birthday happening to be upon the Wednesday, I thought it proper to keep it the next day, and accordingly I invited ten or twelve couples of young people to dance at night. The Electoral Prince and Princess with the Margrave, her brother, and the young Princess of Hanover hearing of it, told me the night before that they would come and dance. Half an hour before the ball began, they brought me word that the Electress was also coming. The Electress gave the Queen’s health at supper, and stayed till two o’clock.”[24]

The same year the bells at Hanover rang out to celebrate the wedding of Princess Sophie Dorothea with her first cousin, Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia. This marriage was one after the Electress Sophia’s own heart, and it at once gratified her ambition and appealed to her affections. The young Princess had a good deal of beauty, an equable temper, and a fair share of the family obstinacy; she had something of her mother’s charm, but not much of her grandmother’s commanding intellect. The Electress Sophia had busied herself for some time with matrimonial schemes on Sophie Dorothea’s behalf. There had been a project for marrying her to the King of Sweden, but it fell through, and though it had been known for a long time that Frederick William loved his pretty Hanoverian cousin, there were obstacles in the way, notably the opposition of the King of Prussia, who had no desire to draw the bonds between Prussia and Hanover any closer. He was angry at having been outwitted in the matter of the Electoral Prince’s marriage to the Princess of Ansbach. After the Queen of Prussia’s death, the King busied himself to find a suitable bride for his son, but Frederick William rejected one matrimonial project after another, and obstinately declared that he would wed his cousin, Sophie Dorothea, and none other. Knowing the violence of his temper, and the impossibility of reasoning with him, his father had to give way, which he did with the better grace as he was anxious to secure the future of the dynasty. The marriage was celebrated at Hanover in 1706. The King of Prussia seized the opportunity to gratify his love of pageantry, and the festivities were prolonged for many days.

They were graced, too, by the presence of a special embassy from England, with Lords Halifax and Dorset at its head. Queen Anne had been compelled by the Whig administration to send them over to Hanover to present to the Electress Sophia a copy of the recent Act of Parliament naturalising the electoral family in England. The mission was a very welcome one to the old Electress, and she gave the English lords a formal audience at Herrenhausen, when after delivering his credentials Lord Halifax proceeded to address her in a set speech. In the middle of the address, the Electress started up from her chair, and backing to the wall remained fixed against it until the ceremony ended. Lord Halifax was much mystified by this unusual proceeding, and eventually discovered that the Electress had in her room a portrait of her cousin, James, her rival to the throne. She suddenly remembered it was there, and fearing the Whig lords (Halifax was a noted Whig leader) would suspect her of Jacobitism if they saw it, she adopted this means of hiding it. It was the fashion among the Whigs to call James the “Pretender,” and to pretend to doubt his legitimacy, but the Electress Sophia knew that he was as truly the son of James the Second as George was her own, and though she was eager to wear the crown of England, she would not stoop to such a subterfuge to gain it, preferring to base her claim on the broader and surer ground of the will of the people, and the interests of the Protestant religion.

Lord Halifax was accompanied on this mission by Sir John Vanburgh in his official capacity of Clarenceux King of Arms, who invested the Electoral Prince with the insignia of the Garter. Another and more famous Englishman, Joseph Addison, came with Halifax as secretary to the mission. It was on this occasion Addison first saw Caroline, his future benefactress, and he expressed himself enthusiastically concerning her beauty and talents.

The presence of the English mission added in no small degree to the brilliance of the wedding festivities, which after tedious ceremonial at last came to an end, and the bride and bridegroom departed for Berlin. It was not a peaceful domestic outlook for Sophie Dorothea, nor did it prove so; but she and her husband were sincerely attached to one another, and despite many violent quarrels and much provocation on either side, they managed to live together until their union was broken by death. Seven years after his marriage, by the death of his father, Frederick William ascended the throne, and Sophie Dorothea became the second Queen of Prussia. But what will cause her name to be remembered throughout all generations is that she was the mother of Frederick the Great.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER IV:

[20] Short genealogical table showing the descent of his Majesty King Edward VII. from James I., the Electress Sophia and Caroline of Ansbach:—

James I.
|
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.
|
Sophia, Electress of Hanover.
|
George I.
|
George II. = Caroline of Ansbach.
|
Frederick, Prince of Wales.
|
George III.
|
Duke of Kent.
|
Queen Victoria.
|
Edward VII.

[21] Letter of Leibniz to the Princess of Hohenzollern-Heckingen, Hanover, 25th February, 1702. Some passages in this letter are omitted as unfit for publication.

[22] Nero is satirised under the name of Trimalchio by Petronius Arbiter in the Satyricon, and the description of his banquet is gross in the extreme. A comparison of Petronius’s account of the banquet in the Satyricon with Leibniz’s description of the fête at Hanover will show how closely the Electoral Court followed the Roman original.

[23] Dr. A. W. Ward, the greatest English authority on Hanoverian history, has brought this point out clearly in his Notes on the Personal Union between England and Hanover.

[24] Howe’s Despatch, Hanover, 18th February, 1706.

CHAPTER V.
THE HEIRESS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 1706–1713.

Queen Anne’s invitation to the electoral family still tarried in the coming. Meanwhile the old Electress, despite her assurances to the Queen, was listening to the suggestions put forward by the English Whigs, through their emissaries in Hanover. Her favourite plan was, that though she herself, as heiress to the throne, could not visit England without an express invitation from the Queen, yet the Electoral Prince and Caroline might do so. She seems thus to have prompted her grandson to court popularity with the English at the expense of his father. The Elector placed little faith in Queen Anne, who he considered was merely playing him off against her brother, James. He had soon an opportunity of showing his displeasure publicly. An important event took place in the electoral family, which had a direct bearing upon the English succession; Caroline, on February 5th, 1707, more than a year after her marriage, gave birth to the much wished-for son and heir. Howe, the English envoy, writes: “This Court having for some time past almost despaired of the Princess Electoral being brought to bed, and most people apprehensive that her bigness, which has continued for so long, was rather an effect of a distemper than that she was with child, her Highness was taken ill last Friday at dinner, and last night, about seven o’clock, the Countess d’Eke, her lady of the bedchamber, sent me word that the Princess was delivered of a son.”[25]

Considering that, according to Act of Parliament, the infant now born was in the direct line of succession to the English crown, it was extraordinary that the English envoy should not have been present at the birth, or the event notified to him with proper ceremony; the more extraordinary when it is remembered that this was an age much given to inventing fables about the births of princes, and the lie that a surreptitious child had been introduced into the Queen Mary Beatrice’s bedchamber in a warming pan was largely relied upon by the Whigs to upset the Stuart dynasty.

THE ELECTRESS SOPHIA OF HANOVER.

This was not the only affront which the Elector put upon Queen Anne’s representative. The infant prince was christened a few days later in the Princess’s bedchamber, and given the name of Frederick Louis. The Electress Sophia was present at the ceremony, but no invitation was sent to the English envoy, nor was he allowed to see either the Princess or the infant until ten days later, and he writes home that he considers such proceedings “unaccountable”. After repeated representations, he was admitted to the Princess’s chamber, and writing home he mentions the fact, and says that he found “the women all admiring the largeness and strength of the child”. That these proceedings were directly due to the Elector may be gathered from the English envoy’s next despatch, which also shows that thus early there was bad feeling between the father and the son.

“Being at the Court,” he writes, “the other day, the Prince Electoral took me away from the rest of the company, and making great professions of duty to the Queen, he desired me that I would represent all things favourably on his side, and he was not the cause that matters were arranged at the Princess’s lying-in and the christening of the child with so little respect to the Queen, and so little regard to England. For my part I have taken no notice of it to any of them, but I think the whole proceeding has been very extraordinary. Wherever the fault is, I won’t pretend to judge.”[26]

There is little doubt that the Elector George had learned of the Electress Sophia’s and his son’s intrigues, and had determined to show his independence and his indifference to the English succession in this manner. He might have been more polite without any sacrifice of principle. But Queen Anne had to swallow the affront, and after the birth of Prince Frederick she was forced to create Prince George Augustus, Baron Tewkesbury, Viscount Northallerton, Earl of Milford Haven, Marquis and Duke of Cambridge, and to give him precedence over the whole peerage. The patent of the dukedom was sent over to the English envoy at Hanover, with instructions that he was to deliver it with ceremony. The Whigs had, however, reckoned without the Elector, who was jealous of these English honours to his son, and regarded them as a proof of his mother’s desire to oust him from the succession. When Howe notified to the Elector that the patent had arrived, and asked for an opportunity to deliver it in due form, the Elector did not condescend to reply, but sent his footman to bring it to the palace. The envoy very properly refused to deliver the Queen’s patent to such a messenger, and explained with some indignation that it was “the highest gift the Queen had to bestow”. To this representation no answer was returned, and Howe writes home complaining of the “delay and disrespect” with which the Queen’s gift was treated, and states that though he pressed repeatedly for a public audience, the Ministers could not decide upon giving him one, and he adds: “They would have me think it is the Elector’s jealousy of the Prince that would have it otherwise; the Electress is much concerned”.[27]

This difficulty continued for some time, but it was finally got over by the Electoral Prince receiving the patent privately from the English envoy, and the Prince, on the occasion of its presentation, made “many expressions of duty and gratitude for the great honour and favour the Queen had been pleased to show him. He also made many excuses, and desired me to represent that it was not his fault the receiving of the patent was not performed in the most respectful manner.”[28]

Anne again had to ignore the Elector’s affront, though she did not hesitate to quote it to the Whigs as an additional reason why she should not invite any member of the Hanoverian family to England, and, by way of marking her displeasure in a diplomatic manner, she recalled Howe, and replaced him by D’Alais, who was in every way his predecessor’s inferior; he could not speak or write the English language, and was the less likely to have any direct communication with the disaffected in England. Still Anne was compelled to disguise her dislike, and when Caroline gave birth to a daughter,[29] the Queen became godmother to the infant, who was named after her, though she contrived to distil a drop of bitterness into the cup by nominating the Duchess of Celle, who was hated by the Electress Sophia, to act as her proxy.

Though the Queen was successful, now on one pretext, now on another, in preventing the arrival of any member of the electoral family in England, the fact remained that the Hanoverian succession was the law of the land, and the Queen’s bad health made it likely that in all human probability that succession would not long be delayed. These considerations led many eminent Englishmen to cultivate good relations with the Court of Hanover, and caused many well-born adventurers, too, who had not been particularly successful at home, to journey to Herrenhausen with the object of ingratiating themselves with the electoral family against the time when they should come into their kingdom. Among these worldly pilgrims were the Howards, husband and wife. Henrietta Howard was the eldest daughter of a Norfolk baronet, Sir Henry Hobart, and had married, when quite young, Henry Howard, third son of the Earl of Suffolk, a spendthrift who possessed no patrimony, and probably married her because of her fortune of £6,000, a fair portion for a woman in that day. £4,000 of this sum was settled on Mrs. Howard, the rest her husband quickly got rid of. He was a good-looking young fellow, but dissipated and drunken, with no principles, and a violent temper. It soon became evident that he and his wife could not afford to live in England as befitted their station, and Howard’s character was so well known that he could not obtain any appointment at home; they therefore resolved to repair to Hanover, where living was much cheaper than in England, and throw in their fortunes with the electoral family.

Mrs. Howard, at the time of her arrival in Hanover, had pretensions to beauty; she was of medium height and a good figure, with pretty features and a pleasing expression. Her greatest beauty was her abundant light brown hair, as fine as spun silk. This she is said to have sacrificed, either to pay the expenses of the journey or to defray the cost of a dinner the Howards gave to certain influential Hanoverians after their arrival. They were often in great straits for money, even at Hanover. They took lodgings in the town, and duly paid their court to the “heiress of Great Britain” at Herrenhausen. The Electress Sophia was delighted with Mrs. Howard; she was English and well-born, which constituted a sure passport to her favour; she was pleasant and amiable, and, though not the prodigy of intellect some of her admirers subsequently declared her to be, she was well-informed and well-read, much more so than the Hanoverian ladies. She soon became a welcome guest in the apartments of the Electress Sophia and the Electoral Princess, where she could even simulate an interest in the philosophy of Leibniz. Mrs. Howard possessed in a consummate degree the artfulness which goes to make a successful courtier, and she knew exactly how far flattery should go.[30] Caroline grew to like her, and appointed her one of her dames du palais; she found in Mrs. Howard a companion naturally refined in speech and conduct, and thus a welcome change to the coarseness of many of the Hanoverian ladies.

But the Howards had not come all the way to Hanover to figure at the coteries of the Electress and the Electoral Princess. They sought more substantial rewards, and these they knew rested with the princes rather than the princesses of the electoral house. George Augustus, whose vanity led him to desire a reputation for gallantry, which had mainly rested on hearsay, was early attracted to Mrs. Howard, and before long spent many hours in her society. The acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy, and the lady found herself not only the servant of the Electoral Princess, but also the friend of the Electoral Prince. If we bear in mind the laxity of the manners and morals of courts in general at this time, and the Hanoverian Court in particular, it is puerile to regard this intimacy as “Platonic,” as some have described it. George Augustus was not of a nature to appreciate intellectual friendship between man and woman; and such friendships were not understood at the Court of Hanover, where Mrs. Howard, though not occupying the position of accredited mistress to the Electoral Prince, as Schulemburg did to the Elector (for she would probably have objected to such publicity), came to be universally so regarded. The fact that, despite her intimacy with George Augustus, she continued to be received by the Electress Sophia, and was still admitted to the society of the Electoral Princess, goes for nothing. Both Princesses were women of the world, and both had been reared in courts not conspicuous for their morality. The Electress Sophia had for years tolerated, nay more, had recognised and received the Countess Platen as the mistress of her husband, the late Elector, and Schulemburg as the mistress of her son, the present Elector. Her daughter, Sophie Charlotte, had followed the same policy towards the mistress of her husband, the King of Prussia, and Caroline, who had spent her childhood in the corrupt Court of Dresden, her girlhood at Berlin, and had married into the family of Hanover, was not likely to take a different line. If she had been tempted to do so, she had the fate of her unhappy mother-in-law before her eyes, who, largely in consequence of her lack of complaisance, was now dragging out her life in dreary Ahlden. At Hanover even the court chaplain would probably have found excuses for these irregularities; he would have pleaded that princes were not like other men, and as they were obliged to make marriages of policy, they were not amenable to the laws that govern meaner mortals. Caroline’s was not wholly a marriage of policy; there is abundant evidence to prove that she was attached to her husband, and he, so far as it was in his nature to be so, was devoted to her. But he must have been very tiresome sometimes, with his boasting and strutting, his silly vanity and absurd stories, his outbursts of temper and his utter inability to understand or sympathise with the higher side of her nature, and she was doubtless glad when he transferred some of his society to Mrs. Howard, provided always that Mrs. Howard kept her place. To do Mrs. Howard justice, she showed no desire to vaunt herself, or take advantage of the intimacy. She must indeed have been content with very small things, for the Electoral Prince, like his father, was mean; but had he been generous, he had at this time neither money to give nor patronage to bestow, the rewards were all in the future. The Electress Sophia was pleased rather than otherwise with her grandson’s intimacy with Mrs. Howard: “It will improve his English,” she is reported to have said. Regarding such affairs as inevitable she thought he could not have chosen better than this lady, who had a complaisant husband, and whose conduct to the world was a model of propriety, verging on prudishness.

Caroline, at any rate, accepted the situation with philosophy. She knew her husband’s weaknesses and made allowance for them. She had greater things to occupy her mind than his domestic irregularities, for, though outwardly indifferent to the English succession, she was in reality keenly concerned about it. She did not dare to show her interest too prominently, for the Electoral Prince had his own views on the subservience of women generally, and wives in particular, and was jealous of his wife taking any public part in politics, lest it should be said that she governed him, as in fact she did. To better qualify herself for her future position, Caroline took into her service a girl from England, but born in Hanover, named Brandshagen, who read and talked English with her daily. It is a pity that she did not engage a native-born Englishwoman while she was about it, as such a teacher might have corrected the future Queen’s English, which was impaired by a marked German accent until the end of her life.

Queen Anne showed her interest in Caroline, or at least her knowledge of her existence, by frequently sending her “her compliments” through the English envoy, and, a little tardily, she sent over a present to Hanover for her godchild, the Princess Anne, and a letter full of good wishes.

Within the next few years Caroline gave birth to two more daughters, Amelia and Caroline.[31] The Queen of England sent neither gifts nor letters on the occasion of their birth, nor took any notice of them. For the state of political parties had now changed in England, and with the change the need of conciliating the Hanoverian family had receded into the background.

The popular feeling expressed at the time of Sacheverell’s trial had shown the Queen that the nation was weary of the Whigs, and when the new Parliament met in November, 1710, it was found that the Tory party largely predominated, and sweeping changes were made in the Ministry. Harley, Earl of Oxford, became Lord Treasurer, and stood highest in the Queen’s confidence; St. John, shortly afterwards created Viscount Bolingbroke, became Secretary of State; and the Duke of Ormonde, a noted Jacobite, was appointed to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland. Anne had broken at last with the imperious Duchess of Marlborough, and had taken a new favourite, one Abigail Hill, afterwards Lady Masham, whose interest was all for the Tories. Marlborough still retained command of the army, but resigned all the places held by his duchess, and absented himself from court.

It is difficult to follow Anne’s mind at this time, or the tortuous policy of her Ministers with regard to the Hanoverian succession, since one act contradicted another, and one utterance was at variance with the next. There must have been some hard lying on both sides, and there was certainly no standard of political honour, morality or truth. The Queen’s health was bad, and her life uncertain, and the policy of most of her Ministers was dictated by the wish to stand well with both claimants to the throne, so that they might be on the safe side whatever happened. Such, at least, was the policy of Oxford, who was personally in favour of the Hanoverian succession, yet corresponded with Marshal Berwick for the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, on condition of Anne retaining the crown for life, and due security being given for religious and political freedom. Marlborough, on the other hand, while corresponding with St. Germains, did not scruple to approach the Electress Sophia with assurances of absolute devotion, and to denounce Oxford and Bolingbroke as traitors desirous of placing James on the throne of England. Marlborough frequently visited Hanover, and in return for his support, and also because he favoured the continuance of the war between the Allies and France, the Elector upheld Marlborough’s command of the English army in Flanders.

England, however, was weary of the war, which had been dragging on for years, and had cost her thousands of men and millions of money, without her having any direct interest in it, however advantageous its prosecution might be to the Elector of Hanover and others. The Tory Ministry, upon reflection, determined to withdraw England from the Allies, and to make peace with France, partly, no doubt, because this policy would be the means of breaking the power of Marlborough. The death of the Emperor Joseph, which occurred in 1711, furnished an excuse for England to reconsider her position and to begin negotiations for peace. Queen Anne addressed a personal letter to the Electress Sophia, and sent it by Lord Rivers, praying her to use her influence to promote the peace of Europe. But the Electress was much hurt by the Queen’s behaviour, and the fact that, after all these years of effort, neither she nor any member of her House had yet been invited to England, and she replied very coldly. The interests of Hanover were all in favour of the prosecution of the war, and of England continuing her share, or more than her share, of the burden, so the Elector departed from his usual policy of abstention in English affairs, to oppose both the Queen and her Ministers. He even went so far as to instruct his envoy, Bothmar, who had come over to London with Marlborough, to present a memorial against the peace. This was regarded as an unwarrantable interference on the part of a foreign prince with English affairs, and both the Queen and the House of Commons were extremely indignant. The House of Lords, which had a Whig majority, supported Marlborough and the Elector, but the Queen, to overcome their opposition, created twelve new peers, and, supported by popular feeling, triumphed all along the line. Bothmar was denounced by Bolingbroke as a “most inveterate party man,” and the Queen insisted on his recall. Marlborough was dismissed from all his employments, and retired to Antwerp in disgrace. England withdrew from the Allies, and the Peace of Utrecht was signed, after protracted negotiations, on March 31st, 1713. There is no need to enter here into the question of its merits or demerits; it will suffice to say that the peace was undoubtedly popular in England, and, when proclaimed, was hailed by the people with demonstrations of joy.

LEIBNIZ.

The popular enthusiasm looked ominous for the Hanoverian succession. The Elector had departed for once from his wise policy of abstention, and the result was disastrous. England left Hanover to shift for itself; moreover, it emphatically resented Hanoverian interference. The Act guaranteeing the succession to the Electress Sophia and her heirs still remained on the Statute Book, but in the present temper of the House of Commons and the nation it might be repealed any day. The gravity of the situation was fully realised at the Electoral Court; the coveted crown of England seemed to be receding into the distance. The Elector shrugged his shoulders and said nothing, but the Electress Sophia and the Electoral Prince were greatly exercised by the untoward turn of events, and put their heads together to see what could be done. Caroline was also very anxious—how much so is shown by the letters which passed between her and Leibniz at this time. Leibniz, who was at Vienna, wrote to Caroline to send her his good wishes for Christmas, and at the same time to condole with her on the outlook in England. His letter runs as follows:—

“Vienna, December 16th, 1713.

“I have not troubled your Highness with letters since I left Hanover, as I had nothing of interest to tell you, but I must not neglect the opportunity which this season gives me of assuring your Highness of my perpetual devotion, and I pray God to grant you the same measure of years as the Electress enjoys, and the same good health. And I pray also that you may one day enjoy the title of Queen of England so well worn by Queen Elizabeth, which you so highly merit. Consequently I wish the same good things to his Highness, your consort, since you can only occupy the throne of that great Queen with him. Whenever the gazettes publish favourable rumours concerning you and affairs in England, I devoutly pray that they may become true; sometimes it is rumoured here that a fleet is about to escort you both to England, and a powerful alliance is being formed to support your claims. I have even read that the Tsar is only strengthening his navy in order to supply you with knights of the round table. It is time to translate all these rumours into action, as our enemies do not sleep. Count Gallas, who is leaving for Rome in a few days, tells me that well-informed people in England think that the first act of the present Tory Ministry will be to put down the Whigs, the second to confirm the peace, and the third to change the law of succession. I hear that in Hanover there is strong opposition to all this; I hope it may be so, with all my heart.”

To this Caroline replied:—

“Hanover, December 27th, 1713.

“I assure you that of all the letters which this season has brought me yours has been the most welcome. You do well to send me your good wishes for the throne of England, which are sorely needed just now, for in spite of all the favourable rumours you mention, affairs there seem to be going from bad to worse. For my part (and I am a woman and like to delude myself) I cling to the hope that, however bad things may be now, they will ultimately turn to the advantage of our House. I accept the comparison which you draw, though all too flattering, between me and Queen Elizabeth as a good omen. Like Elizabeth, the Electress’s rights are denied her by a jealous sister with a bad temper (Queen Anne), and she will never be sure of the English crown until her accession to the throne. God be praised that our Princess of Wales (the Electress Sophia) is better than ever, and by her good health confounds all the machinations of her enemies.”

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER V:

[25] Howe’s Despatch, Hanover, 5th February, 1707. The son now born was Frederick Louis, later Prince of Wales, the father of George III.

[26] Howe’s Despatch, Hanover, 25th February, 1707.

[27] Howe’s Despatch, Hanover, 11th March, 1707.

[28] Howe’s Despatch, Hanover, 11th March, 1707.

[29] Anne; born in 1709. She was afterwards Princess Royal of England, and married in 1733 the Prince of Orange.

[30] Vide Swift’s character of Mrs. Howard, Suffolk Correspondence.

[31] Princess Amelia was born in 1710, Princess Caroline in 1713. They both died unmarried.

CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST YEAR AT HANOVER. 1714.

The history of the last year of Queen Anne’s reign, with its plots and counter plots, strife of statesmen and bitter party feuds, has often been written, so far as England is concerned. But comparatively little is known of how this eventful year, so important in fortunes of the dynasty, passed at Hanover. Every one, both in England and Hanover, felt that a crisis was imminent, yet no one, on either side of the water, prepared for it. The Queen’s death was likely to be accelerated by her own mental struggles with regard to the succession to her crown, and by the fierce quarrels and jealousies that raged among her advisers. The rival ministers could scarce forbear coming to blows in her presence, the rival claimants to her throne were eager to snatch the sceptre from her failing hand almost before she was dead. James, flitting between Lorraine and St. Germains, was in active correspondence with his friends in England waiting for the psychological moment to take action. Over at Herrenhausen, the aged Electress watched with trembling eagerness every move at the English Court, straining her ears for the summons which never came. Though she knew it not, in these last months she and Anne were running a race for life.

The news that came to Sophia from England was bad, as bad as it could be. The Tories were in power, and what was worse, the Jacobite section of the Tories, headed by Bolingbroke and Ormonde, were gaining swift ascendency over Oxford, who still, outwardly at any rate, professed himself in favour of the Hanoverian succession, and so, for that matter, did Bolingbroke too. The Queen, it is true, continued to profess her friendship to the House of Hanover, but her professions were as nothing worth. As her health failed, her conscience reproached her with the part she had played towards her exiled brother. There was another consideration which weighed with her more than all the rest, one that does not seem to have been given due weight in the criticisms which have been passed on her vacillating conduct, either from the Hanoverian or the Jacobite point of view. Like her grandfather, Charles the First, Anne was fervently attached to the Church of England; her love for it was the one fixed point in her otherwise tortuous policy. Like Charles the First, she saw the English Church through the medium of a highly coloured light, as a reformed branch of the Church Catholic, and as the via media between Protestantism and Popery. Her love for the Church was a passionate conviction, and her zeal for its welfare was shown by many acts throughout her reign. The excuse urged by her friends for her conduct to her father was that she had been actuated by zeal for the Church, which was in danger at his hands.

The question now presented itself again. How would the Church fare with a Roman Catholic as her successor? James, it was true, spoke fair, and declared his determination to maintain the Church of England in all its rights and privileges as by law established, but the Queen remembered that King James the Second had promised the same, and had persecuted the Church beyond measure. The people had not forgotten the expulsion of the Fellows of Magdalen, or the committal of the seven bishops to the Tower. Would not her brother also, in the same spirit of blind bigotry, seek to destroy one of the strongest bulwarks of the throne? “How can I serve him, my lord?” she once asked Buckingham. “You know well that a Papist cannot enjoy this crown in peace. All would be easy,” she continued, “if he would enter the pale of the Church of England.”[32] But that was what James would not do. On the other hand, the Church would gain little, and probably suffer much, if its temporal Head were the Electress Sophia, a German Calvinist, with a strong bias towards rationalism, as was shown by her patronage of the sceptic Toland and others of the same way of thinking. In truth, some sympathy must be extended to Queen Anne, and those of her many subjects who thought with her. It is no wonder they were undecided how to act, for they were between the Scylla of Popery and the Charybdis of Calvinism.

Yet the impassioned appeal which James had addressed to his sister that she would prefer “your own brother, the last male of our name, to the Electress of Hanover, the remotest relation we have, whose friendship you have no reason to rely on, or to be fond of, and who will leave the government to foreigners of another language, and of another interest,”[33] could not fail to awaken a responsive echo in the Queen’s heart. Other considerations weighed too. She was by temperament superstitious, and as her health failed and she saw herself like to die, childless, friendless and alone, she came to think that the restoration of the crown to her brother was the only atonement she could make for the wrong she, his best-loved child, had done her father. This sentiment of Queen Anne’s was well understood, and for the most part approved, by the Courts of Europe, with whom, almost without exception, the Hanoverian claims were unpopular, and considered to have little chance of success. The ambitions of the Electress Sophia met with no sympathy, and the idea of her becoming Queen of England was scouted as preposterous. Even her beloved niece and confidante, the Duchess of Orleans, gave her cold comfort. “Queen Anne,” she wrote to her, “must be well aware in her heart of hearts that our young king is her brother; I feel certain that her conscience will wake up before her death, and she will do justice to her brother”.[34]

Neither the Electress Sophia nor the Duchess of Orleans realised that the crown of England was not in the Queen’s gift, or that there was a power behind the throne greater than the throne. If this power had been vested in the people, there is little doubt that James would have come into his own. In 1714 the fickle tide to popular feeling seemed to be flowing in his favour. For the last year or two the birthday of James had been celebrated as openly as if he had been de facto and not de jure the heir to the crown, and his adherents were to be found everywhere—in the Army, in the Navy, in the Church, in both Houses of Parliament, and even in the councils of the Queen herself. But as a result of the Revolution Settlement of 1688, the balance of power rested, not with the people, nor with the Queen, nor even with her chosen advisers, but with the Whig oligarchy. The Electress Sophia did not appreciate fully the extent of this power; indeed it was impossible for any one who had not a close acquaintance with English politics to do so, but she was shrewd enough to see that with the Whigs was her only hope.

The situation became so desperate that she determined to depart for once from her policy of outward abstention from English politics, and to take action independent of the Queen. The Whigs represented to her that the presence in England of some member of her family was imperatively necessary at this juncture. She agreed with them, and the Electoral Prince was most eager to go, and so was the Electoral Princess Caroline. A good deal has been written about the honourable conduct of the House of Hanover in refusing to embarrass Queen Anne, and certainly its conduct in this respect contrasted most favourably with that of William of Orange towards James the Second. But though this was true of the Elector George, who would do nothing behind the Queen’s back, it could hardly be held to apply to the Electress Sophia and her grandson. The Elector, had he been consulted, would certainly have opposed the idea of the Electoral Prince going to England before himself, as he would have regarded it as another intrigue to supplant him in the favour of the English by his son; so it was decided not to consult him at all. The Electress Sophia, George Augustus and Caroline put their heads together, and with the advice of certain Whig emissaries who were at Hanover, and of Prince Eugene of Savoy and Leibniz, they resolved that the Electress should order Schütz, the Hanoverian Envoy in England, to demand the writ for the Electoral Prince to take his seat in the House of Lords as Duke of Cambridge. As they knew that it would be useless to make such a request of the Queen, to whom it ought to have been made, Schütz was instructed to apply direct to the Lord Chancellor, in the hope that, when the knowledge of his demand got abroad, the Whig Lords would take the matter up, and make such a point of it that the Queen would be forced to give way. They little knew the strength of her resistance, for her determination to reign alone amounted to a mania. She would infinitely have preferred James’s coming to that of George Augustus, if she had to endure the presence of one claimant or the other.

The demand was duly made. What followed is best told in the despatch which Bromley, the Secretary of State, wrote to Harley, a relative of Lord Oxford, who had been sent to Hanover a few days previously. Rumours had reached the Queen’s ears that intrigues were on foot there, and Harley had been despatched to find out the state of feeling and temporise matters. But before he arrived at Hanover the Electress’s orders had been given to Schütz, and the move which Anne hoped to prevent had been made. Bromley wrote:—

“Baron Schütz went to the Lord Chancellor, and said he was ordered by the Electress Sophia to demand a writ for the Duke of Cambridge to take his seat in Parliament, to which his Lordship answered that his writ was sealed with the writs of the rest of the peers, but he thought it his duty to acquaint the Queen before he delivered it. Her Majesty was very much surprised to hear that a writ should be demanded for a prince of her blood, and whom she had created a peer, to sit in Parliament without any notice taken of it to her, and her Majesty looks upon Mr. Schütz’s manner of transacting this affair to be so disrespectful to her, and so different from any instructions he could possibly have received from the Electress, that she thinks fit you should immediately represent it to the Electress, and to his Electoral Highness, and let them know it would be very acceptable to her Majesty to have this person recalled, who has affronted her in so high a degree.”[35]

On receipt of this despatch Harley had an interview with the Elector, who assured him that he had given no instructions to Schütz, and he had acted without his knowledge or approval. The Electress Sophia took refuge in an evasion: “It is said that Madame l’Electrice wrote a letter to Schütz only to inquire whether the Duke of Cambridge might not have a writ as well as other peers”.[36] So writes Harley home. He was charged with the less ungrateful task of making the Queen’s compliments to the Electress and her family, and of asking them to state what they wanted. The Electress Sophia’s hopes were raised again by Harley’s request, and she and the Elector jointly drew up a memorial to the Queen setting forth their wishes. The Elector was very angry with his mother and his son, but where his interests were concerned he sank family differences. The memorial,[37] which did not err on the side of ambiguity, may thus be summarised:—

First. That the “Pretender” be forced to retire to Italy, seeing the danger that existed to the Protestant succession by his being allowed to remain so long in Lorraine.

Secondly. That the Queen should take measures to strengthen her Army and Fleet against an invasion of England in the interests of the “Pretender,” and for the better security of her Royal person and the Protestant succession.

Thirdly. That the Queen should grant to those Protestant princes of the Electoral House, who had not yet got them, the usual titles accorded to princes of the blood of Great Britain.[38]

The Elector and Electress also expressed themselves strongly in favour of the establishment of some member of the electoral family in England. Harley promised to present the memorial to the Queen, and added that her answer to the several points would be sent by special envoy. He then departed from Hanover.

Meantime intrigue ran high in England. Bolingbroke had managed to persuade the Queen that Oxford had privily encouraged the demand of the writ for the Electoral Prince. The Queen, excited by this, began to have doubts whether Harley, his relative, was to be trusted, and whether he was not betraying her interests at the Hanoverian Court. So, to make matters more explicit, she wrote a letter with her own hand to the Electress Sophia, reiterating in the strongest and most peremptory terms her objection to having any member of the electoral family in her dominions during her lifetime. Similar letters were also sent to the Elector and the Electoral Prince. The wording of them was generally ascribed to Bolingbroke.

When Anne’s letters arrived at Hanover they created a feeling of consternation at Herrenhausen, at least in that wing of the palace which was occupied by the Electress Sophia. She, her grandson and Caroline were depressed beyond measure at the failure of their scheme, and incensed that the Queen should address them in so unceremonious a manner. A few days previously Leibniz, who was then at Vienna, had written to Caroline, saying:—

“God grant that the Electoral Prince may go to London soon, and that all possible success may attend him. I trust that your Highness may either accompany him or follow him immediately. Well-informed people here are persuaded that, in the event of his Highness going to London, the Corporation would not fail to make him a present, even if the Queen and Parliament did nothing. But if, against the expectation of the nation and the hopes of all well-affected people, the project comes to nothing, or if it be thought at Hanover that the Prince’s going would not yet be wise, it will be necessary to take great care to attribute the cause of the delay to the English Ministers’ public and ill-founded resentment. In that case the nation in the end will force them to consent to the Prince’s coming. But if the English Court can make the nation believe that there is dislike of, or indifference to, England at the Court of Hanover, it will have a bad effect, and the last state will be worse than the first.”[39]

To this communication Caroline now replied, and her letter shows how keenly the Queen’s letters had been taken to heart:—

“Alas! It is not the Electoral Prince’s fault that, as desired by all honest folk, he has not gone to London before now. He has moved heaven and earth in the matter, and I have spoken about it very strongly to the Elector. We were in a state of uncertainty here until yesterday, when a courier arrived from the Queen with letters for the Electress, the Elector and the Electoral Prince, of which I can only say that they are of a violence worthy of my Lord Bolingbroke. The Electoral Prince is now in despair about going to take his seat in the English Parliament, as he had hoped. I do not know how the world will judge of the policy which keeps us still at Hanover. I do not so much regret the loss we personally may suffer, as that we may seem to have abandoned for the moment the cause of our religion, the liberty of Europe and so many of our brave and honest friends in England. I have only the consolation of knowing that everything possible has been done by the Prince to obtain the Queen’s permission. The Electress joined him in this, and they now both intend to send the letters they have received from the Queen to their friends in England. I can find no comfort anywhere beyond the belief that Providence orders all things for our good. In fact I may say that never has any annoyance seemed to me so keen and insupportable as this. I fear for the health of the Electoral Prince, and perhaps even for his life.”[40]

There was another life, more valuable than that of the Electoral Prince, trembling in the balance. The day after Caroline wrote this letter was a fatal day to the Electress Sophia. She, the “Heiress of Britain,” had felt the Queen’s rebuff far more than her grandson or Caroline; her haughty spirit resented the manner in which she was addressed by her royal cousin of England, and her wounded pride and her thwarted ambition combined to throw her into an extraordinary state of agitation, which at her age she was unable to bear. Mollineux, an agent of the Duke of Marlborough who was at Hanover at the time, declared later that the shock of “these vile letters has broken her heart and brought her in sorrow to the grave”.

The Queen of England’s letter was delivered to the Electress on Wednesday evening about seven o’clock when she was playing cards. She got up from the card-table, and when she had read the letter, she became greatly agitated, and went out and walked up and down the garden for about three hours. The next morning she was not very well, but though still very much annoyed she recovered during the day, and on Friday she had apparently regained her composure. Meanwhile she determined that the Queen’s letters to herself and her grandson should be published, so that the world in general, and her friends in England in particular, might know the true state of affairs. The Elector refused to join them in this, and withheld the Queen’s letter to himself. She dined in public with the Elector that day as usual, and late in the afternoon went out for her walk in the garden of Herrenhausen with the Electoral Princess and her suite. She began to talk to Caroline about the letters, and gradually became more and more excited, walking very fast. The most trustworthy account of what followed is given in the following despatch of D’Alais, the English envoy:—

“The Electress felt indisposed on Wednesday evening, but she was better on Friday morning, and even wrote to her niece, the Duchess-dowager of Orleans. The same evening, about seven o’clock, whilst she was walking in the garden of Herrenhausen, and going towards the orangery, those with her perceived that she suddenly became pale, and she fell forwards in a fainting fit. The Electoral Princess and the Countess von Pickenbourg, who were with her, supported her on either side, and the chamberlain of her Electoral Highness helped them to keep her from falling. The Elector, who was in the garden hard by, heard their cries, and ran forward. He found her Electoral Highness unconscious, and he put some poudre d’or in her mouth. Servants were promptly called, and between them they carried the Electress to her room, where she was bled. But she was already dead, and only a few drops of blood came out. The Electress was in the eighty-fourth year of her age. The doctors say that she has died of apoplexy. On the Saturday night they carried her body into the chapel of the château.”[41]

Thus died one of the greatest princesses and most remarkable women of her time. The Electress Sophia was a worthy ancestress of our good Queen Victoria, whom in some respects, notably her devotion to duty, and her large and liberal way of looking at things, she closely resembled. No English historian has yet done justice to the eventful life of Sophia of Hanover, who missed, by a bare two months, becoming Queen of England. It was largely in consequence of her able policy, maintained throughout a critical period, no less than her Stuart descent, that her descendants came to occupy the English throne.

The Electress Sophia’s death was soon known in England, but no official notice was taken of it until Bothmar arrived to announce it formally in July. The choice of Bothmar for this mission shows that the Elector George, now heir-presumptive, was manifesting more interest in the English succession. Bothmar had been in England before, and was by no means a favourite with Bolingbroke and the Tories. At the same time, through Bothmar, George caused a fresh instrument of Regency to be drawn up in the event of the Queen’s death, containing his nominations of the Lords of the Regency. This document was entrusted to Bothmar, and the seals were to be broken when the Queen died. On receiving the Elector’s notification of his mother’s death, Queen Anne commanded a general mourning, and very reluctantly inserted George’s name in the prayer-book as next heir to the throne in place of that of the late Electress Sophia. The death of the Electress came to the Queen as a relief. She regarded her as one embarrassment the less, for she had heard of her cousin George’s indifference to the English succession, and she anticipated comparatively little trouble from him. Sophia’s death also enabled her to ignore some awkward points in the memorial, which had now reached her by the hands of Harley, such as had reference to the Electress’s English household and pension. But though Sophia was dead, the memorial had to be answered. A reply was drawn up in writing, and the Earl of Clarendon, the Queen’s first cousin, of whose attachment to her person she had no manner of doubt, was despatched as Envoy Extraordinary to Hanover—the second special mission within a few months.

The Queen’s answer to the Hanoverian memorial ran as follows:—

“That her Majesty has used her instances to have the Pretender removed out of Lorraine, and since the last addresses of Parliament has repeated them, and has writ herself to the Duke of Lorraine to press it in the strongest terms. This her Majesty hath done to get him removed, but it can’t be imagined it is in her power to prescribe where the Pretender shall go, or by whom he shall be received. His being removed out of France is more than was provided for by the Peace at Ryswick. Correspondence with the Pretender is by law high treason, and it is her Majesty’s interest and care to have this law strictly executed.

“The vain hopes entertained at Bar-le-Duc and the reports thence are not to be wondered at. Her Majesty thinks herself fully secured, as well by treaties as by the duty and affection of her people, against all attempt whatsoever. Besides these securities, her Majesty has a settled militia and such other force as her Parliament, to whose consideration she has referred that matter, judged sufficient for the safety of her kingdom. And it cannot be unknown that a standing army in time of peace, without consent of Parliament, is contrary to the fundamental laws of this realm. Her Majesty is so far from being unfurnished with a fleet that she has at this time more ships at sea, and ready to be put to sea, than any other power in Europe.

“Her Majesty looks upon it to be very unnecessary that one of the Electoral family should reside in Great Britain to take care of the security of her Royal person, of her kingdom, and of the Protestant succession, as expressed in the memorial. This, God and the laws have entrusted to her Majesty alone, and to admit any person into a share of these cares with her Majesty would be dangerous to the public tranquillity, as it is inconsistent with the constitution of the monarchy.

“When her Majesty considers the use that has been endeavoured to be made of the titles she has already conferred, she has little encouragement to grant more. Granting titles of honour in the last reign to persons of foreign birth gave such dissatisfaction to the nation as produced a provision in the Act of Parliament whereby the succession is established in the Electoral House, that when the limitation in that Act shall take effect, no person born out of the kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging, though naturalised or made a denizen (except such as are born of English parents), shall be capable to be of the Privy Council, or a member of either House of Parliament, or to enjoy any office or place of trust, or to have a grant of land, tenements or hereditaments from the crown to himself, or to any other in trust for him.”[42]

Clarendon arrived at Hanover on July 26th, 1714, imbued with a strong sense of the importance of his mission, and requested an audience at once. But he found, to his surprise, that the Elector was in no hurry to receive him, and could not see him for more than a week. At last he had audience. The account of that interview and what followed is best given in his own words:—

“On Saturday last I had my first audience of the Elector at noon at Herrenhausen. He received me in a room where he was alone; a gentleman of the Court came to my lodgings here, with two of the Elector’s coaches, and carried me to Herrenhausen. I was met at my alighting out of the coach by Monsieur d’Haremberg, Marshal of the Court, and at the top of the stairs by the Chevalier Reden, second chamberlain (the Count de Platen, great chamberlain, being sick); he conducted me through three rooms, to the room where the Elector was, who met me at the door, and being returned three or four steps into that room, he stopped, and the door was shut. I then delivered my credentials to him, and made him a compliment from the Queen, to which he answered that he had always had the greatest veneration imaginable for the Queen, that he was always ready to acknowledge the great obligations he and his family have to her Majesty, and that he desired nothing more earnestly than to entertain a good correspondence with her....

“I then delivered to him the Queen’s answer to his memorial, and the other letter, and I spoke upon all the heads contained in my instructions, and in your letter of the 22nd of June, O.S. When I told him that, as the Queen had already done all that could be done to secure the succession to her crown to his family, so she expected that if he had any reason to suspect designs are carrying on to disappoint it, he should speak plainly upon that subject, he interrupted me and said these words: ‘I have never believed that the Queen cherished any designs against the interests of my family,’ and ‘I am not aware of having given her Majesty any reason to suspect that I wished to do anything against her interests, or which might displease her in any way. I love not to do such things. The Queen did me the honour to write to me, and ask me to let her know what I thought would be of advantage to the succession. We gave a written memorial to Mr. Harley to which I have yet had no reply.’ I told him I had just then had the honour to deliver him an answer to the memorial, and that if, when he had perused that answer, he desired to have any part explained, I did believe I should be able to do it to his satisfaction. Then I proceeded to speak upon the other points, and when I came to mention Schütz’s demanding the writ for the Duke of Cambridge, he said these words: ‘I hope that the Queen does not believe that it was done by my commands. I assure you it was done unknown to me; the late Electress wrote to Schütz without my knowledge to ask him to find out why the Prince had not received his writ, which she believed was sent to all peers, and instead of that he demanded the writ even without the Electress’s commands. I would do nothing to annoy the Queen to whom we owe so many obligations.’ My speaking to him and the answers he made took up something above an hour.

HERRENHAUSEN.

“Then I had audience of the Electoral Prince and of Duke Ernest, the Elector’s brother, in the same room, and then of the Electoral Princess. After that I had the honour to dine with them all, and after dinner, here in the town, I had audience of the Electoral Princess’s son and three daughters. At dinner the Elector seemed to be in very good humour, talked to me several times, asked many questions about England, and seemed very willing to be informed. It is very plain that he knows very little of our Constitution, and seems to be sensible that he has been imposed upon. The Electoral Prince told me he thought himself very happy that the Queen had him in her thoughts, that he should be very glad if it were in his power to convince the Queen how grateful a sense he had of all her favours. Duke Ernest said the Queen did him a great deal of honour to remember him, that he most heartily wished the continuance of her Majesty’s health, and hoped no one of his family would ever be so ungrateful as to forget the very great obligations they all had to her. The Electoral Princess said she was very glad to hear the Queen was well, she hoped she would enjoy good health many years, that her kindness to this family was so very great that they could never make sufficient acknowledgments for it. Thus I have acquainted you with all that passed at the first audience.”[43]

We find Clarendon writing again a few days later: “The Elector has said to some person here that I have spoken very plain, and he can understand me, and indeed I have spoken plain language on all occasions. I hope that will not be found a fault in England.”[44]

Clarendon soon had reason to regret his speaking so “very plain,” for at the very hour when the English envoy was haranguing the Elector, Queen Anne was dead. The sword so long suspended had fallen at last. The Queen had frequently declared in the course of the last month that the perpetual contentions of her Ministers would cause her death. She had striven to end the bitter strife between Oxford and Bolingbroke by compelling the former to give up the Treasurer’s staff, which he did on Tuesday, July 27th. Thus Oxford had fallen; Bolingbroke had triumphed, but his triumph was not to last long. The same night a council was called at nine o’clock in the evening, over which the Queen presided; but the removal of Oxford seemed only to add fuel to the flames. The partisans of the displaced Minister and those of Bolingbroke, regardless of the presence of the Queen, her weakness, the consideration due to her as a woman, and the respect due to her office, violently raged at one another until two o’clock in the morning, and the scene was only closed by the tears and anguish of the Queen, who at last swooned and had to be carried out of the council chamber. Another council was called for the next day; the recriminations were as fierce as before, nothing was settled, and the council was again suspended by the alarming illness of the Queen.

A third council was summoned for the Friday. The Queen wept, and said, “I shall never survive it”. And so it proved, for when the hour appointed for the council drew nigh, the royal victim, worn out with sickness of mind and body, and dreading the strife, was seized with an apoplectic fit. She was carried to bed, and her state was soon seen to be hopeless. The news of the Queen’s illness got known to Bolingbroke and his friends first, probably through Lady Masham, and they hurried to the palace. Lady Masham burst in upon them from the royal chamber in the utmost disorder, crying: “Alas! my lords, we are undone, entirely ruined—the Queen is a dead woman; all the world cannot save her”. The suddenness of this blow stunned the Jacobites; they had been so eager to grasp at power that they had killed their best friend. All was confusion and distracted counsel. The Duke of Ormonde declared that if the Queen were conscious, and would name her brother her successor, he would answer for the soldiers. But the Queen was not conscious, and they hesitated to take a decisive step. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was all for action, and then and there offered to go forth in full pontificals and proclaim King James at Charing Cross and the Royal Exchange. But the others resolved to temporise and call a formal council for the morrow to see what could be done. Meantime the Queen was sinking, and her only intelligible words were: “My brother! Oh! my poor brother, what will become of you?” There is no doubt that Bolingbroke, Ormonde and Atterbury, had they been given time, would have tried to obtain from the Queen the nomination of James as her successor, and have acted accordingly, but time was not given them. The favourable moment passed, and the Whigs, and those Tories who favoured the Hanoverian succession, were alert.

Before the assembled council could get to business next morning, the door opened, and the Dukes of Argyll and Somerset entered the room. These two great peers, representing the Whigs of Scotland and England respectively, announced that though they had not been summoned to the council, yet, on hearing of the Queen’s danger, they felt bound to hasten thither. While Bolingbroke and Ormonde sat silent, fearing mischief, afraid to bid the intruding peers to retire, the Duke of Shrewsbury rose and welcomed them, and asked them to take seats at the council table. It was then clear to the Jacobites that the presence of Argyll and Somerset was part of a concerted plan with Shrewsbury. The plan rapidly developed. On the motion of Somerset, seconded by Argyll, Shrewsbury was nominated Lord Treasurer, but he declined the office unless the Queen herself appointed him. The council then sought audience with the dying Queen. She was sinking fast, but she retained enough consciousness to give the white wand into the hands of Shrewsbury, and bade him, with the sweet voice which was her greatest charm, to “use it for the good of my people”. Then indeed the Jacobites knew that all was over, for Shrewsbury was a firm adherent of the House of Hanover. Bolingbroke and Ormonde withdrew in confusion, and the “best cause in the world,” as Atterbury said, “was lost for want of spirit”.

The Whig statesmen were not slow to follow up their advantage. They concentrated several regiments around and in London, they ordered the recall of troops from Ostend, they sent a fleet to sea, they obtained possession of all the ports, and did everything necessary to check a rising or an invasion in favour of James. Craggs was despatched to Hanover to tell the Elector that the Queen was dying, and the council determined to proclaim him King the moment the Queen’s breath was out of her body. They had not long to wait. The Queen died early next morning, August 1st, and on the same day the seals of the document drawn up by George appointing the Council of Regency were broken in the presence of the Hanoverian representative, Bothmar. Without delay the heralds proclaimed that “The high and mighty Prince, George, Elector of Brunswick and Lüneburg, is, by the death of Queen Anne of blessed memory, become our lawful and rightful liege lord, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith”. The people heard the proclamation without protest, and some even were found to cry, “God save King George”.

The moment the Queen died two more messengers were despatched to Hanover, one, a State messenger, to Lord Clarendon, the other, a special envoy, Lord Dorset, to do homage to the new King on behalf of the Lords of the Regency, and to attend him on his journey to England. Hanover was in a state of great excitement. Craggs had arrived on August 5th, bringing the news of the Queen’s serious illness. The messenger to Lord Clarendon arrived next day late at night, and found that the envoy was not at his lodgings, but supping with a charming lady. But the news brooked of no delay, and seeking out Clarendon, the messenger handed him his despatches, which ordered him to acquaint George with the death of the Queen. There could be no more unwelcome tidings for Lord Clarendon. “It is the only misfortune I had to fear in this world,” he exclaimed. Anne was his first cousin, and all his hopes were bound up with Bolingbroke and the Jacobite Tories, whose day, he shrewdly guessed, was now over. He forthwith called his coach, and late though the hour was, drove off to Herrenhausen, which he reached at two o’clock in the morning. George was asleep when Clarendon arrived, but the envoy dared to penetrate into his chamber, and, falling on his knees by the bedside, “acquainted his Majesty that so great a diadem was fallen to him,” and asked his commands. “He told me I had best stay till he goes, and then I was dismissed.”[45]

George’s curtness is explained by the fact that he had heard the great news already. Eager though Clarendon was, another had been before him. On August 1st Bothmar had despatched his secretary, Godike, in hot haste to Hanover, who had reached Herrenhausen earlier the same evening (August 5th). Still, Clarendon could claim the honour of being the first Englishman to bend the knee to King George. It availed him little in the future, for George never forgave him his “plain speaking,” and Clarendon, finding all avenues of public advancement closed to him, retired into private life.

Lord Dorset arrived at Hanover the next day, bringing the news of George the First’s proclamation and despatches from the Lords of the Regency informing the King that a fleet had been sent to escort him from Holland to England, where his loyal subjects were impatiently awaiting his arrival. Soon Hanover was thronged with English, all hastening to pay their homage to the risen sun of Hanover, and to breathe assurances of loyalty and devotion. George received them and their homage with stolid indifference. He showed no exultation at his accession to the mighty throne of England, and was careful not to commit himself by word or deed. His policy at this time was guided, not by anything that the Lords of the Regency might say or do, but by the secret despatches which his trusted agent, Bothmar, was forwarding him from England. Had Bothmar informed him that his proclamation was other than peaceable, or that rebellion was imminent, it is probable that George would never have quitted Hanover. But as he was apparently proclaimed with acclamation, there was no help for it but to go. “The late King, I am fully persuaded,” writes Dean Lockier soon after the death of George the First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong opposition.”

George Augustus and Caroline had shown themselves eager to go to England, but when the great news came, they were careful to dissemble their eagerness, lest the King, mindful of their intrigues, should take it into his head to leave them behind at Hanover. Apparently he came to the conclusion that they would be less dangerous if he took them with him; so he commanded George Augustus to make ready to depart with him, and told Caroline to follow a month later with all her children except the eldest, Prince Frederick Louis. Leibniz hurried back from Vienna on hearing of Anne’s death, and prayed hard to go to England, but he was ordered to stay at Hanover and finish his history of the Brunswick princes. This was a bitter disappointment, and in vain Caroline pleaded for him. The King knew that she and the late Electress had employed him in their intrigues, and he was determined to leave so dangerous an adherent behind. Leibniz had sore reason to regret the loss of the Electress Sophia.

If his loyal subjects in England were impatient to receive him, the King was not equally impatient to make their acquaintance. He had a good deal to do at Hanover before leaving, and he refused to be hurried, however urgent English affairs might be. He conferred some parting favours on his beloved electorate, and vested its government in a council presided over by his brother, Ernest Augustus. George left Hanover with regret, comforting his bereaved subjects with assurances that he would come back as soon as he possibly could, and that he would always have their interest at heart. Both of these promises he kept—at the expense of England.

A month after the Queen’s death the new King departed for the Hague, without any ceremony. He took with him a train of Hanoverians, including Bernstorff, his Prime Minister, and Robethon, a councillor, two Turks, Mustapha and Mahomet, and his two mistresses, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge. The former was even more reluctant than her master to quit Hanover, and feared for the King’s safety. But George consoled her with the grim assurance that “in England all the king-killers are on my side,” and like the others she came to regard England as a land of promise wherein she might enrich herself. Kielmansegge was eager to go to England, but she did not find it so easy, as she was detained at Hanover by her debts, which George would not pay. After some difficulty she managed to pacify her creditors by promises of the gold she would send them from his Majesty’s new dominions; they let her go, and she caught up the King at the Hague. The Countess Platen did not accompany him. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says that this was due to the enmity of Bernstorff, who hated her because she had obtained the post of cofferer for her favourite, the younger Craggs. “Bernstorff was afraid that she might meddle in the disposition of places that he was willing to keep in his own hands, and he represented to the King that the Roman Catholic religion that she professed was an insuperable bar to her appearance in the Court of England, at least so early; but he gave her private hopes that things might be so managed as to make her admittance easy, when the King was settled in his new dominions.”

George was warmly welcomed at the Hague, where he stayed a fortnight, transacting business, receiving Ministers and Ambassadors, and waiting for the remainder of his Hanoverian suite to join him. At the Hague he determined that Bolingbroke should be dismissed from all his offices, and appointed Lord Townshend Secretary of State in his place. On September 16th George embarked at Oranje Polder, in the yacht Peregrine, and, accompanied by a squadron of twenty ships, set sail for England.

FOOTNOTES TO BOOK I, CHAPTER VI:

[32] Macpherson Stuart Papers, vol. ii.

[33] Letter of James to Queen Anne, May, 1711. In this letter he styles himself “The Chevalier St. George”. It is to be noted that he does not speak of the Electress Sophia as a foreigner, but only of her descendants.

[34] Letter of Elizabeth Charlotte, Duchess of Orleans, to the Electress Sophia, 12th January, 1714.

[35] Despatch of Bromley to Harley, 16th April, 1714.

[36] Harley’s letter, 11th May, 1714.

[37] Memorial of the Electress Dowager of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and the Elector of Hanover to Queen Anne, 4th May, 1714.

[38] This would apply to the Elector, the Electoral Prince, Prince Ernest Augustus, brother of the Elector, and the young Prince Frederick, son of the Electoral Prince. It would exclude Prince Maximilian, brother of the Elector, who had become a Roman Catholic.

[39] Letter of Leibniz to the Electoral Princess Caroline, Vienna, 24th May, 1714.

[40] The Electoral Princess Caroline to Leibniz, Hanover, 7/17th June, 1714.

[41] D’Alais’s Despatch (translation), Hanover, 12th June, 1714. This has not before been published.

[42] The Queen’s Answer to the Memorial of their Electoral Highnesses the late Electress Dowager and the Elector of Hanover, June, 1714.

[43] Clarendon’s Despatch, Hanover, 7th August, 1714. The Elector’s words are translated from the French.

[44] Clarendon’s Despatch, Hanover, 10th August, 1714.

[45] Clarendon’s Despatch, 10/17th August, 1714.

BOOK II.
PRINCESS OF WALES.

CHAPTER I.
THE COMING OF THE KING. 1714.

George the First landed at Greenwich on Saturday, September 18th, 1714, at six o’clock in the evening. The arrival of the royal yacht was celebrated by the booming of guns, the ringing of bells, the flying of flags, and the cheers of a vast crowd of people, who had assembled along the riverside. A great number of privy councillors and lords, spiritual and temporal, hurried down to Greenwich, eager to kneel in the mud, if need be, and kiss the hand of the new sovereign. This was not the first visit of George to England; he had come here thirty-four years before, as a suitor for the hand of Queen Anne, then Princess Anne of York, whose throne he was now to fill. On that occasion his barque was left stranded all night at Greenwich, and no one was sent from Charles the Second’s court to meet him or bid him welcome. If he had any sense of the irony of events, he must have been struck by the contrast between then and now, when he landed on the same spot, and gazed at the servile crowd of place-hunters who elbowed and jostled their way into the royal presence. Tories and Whigs were there, and Jacobites too, all fervent in their expressions of loyalty, which George knew how to value for what they were worth. He wished them and their lip service far away, for he was both tired and cross; he had had a rough voyage, and the yacht had been detained some hours off Gravesend by a thick fog. He dismissed them all with scant ceremony and went to bed.

The next day, Sunday, King George held his first levée, at which he particularly noticed Marlborough and the Whig Lords, but ignored Ormonde and Lord Chancellor Harcourt altogether, and barely noticed Oxford, “of whom your Majesty has heard me speak,” said Dorset in presenting him. Bolingbroke was not received at all. The Whigs were jubilant; it was evident that the King had no intention of conciliating the Tories. As it was Sunday, a great many citizens came down from London by road and water to catch a glimpse of the new King, and in the afternoon a large crowd assembled outside the palace of Greenwich and cheered for hours. To quote one of the journals of the day: “His Majesty and the Prince were graciously pleased to expose themselves some time at the windows of their palace to satisfy the impatient curiosity of the King’s loving subjects”.[46]

On the morrow, Monday, George the First made his public entry into London, and his “loving subjects” had ample opportunity of seeing their Sovereign from Hanover, whose “princely virtues,” in the words of the Address of the loyal Commons, “gave them a certain prospect of future happiness”. It was king’s weather. The September sun was shining brightly when at two o’clock in the afternoon the procession set out from Greenwich Park. It was not a military procession after the manner of royal pageants in more recent years, though a certain number of soldiers took part in it, but it was an imposing procession, and more representative of the nation than any military display that could have been devised. In it the order of precedence set forth by the Heralds’ Office was strictly followed. The coaches of esquires came first, but as no esquire was permitted to take part in the procession who could not afford a coach drawn by six horses and emblazoned with his arms, it could not fully represent the untitled aristocracy of England. Then followed the knights bachelors in their coaches, with panels painted yellow in compliment to the King, though in truth he was of a very different calibre to the last foreign monarch who affected that colour, William of Orange. Then came the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, and after them the baronets and younger sons of barons and viscounts. Then followed the majesty of the law as represented by the Barons of the Exchequer, his Majesty’s Judges, the Lord Chief Justice, and the Master of the Rolls. The Privy Councillors, such as were not noble, came next, and then the eldest sons of barons, the younger sons of earls, the eldest sons of viscounts, and, all by himself, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in wig and gown. The barons and the bishops came next, fully robed, followed by the younger sons of dukes, the eldest sons of marquesses, the earls, the Lord Steward, the two lords who jointly held the office of Earl Marshal, the eldest sons of dukes, the marquesses, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the dukes, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord President of the Council, the Lord High Treasurer, the Archbishop of York and the Lord Chancellor. From some unexplained cause the Archbishop of Canterbury was absent.

Then, the climax and focus of all this splendour, came King George himself and Prince George Augustus in an enormous glass coach, decorated with gold, emblazoned with the royal arms, and drawn by eight horses with postillions. The Duke of Northumberland, the Gold Staff, and Lord Dorset, who had now been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, were on the front seat. The King leaned forward and bowed to the cheering crowds from time to time, with his hand upon his heart, but his countenance showed never a smile. The Prince, on the other hand, was all smiles, but having been commanded by his royal sire not to bow, he had perforce to sit upright, and content himself with smiling. Immediately after the royal coach came other coaches bearing the King’s suite of faithful Hanoverians, including his two mistresses en titre, Schulemburg and Kielmansegge, whose quaint appearance was the signal of some ribald remarks from the mob, which, fortunately for the German ladies, they did not understand. The whole of the way was lined with cheering crowds, and men and boys climbed up the trees along the route to wave flags and shout “God save the King”.

As the procession entered London cannon roared from the Tower. There was a temporary halt in Southwark, where the Lord Mayor and City Fathers, in brave array, were drawn up to meet the King. The Recorder stepped up to the royal coach and read a long speech, in which he assured his Majesty of the impatience with which the citizens of London, and his subjects generally, awaited “his Royal presence amongst them to secure those invaluable blessings which they promised themselves from a Prince of the most illustrious merit”. The King listened stolidly, and bowed his head from time to time, or gave utterance to a grunt, which presumably was intended to convey the royal approval, but as George understood barely a word of English, the loyal address could hardly have been intelligible to him. The procession then moved slowly over London Bridge, through the City, by St. Paul’s, where four thousand children sang “God save the King,” and so wended its way to St. James’s. The roadway was lined with troops, and people looked down from windows and balconies, shouted and threw flowers; flags waved and draperies hung down from nearly every house, triumphal arches crossed the streets, the bells of the churches were ringing, and the fountains ran with wine. But the King throughout the day remained stolid and unmoved; the English crowd might shout for King George as loud as they pleased, but he knew full well in his heart that, given the same show and a general holiday, they would have shouted as loud for King James.

It was eight o’clock in the evening before the procession broke up at St. James’s Palace, and even then the festivities were not over, for bonfires were lighted in the streets and squares, oxen roasted whole, and barrels of beer broached for the people, who enjoyed themselves in high good humour until the small hours of the morning. The day was not to end without some blood being spilled. A dispute took place that night at St. James’s between one Aldworth, the Tory member of Parliament for Windsor, and Colonel Chudleigh, a truculent Whig. The colonel called Aldworth, who had been in the royal procession, a Jacobite. Aldworth resented this as an insult, and, both being the worse for wine, the quarrel grew. Nothing would settle it but to fight a duel with swords, and the pair set off at once with seconds to Marylebone Fields. Aldworth was killed, “which is no great wonder,” writes an eye-witness, “for he had such a weakness in both his arms that he could not stretch them, and this from being a child it is suppos’d not to be a secret to Chudleigh”.[47]

The King and Prince slept that night in St. James’s Palace. Did the ghosts of their Stuart ancestors mock their slumbers?

The next day King George held a levée, which was largely attended, and the day after he presided over a meeting of the Privy Council, when George Augustus was created Prince of Wales. In the patent the King declared that his “most dear son is a Prince whose eminent filial piety hath always endeared him to us”. Yet, though the Prince was nominally a member of the Privy Council, the King was careful not to allow him the slightest influence in political affairs, or to admit him to his confidence or to that of his Ministers.

We get glimpses of the King during the first few weeks of his reign in contemporary letters of the period. We find him and the Prince supping with the Duke of Marlborough, whose levées were more largely attended than ever, and whose popularity was far greater than that of his royal guests. The duke improved the occasion by offering to sell the Prince of Wales Marlborough House, and showed him how easily it might be joined to St. James’s Palace by a gallery; the King would not hear of it.[48] We also find the King supping at Madame Kielmansegge’s with Lady Cowper, for whom he evinced undisguised, if not altogether proper admiration, and the lovely Duchess of Shrewsbury, whose conversation, if we may believe Lady Cowper, “though she had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency”. On this occasion she entertained his Majesty by mocking the way the King of France ate, telling him that he ate twenty things at a meal, and ticking them off on her fingers. Whereupon the astute Lady Cowper said: “Sire, the duchess forgets that he eats a good deal more than that”. “What does he eat, then?” said the King. “Sire,” Lady Cowper answered, “he devours his people, and if Providence had not led your Majesty to the throne, he would be devouring us also.” Whereupon the King turned to the duchess and said, “Did you hear what she said?” and he did Lady Cowper the honour of repeating her words to many people, which made the Duchess of Shrewsbury very jealous.

The Duchess of Shrewsbury was by birth an Italian, the Marchesa Paleotti, and scandal said that she had been the duke’s mistress before she became his wife. The Duchess of Marlborough made many slighting remarks about her when she first appeared at Queen Anne’s Court, where she was coldly received. But after the Hanoverian accession she came to the front and stood high in the favour of King George, who loved a lady who was at once lively and broad in her conversation. Lady Wentworth declared that “the Duchess of Shrewsbury will devour the King, for she will not let any one speak to him but herself, and she says she rivals Madame Kielmansegge”. Be that as it may, the King found great pleasure in her society, and often went to her little supper parties to play “sixpenny ombre”. She had a great advantage over the English ladies in that she could speak admirable French. The King later obtained for her a post in the household of the Princess of Wales, not without some reluctance on the part of the Princess.

The King lost no time in forming his Government. All the members, with the possible exception of Lord Nottingham, the President of the Council, who, despite his leaning to High Church principles, had long been identified with the Whigs, were of the Whig party. Lord Townshend was confirmed in Bolingbroke’s place as chief Secretary of State, and must henceforth be regarded as Prime Minister. He was not a statesman of first-rate ability, but he was a just man and free from the prevailing taint of corruption; his considerable position among the Whigs had been strengthened by his marriage with Robert Walpole’s sister. Robert Walpole was given the minor appointment of Paymaster-General to the Forces, but he was promoted the following year to the post of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The second Secretary of State, James Stanhope (afterwards Earl Stanhope), was a much stronger personality than Townshend; he had shown himself a dashing soldier, and he was an accomplished scholar.