Destruction of George the First's will.
At the first council held by the new sovereign, Dr. Wake,
Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the will of the late King, and
delivered it to the successor, expecting it would be
opened and read in council. On the contrary, his Majesty put it
into his pocket, and stalked out of the room without
uttering a word on the subject. The poor prelate was
thunderstruck, and had not the presence of mind or the courage to
demand the testament's being opened, or at least to have it
registered. No man present chose to be more hardy than the
person to whom the deposit had been trusted-perhaps none of them
immediately conceived the possible violation of so solemn an act
so notoriously existent; still, as the King never
mentioned the will more, whispers only by degrees informed the
public that the will was burnt; at least that its injunctions
were never fulfilled.
What the contents were was never ascertained. Report said, that
forty thousand pounds had been bequeathed to the Duchess of
Kendal; and more vague rumours spoke of a large legacy to the
Queen of Prussia, daughter of the late King. Of that
bequest demands were afterwards said to have been frequently and
roughly made by her son the great King of Prussia, between whom
and his uncle subsisted much inveteracy.
The legacy to the ]Duchess was some time after on the brink of
coming to open and legal discussion. Lord Chesterfield
marrying her niece and heiress, the Countess of Walsingham, and
resenting his own proscription at court, was believed to have
instituted, or at least to have threatened, a suit for recovery
of the legacy to the Duchess, to which he was then become
entitled; and it was as confidently believed that he was quieted
by the payment of twenty thousand pounds.
But if the Archbishop had too timidly betrayed the trust
reposed in him from weakness and want of spirit, there were two
other men who had no such plea of imbecility, and who, being
independent, and above being awed, basely sacrificed their honour
and their integrity for positive sordid gain. George the First
had deposited duplicates of his will with two sovereign German
princes: I will not specify them, because at this distance of
time I do not, perfectly recollect their
titles; but I was actually, some years ago, shown a copy of a
letter from one of our ambassadors abroad to-a secretary of state
at that period, in which the ambassador said, one of the princes
in question would accept the proffered subsidy, and had
delivered, or would deliver, the duplicate of the King's will.
The other trustee, was no doubt, as little
conscientious and as corrupt. It is pity the late King of
Prussia did not learn their infamous treachery.
Discoursing once with Lady Suffolk on that suppressed
testament, she made the only plausible shadow of an excuse that
could be made for George the Second. She told me that George the
First had burnt two wills made in favour of his son. They were,
probably, the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell; or one of
them might be that of his mother, the
Princess Sophia. The crime of the first George could only
palliate, not justify, the criminality of the second; for the
second did -not punish the maturity, but the innocent. But bad
precedents are always dangerous, and too likely to be
copied. (104)
(104) On the subject of the royal will, Walpole, in his
Memoires, vol. ii. p. 458, relates the following
anecdote:-"The morning after the death of George the Second, Lord
Waldegrave showed the Duke of Cumberland an extraordinary piece:
it was endorsed, 'very private paper,' and was a letter from the
Duke of Newcastle to the first Earl of Waldegrave; in which his
Grace informed the Earl, then our ambassador in
France, that he had received by the messenger the copy of the
will and codicil of George the First; that he had delivered it to
his Majesty, who put it into the fire without opening it: 'So,'
adds the Duke, 'we do not know whether it confirms the other or
not;' and he proceeds to say, 'Despatch a messenger to the Duke
Of Wolfenbuttle with the treaty, in which he is granted all he
desired; and we expect, by return of the
messenger, the original will from him.' George the First had
left two wills; one in the hands of Dr. Wake, Archbishop of
Canterbury, the other with the Duke of Wolfenbuttle. He had been
in the right to take these precautions: he himself had burned his
wife's testament, and her and her father's, the duke of Zell;
both of whom had made George the Second their heir--a paliative
of the latter's obliquity, if justice would allow of any
violation." From the following passage in
Boswell's Life of Johnson, the Doctor appears to have given
credence to the story of the will:--"tom Davies instanced
Charles the Second; Johnson taking fire at an attack upon that
prince, exclaimed, "charles the Second was licentious in his
practice, but he always had a reverence for what was good;
Charles the Second was not such a man as George the Second; he
did not destroy his father's will' he did not betray those over
whom he ruled' he did not let the French fleet pass
ours.' He roared with prodigious violence against George the
Second. When he ceased, Moody interjected, in an Irish tone, and
a comic look, 'Ah! poor George the Second!'" See vol. v. p. 284,
ed. 1835.-E.