_BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE_
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_First published with numerous illustrations by
Messrs. Goupil & Co. in October 1903_
_Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged, cr. 8vo.
published by Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co.
in October 1909_
PREFACE
TO
SECOND EDITION
The long and eventful life of the Electress Sophia admits of being
treated from various points of view, each of which possesses an interest
of its own. A Stewart by descent and breeding, and naturally enough in a
large measure by sentiment also, she likewise, by reason of her birth
and through the traditions and experiences of her youth, had an
immediate part in the declining fortunes of the Palatine House. The
title acquired by her, for herself and her descendants, to the
succession to the throne of her maternal ancestors, was a Parliamentary
title; but it rested ultimately on the relation of herself and the House
of Brunswick-Lüneburg to the political and religious conflicts—the
struggle against France and the resistance to Rome—on whose issue the
future of Europe, and that of England in particular, mainly depended.
Personally, thanks to the unflagging vivacity and unfailing candour of
her mind, fostered by an education carried on by her through life, she
became one of the foremost feminine representatives of the intellectual
liberalism of her age.
In the succeeding pages, the aspect of the Electress Sophia’s career to
which prominence has been designedly given, is the part played by her,
on her own behalf and on that of her descendants, in the history of the
question of the British Succession. To this one aspect it has been
necessary to subordinate the rest, without, it is hoped, unduly
neglecting any one of them. It has not been easy to refrain from
dwelling at some length on the story, often but never yet quite
adequately told, of the Queen of Bohemia, with its alternations of light
and shadow. And it would have been an interesting task to seek to put
into shape all that we know as to the extraordinarily varied
experiences, in Court and camp, and in the contiguous spheres of
religious and intellectual activity, of Sophia’s brothers and sisters.
But, with her marriage, there opens the period of her life at the close
of which, as the ancestress and the source of the Hanoverian dynasty of
British sovereigns, she stands forth by herself as an important
historical figure; and it was her connexion with the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg that moulded her own future and rendered it
propitious for the destinies of Great Britain. In the present narrative,
there has accordingly been included an account of so much of the history
of that House in the period preceding Sophia’s marriage as might suffice
to indicate, not only its main dynastic purposes and principles of
policy, but also the share which it had come to take in the general
progress of European affairs. On this there follows a more special
consideration of the attitude consistently maintained by the Hanoverian
family, as the representative branch of the whole House, towards the
question of the British Succession, which gradually became one of the
chief questions of European politics at large. In these transactions the
chief responsibility, on the Hanoverian side, necessarily devolved upon
the Electress Sophia, though her eldest son pursued his own course, in
general but not in invariable conformity with her own. And thus, both
the House of Hanover and Sophia herself contributed directly to a result
of high historical significance.
In describing the ambitions, the achievements, and the experiences, good
or evil, of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, in the period more
immediately preceding its accession to the British throne, I have not
thought it right to draw a veil over episodes which have often been
intentionally slurred over or misrepresented. On one of these episodes,
the most vexed and the most painful among them, fresh light, but not
such as to disturb conclusions already to all intents and purposes
established, is thrown, in an Appendix to the present volume, by a
supplementary series of documents now (with two exceptions) for the
first time made public. Such episodes a truthful narrator cannot pass
by; but they should not be allowed to affect his judgment on questions
connected with his story which possess a far higher historical interest.
In my opinion, the debt of the British nation to the House of Hanover,
from the times of the Electress Sophia to those of Queen Victoria, is
one to which no conscientious student of the history of the dynasty, in
both the one and the other period, ought to refuse to bear witness.
The materials for a history of the Electress Sophia, in its connexion
with the Hanoverian Succession, are so abundant that they could only be
satisfactorily enumerated in an elaborate bibliography, for which room
could hardly be found in the present volume. A succinct bibliography of
the history of the Succession, so far as it enters into the general
course of European history, will be found in Vols. v. and vi. of the
_Cambridge Modern History_, in connexion with the chapter on _Party
Government under Queen Anne_ and the section on the _Hanoverian
Succession_, by Mr. H. W. V. Temperley and by the author of the present
work respectively. The materials in question may be summarised as
follows. They consist primarily of Sophia’s own _Memoirs_ (which,
however, only reach the beginning of the year 1681) and of her
voluminous correspondence, preserved in the State Archives at Hanover.
Among her letters, the collections of those addressed to her mother, to
the Elector Palatine Charles Lewis, to her nephews and nieces, the
Raugraves and Raugravines, and to her Mistress of the Robes, Frau von
Harling, have been admirably edited by Dr. E. Bodemann, and that of her
letters to her son-in-law, King Frederick I. of Prussia, by Professor E.
Berner; and to these has recently been added a very interesting
collection of her (and her daughter’s) letters to Hanoverian diplomats
(more especially the younger Schütz and Bothmer). None of these
collections, however, equals in general interest the correspondence of
the Electress Sophia with Leibniz, published several years ago by the
late Onno Klopp, the author of the monumental _Fall of the House of
Stuart_. Besides her own letters, we have many from the hand of her
mother, the Queen of Bohemia. So much of her correspondence as was in
her hands at her death, went to her son Prince Rupert, and was
published, in whole or in part, by Sir George Bromley, Bart., the
great-grandson of Prince Rupert’s illegitimate daughter Ruperta, under
the title of _A Collection of Original Letters_ (1787). Some of her
letters to Sir Edward Nicholas in 1654-5 were printed by Mr. J. Evans
for the Society of Antiquaries, and another set appeared with the
private correspondence of Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas appended to
Wheatley’s edition of Bray’s _Diary and Correspondence_. Many of the
Queen’s letters are, of course, to be found in the late Mrs. Everett
Green’s _Life of Elizabeth_, a work which has long held its own and is
on the point of being republished in a new edition, carefully revised by
the expert hand of Mrs. Lomas, of the Record Office, and provided by her
with an admirable Introduction. In this Mrs. Lomas refers to a very
interesting set of Elizabeth’s letters, addressed by the Queen to her
son, the Elector Charles Lewis, accompanied by a few drafts of his
replies, which was a few years ago edited by Miss Anna Wendland for the
Stuttgart Literary Society.[1] The letters of Charles Lewis himself and
his family have been edited by Dr. W. L. Holland for the Stuttgart
Literary Society; and there is, in addition, the inimitable and endless
series of letters by Charles Lewis’ daughter, Sophia’s beloved niece and
second self, Elizabeth Charlotte Duchess of Orleans, among which mention
need only be made of the selection of letters to her aunt, edited in two
volumes by Dr. Bodemann. The letters addressed by Sophia’s youngest son,
Prince Ernest Augustus (afterwards Bishop of Osnabrück and Duke of
York), to his friend J. F. D. von Wendt, edited by Count Erich
Kielmannsegg, together with the editor’s notes, throw much light on
certain passages and personages of Hanoverian history; unfortunately,
their continuous sequence breaks off in November, 1713. To these may be
added the letters and memoranda of Ilten, Schulenburg and other
Hanoverian politicians and courtiers, including Bernstorff’s
correspondence and autobiographical fragment; the numerous contributions
of Leibniz, in the historical section of Pertz’s edition of his
_Collected Works_, to the politics and later history of the House of
Brunswick-Lüneburg; and Toland’s account of his visit to Hanover, told
well if not too wisely. Of the despatches of our envoys and residents
preserved in the Record Office and elsewhere, part only have been given
to the world by J. M. Kemble and others; while a vast amount of matter
of this kind, especially from the despatches of the Imperial envoys and
residents in London, preserved in the Vienna Archives, is embedded in
Onno Klopp’s _magnum opus_. A very useful guide to the _personnel_ of
the diplomatic representation of England and the North German
Governments at the respective courts is furnished by the _List of
Diplomatic Representatives and Agents, England and North Germany,
1689-1727_, contributed by Mr. J. F. Chance to Professor Firth’s _Notes
on the Diplomatic Relations of England and Germany_. The _Memoirs_ of de
Gourville have not been lost sight of; and the records of the court of
Hanover, selected for publication by the experienced hand of C. E. von
Malortie, and illustrated by him with much additional matter, have been
of occasional use.
-----
Footnote 1:
The reader may like to be referred to certain contributions to the
biography of the Queen of Bohemia, besides Häusser and Söltl’s
well-known _Elizabeth Stuart_; viz. J. O. Opel, _Elizabeth Stuart von
der Pfalz_ (_Histor. Zeitschrift_, Vol. xxiii.); K. Hauck, _Elizabeth,
Königin von Böhmen, Kurfürstin von der Pfalz, in ihren letzten
Lebensjahren_ (_Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte der Pfalz I_); A.
Wendland, _Hannoverische Erinnerungen an die Winterkönigin_ (, Jahrg.
1903). The last named contains some notes on portraits.
-----
There seems no necessity for referring in this place to the secondary
authorities to which, as a matter of course, I have made more or less
frequent reference—from Spittler to Havemann and O. von Heinemann and to
the late Professor Adolf Köcher’s standard _History of Hanover and
Brunswick, from 1648 to 1674_, beyond which date the author
unfortunately did not live to carry his invaluable work. Häusser’s
_History of the Rhenish Palatinate_, a work which satisfied the
requirements of its day, and is most readable into the bargain, has been
in constant use. Among earlier biographical sketches of the Electress
Sophia I may mention, besides J. G. H. Feder’s and W. Nöldeke’s
monographs, Dr. E. Bodemann’s account of her in the _Historische
Taschenbuch_ for 1888; H. Forst’s article on _Sophie Herzogin von
Braunschweig Lüneburg, Frau von Osnabrück, 1661-1679_, in the 1889
_Jahrgang_ of the _Mittheilungen of the Osnabrück Historical Society_
(kindly made accessible to me by Mr. S. Jaffé of Sandfort), in which,
however, there is little as to her life at Osnabrück and Iburg, of which
one would gladly know more, besides what is to be found in her
correspondence; and R. Fester’s and H. Schmidt’s biographical essays, to
the latter of which is appended a contribution by Professor A. Haupt on
_Art (plastic and pictorial) at Hanover in the times of the Electress
Sophia_. The masterly chapters in the late Kuno Fischer’s great book on
Leibniz which deal with his political and religious activity, and with
his relations to the Electress Sophia and her family, are certain to be
consulted by serious students; nor will the late M. Foucher de Careil’s
_Leibniz et les deux Sophies_ be overlooked. Of Sophia’s brothers,
Charles Lewis has found a careful as well as sympathetic biographer in
Dr. K. Hauck, who has printed a large number of the Palatine family
letters in the _Neue Heidelberger Jahrbücher_; and Miss Eva Scott has
recently published a useful _Life of Prince Rupert_. The Princess
Palatine Elizabeth would no doubt have preferred to live in her
correspondence with her great friend Descartes, which will be found in
Victor Cousin’s edition, and in Vols, iii., iv., and v. of the
definitive edition of the philosopher’s works by C. Adam and P. Tannery.
Several attempts have, however, been made to put the materials for the
biography of this fair sage—and saint—into form. Among these are G. E.
Guhrauer’s exhaustive essay in the _Historische Taschenbuch_ for 1850
and 1851; the admirable monograph by Foucher de Careil, _Descartes et la
Princesse Palatine_, and M. V. de Swarte’s _Descartes Directeur
Spirituel_, which contains a commentary on his correspondence with both
the Princess Elizabeth and Queen Christina. The reader should not fail
to consult Miss E. S. Haldane’s _Descartes, His Life and Times_. I may
also mention M. J. Bertrand’s paper _Une Amie de Descartes_ in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_, Vol. cii., and another contributed by the
present writer to _Owens College Historical Essays_ (1901). I have not
seen an essay on the Princess by Dr. J. Witte in the _Neue Heidelberger
Jahrbücher_ (1901), which is described as very attractive. A biography
of the Princess has quite recently been published by Miss Elizabeth
Godfrey, under the title of _A Sister of Prince Rupert_. I am not aware
of any attempt to put together in more than outline the curious life’s
story of another member of the family—the Princess Louisa Hollandina;
the source of most of what I have been able to add to details generally
accessible on the subject is acknowledged below. I have, of course, used
Guhrauer, Varnhagen, and the later memoir writers for various kinds of
collateral information; and on the Succession question I have, besides
the works mentioned above, consulted divers essays as to special points
by A. Schaumann, O. Meinardus, Reinhold Pauli, and others. It has not
been part of my design to trace the way in which the progress of the
Succession question was affected by the course of English party history
on the one hand, or on the other by the action of the exiled Stewarts,
and of the Jacobite interest at home and abroad. But I have endeavoured
to keep both influences in view, noticing any Parliamentary transactions
of importance, and attempting to utilise such information as is afforded
by the Reports of the Royal Historical MSS. Commission, including those
on the Stuart Papers at Windsor, and on the Harley MSS. Among recent
secondary works on the subject, I am greatly indebted to Dr. F.
Salomon’s extremely valuable research relating to the history of the
last four years of Queen Anne; I have also referred to Mr. W. Sichel’s
_Bolingbroke_, Mr. E. S. Roscoe’s _Oxford_, and Mr. Percy M. Thornton’s
useful _Brunswick Succession_. I may take this opportunity of noting the
fairness of tone which characterises Mr. Lewis Melville’s now completed
book, _The First George in Hanover and England_. Finally, I have sought
to keep abreast of the learning which, I am glad to say, continues to
stream into the exemplary _Journal of the Historical Society for Lower
Saxony_. I have to thank Mr. John Murray and Messrs. Longmans, Green &
Co., as well as the Editors of the _Quarterly, Edinburgh_, and _English
Historical Reviews_, and of the _Owens College Historical Essays_, for
allowing me to make use of various articles by me which have appeared in
these quarters on subjects treated in this volume. For a remarkably full
account of the Abbey of Maubuisson and of the connexion with it of the
Princess Louise Hollandina, its twenty-sixth Abbess—many details of
which I have reproduced—I am indebted to the excerpts made by M. L.
Toyant from the _History and Cartulary of the Abbey_, edited from
original documents by MM. A. Dutilleux and J. Depoin for the Societé
Historique du Vexin Français (1882). M. Toyant rendered me this service
at the request of Mr. H. Tinson (late of Messrs. Goupil & Co.), without
whose skilled assistance, most readily and courteously given, the first
(illustrated) edition of the present work could not have been produced.
In revising the last chapter of the present edition, I had the advantage
of utilising some notes kindly made by Mr. J. F. Chance on the section
entitled _The Hanoverian Succession_ contributed by me to Vol. vi. of
the _Cambridge Modern History_, which volume also contains a most
valuable section by Mr. Chance on the earlier foreign policy of George
I—a subject closely connected with that of his European policy before
his accession to the English throne, which is discussed in the present
volume. Mr. R. W. Goulding, Librarian to the Duke of Portland, was so
kind as to communicate to me in 1903 extracts from three letters from
the Electress Sophia to the Earl of Portland, dating from the years
1703-4, preserved, together with eight others, at Welbeck Abbey. Of
these extracts I have in my last chapter taken the liberty of
translating that which has reference to the death of King William III. I
desire also to thank Miss A. D. Greenwood (who has just published a
work, based on careful research, dealing with parts of the subject
treated in this volume), and Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, M.A., of Peterhouse,
and the Cambridge University Library, for aid given in the preparation
of one of the Appendices to the present edition.
In this Appendix will, as already indicated, be found, a series of
letters between the Electoral Princess Sophia Dorothea and Count Philip
Christopher in Königsmarck. This correspondence, which supplements the
much longer series deposited in the University of Lund, is preserved in
the Royal Secret Archives of State at Berlin, and is now (with the
exception of two letters forming part of it) printed for the first time.
I have to offer special thanks to the authorities of these Archives for
allowing this correspondence to be transcribed for me. I request the
eminent historian, Geh. Oberregierungsrath Dr. Koser, who holds the
office of Director of the Archives, to accept the expression of my
sincere obligations; and I desire very particularly to thank the Second
Director, Geh. Archivrath Dr. Bailleu, to whose historical works I owe a
debt which the present is not the occasion for recording at length, for
his courtesy in arranging for the transcription of these letters and
thereby facilitating the execution of my task. For the translation of
the letters I am myself responsible, as well as for some elucidatory
remarks concerning these documents. The Appendix on the Religious
Situation in Scotland, as it affected the Hanoverian Succession, I owe
to Mr. R. S. Rait, of New College, Oxford, whose command of Scottish
history is well known.
The present edition of this book necessarily appears without the
illustrations which adorned the first. In the Preface to that edition I
expressed my own gratitude and that of my publishers (Messrs. Goupil &
Co.) for services rendered in many quarters both at home and abroad,
towards the collection and reproduction of the illustrations in
question. More especially, I asked leave to offer the respectful thanks
of publishers and author to the present Head of the House of Hanover,
His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, K.G.,who had,
through Privy Councillor and Chamberlain von der Weise, kindly granted
permission for the reproduction of a series of family portraits
preserved at Herrenhausen and in the Fideicommiss. Gallery in the
Provinzial-Museum at Hanover. I expressed at the same time our gratitude
to the Right Hon. the Earl of Craven for allowing the reproduction of
several of the pictures forming the unique collection at Combe Abbey,
which contains so many of the portraits of the Queen of Bohemia.[2] Next
to the collection of Palatine portraits at Combe Abbey, the most
interesting is that at Blair Castle, of the existence of which Miss
Haldane, the translator of Descartes, was so good as to apprise me. His
Grace the Duke of Athol, whom the Marchioness of Tullibardine had, at
the instance of Miss Haldane, informed of my interest in the pictures,
kindly wrote to me that there are at present in Blair Castle original
portraits in panel by Gerard Honthorst of the Princess Palatine
Elizabeth, Louisa Hollandina and Henrietta Maria (married to Prince
Sigismund of Transylvania). These portraits, together with two of the
Queen of Bohemia and Prince Rupert, likewise by Honthorst, and ‘head and
shoulders’ portraits on panel, belonged to John, first Duke of Athol,
who probably inherited them from his mother, daughter of James, seventh
Earl of Derby. At the Duke’s death in 1724 he left the furniture of
Huntingtower to his widow (who had been his second wife); and the
last-named two pictures being there, were after her death removed to
England by her eldest son, Lord John Murray, from whom they descended to
W. H. G. Bagshawe, Esq., of Ford Hall, Chapel-in-the-Frith, Derbyshire;
but the portraits of the three Princesses, being at Dunkeld, went to the
Duke’s heir and successor. Mr. Bagshawe (who informs me that the
portrait of the Queen is extremely like that of her in the National
Portrait Gallery) in 1886 allowed copies of these two portraits to be
made for the Duke of Athol, which are now with the three originals of
the three Princesses at Blair Castle. I recollect seeing a charming
portrait of at least one of the Palatine Princes at Ford Castle,
Northumberland.
-----
Footnote 2:
I may perhaps take this opportunity of observing that the many
portraits of the Queen of Bohemia which I have seen at Combe Abbey, at
Herrenhausen, in the National Portrait Gallery, in Corpus Christi
College Lodge, Cambridge, and elsewhere, do not all agree in details
of feature, or, of course, of costume, though in most of them the
Queen wears one of those mighty farthingales which her father (poor
man!) in vain attempted to moderate. In most of her portraits her eyes
are dark, in one at least they are slate-grey. In a contemporary
account of her wedding special mention is made of the long flow of her
amber-coloured hair, which descended to her waist; and I notice that
Miss Wendland speaks of her children as ‘fair’ (_blond_) ‘like their
beautiful mother.’ But of her appearance in later life we have a
different account from the trustworthy hand of the Duchess of Orleans,
who says that she remembered her grandmother as if she had been in her
presence on the day of writing, and who notes her black hair, long
face, and powerful nose. Elizabeth Charlotte adds that there was a
great likeness between the Queen and her eldest son, of whom, as of
her second, she was in his early days fond of speaking to the King,
his father, as her ‘petit black babie.’ Altogether there can be no
doubt that she was one of the ‘dark ladies’ to whom Shakespeare and
others have attributed so peculiar a fascination, and for whom Goethe
had so marked a preference. The other feature noted by the Duchess of
Orleans was inherited by all of Elizabeth’s children whose portraits
are accessible—notably by Prince Rupert and the Princesses Elizabeth
and Sophia and her family, including numerous Honthorsts and some
works ascribed, I suppose traditionally, to Louisa Hollandina’s active
brush. More than a quarter of a century has passed since I had the
privilege of paying a visit to Combe Abbey; but the memory of it has
never left me.
-----
M. Toyant’s researches, communicated to me by Mr. Tinson, showed that,
besides the portraits of the Princess Louise Hollandina at Combe Abbey,
Hanover, and Herrenhausen (to which has to be added that at Blair
Castle), there exists one at Wilton House, the Earl of Pembroke’s seat
near Salisbury.
Of the Electress Sophia herself, one of the two portraits by Gerard
Honthorst at Combe Abbey served as the frontispiece to the first edition
of this book. The other, and a third of her and her daughter, Sophia
Charlotte, said to be the work of the Princess Louisa Hollandina, were
reproduced at later points in the volume; in which also appeared
engravings of Engelhard’s statue of the Electress, in a sitting
position, in the gardens at Herrenhausen, and of a gold medal in her
honour designed by Lambelet, of which a plaster cast is in the British
Museum. Other medals struck in her honour are depicted in Rehtmeier’s
_Hannöverische Chronik_. On the occasion of the serious illness, in
October, 1701, of an old and confidential friend, the Electress Sophia
wrote that ‘if she was to have her medal made of her portrait, she ought
to do it now; for, should Frau von Harling recover, she would not allow
me to spend so much on _ma vieille trogne_.’ Personal vanity, or
personal self-consciousness of any kind, was not among the shortcomings
traceable in the character of the brave and high-minded Princess of
whose life I have attempted to trace the unblemished record.