THE FALLING IN OF A GREAT LEGACY.
On the 18th of June, 1714, the Heiress of England, the Electress Sophia
of Hanover, the aged mother of that Prince Elector, who afterwards
became George the First of England, and granddaughter of James the
First having dined in public with her son, that is to say having taken
her big German mid-day meal in the presence of the Court, went forth on
the arm of her granddaughter-in-law, the Electoral Princess Caroline,
to take the summer air in the beautiful gardens of the Palace of
Herrenhausen.
Much had occurred during the previous twenty-four hours to upset the
“Heiress of Britain” as she was proud to be called, far too much worry
for an old lady in her eighty-fourth year. Even at that advanced age
the glamour of the English crown fascinated her. Perhaps it was the
long drawn out hope of many years, the hope that possibly had been ever
before her eyes since the flight of James the Second.
She had received a letter on the previous day written by the hand of
Queen Anne herself in which that royal lady had distinctly told her in
the most peremptory manner in answer to a supplication to that effect,
that she objected to have any member of the Electoral family in her
dominions during her lifetime.
This had been a crushing blow. The old Electress had schemed, and
schemed as she imagined successfully, to establish her grandson George
Augustus, the Electoral Prince, with his wife in England. This would
have been a masterly stroke worthy of the universal reputation for
policy of so grand an old lady, and would have been as it were the
planting of one foot on the land she looked upon as her rightful
heritage, but fate and Queen Anne decided differently. The latter had
left no room for doubt about her intentions. Writing to her confidant
Leibnitz, on the 17th June, the Electoral Princess Caroline said on the
subject of this letter and others:
“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.”[6]
It is perfectly certain that Queen Anne had made herself exceedingly
objectionable as even a Queen can at times, and had not possibly stayed
to choose her words. Be that as it may, she had succeeded in entirely
upsetting the equanimity of her “good cousin” the Electress.
The old lady issuing from the Palace, where possibly she had dined
more amply than was judicious--for she was a great eater--leant on the
arm of her beloved Catherine and harped as ladies of her age will do
on the string of her treatment by her kinswoman Anne. It is said that
she became greatly excited and walked very fast, as she spoke of her
imagined wrongs. They bent their steps towards the celebrated orangery,
where the Princess and the attendants with them noticed the Electress
turn very white; then the next moment she fell forward in a swoon.
The cries of the attendants quickly brought to her aid her son
the Elector who was not far off, and he placed some _poudre
d’or_--evidently a restorative--in her mouth. But she was beyond the
power of earthly restoratives; she was carried into the Palace and in
the barbarous custom of the time bled, but very little blood came[7];
she was dead! as the doctors said, from apoplexy.
Thus did this great Princess, to whom our own late Queen, Victoria,
her descendant, has been so often likened, miss by a little over six
weeks the great goal of all her long years of ambition, the throne of
England, for Queen Anne died on the 1st of August following.
It is extraordinary that after the lapse of six generations a
descendant so like her should fill that throne after which she had
striven so long and so wisely for her family.
Her son George was now the “Heir of Britain” in her place; an heirship
which was to very soon resolve itself into possession, for within a
few weeks began that celebrated crisis in England between Oxford and
Bolingbroke which from the virulence of the discussions at the Councils
absolutely broke down Queen Anne’s health and killed her.
She departed this life on the 1st of August, 1714, almost her last
intelligible words being of her brother, the Pretender: “My brother!
Oh! my poor brother. What will become of you?”
On July 31st, Craggs, a creature of the Whig Government, had been
despatched to Hanover to convey the news that the Queen of England was
dying.
Craggs reached Hanover on August 5th--a journey then apparently of six
days--but his performance, though accomplished, one can imagine, with
all haste, was entirely eclipsed by that of one Godike, secretary to
Bothmar, the Hanoverian Envoy to England, who, despatched by his master
on August 1st, the day of the Queen’s death, arrived at Hanover on the
5th, the same day as Craggs, and proceeding direct to the Palace of
Herrenhausen, conveyed the news to the Elector before any of the other
messengers from England arrived.
It was this enterprising Bothmar who really decided George in
accepting the British Crown, for had not his reports from London been
satisfactory as to the feeling of the people, or at any rate as to the
absence of hostility to the Elector on their part, it is very unlikely
that George would have left his beloved Herrenhausen at all, and
England might to-day have been ruled by a Stuart King.
“The late King,” wrote Dean Lockier after the death of George the
First, “would never have stirred a step if there had been any strong
opposition.”[8]
But there was no disturbance, the people of London at any rate were
quiet, probably in a state of expectancy, and the preparations of the
Elector and his family for a move to England commenced forthwith.
Nevertheless, the new King of England did not hurry himself to take
possession of his dominions; he had been there thirty-four years before
on a matrimonial venture, of which the late Queen Anne, then Princess
of York, was the object, and he apparently cherished no pleasant
recollections of the visit, which had proved a dismal failure.
However, he started a month after the death of Queen Anne for the
Hague, there to embark for England, and he took with him a numerous
following of Hanoverians in which was Bernstorff, his Prime Minister,
and two-thirds of his seraglio, _i.e._, the Ladies Schulemburg and
Kielmansegge. It is not surprising that with his Eastern proclivities
he took also a couple of Turks by name Mustapha and Mahomet, but
whether these two last were eunuchs, in attendance on the two ladies of
the harem or not is not mentioned in history.
To his son, the Electoral Prince, George gave the command to travel
with him, the Princess Caroline was to follow in a month with all her
children except one. Little Prince Frederick Louis, the subject of
these Memoirs, by his grandfather’s command, was to remain behind in
Hanover, a child of seven, alone and separated from the rest of his
kindred.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The Electoral Princess Caroline to Leibnitz, Hanover, 17th June,
1714. From Wilkins’ “Caroline.”
[7] D’Alais’s Despatch. Hanover, 22nd June, 1714. Wilkins’ “Caroline.”
[8] Wilkins’ “Caroline.”