"OSNABRUCK! OSNABRUCK!"
[Sidenote: 1725--Trial of Lord Macclesfield]
The impeachment of Lord Macclesfield was ascribed, rightly or wrongly,
to the influence of the Prince of Wales; the comparative leniency of
Lord Macclesfield's punishment to the favor and protection of the King.
Macclesfield was a justly distinguished judge. He had had the highest
standing at the bar; had risen, step by step, until from plain Thomas
Parker, the son of an attorney, he became Chief Justice of the Court of
King's Bench, then one of the Lords Justices of the kingdom in the
interval between Anne's death and the arrival of George the First, and
finally Lord Chancellor. George made him Baron, and subsequently Earl,
of Macclesfield. He had always borne a high reputation for probity as
well as for generosity until the charge was made against him on which
he was impeached. He was accused of having, while Lord Chancellor,
sold the offices of Masters in Chancery to incompetent persons and men
of straw, unfit to be intrusted with the money of suitors, but whom he
had publicly represented to be "persons of great fortunes, and in every
respect qualified for that trust;" with having extorted money from
several of the masters, and with having embezzled the estates of widows
and orphans. On May 6, 1725, the managers of the House of Commons
appeared at the bar of the House of Lords and presented their articles
of impeachment against Macclesfield. The trial took place at the bar
of the House, and not in Westminster Hall, where impeachments were
usually carried on, and it lasted until May 26th. There was nothing
that could be called a defence to some of the charges, and as {263} to
others Lord Macclesfield simply insisted that he had followed the
example of some of his most illustrious predecessors, and that the
moneys he received as presents were reckoned among the known
perquisites of the Great Seal, and were not declared unlawful by any
Act of Parliament. The Lords were unanimous in finding Macclesfield
guilty, and condemned him to be fined thirty thousand pounds, and to be
imprisoned in the Tower until the fine had been paid. The motion that
he be declared forever incapable of any office, place, or employment in
the State was, however, rejected, as was also a motion to prohibit him
from ever sitting in Parliament or coming within the verge of the
court. It would certainly seem as if these motions ought to have been
the natural and necessary consequence of the impeachment and the
conviction. If the conviction were just--and it was obviously
just--then Lord Macclesfield had disgraced the highest bench of
justice, and merely to condemn him to disgorge a part of his plunder
was a singularly inadequate sort of punishment. George the First,
however, chose to ascribe the impeachment to the malice and the
influence of the Prince of Wales, and when Macclesfield had paid the
fine by the mortgage of an estate, the King undertook to repay the
money to him. George actually did pay to Macclesfield one instalment
of a thousand pounds, but fate interposed and prevented any further
payment. Macclesfield retired from the world, and spent his remaining
years in the study of science and in religious meditation. He died in
1732. His was a strange story. He had many of the noblest qualities;
he had had, on the whole, a great career. It is not easy, if we may
borrow the words which Burke applied to a more picturesque and
interesting sufferer, "to contemplate without emotion that elevation
and that fall."
During all this time of comparative quietude we are not to suppose that
there were no threatenings of foreign disturbance. The adherents of
the Stuarts were never at rest; the controversies which grew out of the
Treaty of Utrecht were always sputtering and menacing. Cardinal {264}
Fleury, a statesman devoted to peace and economy, had become
Prime-minister of France. Other new figures were arising on the field
of Continental politics. Alberoni, in exile and disgrace, had been
succeeded by a burlesque imitation of him, the Duke of Ripperda, a
Dutch adventurer who turned diplomatist, and had risen into influence
through Alberoni's favor. In 1725 Ripperda negotiated a secret treaty
between the Emperor, Charles the Sixth, and the King of Spain, and was
rewarded with the title of duke. He became Prime-minister of Spain for
a short time, to be presently disgraced and thrown into prison, quite
after the fashion of a royal favorite in the pages of "Gil Blas." He
was a fantastic, arrogant, feather-headed creature, an Alberoni of the
_opera bouffe_. He betook himself at last to the service of the
Sovereign of Morocco. England had a sort of Ripperda of her own in the
person of the wild Duke of Wharton, the man whose eloquent and
ferocious invective had contributed to the sudden death of Lord
Stanhope, and who had since that time devoted himself to the service of
James Stuart on the Continent, and actually fought as a volunteer in
the ranks of the Spanish army at the abortive siege of Gibraltar. It
is to the credit of the sincerer and better supporters of the Stuart
cause that they would not even still consent to regard it as wholly
lost. They kept their eyes fixed on England, and every murmur of
national discontent or disturbance became to them a new encouragement,
a fresh signal of hope, a reviving incitement to energy. In England
men were constantly hearing rumors about the dissolute life of the
Chevalier, and his quarrels with his wife, Clementina Maria, a
granddaughter of one of the Kings of Poland. The loyalists here at
home were ready to believe anything that could be said by anybody to
the discredit of James and his adherents; James and his adherents were
willing to be fed on any tales about the unpopularity of George the
First, and the tottering condition of his throne. Nor could it be said
that George was popular with any class of persons in {265} England. If
the reign of the Brunswicks depended upon personal popularity, it would
not have endured for many years. But the people of England were able
to see clearly enough that George allowed his great minister to rule
for him, and that Walpole's policy meant prosperity and peace. They
did not admire George's mistresses any more now than they had done when
first these ladies set their large feet on English soil; but even some
of the most devoted followers of the Stuart cause shook their heads
sadly over the doings of James in Italy, and could not pretend to say
that the cause of morality would gain much by a change from Brunswick
to Stuart.
[Sidenote: 1727--Death of George the First]
The end was very near for George. He was now an old man, in his
sixty-eighth year, and he had not led a life to secure a long lease of
health. His excesses in eating and drinking, his hot punch, and his
many mistresses had proved too much even for his originally robust
constitution. Of late he had become a mere wreck. He was eager to pay
one other visit to Hanover, and he embarked at Greenwich on June 3,
1727, landing in Holland on the 7th of the month. He made for his
capital as quickly as he could, but in the course of the journey he was
attacked by a sort of lethargic paralysis. Early on June 10th he was
seized with an apoplectic fit; his hands hung motionless by his sides,
his eyes were fixed, glassy, and staring, and his tongue protruded from
his mouth. The sight of him horrified his attendants; they wished to
stop at once and secure some assistance for the poor old dying King.
George, however, recovered consciousness so far as to be able to insist
on pursuing his journey, crying out, with spasmodic efforts at command,
the words "Osnabrück! Osnabrück!" At Osnabrück lived his brother the
Prince-bishop. The attendants dared not disobey George, even at that
moment, and the carriage drove at its fullest speed on towards
Osnabrück. No swiftness of wheels, however, no flying chariot, could
have reached the house of the Prince-bishop in time for the King. When
the royal carriages clattered into the court-yard of the {266}
Prince-bishop's palace the reign of the first George was over--the old
King lay dead in his seat. Lord Townshend and the Duchess of Kendal
were following in different carriages on the road; an express was sent
back to tell them the grim news. Lord Townshend came on to Osnabrück,
and finding that the King was dead, had nothing to do but to return
home at once. The Duchess of Kendal is stated to have shown all the
signs of grief proper to be expected from a favorite. She tore her
hair--at least she pulled and clutched at it--and she beat her ample
bosom, and professed the uttermost horror at the thought of having to
endure life without the companionship of her lord and master. It is
satisfactory, however, to know that she did not die of grief. She
lived for some sixteen years, and made her home for the most part at
Kendal House, near Twickenham.
[Sidenote: 1727--The raven]
Even such a man as George the First may become invested by death with a
certain dignity and something of a romantic interest. Legends are
afloat concerning the King's later days which would not be altogether
unworthy the closing hours of a great Roman emperor. George had his
melting moments, it would seem, and not long before his death, being in
a pathetic mood, he gave the Duchess of Kendal a pledge that if he
should die before her, and it were possible for departed souls to
return to earth and impress the living with a knowledge of their
presence, he, the faithful and aged lover, would come back from the
grave to his mistress. When the Duchess of Kendal returned to her home
near Twickenham she was in constant expectation of a visit in some form
from her lost adorer. One day while the windows of her house were
open, a large black raven, or bird of some kind--raven would seem to be
the more becoming and appropriate form for such a visitor--flew into
her presence from the outer air. The lamenting lady assumed at once
that in this shape the soul of King George had come back to earth. She
cherished and petted the bird, it is said, and lavished all fondness
and tenderness upon it. What {267} became of it in the end history
does not allow us to know. Whether it still is sitting, like the more
famous raven of poetry, it is not for us to guess. Probably when the
Duchess herself expired in 1743, the ghastly, grim, and ancient raven
disappeared with her. Why George the First, if he had the power of
returning in any shape to see his mistress, did not come in his own
proper form, it is not for us to explain. One might be disposed to
imagine that in such a case it would be the first step which would
involve the cost, and that there would be no greater difficulty for the
departed soul to come back in the likeness of its old vestment of clay
than to put on the unfamiliar and somewhat inconvenient form of a fowl.
Perhaps the story is not true. Possibly there was no raven or other
bird in the case at all. It may be that, if a black raven did fly in
at the Duchess of Kendal's window, the bird was not the embodied spirit
of King George. For ourselves, we should be sorry to lose the story.
Neither the King nor the mistress could afford to part with any slight
clement of romance wherewithal even legend has chosen to invest them.
Another story, which probably has more truth in it, adds a new
ghastliness to the circumstances of George's death. On November 13,
1726, some seven months before that event, there died in a German
castle a woman whom the gazette of the capital described as the
Electress Dowager of Hanover. This was the unfortunate Princess
Sophia, the wife of George. Thirty-two years of melancholy captivity
she had endured, while George was drinking and hoarding money and
amusing himself with his seraglio of ugly women. She died protesting
her innocence to the last. In the closing days of her illness, so runs
the story, she gave into the hands of some one whom she could trust, a
letter addressed to her husband, and obtained a promise that the letter
should, somehow or other, be delivered to George himself. This letter
contained a final declaration that she was absolutely guiltless of the
offence alleged against her, a bitter reproach to George for his
ruthless conduct, {268} and a solemn summons to him to stand by her
side before the judgment-seat of Heaven within a year, and there make
answer in her presence for the wrongs he had done her, for her blighted
life and her miserable death. There was no way of getting this letter
into George's hands while the King was in England, but an arrangement
was made by means of which it was put into his coach when he crossed
the frontier of Germany on his way towards his capital. George, it is
said, opened the letter at once, and was so surprised and
horror-stricken by its stern summons that he fell that moment into the
apoplectic fit from which he never recovered. Sophia, therefore, had
herself accomplished her own revenge; her reproach had killed the King;
her summons brought him at once within the ban of that judgment to
which she had called him. It would be well if one could believe the
story; there would seem a dramatic justice--a tragic retribution--about
it. Its very terror would dignify the story of a life that, on the
whole, was commonplace and vulgar. But, for ourselves, we confess that
we cannot believe in the mysterious letter, the fatal summons, the
sudden fulfilment. There are too many stories of the kind floating
about history to allow us to attach any special significance to this
particular tale. We doubt even whether, if the letter had been
written, it would have greatly impressed the mind of George. Remorse
for the treatment of his wife he could not have felt--he was incapable
of any such emotion; and we question whether any appeal to the
sentiment of the supernatural, any summons to another and an impalpable
world, would have made much impression on that stolid, prosaic
intelligence and that heart of lead. Besides, according to some
versions of the tale, it was not, after all, a letter from his wife
which impressed him, but only the warning of a fortune-teller--a woman
who admonished the King to be careful of the life of his imprisoned
consort, because it was fated for him that he should not survive her a
year. This story, too, is told of many kings and other persons less
illustrious.
{269}
[Sidenote: 1727--Character of the first George]
Much more probable is the rumor that Sophia made a will bequeathing all
her personal property to her son, that the will was given to George the
First in England, and that he composedly destroyed it. If George
committed this act, he seems to have been repaid in kind. His own will
left large legacies to the Duchess of Kendal and to other ladies. The
Archbishop of Canterbury gave the will to the new King, who read it,
put it in his pocket, walked away with it, and never produced it again.
Both these stories are doubted by some of the contemporaries of George
the Second, but they were firmly believed in and strongly asserted by
others, who seem to have had authority for their belief. At all
events, they fit in better with the character and surroundings of both
princes than the tragic story of the letter and its fearful summons,
the warning of the fortune-teller, or the soul of the dead King
revisiting the earth in the funereal form of a raven.
There is not much that is good to be said of George the First. He had
a certain prosaic honesty, and was frugal amid all his vulgar
voluptuousness. He managed the expenses of his court with creditable
economy and regularity. The officers in his army, and his civil
servants, received their pay at the properly-appointed time. It would
be hardly worth while recording these particulars to the King's credit,
but that it was somewhat of a novelty in the arrangements of a modern
court for men to receive the reward of their services at regular
intervals and in the proper amount. George occasionally did a liberal
thing, and he more than once professed a strong interest in the
improvement of university education. He is said to have declared to a
German nobleman, who was complimenting him on the possession of two
such kingdoms as England and Hanover, that a king ought to be
congratulated rather on having two such subjects as Newton in the one
country and Leibnitz in the other. We fear, however, that this story
must go with the fortune-teller and the raven; one cannot think of dull
prosaic {270} George uttering such a monumental sort of sentiment. He
cared nothing for literature or science or art. He seems to have had
no genuine friendships. He hated his son, and he used to speak of his
daughter-in-law, Caroline, as "that she-devil the princess." [Sidenote:
1727--His epitaph] Whatever was respectable in his character came out
best at times of trial. He was not a man whom danger could make
afraid. At the most critical moments--as, for instance, at the
outbreak of the rebellion in 1715--he never lost his head. If he was
not capable of seeing far, he saw clearly, and he could look coming
events steadily in the face. On one or two occasions, when an
important choice had to be made between this political course and that,
he chose quickly and well. The fact that he thoroughly appreciated the
wisdom and the political integrity, of Walpole speaks, perhaps, his
highest praise. His reign, on the whole, was one of prosperity for
England. He did not love England--never, up to the very end, cared for
the country over which destiny had appointed him to rule. His soul to
the last was faithful to Hanover. England was to him as the State wife
whom for political reasons he was compelled to marry; Hanover, as the
sweetheart and mistress of his youth, to whom his affections, such as
they were, always clung, and whom he stole out to see at every possible
chance. George behaved much better to his political consort, England,
than to the veritable wife of his bosom. He managed England's affairs
for her like an honest, straightforward, narrow-minded steward. We
shall see hereafter that England came to be governed much worse by men
not nearly so bad as George the First. To do him justice, he knew when
he ought to leave the business of the State in the hands of those who
understood it better than he; this one merit redeemed many of his
faults, and, perhaps, may be regarded as having secured his dynasty.
Frederick the Great described George as a prince who governed England
by respecting liberty, even while he made use of the subsidies granted
by Parliament to corrupt the Parliament which voted them. {271} He was
a king, Frederick declares, "without ostentation and without deceit,"
and who won by his conduct the confidence of Europe. This latter part
of the description is a little too polite. Kings do not criticise each
other too keenly in works that are meant for publication. But the
words form, on the whole, an epitaph for George which might be
inscribed on his tomb without greater straining of the truth than is
common in the monumental inscriptions that adorn the graves of less
exalted persons.
{272}