_The Königsmarks_ (Vol. v., pp. 78. 115. 183.).--It is certain from the
_State Trials_, ix. 31., that Count Charles John Königsmark, the
murderer of Mr. Thynn, was the elder of the two brothers; for it
appeared on the trial that the younger, Philip Christopher (a dozen
years later the gallant of the young Princess of Hanover), was at that
time a youth still under the care of a travelling tutor, who was
examined on the trial. This is stated in the _Quarterly Review_, art.
"Lexington Papers," to which inquirers had been already referred (Vol.
v., p. 115.). I am a little at a loss to account for J. R. J.'s
distribution of his epithets; he calls the case of the elder brother
"_mysterious_," and that of the second "_well-known_," when in truth the
former case is, and has been _well-known_ these hundred and fifty years.
Whereas the second case was so long a mystery that it was nowhere told
but in a corner of Horace Walpole's _Reminiscences_, and he was mistaken
as to the identity of the victim,--a mistake but recently cleared up. I
believe, too, that until the discovery of the Lexington Papers, no one
altogether believed the story; and the minuter details of the case, such
as by whose order, and how, and when and where the deed was done, and
how and where the body was disposed of, are still so far mysterious that
Walpole's _Reminiscences_ and the Princess's own notes differ
essentially on all those points.